Full of Bull-- Stephen T. McClellan-- Review

Here is the author on Fox News talking about "Full of Bull". It is almost a pun.

Full of Bull Do What Wall Street Does Not What It Says To Make Money In The Market by Stephen T. McClellan is an overview of how wall street misleads the individual investor. McClellan worked as a stock analyst for 32 years, including being a vice president at Salomon Brothers and a first vice president at Merrill Lynch.

While the overall theme of the book, that wall street was misleading you with how analysts portrayed stocks, the interesting part was the small insights into the market which he gave throughout the book. He suggests that if you are looking for a list of stocks to pick from, try to choose from a hedge fund, not a mutual fund, hedge fund managers make their money by taking a percentage of the money they earn from the fund.

A few other insights were that the New York Stock Exchange was an investors market, and the Nasdaq market was primarily a trader and speculators market.

His viewpoint on analysis is that you should use the analysis from the stock market for the information it contains, statistics and financial information mainly. However, you should not necessarily follow the recommendations on which stocks to buy and sell. Analysts are biased towards making recommendations to buy stocks, any indication other than buy is a sell signal for most stocks. McClellan points out that analysts are too close to the companies they cover and often to get coverage, they have to take perks like golf trips, dinners, vacations, and go to conferences. Their job is not to rock the boat, but keep the market steady so people will continue buying stocks.

He further points out that analysts are over focused on large capitalization stocks which mutual funds and banks hold. He claims that it is better to invest in small capital value stocks because they have room to grow over the long term.

He also points out things like it is easier for an analyst to simply stop covering a stock than give a negative rating to stock. When an analyst stops covering a stock it is a bad sign.

There is an interesting section on executive qualities to look for both good and bad. For example he likes confidence, creativity, lack of yes men, and working very long hours. He dislikes bad health, messy relationships, lavish offices and perks, and a fixation on stock price. There is quite a bit on how to spot when an executive or company is misleading the public.

Mr. McClellan's viewpoint from retirement is that his profession is becoming corrupted by historical forces like the 1990's internet bubble and should require greater certification and oversight. He believes every analyst should be a CFA certified financial analyst and have an MBA masters in Business Administration.

I think this book gives quite a bit of insight into how the market really works. It appears to be focused on how to manage your investments in a long term safe manner while avoiding the pitfalls and hype of Wall Street. There is a glossary of financial terms and an index. His writing style often includes anecdotes about the authors experiences covering companies like EDS, Cisco, and other computer companies.

More Thoughts.

I have the rough outline for the review of Full of Bull done. I will probably write the review later tonight. I took some more notes on the train in to work. I sometimes juggle my tea with lemon and honey and writing notes on the train in to work. It can be cramped sometimes.

I alternated between taking notes and reading more of The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. The first part of the book is kind of confusing. The second part seems to clear up many unanswered ideas. The book is full ideas and at times can be quite sensual if not adult in content.

While I was looking for items to purchase for the Job Information Center, I came across a rather interesting manga. It is a career manga called The Adventures of Johnny Bunko The Last Career Guide You'll ever need by Daniel H. Pink. I wonder what it will be like reading a manga on how to further your career. I requested the book to be sent to my library so I could read it. It might be good for the teenagers, people getting their first jobs, or people entering college. I'll have to see.

I also found another interesting urban fantasy book called The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar. I hope it is interesting. Sometimes, it is interesting reading about a setting that is real, you can pick out places you might have been. Fantasy books often give a unique viewpoint on real settings. I put the book on order.

Another book came in for me today as well, The Courts of the Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling. It is set in the romantic mars where aliens terraformed mars millions of years ago with life forms from earth.

Right now, I have been doing various things, mostly updating the law collection and ordering books for the Job Information Center. I have to eventually get down to weeding some of the law books.

Todays Meanderings

Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

I am almost done reading Full of Bull Do What Wall Street Does, Not What It Says, To Make Money In The Market by Stephen T. McClellan. I will probably finish reading it on the train home. I have enjoyed his criticism of the current use of analysts on Wall Street. He believes analysis should be separated from investment banking and should have a much more long term focus. He mentioned a book which I have in my bookshelves, Security Analysis by Graham and Dodd. He calls it the foundation stone for modern security analysis.

It makes me think deeply about stocks lately. I have been noticing that there is a lot more demand for mass transit lately, especially things like hybrid electric buses. I have been looking closely at Capstone Turbine which has an advanced hybrid electric turbine bus engine for mass transit. I think they will be doing well lately. I am of course not a professional and cannot know the future.

Two more books came in for me to look at today. One is the graphic novel, Castle Waiting by Linda Medley. There is an introduction by Jane Yolen. It appears to be a kind of fractured fairytale. The other book is American Nerd: A History of My People by Benjamin Nugent.

I also have been looking at another title called Theodor Seuss Geisel The Early Works of Dr. Seuss Volume 1, it is printed by Checker Publishing Group, c2005. It consists of Dr. Seuss's work before he was a children's author. Apparently, he met Chuck Jones, the animator during his stint in Frank Capra's signal corps. He wrote numerous editorial cartoons in support of the war effort during World War II.

He also ran a series of advertising cartoons for Atlas Oil. Right know I am looking at a magazine article entitled Ye Knights of Ye Round Table Being The Inside Dope on King Arthur's Court Translated From Merlin's Memoirs by Theophratus Seuss. The book is fairly entertaining so far.

The majority of his cartoon lampoon society. They often include rube goldberg type contraptions, make comments on peoples style, or physical aspects of people like mustches, beards, and adams apples.

There are also advertisements for things like mirrors and fountain pens. He did a campaign for Chilton Wing Flow Pens.

I am at the point where there are several anti Lindbergh for president cartoons. He wrote a number of pro-war cartoons well before Pearl Harbor.

I don't think it is as good as his children's cartoons. The majority of the cartoons are in black and white. This book is definitely not a childrens book. I still found it quite intriguing.

Thoughts for Today

I have been reading more of The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. This book would be quite a hard book to review. The reason is that he is taking real events and history and changing it into fiction with a magical realist style. Not only is he reimagining historical events and people and recounting them, he is also adding in elements of the strange like magic tricks, philosophy, mysticism, humor, and language tricks.

The book contains an extensive four page bibliography of historical citations. Many of these cover witchcraft, the Osman's, Renaissance Florence, Machiavelli, Botticelli, the relations between the Medici, and the Mughals and many other arcane subjects.

In addition to works in print, he cites several websites. Some of these are on Akbar, the great Mughal king. For example there is a site on Persian literature in translation, http://persian.packhum.org/persian and the Gardens of the Mughal Empire http://www.mughalgardens.org/html/music01.html

This provides for a truly incredible reading experience, unlike anything else which I have ever read. I have not seen such an extensive bibliography in most fiction works.

I have learned a few things about social networking sites. One of these is that social networking requires a tremendous amount of bandwidth which is often not supported by the companies just starting out. I have seen outages and overloads at all the social networking sites I have used. All of them. As these social networks expand, they need to constantly increase the amount of bandwidth and memory which they are using.

Technorati has had trouble supporting favorites, Twitter has run into too many people, Blogcatalog has run into excessive amounts of people on their servers. The latest trouble has been with Entrecard, one of their servers blew and there was a fire. http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?showtopic=90185 . I do not blame anyone for this. Social networking is much more data intensive than most people imagine.

If you are going to join and use social networking, join three networks and expect two to be working at any given time. Reliability seems to be highly random. A lot of these services are new and will be experimenting with their computing needs.

On another note, I played around with Shelfari a little bit more today. I added a few children's books The Butter Battle Book, Where the Wild Things Are, and Peter Rabbit to my shelf. I also posted a few comments in the groups.

I finally removed Technorati from my blog. I added Twitter instead. I don't know if it is just a flight of fancy. I was not happy with Technorati's function.

Miss Potter-- DVD- Review

I watched the film, Miss Potter starring Rene Zellwegger as Beatrix Potter, and Ewan McGregor as Mr. Warne. I really enjoyed the film because I happen to really like her childrens books. Peter Rabbit the book she is most famous for sold over 40 million copies. When Beatrix Potter was a child, she had two pet rabbits, the first was Benjamin, and the second was Peter.

The film has a magical quality much like a fairytale. But, then Beatrix Potter's story is very much like a Victorian fairytale. Large portions of the film were shot on the Isle of Man. This means the cinematography and backgrounds were quite beautiful. You have rolling hills, forests, quaint villages, gardens, and old fashioned Victorian houses as the backdrop.

The story is at once tragic and at the same time uplifting. Ewan McGregor does an excellent job as Mr. Warne, the gentleman who first helps Miss Potter get her book published. He dies as they become engaged. The film is a more than a little stuffy in explaining their romance. They barely kiss. If you look at the actors cast as Beatrix Potter's parents, they look very similar to the photographs of her childhood. The film appears to be historically accurate.

There are numerous small animations of her childrens characters, including Jemima Puddleduck, Tom Tittlemouse, and Peter Rabbit. They come alive for brief moments in the film. These are very slight animations. Maybe, their ears move, or their eyes, or a frog hops about. Beatrix Potter was a mycologist and wrote numerous tracts on fungi.

This is also a story of a woman becoming independent. Beatrix Potter moved away from her family's house after she learned that she had a small fortune from selling her books. This allowed her to buy numerous small farms. Although, this wasn't shown in the film, she was famous for raising sheep. It did show her meeting William Heelis who helped her purchase her country properties and later married her.

I really enjoyed the film. Many people will find it stuffy and excessively proper, but that is how much of Victorian times was. There are tea parties, Miss Potter gets followed around by an old lady to make sure she is acting properly, and her father and mother try and marry her off to appropriately rich upper class people which she refuses to do.

Beatrix Potter's real life story is quite uplifting. The final screenshot where she leaves 4,000 acres of farmland to the British national trust to turn into parks is quite uplifting.

The DVD includes a documentary about the life of Beatrix Potter, and a film on the making of Miss Potter. It also includes some truly awful trailers of other films which are well worth skipping

I decided to do something a bit different this morning and review a film on an author. I am not sure if I should do this again with Finding Neverland starring Jonny Depp as J.M. Barrie author of Peter Pan. The film did not do too well in American markets, but did alright in world markets. I think it is more of an artistic statement than a mainstream film.