Customer Rating: 
Summary: don't waste your money and time
Comment: the author claims that the book will not make you rich but would make you understand the market behaviour better and thus avoid loss, he's right on the first part and wrong on the second part, he may be a genious but if he does not improve his presentation 100 times, this book will achieve one thing only - waste your time and money
Customer Rating:
Summary: a Rich, Accessible compendium of thought
Comment: I am a risk manager. The challenges that Mandelbrot has undertaken both politically, socially and intellectually are breathtaking and highly relevant. I am routinely found plodding through dense math texts, trying to remember my greek alphabet and often hoplessly lost in teh terminology. Mandelbrot does a great service to us all when he keeps the language understandable for the laity and eschews the complex formulas. You can tell that he does not need to sound overly smart because he is overly smart.
This book toes together so much history and so many concepts in such an elegant style that it is very hard to oversell the work. I have a hard time imagining a field in which this knowledge is not applicable in some way. And anyone who has even a baseline sense of curiosity will find the interweaving of the many great stories compelling.
I would imagine that some math majors will find that the information is somewhat basic, but only if they are exposed to a lox on non linear problems in a complexity theory or econophysics field. For everyone else, this is a masterpiece, an entertaining, accessible masterpiece.
Oh, and for any of you who like Nassim Taleb's work, this is absolutely essential reading. I also suggest diving into network and sync theories which fill in the gaps left by Mandelbrot. Much good work has been done since he wrote this. "Linked" and "sync" are especially good and accessible.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Comment: I'm doing research for a lecture about non-normal distributions, difficulties in prediction, etc. My colleague recommended The Black Swan, which he loved. I was plodding through it with difficulty when I found this book. Both are written by mathematical types, and both deal with the economics as the subject matter. But this book is by the founder of fractal geometry, and is much more lively, informative, well-documented and fun to read than the Black Swan, IMHO.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good on explanation, light on math, heavy on boasting
Comment: (Mis)Behavior of Markets is a wonderful book for people looking to understand why modern financial modelling does not adequately explain real market prices and their fluctuations. The authors are quite good at pointing out the shortcomings of current models that can be easily verified by the reader with web access. They also give a decent overview of how an alternate mathematical view shows promise in improving our understand of market volatility. I took away from it that markets are far more chaotic than we currently appreciate (their view) and short-term investors will suffer the costs of this (my view).
There are two points where the book falls short. While it makes generous use of graphs to explain mathematical relationships, it could stand a fair bit more formalism in explaining the math. This isn't supposed to be an academic treatise, to be sure, but the informality made it hard for a skeptic to follow every logical step in the reasoning.
The book may be light on math but it sure isn't light on self-esteem. The author (I'm assuming these parts are chiefly written by Mandelbrot) feels the need to end most of his paragraphs with a reminder of how his contemporaries have underappreciated his groundbreaking research. I'm sure he's smart dude but I kind of assumed that whe
Customer Rating:
Summary: For the financial theorist in you
Comment: Mandelbrot is, of course, a genius. In this book Mandelbot attacks orthodox financial theory and substitutes a fractal view of how markets everywhere behave. It's all interesting and Mandelbrot writes in a very accessible style. The conclusions he draws are non-controversial (markets are turbulent, markets are far riskier than we think, etc). An alternative to evaluating risk and reward is offered and might be of interest to theoretical finance people and perhaps some people who trade as a hobby or for a living and like to ponder ways to avoid severe financial loss or ruin. Having known a few traders in complex financial derivatives who did experience ruin, the topic is of great interest to me. As a long term investor who relies mainly on index stock and bond funds and real estate for my investments, I'm happy to see Dr. Mandelbrot's wild graphs in a book and not on my financial statements (fingers crossed!).
Summary: don't waste your money and time
Comment: the author claims that the book will not make you rich but would make you understand the market behaviour better and thus avoid loss, he's right on the first part and wrong on the second part, he may be a genious but if he does not improve his presentation 100 times, this book will achieve one thing only - waste your time and money
Customer Rating:
Summary: a Rich, Accessible compendium of thought
Comment: I am a risk manager. The challenges that Mandelbrot has undertaken both politically, socially and intellectually are breathtaking and highly relevant. I am routinely found plodding through dense math texts, trying to remember my greek alphabet and often hoplessly lost in teh terminology. Mandelbrot does a great service to us all when he keeps the language understandable for the laity and eschews the complex formulas. You can tell that he does not need to sound overly smart because he is overly smart.
This book toes together so much history and so many concepts in such an elegant style that it is very hard to oversell the work. I have a hard time imagining a field in which this knowledge is not applicable in some way. And anyone who has even a baseline sense of curiosity will find the interweaving of the many great stories compelling.
I would imagine that some math majors will find that the information is somewhat basic, but only if they are exposed to a lox on non linear problems in a complexity theory or econophysics field. For everyone else, this is a masterpiece, an entertaining, accessible masterpiece.
Oh, and for any of you who like Nassim Taleb's work, this is absolutely essential reading. I also suggest diving into network and sync theories which fill in the gaps left by Mandelbrot. Much good work has been done since he wrote this. "Linked" and "sync" are especially good and accessible.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Comment: I'm doing research for a lecture about non-normal distributions, difficulties in prediction, etc. My colleague recommended The Black Swan, which he loved. I was plodding through it with difficulty when I found this book. Both are written by mathematical types, and both deal with the economics as the subject matter. But this book is by the founder of fractal geometry, and is much more lively, informative, well-documented and fun to read than the Black Swan, IMHO.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good on explanation, light on math, heavy on boasting
Comment: (Mis)Behavior of Markets is a wonderful book for people looking to understand why modern financial modelling does not adequately explain real market prices and their fluctuations. The authors are quite good at pointing out the shortcomings of current models that can be easily verified by the reader with web access. They also give a decent overview of how an alternate mathematical view shows promise in improving our understand of market volatility. I took away from it that markets are far more chaotic than we currently appreciate (their view) and short-term investors will suffer the costs of this (my view).
There are two points where the book falls short. While it makes generous use of graphs to explain mathematical relationships, it could stand a fair bit more formalism in explaining the math. This isn't supposed to be an academic treatise, to be sure, but the informality made it hard for a skeptic to follow every logical step in the reasoning.
The book may be light on math but it sure isn't light on self-esteem. The author (I'm assuming these parts are chiefly written by Mandelbrot) feels the need to end most of his paragraphs with a reminder of how his contemporaries have underappreciated his groundbreaking research. I'm sure he's smart dude but I kind of assumed that whe
Customer Rating:
Summary: For the financial theorist in you
Comment: Mandelbrot is, of course, a genius. In this book Mandelbot attacks orthodox financial theory and substitutes a fractal view of how markets everywhere behave. It's all interesting and Mandelbrot writes in a very accessible style. The conclusions he draws are non-controversial (markets are turbulent, markets are far riskier than we think, etc). An alternative to evaluating risk and reward is offered and might be of interest to theoretical finance people and perhaps some people who trade as a hobby or for a living and like to ponder ways to avoid severe financial loss or ruin. Having known a few traders in complex financial derivatives who did experience ruin, the topic is of great interest to me. As a long term investor who relies mainly on index stock and bond funds and real estate for my investments, I'm happy to see Dr. Mandelbrot's wild graphs in a book and not on my financial statements (fingers crossed!).
The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward Reviews: Page 2 of 10
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |