Rating: - Lcsmith
This one's so interesting it's a bit scary goes to show you how much study has been done to control the heard, charts on death rates and the economy, birth rates, divorces on and on even how we like women to look during good times and bad.Nothing here on short term trading but the guys your trading against know what color your toothbrush is.And they do want your your childs college money just in case you don't really realize that yet.To be honest I haven't finished this yet but I did skim through it It's a long read ....Good book for presidential cycle holds.Debra is simply amazing what she must know

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Rating: - A useful book that delivers what the title promises.
I find this book very useful, as it gives you a clear and complete vision of the investment universe avalaible to anyone. Deborah explains her investment criteria in real market situations with the social, historical and economic details of every period. A very good point is that she provides tips on where to find the actual data she is using. It's written at basic level, combining fundamental (through the yield curve) and technical analysis with some cultural indicators. The first one is the backbone of the book. In short, I enjoyed it and it's global and practical approach.

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Rating: - Timing the Market . . it's just better
I'm a technology guy, so when asked if "something works", my response is often: "I don't know, let's try it." That's precisely what I did with this book. It actually inspired me to go out to the Fed's site, collect the data, crunch through some numbers, and make the trades myself going back to 1960. I only "traded" based on the information in the first two chapters (the heart of the book really) I used the 3 month / 10 year curve and the money market curve for buying back in.

I really was surprised to find that I ended up with twice the money as the buy and hold portfolio even though my trade dates were slightly different than the author's (not by much, but I think the data differs a bit depending on your source)

Bottom line for me: It seems that there is something to this yield curve stuff . . Sitting down and working through the math did teach me an important lesson though. The 1982 - 2000 Bull Market in stocks was an incredible thing - an unusual affair. After trudging through the volatility of the 1960s and 1970s that fact really leaps out at you. If you had simply bought stocks toward the end of 1981 and held on until about the middle of 2000 you would've reaped something like a 1200% gain by my estimates. In other words, the 1982-2000 Bull made things very easy for stock market investors and bailed out a lot of unsophisticated people.

Will the future be so easy? I highly doubt it. And I wouldn't expect a bull market like the one we just saw anytime soon. This may render the simplistic "buy and hold" advice of old practically worthless. All the more reason to pay attention to what markets and the economy are doing. Bear markets can last a looooong time. It's worth making an effort to stay away from them if possible.

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Rating: - A few percent more . . .
I purchased this book to learn about yield curve inversions and how to use that information in making decisions on when to exit the stock market. The book meets those two goals and provides a real basis on how to improve market returns by avoiding potentially large losses. The price of the book is a little high. The section on cultural factors such as hemlines and bust sizes did not match well with the main theme of the book. Is it worth $35 to improve stock market returns by a few percent? Duh. Yeah.

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Rating: - One of the Better Market 'Timing' Books
If your primary investment goal is to invest for the longterm, but you would like to obtain far better results than the outdated and limiting 'Buy & Hold' strategy suggested by brokerage firms, then this is a book you should include in your library. While I feel some chapters could have easily been left out (the whole section on Cultural Indicators) Weir nevertheless offers some excellent information and proofs on various market-timing strategies. Frankly, the first section of the book offers the best explanation of the Yield Curve that I have found. Whether you include the yield curve methodology in your own investment strategy or not, it would be worth your while to understand its ability to predict market turns.

This book and Leslie Masonson's "All ABout Market Timing" are two of the better market-timing books that you should incorporate into your efforts to learn how to increase the returns on your investments through better market timing.