Guidebook for Directors of Nonprofit Corporations
Author: Staff of Committee on Nonprofit Corporations
This guidebook describes the legal principles that apply to nonprofits of all sizes.
Read also Common Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms of the Northeast or The Twelve Blessings Of Christmas
A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market
Author: John Allen Paulos
Can a renowned mathematician successfully outwit the stock market? Not when his biggest investment is WorldCom.In A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, best-selling author John Allen Paulos employs his trademark stories, vignettes, paradoxes, and puzzles to address every thinking reader's curiosity about the market--Is it efficient? Is it random? Is there anything to technical analysis, fundamental analysis, and other supposedly time-tested methods of picking stocks? How can one quantify risk? What are the most common scams? Are there any approaches to investing that truly outperform the major indexes?But Paulos's tour through the irrational exuberance of market mathematics doesn't end there. An unrequited (and financially disastrous) love affair with WorldCom leads Paulos to question some cherished ideas of personal finance. He explains why "data mining" is a self-fulfilling belief, why "momentum investing" is nothing more than herd behavior with a lot of mathematical jargon added, why the ever-popular Elliot Wave Theory cannot be correct, and why you should take Warren Buffet's "fundamental analysis" with a grain of salt.Like Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street, this clever and illuminating book is for anyone, investor or not, who follows the markets--or knows someone who does.
USA Today
Yes, there are many percentage signs in this book, and even the odd Greek letter. But Paulos' humor and clarity will see you through.
The Washington Post
John Allen Paulos is a genius at translating the arcane and complex for the rest of us in ways that go down as easily, and enjoyably, as vanilla ice cream. ... This book should be required reading for anyone opening a brokerage account.
New York Observer
Throughout this wide-ranging survey, the writing is spirited, funny and clear. Mr. Paulos is continually imaginative in finding apt metaphors and anecdotes for the mechanics he dissects.
The New York Times
… Paulos engages his subject. Are stock markets truly efficient? The scandals that enriched insiders and euchred ordinary investors like the author, he writes, make it difficult to believe that ''available information about a stock always quickly becomes common knowledge'' as the efficient-market hypothesis contends. He has some useful, if brief, discussions of portfolio theory and the importance of diversification. And he draws on the best of the writers on anomalies in financial markets, like Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky, to explore the psychology of why economic actors, and hence markets, often behave irrationally and fail to work in textbook fashion. — Robert Kuttner
The Los Angeles Times
Paulos is the real McCoy, and his newest offering, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, is a double-chocolate nougat of a book -- a rich, densely packed delight. It is also rueful, funny and disarmingly personal. — Kai Maristed
Publishers Weekly
We like to think not only that mathematicians are smarter than the rest of us but that by dint of their mastery of numbers, they hold the key to understanding the baffling mysteries of the universe. Alas, Paulos (Innumeracy) says that's not always the case. As the author relates in this funny, insightful little volume about attempts to bring order and science to the free-for-all that is the stock market, he himself was once a big investor (in WorldCom). Despite strong evidence to sell, he desperately hung on to his stock as the price plummeted, proving that a head for numbers doesn't always translate to Wall Street know-how. Through most of this book, Paulos discusses various methods for predicting markets and offers thoughts on why people keep trying to perfect them. Shocking in their obtuseness are the so-called Elliot Wave followers, who believe stocks operate according to an impossibly arcane series of numerical waves and cycles. The efficient-market theorists-many of whom believe the stock market is so inherently efficient that everything one needs to know about a company is reflected in its stock price-get the most thorough joshing from Paulos: never able to resist a joke, he tells one about how many efficient market theorists it takes to change a light bulb. "Answer: None. If the light bulb needed changing the market would have already done it." Playful and informative, Paulos's book will be appreciated by investors with a sense of humor. (June) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Tom Downey - KLIATT
Many adults invest in the stock market and many high school students play the stock market game in class. Some win big, some lose big, some merely tread water, but all come away wondering why stock prices move the way that they do. After losing money on WorldCom stock, John Allen Paulos decided to use his own tale as a unifying theme in presenting an overview of the current thinking and theory on the stock market. His latest book is readable and very engaging, covering a broad range of topics without too many equations (there are some, but he makes it easy to skip over the occasional more technical sections). He touches on technical and fundamental analysis, the efficient market hypothesis, behavioral theories, game theory, risk and diversification, and chaos and complexity theory. His use of stories, anecdotes, and simple games and analogies helps the reader gain a deeper appreciation for the difficulties in picking an investment strategy. I recommend the book to high school mathematics teachers (especially of statistics) and to teachers who play the stock market game with their students. KLIATT Codes: A—Recommended for advanced students and adults. 2003, Basic Books, 224p., Ages 17 to adult.
Library Journal
What at first appears to be a sour grapes account of investing in ill-fated WorldCom stock during 2000-02 is actually a tour of investing with a mathematical twist. As he recounts the decline of his WorldCom investment, Paulos (mathematics, Temple Univ.; Innumeracy) explains the simple mathematical concepts of investing, such as P/E ratios, the present and future value of money, and compound interest. He also looks at market psychology and such popular techniques of investing as technical and fundamental analysis. Paulos concludes that no technique works in the long run, which implies that he should have stuck to the index funds he mentions at the book's start. The math he introduces is easily understood, however, and Paulos gives copious examples; his book would be interesting to those who enjoy popular works on mathematics. Still, authors like John Bogle and Burton Malkiel have covered the fundamentals of investing better. An optional purchase for public and academic libraries.-Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, PA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Soundview Executive Book Summaries
In this witty tale of a smart man making dumb investment decisions (a disastrous love affair with WorldCom stock was not his brightest endeavor), mathematics professor John Allen Paulos describes his ill-fated journey into the stock market. As he attempts to use his analytical skills to predict the Dow's peaks and dips, Paulos presents down-to-earth explanations of risk, volatility, stock portfolio diversity, and game theory. He also shows how many investment strategies are mathematically flawed. Copyright © 2004 Soundview Executive Book Summaries
Kirkus Reviews
A severe investment miscalculation leads to valuable lessons about the tricky psychology and thorny arithmetic of the market. Bestselling mathematician Paulos (Innumeracy, 1988, etc.; Mathematics/Temple Univ.) invested in WorldCom, he averaged down and bought more WorldCom, he bought WorldCom calls, and he bought WorldCom on margin. He lost a lot on WorldCom, but since that loss gave rise to this account, it's a gain for investing readers. His uncommonly cogent text does not promote a secret investment method for attaining riches. Rather, it lucidly clarifies many of the mathematical and statistical influences on the stock market. With accustomed humor and apt examples, Paulos tackles complex computations that are vaguely understood and frequently misapplied by Wall Street pros. He explores the deficiencies of both technical and fundamental analyses. Diversification, covariance, beta factors, and various portfolio selection models utilized by brokerage theoreticians all have mathematical perils unseen by the most sophisticated players, the author argues. He introduces the wave theory of market movements, based on Fibonacci numbers, to the golden ratio. He warns that scams like pump and dump, short and distort, e-mail chat-room diversions, or plain old book-cooking will surely affect an investment; so may arcana like moving averages, regression to the mean, standard deviation, availability error, Benford's Law, and the Nash equilibrium, not to mention psychological, logical, and belief-system influences. In his generally accessible explanations, Paulos walks the reader through basic formulae and eschews tables and charts—even where they might help. Investors would do well to heed hisentertaining, frequently counterintuitive, always useful bean-counting methodology. A first-rate exploration into the math of the market: heuristic numeracy at its best. Author tour. Agent: Rafe Sagalyn/Sagalyn Agency
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