The Either/Or Investor: How to Succeed in Global Investing, One Decision at a Time

by Clark Winter

Book Overview

A REVOLUTIONARY AND DISARMINGLY SIMPLE ROAD MAP FOR INVESTORS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY People today are inundated with advice, opinions, and information about how to invest. The more data you... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400065925
• ISBN13: 9781400065929
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 181 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A valuable resource for serious investors

This is a very valuable resource for serious investors. It is not for everyone. The concepts presented in this book take a certain level of knowledge to implement. It takes time to learn the concepts and to stay abreast of what is happening in the world. The first thing that Mr. Winter does is to dispel the myth that you can become automatically wealthy by following the buy and hold method of investing. He does a good job of showing the dangers of the buy and hold philosophy of investing. Unfortunately, far too many Americans will not take the time to understand the basic factors controlling the domestic stock markets let alone trying to understand the more complex global markets. There are, in my opinion, three major lessons in this book. The first is while buy and hold may have worked at one time, it no longer works. The second major lesson has to do with effective decision making. Here Mr. Winter gives a good lesson on binary decision making. Simply reduce every decision to a yes or no outcome. It does not matter how much you study a question, eventually you need to make a decision. So learn to structure your research so that you arrive at an either/or decision. The third major portion of the book is a set of concepts or questions that an astute investor needs to examine. These questions concern where and why you will invest or choose not to invest in a given situation. For example, should you invest in the developed world or the developing world? Should you invest where a country is ruled by the rule of power or the rule of law? Should your investment decisions be based on fear or greed? It is interesting that he defines greed as a sub-set of fear, that is, we actually fear that we are not going to get our share. There are twenty-one either/or questions that he presents with a full explanation of the significance the question has on our investment choices. The book is well written and easy to understand. However, it is not for the casual reader. While understanding the concept of binary decision making will improve the decision making process for some, I would not recommend you read the book just for that purpose. If you are a serious investor, with a strong desire to become a successful investor, then this book should be high on your reading list. It does not dwell on the fundamentals verses the technical charts. It looks at investing from a higher perspective. The book examines the various factors that impact successful investing. In a changing world, where events happening around the world affect what happens everywhere, you really need to understand the interactions. This book does a very good job of making the complex financial world at least understandable. Mr. Winter also gives you are detailed model to follow to stay informed about how the changes will affect your investment decisions.

Common Sense Investing

I originally avoided Clark Winter's The Either/Or Investor because the title is uninspiring and brought back visions of Søren Kierkegaard. I am happy I reconsidered. Clark Winter isn't your ordinary Wall Street denizen. He dedicates his book to his "wife and family," which tells you right away he knows his priorities. You can almost imagine him zipping across the landscape in a Pontiac G8. He seems to admire GM and the car business--which is part of the problem, because he wrote his book before March 2008 and the auto industry's current woes. If you can ignore his sanguine predictions about car companies and auto usage (see page xxxiii, where he praises GM over Ford, and says, "Even rising fuel prices will probably not make much a difference, as American habits are extraordinarily ingrained." [p. 147]), the rest of his book is a joy to read. His comments on immigration are particularly timely, given America's increasing protectionist sentiments: Despite the belief that immigrants don't contribute much to society besides low-level work, they are in fact instrumental in starting businesses that serve other immigrants. In the United States, individuals start more than 550,000 new businesses a month, according to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Latin American immigrants start more business[es] than any other group, following by immigrants in general. [p. 33] On the whole, immigration is good for investors. It brings new customers, new incentives to innovate, new markets, new competitors, and new capital into the market. The savings rates of immigrants are higher than those of the native born, which adds to capital formation. What immigrants, legal or otherwise, take out of the system in terms of municipal services, they probably make in sales taxes on the goods they purchase. Immigrants start new businesses--and therefore are a greater source of new employment--than their native-born counterparts. Additionally, these new companies add to the capital stock of the community in another way. They bring their talents, hopes, dreams, and skills to countries that are increasingly postindustrial and therefore less inclined to do the jobs that those at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder are willing to take on. All in all, there are few reasons to oppose immigration from an investment perspective, much less a cultural one. [p. 35] Most investing books have insightful or funny anecdotes and facts, and Mr. Winter's book is no exception. He talks about teaching his son economics while driving to grandma's house [p. 54]; Singapore's rise [p. 66]; the economic concepts of alpha and beta [p. 106]; sentiment's role in the markets [p. 70]; and the role of "expensive beef" in Argentina's rise and fall [p. 73]: Poverty doubled from 27 percent to 54 percent, and millions of Argentines had their life savings wiped out...During all that time, the diet never changed. If it had, Argentines would have brought down their government. [p. 70] Mr. Winter's main