Irrational Exuberance: Amazon.de: Robert J. Shiller: Englische Bücher

Amazon.co.uk

CNBC, day trading, The Motley Fool, Silicon Investor. Not since the 1920s has there been such an intense fascination with the US stock market. For an increasing number of people, logging onto Yahoo finance is a habit more precious than that morning cup of coffee (as thousands of SBUX and YHOO shareholders know too well). Yet while the market continues to go higher, most of us can't get Alan Greenspan's famous line out of our heads. In Irrational Exuberance, Yale economics professor Robert Shiller examines this public fascination with stocks and sees a combination of factors that have driven stocks higher, including the rise of the Internet, increased coverage by the popular media of financial news, overly optimistic cheerleading by analysts and other pundits, the decline of inflation, and the rise of the mutual fund industry. He writes, "Perceived long-term risk is down ... Emotions and heightened attention to the market create a desire to get into the game. Such is irrational exuberance today in the United States."

By history's yardstick, Shiller believes this market is grossly overvalued and the factors that have conspired to create and amplify this unique millennium event--the baby boom effect, the public infatuation with the Internet, news media interest--will most certainly abate. He fears that too many individuals and institutions have come to view stocks as their only investment vehicle, and that investors should consider looking beyond stocks as a way to diversify and hedge against the inevitable downturn. This is a serious and well-researched book that should read like a Stephen King novel to anyone who has staked their future well-being to the market's continued success. --Harry C. Edwards, Amazon.com -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Amazon.com

Sequels often disappoint when compared to their predecessors, but author Robert Shiller has proved the exception to the rule with his second edition of Irrational Exuberance. When the original book released in 2000, Shiller's prescient analysis of bubble-like market behavior provided perspective on the painful meltdown of stock-price valuations that subsequently occurred. Five years later, the Yale professor's bearish predictions about real-estate valuations are enough to give any savvy investor or homebuyer pause.

Shiller is one of several well-known economists and pundits who've begun a running dialogue in the last few years around the drawbacks of unchecked free markets. Few writers, though, dissect the phenomenon of bubble behavior as clearly and thoroughly as Shiller does. As with the first edition of his book, Shiller begins this one with reams of quantitative data around the late 1990s stock-market runup. This new edition adds data on real-estate price trends in the early 2000s, and points out the striking parallels between the earlier stock-market boom and bust, and current trends with housing prices in the United States. Shiller actually believes the two phenomena are related; as investors lost confidence in the stock market and moved their money into real estate, one asset class fell while the other rose. According to Shiller's analysis, the pattern is destined to repeat itself.

Aside from the initial data, the real strength of Irrational Exuberance is the straightforward, almost clinical way in which it explains why things happen as they do. The book walks readers through structural reasons for market bubbles, then ventures into "softer" analyses which professional economists less confident than Shiller would be scared to touch. It examines cultural factors behind market bubbles, such as hype-mongering news media, and psychological factors, such as herd behavior.

Another improvement in this latest edition of Shiller's book is his inclusion of more personal commentary, and he mentions the influence that his wife, herself a clinical psychologist, has had on his intellectual development and his view of psychological impacts on economic behavior. Other personal insights from Shiller center on experiences he had while touring and lecturing around the first book, and some of the most interesting passages are those in which he describes common questions or feedback from his audience, and what he thought in reaction--but didn't voice while on his tour.

In the end, Shiller closes his book with an intriguing set of policy proposals. He argues for a revamping of the U.S. social security system, a new system of house-price insurance for homeowners, and risk reduction through portfolio diversification. Fans of the brainy academic will note with approval that Shiller practices what he preaches: he has begun trying to implement some of his ideas in the real world through two private consulting firms he has founded, Macro Securities Research and Macro Financial. The hope is if Shiller's as correct with this second book as he was with his first, readers will all learn something from these new companies. --Peter Han

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Is the stock market really overvalued? 15. April 2000

Von David Roth

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

Professor Shiller's excellent book provides food for thought, addressing the timely question of whether stocks are overvalued. He notes that P/Es are at historically high levels, and that high P/Es in the past have led to subsequent subpar returns, while low P/Es have led to excellent returns. For example, P/Es were high before the great depression, and low at the beginning of the eighties.

Shiller then goes on to explain a bit about the psychology of bubbles and manias, a field in which he is expert. He intersperses fascinating data that he has collected over the years, especially from the crash of '87, on whether market moves are due to the arrival of new economic information about firms' profitability or whether the market and its participants have a psychology of their own.

Still, I am not going to heed Shiller's advice to sell all my stocks right now. Before doing so, I would like to see him address the following issues (perhaps in Shiller's next best-selling book?):

(1) "The Fed Model" of stock valuations: Shiller uses P/E as a benchmark, rather than comparing yields available on stocks to those available on bonds. Greenspan's famous Irrational Exuberance speech used this benchmark rather than pure P/E (which doesn't compare stocks to alternative investments).

Also, is the nominal bond interest rate relevant for comparing stock to bond investing? The real interest rate? What have researchers discovered on this front?

(2) Shiller does not admit the possibility that there is anything different in today's economy from historically. I'm not convinced. Presumably, the following should be taken seriously, rather than dismissed out of hand:

First, firms are ramping up extremely rapidly in new industries, faster than ever before. It is quite reasonable to expect faster profit growth than the 11% long term average.

Second, reported profits are not what they used to be, they're better: Firms now expense R&D rather than depreciating it, and because R&D has been growing rapidly, reported profits are now much below what they would have been under old accounting standards.

Third, the cost of investing, especially of diversification through US and international mutual funds, has fallen precipitously, making stocks a more attractive investment.

Fourth, the world economy may very well be more stable now than in the past.

Fifth (and I have no idea if this is true), if people are really investing more for the long run than before, then their greater interest in stocks might be warranted, since stocks beat bonds much more consistently over long time horizons than over short horizons. Given this, it is important to know the source of the stock risk premium. Is it based on people's need for liquidity? Are people more or less in need of liquidity from their stocks now than tradiationally? How does the baby boom generation fit into all this?

Still, it's a fascinating book. Will the 35% fall in Nasdaq over the last few weeks be called the Shiller Effect a century from now?

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Sets the stage for going beyond the efficient-market theory 22. September 2001

Von Theobald Krause

Format:Taschenbuch

Shiller wrote his book with the sobriety of an academic. That's why I enjoyed reading his book so much. While the efficient-market theory seeks to explain the rational side of share-price valuations, Shiller focuses on irrational aspects thereof. The efficient-market theory owes its mathematical rigor to some simplifying assumptions. Shiller provides compelling evidence that the stock market is not as efficient as many "financial experts" might have you believed. Most disquietingly, inefficiet market-behavior shows up not only in the short run, as will be admitted by many advocates of the efficient-market model, but also on rather long time scales (e.g., a decade or so). Shiller carefully covers many aspects and manifestations of this fact.

Read it 5. Juli 2000

Von Rats

This book is very commented upon, so I'll try to make this short.

First - it walks like a duck, but is it a duck? In a book entirely devoted to the subject of overvaluation, I'd expect better proof than aggregate P/E ratios and circumstantial evidence from psychological research. The industry - self-interested as it is - routinely produces valuation measures by sector, including eg P/E to growth which should be a better gauge than P/E alone. Doing this places most of the blame on TMT segments, not on the whole market.

Second - policy implications are weakish. Although the investing-for-retirement issue is important, most of the advice is "do not put all eggs in the equity basket", which is just fine, and "buy TIPS", which is also fine, but overall the policy chapter reminds a bit of the mountain giving birth to a mouse.

Third - the book is clearly written, well documented, and tries to look beyond the US scene (though most of the "behavioral" stuff is in fact very American). Which is fine as most US writers do not give a damn for evidence from the rest of the world.

Fourth - stars should measure the book's usefulness, not its adherence to what the reviewer thinks. If you sift the reviews with this criterion (taking out the angry and the hagiographic ones), the average star grade increases.

This says the book should be read, and that's my conclusion too. I even irrationally bought it before it was discounted, but maybe that will be the market's story too, in a few months!