When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change | 
 enlarge | Author: Mohamed El-erian
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 614
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0071592814
Dewey Decimal Number: 381.101
EAN: 9780071592819
ASIN: 0071592814
Publication Date: May 23, 2008
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Product Description
"ONE OF THE SMARTEST INVESTORS ON THE PLANET."--MONEY MAGAZINE. . �This book is an essential read for those who. wish to understand the modern world of investing.�.
�Alan Greenspan . . . Winner of the 2008 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award When Markets Collide is a timely alert to the fundamental changes taking place in today's global economic and financial systems--and a call to action for investors who may fall victim to misinterpreting important signals. While some have tended to view asset class mispricings as mere �noise,� this compelling book shows why they are important signals of opportunities and risks that will shape the market for years to come. One of today's most respected names in finance, Mohamed El-Erian puts recent events in their proper context, giving you the tools that can help you interpret the markets, benefit from global economic change, and navigate the risks. . . The world economy is in the midst of a series of hand-offs. Global growth is now being heavily influenced by nations that previously had little or no systemic influence. Former debtor nations are building unforeseen wealth and, thus, enjoying unprecedented influence and facing unusual challenges. And new derivative products have changed the behavior of many market segments and players. Yet, despite all these changes, the system's infrastructure is yet to be upgraded to reflect the realities of today's and tomorrow's world. El-Erian investigates the underlying drivers of global change to shed light on how you should: . . . . - Think about the new opportunities and risks.
- Construct an appropriately diversified and internationalized portfolio.
- Protect your portfolio against new sources of systemic risk.
- Best think about the impact of central banks and financial policies around the world
. . Offering up predictions of future developments, El-Erian directs his focus to help you capitalize on the new financial landscape, while limiting exposure to new risk configurations. . . When Markets Collide is a unique collection of books for investors and policy makers around the world. In addition to providing a thorough analysis and clear perspective of recent events, it lays down a detailed map for navigating your way through an otherwise perplexing new economic landscape. .
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| Customer Reviews: Read 27 more reviews...
 dissapointing November 14, 2008
you would think that the CEO of the largest bond fund would have meaningful insights to share..... but you'd be wrong
 With this book, I give up my remaining trust in cover blurbs. November 9, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I bought this book because it won the Financial Times Book of the Year Award (not a top ten winner or something, #1 mind you). Historically, a reliable guide (e.g., the masterpiece China Shakes the World, and theoretically dubious but highly provocative Friedman's World is Flat). It has dawned on me belatedly that advance praisers probably don't read their books. All these absolutely glowing endorsements by serious people...for a book that *clearly* isn't top notch.
T. Bojko's review may seem harsh, but it's spot-on. I can live with the ponderous writing style. I initially thought the big words concealed some new or profound thinking...but not at all.
The problems are: 1. there's almost nothing new or inspired about the "markets of tomorrow," and 2. there is nary a sliver of new, actionable advice about investing. The whole thing is a compendium of the superficial. Seeking to cut a swath a mile wide, it is everywhere one inch deep.
In regard to the first, the following are superficially summarized: global trade/capital flows (rightly footnoted to Martin Wolf, but Wolf's own columns are better on this); a cocktail of snippets on behavioral finance - called a "cocktail" - just read Shiller straightaway; some stuff on global trade and commodities, see latest Economist; a paraphrase of Taleb's colorful insights (just read Taleb directly); a woefully weak primer-not-really on securitization; a brief primer on asset classes that repeats everything I've got in a dozen other finance books; and too much material on IMF (e.g., not a single mention of Basel). I agree the topics per se are important, but most of them here are superficially derivative of other, better works.
Here are the four insights from Chapter 2: we are coming from a period of aberrations, many puzzles; too many dismissed them as noise; the inability to distinguish signal from noise is a bad thing; the adjustment caught people off guard. I'm not kidding. The blinding insight is: take care to distinguish signal from noise! Noise bad, signal good....
Strangest of all, in my opinion, is that the author appears to have nothing to add to the field of risk management, which stuns me given his unique vantage point. Risk management is reduced to a few catchphrases: tail risk, moral hazard, principal-agent. Say it ain't so...
Finally, T. Bojko is right about the mundane asset allocation plan: "the author just lays out a pretty mundane asset allocation plan (which is available for free on any number of websites) and then fills a couple dozen pages with worthless blather. Seriously, that's it." That's exactly right.
The book boils down to: big "structural" change is coming, try to sort signal from noise, here's pointers to a bunch of good reading material, I worked at the IMF, start with this generic plan.
I saved you a few bucks. More to the point, I wasted my time reading this book so you don't have to. Since that time is lost to me forever, the least you can do is vote my review "helpful."
In the eye of the reader -- Eclectic or a muddle? November 8, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The author risked a muddle and he at least partially succeeded by targeting very different audiences at the same time in the same book. He creates this confusion intentionally. "I'm addressing both investors and national and international policy makers." Very few pages are devoted to specific investment that an investor my actually be able to use (see page 203 "Implementation Vehicles"). The average IMF Economist will get much more out of this book than the average stock and bond investor.
Terrible November 1, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Wow, what a disappointment. The book is poorly written and turns simple ideas into convoluted muck. For example, everyone knows that you can sometimes get a bargain in a pool of assets that are generally considered "lemons" such as the used car market. In this book, the "market for lemons" becomes "MFL" and allegedly was originated in 1970 with George Akerlof, a professor and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. Huh? Another staggering glimpse of the obvious: people have trouble absorbing the reality of a sudden, unexpected event (e.g., 9/11, Kennedy assasination (my examples which, incidentally, are better than his)). Wow! and let's cite Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his insights about Black Swans for that astounding revelation! Jeez. I'm not going to bore you with examples of the dense and turgid writing. Also, if you are not a fan of "impact" used as a verb, avoid this book, it occurs in almost every paragraph. If you want clear, crisp writing and good analysis about the economy, skip this leaden tract and read The Economist or The Financial Times.
Overhyped October 21, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
The book is an ordinary piece of work that does not deserve the prominence it is getting in the media. While I would not term it as a Sub-Prime CDO masquearading as a AAA credit, at best it is an Alt-A. We need better.
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