Customer Reviews

Bull! 144 Stupid Statements from the Market's Fallen Prophets

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I stumbled across this book at my friend's house and spent the next hour laughing myself silly. Page after page of predictions gone bad, corruption galore and lots of bad market advice from some very familiar faces from the bubble. If you're watching the Nasdaq climb up and are starting to think about getting back into the market, read Bull! just to remind yourself that those stock market stars are not only fallible, they're sometimes stupid. Graphs and photos make for fast, easy read. Hilarious!

This book chronicles the hype, promotion, conflicts of interest and outright lying by the financial media, pundits and corporate leaders. It also shows the serious recriminations for the few analysts and brokers who went against the market madness of the late '90s. On any financial bulletin board today, "strong buys" issued by the large brokerages are normally perceived as a sure sign that they want to dump stock on the naive small investor. I trade the stock market almost daily, and eshew all the major media new sources - the hype, no matter how absurd, never ends. This small book confirms my worst, cynical beliefs. Read it and laugh, read it and weep.

The authors have performed a valuable service in providing this record of the mania.

I predict it will occupy the same position in future study of stock market history of this period as has a similar account of the 1920s experience.

(Surprisingly there's already enough new material associated with the 2003 stock market rally for a sequel)

To end on a lighter note, folks should sprint and do whatever it takes to get their hands on a new book titled Bull! 144 Stupid Statements From the Market's Fallen Prophets , written by Greg Eckler and L. M. Mac Donald. Greg is a longtime reader of the Rap, but that's not the basis for my enthusiasm. Rather, this is one of those rare finds that's not too long, right on point, hilarious and well-written. It's an easy-to-read history of quotes from many of the mania's pundits, complete with follow-up comments by Eckler and Mac Donald that at times had me laughing so hard I literally cried. I promise you, whatever the effort to obtain this book will be well worth it.

Certainly it is easy to tell things from hindsight but I must praise the authors for their very clever picks, exhaustive info collection and great presentation, that each "statement" is accompanied by the aftermath specific to that statement, a critical analysis, an update about the "fallen prophet" who made the statement and that cursed company, and a sacrastic bottomeline echoing that statement. It's definitely a page turner. Though it will be a long time before we will go into another maniac of the scale of the Y2K Internet Bubble, at least not before people completely forgot the lesson and shouted "this time is different", it's good to place this book in an eye catching place inside your investment/trading book collection coz creepy analysts, anchors, CEOs, Chairmans etc are still after us on media everyday. In short, beware! Take no tips! Just do it! (your own homework).

p.s. It's not a shame to make wrong recommendations. However, It's shameful to deny without a blush one had been wrong at all.

Below please find some copy and paste for your "easy" reference:-

Asked in Feb 2000 for five stocks to hold for next five years, James Cramer serves up this dog's breakfast: "Yahoo!, AOL, SUNW, NOK, CSCO." pg 8
"What is dangerous is for Americans not to be in the stock market. We're going to reach the point where the stocks are correctly priced, and we think that's 36,000." James Glassman, CNN, Dec 1999. pg 38
"I really dont think valuation is all that relevant here. So I would stick with the market leaders." Gregg Hymowitz, Prinicpal, Enthrust Capital, CNN, March 2000. pg 52
"We have a better business model. It's a fundamentally better business model." Jeffrey Skilling, CEO, Enron, Information Week, Nov 2000 pg 90
"There are absolutely no problems that had anything to do with Jeff's departure. There are no accounting issues, no trading issues, no reserve issues, no previously unknown problem issues. The company is probably in the strongest and best shape that it has ever been in." Kenneth Lay, Chairman, Enron, Businessweek Online Aug 2001 pg 91
"The firm that figures out how to bring out the knowledge and insights of two disciplines together to get the power of three, will be the real leader in this model. And we intend to be that leader." Joseph Bernardino, CEO, Arthur Andersen, Business Times, Singapore, Feb 2001 pg 92

After the 1929 crash a book was published of all the outrageous forecasts in the years before. Bull! has the same idea except that it adds photos and graphs. I'm not sure which is more shocking... the quotes or the aftermaths. Bookviews: "There is no comfort in having lost your shirt in the stock market these passed few years, but there are lots of laughs and cautionary wisdom in Bull!" Loved it!

In a book about poor recommendations, I find it hilarious that the authors give their own market opinion, which has proven to be incorrect.

Page 119, in reference to Abby Joseph Cohen's S&P 500 forecasts:

"Last we heard she was still calling for a twelve-month of 1,150. From 835, that's a pretty heady reacceleration."

Last I heard, the S&P was at 1.110. That's up 36% in 9 months, 3 months left in the twelve-month forecast. Hopefully, no one was listening to the author's opinion in early 2003.