Against The Market

In this innovative book, David McNally develops a powerful critique of market socialism, by tracing it back to its roots in early political economy. He ranges from Adam Smith’s attempt to reconcile moral philosophy with market economics to Malthus’s reformulation of Smith’s political economy which made it possible to justify poverty as a moral necessity. Smith’s economic theory was also the source of an attempt to construct a critique of capitalism derived from his conception of free and equal exchange governed by natural price. This Smithian forerunner of today’s market socialism sought to reform the market without abolishing the social relations on which it was based. McNally explores this tradition sympathetically, but exposes its fatal flaws. The book concludes with an incisive consideration of efforts by writers such as Alec Nove to construct a “feasible” model of market socialism. McNally shows these efforts are still plagued by the failure of early Smithian socialism to come to grips with the social foundations of the market, the commodification of labor-power which is the key to market regulation of the economy. The results, he argues, are neither socialist nor workable.

How Contrarians Bet Against the Market and Win—and You Can Too Standing out from the crowd goes against our natural instinct. Which is, of course, why it works. With the relentless growth of passive investing—investors blindly following the market—the opportunities for a smart investor to profit by betting against the crowd should be greater than ever. Yet, being a contrarian is hard work. You need to adopt a sceptical mindset: a flexible mode of thinking that allows you to stand back and spot when the market’s view of the world is badly out of touch with reality—and the best way to profit when reality eventually reasserts itself. In The Sceptical Investor, John Stepek, Executive Editor of MoneyWeek, pulls together the latest research on behavioural finance, and examples from well-known contrarian investors, to offer practical techniques to help you spot opportunities in common investment situations, from turnaround plays to bubbles and busts, that others in the market miss. JOHN STEPEK has been writing about business, economics and investment for more than 20 years. He is the Executive Editor of MoneyWeek, a bestselling weekly investment magazine.

William J. O'Neil's proven investment advice has earned him millions of loyal followers. And his signature bestseller, How to Make Money in Stocks, contains all the guidance readers need on the entire investment processfrom picking a broker to diversifying a portfolio to making a million in mutual funds. For self-directed investors of all ages and expertise, William J. O'Neil's proven CAN SLIM investment strategy is helping those who follow O'Neil to select winning stocks and create a more powerful portfolio. Based on a 40-year study of the most successful stocks of all time, CAN SLIM is an easy-to-use tool for picking the winners and reducing risk in today's volatile economic environment.

Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we allow corporations to pay for the right to pollute the atmosphere? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars? Auctioning admission to elite universities? Selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In What Money Can't Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes on one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets? In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life—medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. Is this where we want to be?In his New York Times bestseller Justice, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy, he provokes an essential discussion that we, in our market-driven age, need to have: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society—and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets don't honor and that money can't buy?

The Philadelphia Stock Exchange and the City It Made recounts the history of America's first stock exchange and the ways it shaped the growth and decline of the city around it. Founded in 1790, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, its member firms, and the companies they financed had profound impacts on the city's place in the world economy. At its start, the exchange and its members helped spur the development of the early United States, its financial sector, and its westward expansion. During the nineteenth century, they invested in making Philadelphia the center of industrial America, raising capital for the railroads and coal mines that connected cities to one another and built a fossil fuel-based economy. After financing the Civil War, they underwrote the growth of the modern metropolis, its transportation infrastructure, utility systems, and real estate development. At the turn of the twentieth century, stagnation of the exchange contributed to Philadelphia's loss of power in the national and world economy. This original interpretation of the roots of deindustrialization holds important lessons for other cities that have declined. The exchange's revival following World War II is a remarkable story, but it also illustrates the limits of economic development in postindustrial cities. Unlike earlier eras, the exchange's fortunes diverged from those of the city around it. Ultimately, it became part of a larger, global institution when it merged with NASDAQ in 2008. Far more than a history of a single institution, The Philadelphia Stock Exchange and the City It Made traces the evolving relationship between the exchange and the city. For people concerned with cities and their development, this study offers a long-term history of the public-private partnerships and private sector-led urban development popular today. More generally, it traces the networks of firms and institutions revealed by the securities market and its participants. Herein lies a critical and understudied part of the history of metropolitan economic development.

Rules for successful trading, direct from the traders who practice them every day Even with today's high-speed computers, online accounts, and information access, traders still live or die based on their abilities to control fear, greed, and emotion. The Market Is Always Right gives traders battle-proven advice for avoiding common trading setbacks by understanding human natureboth their own and others'and directing it toward profitable outcomes. Distilling the wisdom of hundreds of traders, this proactive book starts with 10 overriding rulesfor example, "Evaluate your performance"and then lists the subrules within each, such as "Qualify and quantify your trading pattern." Other examples include: Never chase trades Watch the opendon't trade it When in doubt, get out

Efficient market theorists contend that markets are random and thus not predictable. With the publication of Trading Against theCrowd, however, noted author, economist, and professional trader John Summa convincingly shows that investor sentiment can be incorporated into profitable stock and stock market trading systems. In this groundbreaking book, Summa explains how to use popular gauges of crowd psychology, such as put/call ratios, option-implied volatility, short sales, investor surveys, and advisory opinion to trade against, or contrary to, prevailing market sentiment. He also makes compelling arguments against the efficient markets hypothesis with the presentation of his own quantitative weekly bear and bull news-flow intensity indices, which he builds from news scans. This data series, and other popular measures of crowd psychology, are processed through custom indicators that are programmed into profitable trading systems, such as Squeeze Play I & II, Tsunami Sentiment Wave, and the Fourth Estate. Trading Against the Crowd is the first book to provide a comprehensive assessment of investor crowd psychology, offering valuable market timing tools and trading techniques, including: MetaStock and Trade Station system and custom indicator code; comparative statistical studies of CBOE, OEX, and equity-only put/call ratios; straightforward instructions for combining price triggers with sentiment indicators; a practical guide to understanding put/call ratios, short sales, investor surveys, newsletter opinion, and stock market news-flow intensity; how to use LEAP options as trading vehicles to avoid use of stop loss orders; use of put/call ratios for trading the Treasury bond futures market; and test results and evaluation of trading system performance. Many of today’s professional money managers rely on investor sentiment for improved market timing. They know that at extremes of market sentiment, markets tend to be the most predictable.Trading Against the Crowd shows how you can begin to profit from these short- to medium-term sentiment waves generated by the actions of the speculative crowd. Put into practice powerful sentiment data using thoroughly back-tested trading systems, and rise above the herd mentality of the investor crowd, where potentially large profits await.