Bull's Eye Investing: Targeting Real Returns in a Smoke and Mirrors Market

This book should be subtitled "Economics 101 for Investors". John lays out a historical perspective usually not found in personal investment tomes. Usually, most authors promote some magical formula for getting wealth based on a formula that works until we move from secular bull to secular bear or vice versa. This book teaches a lot about market cycles and cycles within cycles. I wish I would have has this book about 30 years ago. John also has an informative free weekly email newsletter that is a real education.

At a time when raw intellect, vision, and straightforward thinking are in very short supply in the American financial establishment, John Mauldin represents an intellectual force to reckon with, admire, and respect. His astuteness, real understanding of issues, honesty, clarity of thought, and foresight can be matched by only a handful of contemporary American financial thinkers/writers. His latest book "Bull's Eye Investing" is a "must read" not only by the `laymen" but also by us, the "pros" so we can be reminded of the lessons we once had learned, but some of us have chosen to have forgotten. Thank you John, for reminding us what investing should be all about.Ike IossifPresident, Chief Investment Officer.Aegean Capital Group, Inc

This book lays out in clear and complete terms what the likely future path of the economy and stock markets and the logic behind coming to his conclusion. The breadth of discussion topics as well as cognent flow is impressive. It is simply the most comprehensive projection I believe I have seen.But what I like the best about John Mauldin's writing is his balanced approach - he is neither a stock shill nor a gold bug -but one who allows the facts and logical arguments to dictate his conclusions. As for disclaimers, I trade the markets only for my own accounts and as my source of income. I do read and also recommend his weekly letter at www.frontlinethoughts.com .

The bottom line on Mr. Mauldin is that over the past few years following the advice contained in his weekly emails has made me a lot of money, even more important I have avoided large losses. Reading his weekly essay is a highlight of my week. Naturally the question comes up: why should I buy the book when I can get the data for free. Well, first is simple fairness: he deserves some pay back for dispensing so much wisdom for free every week. But hey, whose going to buy a book because the author deserves the money? Well, there are several good reasons. First the list of other free sources of investment/economic analysis available on the internet is worth the price of the book by itself. Second, there are several important chapters that have not been made available in his emails, and lastly the book organizes the data in a way that arms the individual investor with a broad intellectual base in which to put in context the daily stream of market data. Buy this book, and put in the time to fully understand it, and the reward will be many times the price of the book.

I'm in the process of getting serious about investing as returns from existing investments are now a sizable part of my annual income.This book's main argument, that the stock market is going to be flat, at best, over the next decade seems pretty persuasive. The most persuasive reasons for this are:- The market, when starting from a high P/E and low interest rates, historically is flat at best.- The market historically overreacts to a bubble (like the Internet bubble) and we have not yet completed that overreaction.Mauldin recommends:- Small-cap value oriented stock picking. This is the direction I was already intending to pursue. I think I'm going to need some help with this find the right kind of stock screening data.- Hedge funds. This is counter to my strategy (and the whole value approach to investing) of really, deeply understanding your investments.- Betting on a falling dollar. Mauldin provides no specific ways of doing this. I'm interesting in joining a club of serious investors who want to pool what they are learning in the areas of small-cap and value investing. Please email [email protected] if you know of such a club, online or local.Here's a few more notes on the book:o The style is very readable, but repetitive. The book would be considerably better if it had been polished and edited down to about half its length. o Topics on other trends, such as demographics, pensions, the dollar being overvalued are also very valuable.