Product Description
Peter Bernstein argues that the notion of bringing risk under control is one of the central ideas that distinguishes modern times from the more distant past. When investors buy stocks, surgeons perform operations, entrepreneurs launch new businesses, and politicians run for office, risk is their inescapable partner. Bernstein clarifies the major components of risk, explaining how they can be applied to our professional endeavors. 4 cassettes.Amazon.com Review… More >>
What a waste of erudition!
A wormanlike treatment of a fascinating subject.
This well researched book is a hybrid that is completely useless to practitioners and, I guess, rather tedious to non-professionals.
Rating: 2 / 5
Great book on risk and on the history of risk.
Rating: 5 / 5
Firstly , this is an outstanding literature review on the history of risk.
The one central idea of the book is that price movements tend to revert to the mean. In other words if the price is breaking through a band or channel placed around a price. The price is most likely to revert to the mean price rather than continue up (or down) through the band.
Thats it. Simple but very useful piece of knowledge.
Rating: 4 / 5
A show how complex problems of probability are, how long it took to understand more, and the way to this goal. However I question some of the conclusions on random walk or the influence of Chaos Theory. Still a very valuable guide, e.g. understanding the difference between the probability of an event and the single (unprobable ) event that can happen too.
Rating: 4 / 5
This book was an interesting one about risk management. However, I found Bernstein’s depiction of the Catholic Church, or any belief in God, to be too simplistic. Perhaps his own bias came out in this book. He fails to mention that for the last 1000 years it was through the support of the Catholic Church that science saw many of its greatest achievements. This isn’t a major part of the book, but he does convey overtones of his bias against the Catholic Church. He could have easily edited these parts out, but left them in for the wrong reasons.
Rating: 3 / 5