Beat the Crowd: How You Can Out-Invest the Herd by Thinking Differently (Fisher Investments Press)

The book style is engaging, succinct and sometimes humorous. It balances practical observation with a good measure of hard data and analysis, so the blend is convincing. Having read many books about investing over the decades--Lynch, Siegel, Bogle, Buffet, Malkiel--I am not easily impressed. However, this book was worth every minute spent reading and learning.

If you are an active investor you will find this a fascinating and useful book. It teaches you how to spot when a bull market will become a bear market in time. That is get out before the decline. Fischer explains in great detail why the majority of investors gets out too early before the bull market has peaked or too late when a bull market has already for a considerable period changed to a bear market. He shows how taking the Leading Economic Indicator, the LEI, seriously is the right way.Important reasons why investors get the timing wrong are lack of discipline and ignorance in the sense of wrong concepts. Discipline refers especially to not selling unnecessarily. Shares go up and down. Most investors when a position in a portfolio goes down consider selling and replacing it by a winner. They consider a small loss far more important than a large gain. This is behavior based on the past of what has already happened. Fischer points out that what matters is what is expected to happen in the next 30 months.Another important factor is the media that write about the stock market. People are more interested in bad news than good news, and therefore the majority of articles are written about short-term disappointments and negative developments further in the future than 30 months. His definite view is that both short-term opinions and extrapolations of the past and past 30 months predictions are useless for predicting changes from bull to bear and vice versa.Fischer points to more than thirty widely held views he considers wrong. Some examples. A high Price Earnings ratio (PE) has no validity in predicting a better or worse development than a low PE. Small companies do not have a superior long-term performance than large ones. The increase from long-term interest rates does not lead to a change in a bull market. Wars do not influence the stock market other than of the magnitude such as World War II. Fisher presents straightforward statistical proofs. He puts these concepts to tests to determine if these widely held view correspond to what happened in reality. It is necessary to look at a complete picture; there are always examples where these factors appeared to be right, but they are far fewer than when proven wrong. For learning to spot in time approaching bears and bulls this book is first class, five stars.Fisher frequently states that he is not a sociologist but nevertheless holds very negative opinions about politicians. Many people will have different views. His negative views of political leaders are so strong that they even get in the way of his statistical proofs. For example he states on page 132 that in 1938 the GDP started to increase when Franklin Roosevelt was president and on page 143 that a bear market reigned from 1934 to 1942. The reality is that already in 1934, FDR's second year in office, GDP increased with 10.8%. He states about the ACA on page 152 that the uninsured were reduced with between 7 to 10 million and on page 154 only with 1.1% which is only 3.5 million or half.Fisher as a non-sociologist has very definite opinions on government. He sometimes creates the impression that the kind of policies that President Hoover pursued most of the time of non-interference in the economy is the only right policy and political action. I nevertheless also enjoyed this part as he does also make thought-provoking comments on political action.

Ken Fisher is a guru that get's it. He has a non-political perspective, which I appreciate, and his insights on overcoming conventional trading wisdom are fascinating and easy to follow. That said, this book doesn't offer much that Fisher's last three books didn't already address. If you haven't read those books, I recommend reading this one, as some of his analysis is updated to reflect more current data.The message of the book is simple: don't follow the herd, don't follow the anti-herd, do something else. Essentially, don't be a conformist, don't be an anti-conformist, be a non-conformist. It's a fair argument and many examples are provided to support his contention...they just happen to be the same examples he used in Debunkery, The Only Three Questions That Count, and Markets Never Forget. As a person who genuinely appreciates Fisher's sense of humor, candor, and insight, this book was a bit of a let down given that I've read his other books. If you haven't read those books, you'll likely enjoy this read (you needn't know much about financial markets to follow along).

Just finished up with this book last night, and I'm glad I found it. I've dabbled on and off with investments over the years, with streaks of success and patches of rockiness. This book helped me to rethink some of my basic approaches to my portfolio, and in fact I'm probably going to look at my investments this weekend and make some changes based on what I've learned. In particular, I've found that I'm paying too much attention to short-term news and letting it make me either too excited or too scared. The funny thing is that I kind of already knew that about myself, and often times I would make a change knowing that I probably shouldn't. Reading through this book has affirmed that I should stick more to fundamentals and not worry so much about what I read in the paper or see on TV.The book itself is an easy read and only took me two days to finish. It's also written in a way that seems easy to understand even for someone who doesn't have a background in investing or know all the technical jargon. I also like that there are a lot of charts and other graphics to visualize the points being made. I always find it easier to see a concept displayed in a graph so that was a big help for me.Would definitely recommend this book for anyone managing their own investments or just interested in how it works.

This is for the audiobook MP3 CD version:Let me be clear: The content is fine and learning Ken Fisher's investing philosophy will undoubtedly make you a better, or at the very least wiser investor.The problem I have with this audiobook is that it does not play in any of the CD players I have. What good is an audiobook if I can't listen to it? Instead, I have to put it into my laptop's DVD drive and play the tracks one by one via Windows Media Player. Seriously? I know it's 2016 and all, but the publisher apparently no longer has the technology to make an old fashioned audio CD.So in closing, very disappointed with my purchase, I wish they would make just a plain old CD for listening in the car or at least let me know it won't play in CD players.Edit: I guess I should have researched whether or not my CD players can play MP3 CD's beforehand. For that reason I am giving this one more star (3 stars). However, they should have made it clear somewhere that you need a specialized CD player or a computer to play these audiobooks.

Read all books published by Ken Fisher, and this one is also a very well written book. Easy to read and the concepts provided are critical in building long term wealth.

Beat the Crowd von Ken Fisher kann ich jedem empfehlen der sich für Aktien interessiert.Neben zahlreichen Tipps wie z.B. sich nicht von den Medien negativ wie positiv beeinflussen zu lassen gefielen mir besonders die zahlreichen Buch Tipps weiterer Aktien Bücher.Neben vielen Seiten mit Informationen wie “selbst Legenden haben “nur“ zu 70% recht beim Aktienhandel sollte man jedoch wissen, dass auch hier gilt Learning by doing.Zum Schluss möchte ich noch sagen dass jeder Aktionär mit Wasser kocht, ob nun neu Einsteiger oder Börsianer.Ps: mein zusätzlicher Buchtipp ist Laughing at wall street!!!

As an avid reader of econmomic and financial literature I was excited to read the works of a such prolific investor. I nonetheless found this book rather disappointing. I found that it covered no specific topic in detail, and often made contradictory points. Perhaps interesting for the intermediate investor, but far better literature is available on the market.

Must read this book if you are investing in stocks. After reading this book, I have stopped watching technical analsyt in on TV. Incase of market correcting sharply, I just switch off TV and PC. Not panicking anymore after reading this book. On 24th August 2015 Sensex crashed by 1650 points. I just switched off TV and PC and starting listening to my favourite music. After that day the market recovered 1000 points. So I avoided panic selling. My portfolio is very good and I don't panic anymore. Thanks to BEAT THE CROWD.

Ken Fisher kann gut schreiben und mir haben die meisten seiner Bücher sehr gut gefallen. Nur dann fällt einem auch auf, dass er sich recht oft von Buch zu Buch wiederholt. Dennoch ist es ein gutes, kurzweiliges Buch, weil er viele Einsichten gewährt, die man so selten in anderen Börsenbüchern bekommt.