Preface ix
Chapter 1: Your Brain ]Training Guide 1
Wall Street's Contrarian Contradiction 4
The Curmudgeon's Conundrum 5
There Is Always a But 6
Why Most Investors Are Mostly Wrong Most of the Time 8
The First Rule of True Contrarianism 12
The All-Seeing Market 13
Different, Not Opposite 14
The Right Frame of Mind 15
Check Your Ego 16
Chapter 2: For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls 19
Wall Street's Useless/Useful Fascination With Calendars 23
Professional Groupthink 25
How the Contrarian Uses
Professional Forecasts 26
Even the Best Fall Sometimes . . . 30
How to Beat the Street 39
Chapter 3: Dracula and the Four Horsemen of the Media Apocalypse 47
The Media's Flawed Financial Eyesight 50
Dracula Around the Corner 53
Looking for Growth in All the Wrong Places 59
The Magic Indicator 62
War--What Is It Good For? 71
Don't Be a Cow, Be a Contrarian 77
Chapter 4: Not in the Next 30 Months 81
Baby Boomer Bomb? 85
What About Social Security and Medicare? 86
But What if the "Lost Generation"Stays Lost? 90
What About Debt? 93
But What if Debt Causes Runaway Inflation? 98
But What if America Stops Innovating? 98
But What About Global Warming? 100
What About Income Inequality? 102
What if the Dollar Loses Its Place as the World's Reserve Currency? 105
What the Markets Know 108
Chapter 5: Take a Safari With Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau 111
How the Elephant Got Its Tusks 114
Dumbo, Gross Margins and Other High ]Flying Elephants 116
When Good News Dresses Up as Bad News 118
The Yield Curve Curveball 121
When Elephants Attack 127
A Brief History of Tragedy 127
When Textbooks Lie 129
It Can't Be an Elephant If ... 134
Chapter 6: The Chapter You'll Love to Hate 137
Step 1: Ditch Your Biases 140
My Guy Is Best, Your Guy Is Worst and Other Unhelpful Opinions 141
A Magical Elephant Named Gridlock 145
(Not) Just a Bill Sittin' on Capitol Hill 150
That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen 156
What's Worse Than a Politician? 158
Why the Government Already Made the Next Crisis Worse 162
Chapter 7: Put Those Textbooks Away 169
Don't Toss Your Textbooks--But Know Their Limitations! 172
The First Commandment: P/Es Aren't Predictive 175
The CAPEd Crusader Is No Superhero 178
Small Beats All? 181
Fancy Formulas and Other Academic Kryptonite 184
Theory Isn't Reality 189
If Not School, Where? 193
Chapter 8: Throw Away This Book! 197
Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Pop Star Economists 200
Classics Are Classic for a Reason 203
Philosophy and Econ 101 209
How to Learn From the Legends 216
Those Who Forget History . . . 225
Classics in the Twenty ]First Century 230
Chapter 9: When Miley Cyrus Meets Ben Graham: Misadventures in Behavioral Finance 235
Where It All Began 238
The Beginnings of Behavioral Finance's Drift 240
When Academics Met Capitalism and Marketing 240
Behavioral Finance and Tactical Positioning 242
Recency Bias and Sentiment 251
How to Gain a Tactical Advantage With Behavioral Finance 254
A Section for Stock Pickers 259
Know When to Say When 266
Getting Back to Self ]Control 268
Chapter 10: The Negative Myopic Media 277
How to Use the News 281
What the Media Always Misses 285
In Technology (and Capitalism) We Trust 289
Parting Thoughts 290
Index 293