Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112093 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Review
deserves another read --Moneyweek, July 2008

The Financial Times
"Here’s a cushion for when you hit the bottom."

Hugh Sloane, Sloane Robonson LLP
"Keep this book in mind, for one day it will help you make a lot of money!"

Customer Reviews

The author deserves a hug
Stock market histories are pretty thin on the ground and the ones that do exist tend to explore singular periods such as the Wall Street Crash, Tulip mania and so on, so a book which explore all of the 20th Century's recessions in an attempt to find common signals of their ending is both ambitious and timely. Fortunately, like his CLSA stable mate Marc Faber, Russell Napier's delivery is up to the job as he picks primary and secondary source facts and figures like a financial magpie to describe the narrative of each recession's beginning, bottoming and recovery.

'Anatomy of the Bear' has been researched with academic rigour and while all those facts and accompanying charts and tables can appear daunting at first it is also written in an approachable style as Napier brings to life the alternating euphoria then doom and despair and the return to euphoria of each market turn. Unlike books that claim that they will make you wildly rich, the conclusions herein may well actually help you or your firm succeed in making the right investment choices. The only negative issue is the lack of an index but for a title that is worth its weight in gold that is a small price to pay.

Bizarrely prescient
I started reading this in April '09 - partly to see whether there were lessons in understanding the 2009 crash, and partly to see if there were any hints about foreseeing the start of the climb back out. And I liked his approach - give quotations from the Wall Street Journal in the days running up to the turn and shortly after, and try to see what it was that changed people from pessimists to optimists and got the markets moving up.

The author is very picky about what he considers a bear market - and ends up analysing just four - 1921, 1932, 1949 and 1982. He then decides that the Wall Street Crash of 1929 (or 1932 - which was the bottom of the market) was so unusual that we can't draw lessons from it.

So suddenly we are only looking at three events, and trying to draw generalisations from them. I got sceptical.

But at the same time I was reading the book, the maket was showing some (clearly false) signs of life again. And the signs that the author mentioned (drops in interest rates, increases in copper prices, ...)were also appearing. Just a coincidencce, since the market was so obviously set for further falls.

Needless to say, the small investments I made at the time (just in case the author was correct - a bit of regret minimisation by me) have seriously outperformed the rest of my portfolio.

It is an interesting book - readable, educational and well researched. And I think the author will find he has another chapter to write on the 2009 bear market that fits in quite nicely with his thesis.

If only I had believed him the first time!