Stock Market Rules: 70 of the Most Widely Held Investment Axioms Explained, Examined and Exposed [Hardcover]

Michael Sheimo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 1999

Wall Street traders live by time-honored rules­­axioms like "Follow a Few Stocks Well", or "Buy On the Rumor and Sell on the News"­­but only Stock Market Rules tells traders which to trust! A sleeper hit in its previous edition, this instantly accessible book uses an analytical aproach to verify or debunk Wall Street's 70 most followed rules. Investors of all levels, always on the lookout for an edge, will appreciate how it offers guidelines for virtually every market situation. In this updated edition, Stock Market Rules explains 20 all new axioms not previously covered, in a concise and easy-to-reference format, and also reflects the dramatic changes in the market.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The only unbiased examination of sacred Wall Street beliefs­­telling you what works, what doesn't, and why.

Wall Street is a fast-moving, unforgiving world in which traders and investors must often rely on axioms and "rules" to guide their buy and sell decisions. An incorrect interpretation­­or, worse, a commonly accepted belief that is just plain wrong­­can lead to baffling mistakes and huge trading losses. Stock Market Rules uses unemotional historical data to verify or debunk 70 of today's most time-honored maxims.

Examples of mottoes in action show you how legendary investors like Warren Buffet and Jesse Livermore have used them to build some of history's largest trading fortunes. Through analyzing these guidelines and explaining when they work or why they don't, Michael Sheimo has written the only manual you'll need to gain an insider's understanding of the stock market wealth.

Praise for the first edition:

"Mr. Sheimo's book, Stock Market Rules, is a valuable guide to help investors make 'sense' out of stock market folklore. It will help improve their understanding of the stock market and how it operates...a first-rate effort."­­Dick Stoken, Partner, Strategic Investments

"This unusual book will be of interest to individual investors and those fascinated by the lure and lore of Wall Street...analyzes each maxim and demonstrates which have proved to be true and which have not. Includes many charts and graphs."­­David Rouse, Booklist

Product Details

• Hardcover: 313 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 2 edition (April 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071340963
• ISBN-13: 978-0071340960
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,094,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disgracefully ignorant, May 20, 1999

By 

Oliver Kamm (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stock Market Rules: 70 of the Most Widely Held Investment Axioms Explained, Examined and Exposed (Hardcover)

According to the dust jacket, the author earns his living as an investment adviser. One can only marvel at the generosity of his clients in retaining him if this book is anything to go by.

Mr Sheimo affects to "explain" and "examine" some investment notions, and to "expose" the ones he finds contentious. In order to do any of these things, it would help if he were actually to trouble to acquaint himself with what these "axioms" are in the first place. All too often he merely displays his own ignorance by getting them not only comprehensively wrong, but wrong in such a form as to constitute a schoolboy howler.

I take just one example as representative of Mr Sheimo's cluelessness: chapter 65, which attempts to debunk the "random walk hypothesis". The author considers that he has accomplished this task by setting a chart of numbers generated randomly in a lottery draw against a chart of the Dow Jones price index, over two years. And, duh, they look different. It beggars belief that a professional investment adviser should be in business at all let alone could have written stuff like that without first having worked out what variable it is that the hypothesis posits as random. It isn't *prices* that are hypothesised to follow a random walk, but price *changes*. If Mr Sheimo goes back to his database and tries this exercise again, but does it properly this time, I suspect he will see immediately why his published work has - to coin the euphemism to end all euphemisms - somewhat missed the point of the exercise. Having started with a howler of monumental proportions, the author then goes on to a series of misconceptions buttressed by non sequiturs. The most egregious of the lot is his misconception that in an efficient stock market the past doesn't predict the future. Wrong yet again: to the contrary, in an efficient stock market, where all publicly available information is already discounted in market prices, today's price is the best possible predictor of tomorrow's price. It's today's price *change* that has no implications for tomorrow's price *change* - thereby rendering the disciplines of technical analysis and stock market forecasting a damaging irrelevance at best.

It would be difficult to do justice to the sheer awfulness and ignorance of this book in a single review. But the effect after a while is just tedium rather than the majesty that you sometimes get from reading something that is unspeakably bad. Don't bother buying it, in any event.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars If you have bought it then read it, otherwise don't bother, December 25, 1999

By 

Fast Eddie (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stock Market Rules: 70 of the Most Widely Held Investment Axioms Explained, Examined and Exposed (Hardcover)

For the least, Mr. Sheimo's writing style is boring and inconclusive. Many times he tries to make a point but is poorly supported. Many are hindsights, few are based on in-depth analysis. However, it does cover a big spectrum of so called 'rules'. Readers are advised that nothing new will be learned, no teaching of 'how-to' but tons of if, but and may be....

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Only for the novice investor, October 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Stock Market Rules: 70 of the Most Widely Held Investment Axioms Explained, Examined and Exposed (Hardcover)

This book is useful for people just starting out in the field of investing, however doesn't go into any specific detail of each of the axioms. Some of the axioms are Biased and dont fully examine the creditabilty of the stratagy. Bottom line: If you've been investing for over a year this book will prove useless and won't help you in your investing careers. Try another book!