Customer Reviews

Standard & Poor's Sector Investing: How to Buy The Right Stock in The Right Industry at The Right Time

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This book was referenced in John J. Murphy's Intermarket Analysis: Profiting from Global Market Relationships (Wiley Trading). I saw that the Stovall book was out of print and was priced as used for around $150. For that price I figured it must be a densely packed trove of investment wisdom and ordered it. It turns out that it has fifteen or twenty pages of general information about sector rotation and the rest of the book is out-dated information on the sectors themselves (circa 1996). I guess the book was supposed to be a regularly updated reference. It was originally priced at under $20 dollars and that is about what it would be worth IF the information were up to date. Anyway, Murphy's book (which is very helpful) has the essential information on sector rotation. So, save your money.

This is really the bible of sector investing and yes it was originally aimed at being an annual update. The story that I heard was that S&P was upset that Stovall was giving away the store and all its secrets and had this book pulled from the bookstores. That's why it became such a rare used book. At one point the ask price for this book on Amazon was $1100. Boy, I was tempted to sell my $20 copy. Another great book (and out of date) on sector investing is Lacy Hunt, A Time to be Rich. It can be found for a few dollars on other bookstore websites. Publisher was trying for a big seller and saddled the book with a terrible name. That's good because the book has a storehouse of knowledge in it and nobody knows about it.

If you really want to learn top-down investing, these books are the best.

Not so much synthetic, would deserve a revised and extended revision, worth buying if you can afford it (quite expensive for a used book) but clearer than intermarket analysis by Murphy