Best Cellar Book

This guide suggests how to make money whether the market is going up, down, or sideways. After the 2008-2009 recession, Horowitz is not a fan of the "buy and hold" strategy. Like most financial advisers, he promotes diversification. He strongly advises against buying in a market with a steady downward trend, but instead suggests protecting your assets during such a time by selling after a certain set loss and possibly employing stops. He suggests buying when the trend is upward, after researching your options using quantitative, fundamental, or other types of analysis (he explains all of these). There is discussion of some basic financial terminology, including ETFs, REITs, P/E, EPS, and PEG. There is also some discussion of reading economic indicators to try to determine whether the economy is heading for expansion or contraction. Overall it had some useful information for me, but what is a bit repetitive, and I'm not sure the Great Recession should have overturned the standard financial advice with regard to riding out rough times. Obviously some losses were permanent, and if you had to access your money during that time to live, you'd be in trouble, but if you have a longer time horizon, taking a 10-15 percent loss and not buying while prices are low may not be the best idea. This book was written after the brunt of the recession but before the recovery and subsequent stock market climb. A closer look at the ups and downs of the business cycle would have been interesting, especially as we appear to be headed into another bubble and possibly poised for another crash sometime in the next six to eighteen months.