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How the Markets Really Work
Several years ago, Joel Kurtzman was covering a meeting between a group of Russian economists and politicians and some of America’s best thinkers from business and academia. The Russians were trying to get a handle on exactly who was in charge of the markets and how long the founder of a failed start-up would be sentenced to jail.
It’s easy to see why Joel’s Russian friends were befuddled. But how many of us really understand how the markets work, despite the fact that we live and work in a society that practically worships “the market” as a religion? And when people today are investing more money in mutual funds than in banks, this can be a problem. The markets are big, complex, and completely unforgiving. If you make a major mistake, you risk losing a major amount of money. That’s why it’s vital to peel back the layers of mystery shrouding the markets.
In How the Markets Really Work , Joel Kurtzman provides a lucid explanation of one of the fundamental forces shaping our lives. In clear, accessible language, Kurtzman
* How markets, which are so vital to the world’s economies, are able to function without any central control
* How they create wealth and spread the risk of the world’s most uncertain, but potentially lucrative, bets
* How markets package and resell debt, connect financial institutions, and set prices
* Why volatility has increased and what this means for the boom and bust of investing
Kurtzman illuminates the musty corners of the markets, showing how the system is both a single network linked together globally and a highly coordinated dance of free-wheeling, unchoreographed dancers that constitutes a massive social mechanism for laying off some of the world’s riskier bets. He explains the kinds of products that traders trade within the network (stocks, bonds, options, etc); how money circulates within the network; and how banks fit into the global network.
This is a book that will help you think strategically about investing. If you understand the markets and the instruments and vehicles that are traded on those markets before thinking about individual stocks and mutual funds, you’ll be a smarter, savvier investor.
The Crown Business Briefings series offers an appealing solution to the dilemma of today’s business how to keep up with the rapid pace of change in knowledge while leading time-crunched lives. The series features short books on important topics of immediate and measurable benefit to today’s broad audience of business readers.
It’s easy to see why Joel’s Russian friends were befuddled. But how many of us really understand how the markets work, despite the fact that we live and work in a society that practically worships “the market” as a religion? And when people today are investing more money in mutual funds than in banks, this can be a problem. The markets are big, complex, and completely unforgiving. If you make a major mistake, you risk losing a major amount of money. That’s why it’s vital to peel back the layers of mystery shrouding the markets.
In How the Markets Really Work , Joel Kurtzman provides a lucid explanation of one of the fundamental forces shaping our lives. In clear, accessible language, Kurtzman
* How markets, which are so vital to the world’s economies, are able to function without any central control
* How they create wealth and spread the risk of the world’s most uncertain, but potentially lucrative, bets
* How markets package and resell debt, connect financial institutions, and set prices
* Why volatility has increased and what this means for the boom and bust of investing
Kurtzman illuminates the musty corners of the markets, showing how the system is both a single network linked together globally and a highly coordinated dance of free-wheeling, unchoreographed dancers that constitutes a massive social mechanism for laying off some of the world’s riskier bets. He explains the kinds of products that traders trade within the network (stocks, bonds, options, etc); how money circulates within the network; and how banks fit into the global network.
This is a book that will help you think strategically about investing. If you understand the markets and the instruments and vehicles that are traded on those markets before thinking about individual stocks and mutual funds, you’ll be a smarter, savvier investor.
The Crown Business Briefings series offers an appealing solution to the dilemma of today’s business how to keep up with the rapid pace of change in knowledge while leading time-crunched lives. The series features short books on important topics of immediate and measurable benefit to today’s broad audience of business readers.
- GenresEconomicsNonfiction
156 pages, Hardcover
First published May 7, 2002
15 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 14, 2019
Succinct and readable
One of the things that Joel Kurtzman does very well in this pithy little book is demonstrate why the capitalist market system is superior to the old Soviet system of centralized control, why the decisions made by a decentralized economy work so much better than any top down system. However Kurtzman's enthusiasm for the market is eventually revealed as similar to E. M. Forster's for democracy. One recalls that Forster allowed himself just "Two cheers for democracy...there is no occasion to give it three."
Kurtzman writes on page 148 that "Markets may move to the beat of their dumbest members." He adds, "In my view...markets are not rational." To back up his claims he reports that at the height of the Internet bubble in 1999, Yahoo! with sales of $456 million (that's million with an "m") had a market capitalization of $93-billion which he compares to GM, which at the same time with revenues of $177-billion (billion with a "b"), had a market cap about half that of Yahoo! (p. 147) This observation caused Kurtzman to ask, "Yo, Mr. Market, is anybody home?"
Well, it depends on when you knock on the door. In October of 2002 Yahoo's market capitalization was down around $5-billion or so. The real truth is Mr. Market may be irrational for some period of time--indeed for some EXTENDED period of time, especially when you're holding the bag--but eventually a correction occurs, and for a brief shining moment (not the same moment) every stock is priced at what it's worth. (Of course it could also be pointed out that a stopped clock is exactly right twice a day.)
I very much liked Kurtzman's conversation tone and his obvious acumen and the way he explains the underpinnings of the capital markets with an emphasis on understanding rather than mechanical details. (Although an explanation on how the weekend or overnight buy and sell orders received from Internet traders are reconciled at the New York Stock Exchange and at NASDAQ into an opening price would have been nice.) His championing of Michael Milken as one of the great financial geniuses of our times was tolerable, but did Milken really (as Kurtzman insists on page 144) take "an often bloating and ailing American economy" and make it "lean, mean and resilient"? And, although one does not doubt the genius of Warren Buffet, might Kurtzman have pointed out during his many fawning references to the man, that when you have as much economic clout as he has you might well be able to influence the markets to your advantage and to get information that others cannot, and in a nutshell prove beyond a shadow of doubt that money makes money and big money makes even bigger money? He might even have (to be topical and timely) pointed out that Shari'a law, which does not allow interest to be charged on credit, is not in keeping with the realities of the effect time has on capital.
But Kurtzman is an ambassadorially polite man who saved his barbs for the failed communist system and the recent irrational exuberance in dot com land.
Perhaps the highlight of the book, and maybe the most important part, is Kurtzman's explanation of what money is (not obvious) and how it is created and how it can be made to dissipate. For anyone wanting a kind of Reality Economics 101, Kurtzman's book is an eye-opener. He has a gift for explaining things in a succinct and clear manner that other writers on economics might well emulate.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
One of the things that Joel Kurtzman does very well in this pithy little book is demonstrate why the capitalist market system is superior to the old Soviet system of centralized control, why the decisions made by a decentralized economy work so much better than any top down system. However Kurtzman's enthusiasm for the market is eventually revealed as similar to E. M. Forster's for democracy. One recalls that Forster allowed himself just "Two cheers for democracy...there is no occasion to give it three."
Kurtzman writes on page 148 that "Markets may move to the beat of their dumbest members." He adds, "In my view...markets are not rational." To back up his claims he reports that at the height of the Internet bubble in 1999, Yahoo! with sales of $456 million (that's million with an "m") had a market capitalization of $93-billion which he compares to GM, which at the same time with revenues of $177-billion (billion with a "b"), had a market cap about half that of Yahoo! (p. 147) This observation caused Kurtzman to ask, "Yo, Mr. Market, is anybody home?"
Well, it depends on when you knock on the door. In October of 2002 Yahoo's market capitalization was down around $5-billion or so. The real truth is Mr. Market may be irrational for some period of time--indeed for some EXTENDED period of time, especially when you're holding the bag--but eventually a correction occurs, and for a brief shining moment (not the same moment) every stock is priced at what it's worth. (Of course it could also be pointed out that a stopped clock is exactly right twice a day.)
I very much liked Kurtzman's conversation tone and his obvious acumen and the way he explains the underpinnings of the capital markets with an emphasis on understanding rather than mechanical details. (Although an explanation on how the weekend or overnight buy and sell orders received from Internet traders are reconciled at the New York Stock Exchange and at NASDAQ into an opening price would have been nice.) His championing of Michael Milken as one of the great financial geniuses of our times was tolerable, but did Milken really (as Kurtzman insists on page 144) take "an often bloating and ailing American economy" and make it "lean, mean and resilient"? And, although one does not doubt the genius of Warren Buffet, might Kurtzman have pointed out during his many fawning references to the man, that when you have as much economic clout as he has you might well be able to influence the markets to your advantage and to get information that others cannot, and in a nutshell prove beyond a shadow of doubt that money makes money and big money makes even bigger money? He might even have (to be topical and timely) pointed out that Shari'a law, which does not allow interest to be charged on credit, is not in keeping with the realities of the effect time has on capital.
But Kurtzman is an ambassadorially polite man who saved his barbs for the failed communist system and the recent irrational exuberance in dot com land.
Perhaps the highlight of the book, and maybe the most important part, is Kurtzman's explanation of what money is (not obvious) and how it is created and how it can be made to dissipate. For anyone wanting a kind of Reality Economics 101, Kurtzman's book is an eye-opener. He has a gift for explaining things in a succinct and clear manner that other writers on economics might well emulate.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
October 23, 2019
An accessible introduction to the invisible forces ruling our financial lives.
May 16, 2015
Quick informative read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews