Free-market proponents have recently held the upper hand in the debate over regulation of the economy. And their view has become prevalent enough for economist Joseph Stiglitz to term it the "Washington Consensus." In his new book, "The Roaring Nineties," Mr. Stiglitz counters that instead of providing the United States with an enviable economic engine, corporate America and Wall Street have failed us.MORE: REVIEW OF THE ROARING NINETIES AT CS MONITOR
If you have had success as a founding member of one of the world's best-known hedge funds, what do you do with your spare time and money after you retire from the fund? If you are Jim Rogers, you travel the world.MORE: REVIEW OF ADVENTURE CAPITALIST AT ASIAN REVIEW OF BOOKS
Ari Kiev�s book Trading to Win might seem like just psycho-babble to some traders. That is odd, given that some of these same critics are devout followers of technical analysis, which premises that psychology factors firmly into market movements. Why then is it such heresy to believe that you can improve the performance of a trader by working on his psychology?
It is not a strange concept to Steve Cohen, who hired Ari Kiev as a �trading coach� for his hedge fund S.A.C. Kiev, who was profiled in Jack Schwager�s Stock Market Wizards , teaches that traders need to stretch themselves in the goals they set. They also need to eliminate the negative thinking that prevents them from reaching those goals. Much of Trading to Win is thus actually �common sense� (as is most psychology, it seems), but sometimes it is useful to hear someone reiterate sound principles.
One principle for which critics have taken Kiev to task is his suggestion that traders should set or raise their profit goals, which seems like a veritable �no no� from a risk management perspective. The criticism misses the fact, however, that Kiev is really saying that raising your performance goals means raising your work ethic. What are you going to do to raise your game? Squeezing out extra percentage points of return requires getting onto the trading floor hours earlier (or hours later) than you normally would�and researching companies more assiduously on paper or by working the phones harder. Moreover, Kiev actually recommends stricter risk management through such time-tested techniques as understanding your reasons for each trade, as well as the setting of target entry and exit prices. He also wants you to figure out if fears and doubts are keeping you from cutting your losses and riding your winners.
This book is clearly not for everyone; it is easily too �touchy feely� for traders concerned solely with the quantitative or more tangible aspects of trading. Kiev also tends to float heavily from topic to topic, often without a clear path. But for those traders who wonder how �fixing their heads� might result in greater success, Trading to Win is definitely worth a read.
When Nassim Taleb [New Yorker profile] takes aim at Wall Street and tells us that trading is the one �world in which [�] the habit of mistaking luck for skill is most prevalent,� we cheer him on for taking on these master egos of the universe. Put a trader on each side of a coin flip, flip enough coins, and you will ultimately find a long, lucky streak on which a few traders will have ridden. He mocks these nouveau riche products of chance, �trying too hard to become sophisticated by turning into wine collectors and opera lovers.�
Wall Street is not entirely oblivious to the role of chance in the success of its traders. The fact that traders generally enjoy an asymmetrical risk/reward profile (a trader�s upside in any given year is theoretically unlimited, constrained really only by capital constraints, while his downside is simply zero--the loss of his job) has been a source of consternation to Wall Street firms for some time. Measures like setting aside part of the trader�s cash compensation as a loss reserve for later trading years only encourages the trader to move to another firm. In the competition to make dollars, there is always someone who is willing to look the other way.
The most conspicuous instance of this in recent years, of course, was the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) debacle. Wall Street firms were only too willing to allow the hedge fund to keep the lid closed on its black box, spurning all discussion of trading and risk management. The problem with LTCM�s laureates was that they too heavily discounted the occurrence of certain �rare events,� and when those events actually happened, they were ultimately burned. "Rare events are always unexpected, otherwise they would not occur,� says Taleb, who explains how this hubris handicaps traders. �Gamblers, investors and decision makers feel that the sort of things that happen to others [will] not necessarily happen to them," says Taleb in his slim book Fooled by Randomness.
He draws parallels among those traders who blew themselves up in the great crashes. "They all made claims to the effect that 'these times are different' or that 'their market was different,' and offered seemingly well constructed intellectual arguments (of an economic nature) to justify their claims; they were unable to accept that the experience of others was out there, in the open, freely available to all, with books detailing crashes in every bookstore."
One of the most important lessons of Taleb�s book is the importance of risk management, the ability to recognize how the market might go against your initial analysis. Poor traders, he notes �get married to positions,� are quick �to change their story� and have �no precise game plan [�] as to what to do in the event of losses.� In contrast, strong traders possess the ability to revise their opinions �rather rapidly, without the slightest embarrassment." Taleb�s own trading style employs the use of �skewed bets,� in which he tries to profit from �rare events that do not tend to repeat themselves frequently, but, accordingly, present a large payoff when they occur.�
Unfortunately, Taleb does not give us enough examples of such trades from his own experience--or even the experience of others--to whet our appetite on this score. Instead, we get a heavy dose of Taleb�s defensiveness about how the role of chance makes certain traders less successful than others. Like many financial professionals turned writers, he also tries too hard to convince us of his erudition. Finally, the sheer number of the trading caricatures he employs becomes strident, as when he awkwardly describes the young, brash traders he obviously disdains.
"A red convertible Porsche, driven at several times the city speed limit, abruptly stopped in front of the entrance, its tired emitting the sound of pigs being slaughtered. A visibly demented athletic man in his thirties, his face flushed red, emerged and ran up the steps as if he were chased by a tiger."
Taleb�s strength, however, lies in his ability to make the discussion of randomness lucid; his discussion on skewness and asymmetry, in particular, is excellent. In this sense, Fooled by Randomness is an interesting complement to books like Burton Makiel�s A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which provides more better historical background on some of the manias that Taleb mentions. And in the end, Taleb offers a peace offering to those that he mocks. "I am just like every single character whom I ridiculed in this book."
John Train's slim book The Craft of Investing has a title that might mislead some readers into thinking that it is another one of his well-crafted overviews on investing. A good portion of the text, however, deals with topics that are probably most relevant to high networth individuals, family wealth management professionals and private bankers. Other investors will find chapters such as �Family Capital,� �The [Trust] Executor's Job,� and �How to Use a Safe-Deposit Box� less than relevant.
There are passages that are of interest to a wider audience. The first portion of the book is a brief, but useful survey of different investment styles. Other passages provide an interesting distillation of Train's tips on what makes a good investor, for instance, his advice about reverse engineering the trades of well-regarded institutional investors (�start by piggybacking on the thinking of the best professionals�); keeping a conservative approach to investing (which he says favors �sober, seasoned, careful older people�), and honing of investment skills to a professional level. �Most points are lost on errors, rather than by forcing shots. Since the investor never has to act, he should focus on not making avoidable mistakes.�
There is not enough meat on the bone here, though, to rank this book as one of Train's better ones. Instead, readers new to his work are better off starting with The Money Masters and The New Money Masters, two books that rank among the best in the investment field.
Robert Ludlum whips us through Zurich, Buenos Aries and Vienna in his fast paced thriller Sigma Protocol, as asset management scion Benjamin Hartman races to find out who is trying to kill him--and who killed his brother years earlier. He also has to avoid the investigative prowess of beautiful Department of Justice ace Anna Navarro to do it.
Management has changed at Sigma, a secretive "corporation" with far reaching tentacles, an entity that has been managing the course of history since the end of World War II. But someone is killing members of its board of directors, who include many of the world's major industrialists, one by one.
Ludlum has used the all-reaching, seedy corporation as plot device before, most notably and ably in Matarese Circle and The Matarese Countdown. For fodder here, he takes the military industrial complex and the ethics of biomedical research, throws in some Nazis, and raises the equation to the nth degree, to the degree of absurdity really. Yet, since Ludlum regains his form in this novel, we don't care a whit. We are too swept up in the story.
Stefani Fogg is a graduate of two top-notch American universities, "a pretty woman with the face of a pixie," but "bored off her nut" as an international fund manager. It doesn't take much for the head of a "risk management" firm to convince her to trade finance for a life of cloak and dagger.MORE
Even with accounting scandals like those at Adelphia, Enron, Tyco, and now Royal Ahold in the headlines, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge tell us that the "most important organization in the world is the Company: the basis of the prosperity of the West and the best hope for the future of the rest of the world."[MORE]
During the early 20th century, the stock markets were like an Olympus where the citizens below the mount could only watch the clashes of the financial titans, writes B. Mark Smith, a former equity trader and vice president at Goldman Sachs. Speculators like Jesse Livermore and Bernard Baruch made and lost fortunes on insider information and stock manipulation, while "the paucity of publicly available information effectively precluded potential investors from making informed choices."
The stock market since then has been "evolving towards efficiency," even if there has been a "step backward" for every two steps forward, says Smith in his provocative look at the fitful evolution of the markets.
He goes to lengths to defend the efficient-markets orthodoxy, rejecting examples of "anomalies" for depending too heavily on early century data. The toughest event for efficient-markets proponents to explain away is the Crash of 1987, when no discernible event could be found to justify the 30 percent drop on October 19, 1987. Yet Smith continually contends that higher stock prices are a trend toward "more aggressive standards" of valuing stocks. Such aggressive standards during the 1990s were sufficient to make Alan Greenspan the first Fed Chairman since the 1960s to remark on excessive stock market levels when he warned of "irrational exuberance."
"The Federal Reserve should let investors set stock values. It is not the function of the central bank to do it for them," Smith counters, adding that Greenspan has changed his tune since the infamous speech. Stocks were not necessarily overvalued even before the notable crashes of 1929 and 1962, "given that investors who bought stocks at those 'high' prices still earned good returns going forward."
However, that argument assumes that investors were broadly invested and hung on for the long term. Smith admits that during the crash of 1929, the overvaluation was concentrated in approximately 20 percent of stocks. More startling is the just-released Bianco Research study that shows 20 stocks were responsible for more than 76 percent of the losses since last year's peak in the NASDAQ.
Still, perhaps the millions of shares now traded daily confirm Charles Merrill's "belief that there was a vast pool of interest in the stock market that could be tapped if the public could be assured that the market was fair and open." Reforms to improve the flow of information and the establishment of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort have helped in this "market democratization."
Smith's book might rouse some to new interest in the theories behind investing, but where he truly succeeds is in the way he pulls together and contrasts accounts of financial titans like J.P. Morgan, speculators like Livermore and Baruch, and academics like William Sharpe and Eugene Fama.
The review above first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor.
Peter Lynch is the one who brought "ten bagger" into mainstream financial parlance. He seems oft quoted. But somewhere, something got lost in the translation. Say "Peter Lynch," and someone might say: "Oh, he's the one that says 'invest in what you know.'" People have taken that to mean that if you like eating donuts, then you buy stock in your favorite donut company; likewise for coffee. That, of course, is a ridiculous oversimplification of what Lynch has to teach. Lynch did not become the famed manager of Fidelity Magellan by just eating donuts. What he is really saying is that you cannot beat the amount of "fundamental analysis" you can do simply by being a frequent consumer of a customer's products, a recognition that investing in stocks is "an art, not a science."
But do not be fooled by the "aw shucks," self-deprecating humor of this Wharton Business School graduate. Read between the lines and you will see that he is not advocating that you throw out everything you ever learned about financial analysis. Reread One Up On Wall Street as a reminder of how important it can be to visit a company, to test and understand its products.
"I don't believe in predicting markets. I believe in buying great companies--especially companies that are undervalued or underappreciated," he says. "Although it's easy to forget sometimes, a share of stock is not a lottery ticket. It's part ownership of a business."
The book is actually a collection of aphorisms on how to look at and consider various situations in which a company might find itself. Many of these rules are so deceptively simple on first reading that they have only recently truly made sense to me after some years of doing diligence on companies. I would actually call this a "principles" book. For instance, Lynch talks about what is perhaps one of the most difficult arts to learn in finance: knowing when to exit out of an investment. And while there are chapters called "Earnings, Earnings, Earnings" and "Some Famous Numbers," clearly they are meant more for retail investors than portfolio managers. You are not going to find a heavy technical discussion. Now and then, however, it is always healthy to review the general rules.
Those who have never been part of the fund raising process do not know what to expect when they go hat in hand to the venture capitalists. Trying to figure out how to approach them and what they want to see can be like solving a rubic's cube. How do you get the color green to come up?
Even as a former investment banker, I myself have to admit that things look different from the other side of the table when you are asking for money instead of advising people how to raise it. (Not to mention that my time in investment banking was spent looking at high yield and mezzanine deals--not venture capital). That being the case, a book like Steve Harmon's Zero Gravity comes in handy if you are trying to understand the mentality of the venture capitalist. Harmon had access to friends and acquaintances of his in the industry, such as famed VCs John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad, who he queries on such things as what they look for in an investment. You also get to hear some short war stories on their investments in companies such as Excite.
Among Harmon's best advice is that you study the VCs as carefully--if not more carefully--than they are going to study you. Do you know what kind of companies each VC firm likes; do you know who their partners are? Zero Gravity has many pithy axioms that the entrepreneur will find helpful. Certain things about the book are annoying, though. For one thing, Harmon plugs his web site so often, you might think that you were viewing a particularly annoying pop up ad on the Internet. The book also has a lot of charts and tables that honestly are more filler than anything else, especially since a lot of the same information is available on the Internet for free. Still, the book is a quick read and probably one of the more accessible books on venture capital on which an entrepreneur can get his hands.
Fundamentals of Venture Capital by Joseph W. Bartlett is a solid overview of the legalities you need to know to seek venture capital. I say overview and not introduction, however, because I bet that after the first few chapters, the average layman will find portions of the book a bit technical. Although the book was intended for entrepreneurs, it is probably most useful to young practitioners in the private placement field, including lawyers, investment bankers and investors who want to understand the legal framework under which private placements are raised in the United States. The entrepreneur might droop just where Bartlett hits his stride--in his succinct discussion of Rule 144, Regulation D and other regulations and guidelines relevant to venture capital and other private placements.
The entrepreneur will find the book particularly useful when Bartlett describes the basic corporate structure; the types of securities and their legal implications, and the important considerations when drafting a business plan or prospectus. The book succeeds best when Bartlett draws upon his experience as a partner of the law firm Morrison Forster to outline the motivations of the venture capital firm, the startup and other participants in negotiations. The chapter on valuation is cursory, but there are other books to which the entrepreneur or practitioner can turn for fuller discussion. Thus Fundamentals of Venture Capital might not be the last book that you pick up to learn about venture capital, but especially if you want to learn about the legal issues, it is not a bad place to start.
You've probably heard this before to the point that it has become a cliche. The best way to land an investment banking position (or research or trading or any Wall Street position) is through your network of family, friends and colleagues. No matter how distant the relative or how slight the acquaintance, if that person can make an introduction for you for an informational interview, then that can get your foot in the door. A person's personal network is what gets people into investment banking 90% of the time. Work those contacts!
Before you walk into a real job interview or an information interview you need to prepare yourself for it. This website and WetFeet.Com are both good for helping you out in that department. Above all else, enthusiasm and a burning desire to land an IB position are qualities you should convey. The second thing you should do in any interview is get the names of three other people you might contact to get a different view... to expand your network. Now you're really on the road to your goal. Each time you meet a new person, ask for a few of his/her colleagues and acquaintances you might contact just for informational purposes. The odds of finding the position you seek go up exponentially as your little network of contacts expands (assuming you're competent, all bets are off if you're a buffoon.) MORE
You've probably heard this before to the point that it has become a cliche. The best way to land an investment banking position (or research or trading or any Wall Street position) is through your network of family, friends and colleagues. No matter how distant the relative or how slight the acquaintance, if that person can make an introduction for you for an informational interview, then that can get your foot in the door. A person's personal network is what gets people into investment banking 90% of the time. Work those contacts!
Before you walk into a real job interview or an information interview you need to prepare yourself for it. This website and WetFeet.Com are both good for helping you out in that department. Above all else, enthusiasm and a burning desire to land an IB position are qualities you should convey. The second thing you should do in any interview is get the names of three other people you might contact to get a different view... to expand your network. Now you're really on the road to your goal. Each time you meet a new person, ask for a few of his/her colleagues and acquaintances you might contact just for informational purposes. The odds of finding the position you seek go up exponentially as your little network of contacts expands (assuming you're competent, all bets are off if you're a buffoon.)
Ok, so what if you don't have even the most remote possibility of using your network to obtain an informational interview with someone already in investment banking. You've got a few choices:
1) New York Times classifieds: one of the better listings of Wall Street jobs. Doesn't list too much in IB but you might get lucky or you might try to start out in a related field. Ditto for Bloomberg jobs listings. Also, place your resume in resume databases that cater to Wall Street companies like Cruel World.
2) Move to New York City (well, not Manhattan, it's too expensive, but Hoboken or Queens work well.) No, I'm not kidding. If you're hungry enough, come to the world's financial capital. That's what I did, and it worked. Yes, it's risky and painful, but you've got a much better chance of success if you're actually here to interview every day of every week. People that want to act on Broadway move here all the time!
Once you're here, you'll have to find a job. Preferably, find a finance-type job. Otherwise, sign up with a temp agency that services investment banks as part of its client base. Be sure your Excel, Word, PowerPoint, typing, and other useful skills are up to snuff (these should be up to snuff to get a decent IB associate or analyst position in any case). While you're earning you should be attempting to obtain informational and/or real interviews at investment banks. Inevitably someone you will meet, either on the job, out partying, or otherwise, will work in the field or can introduce you to someone that does. It may take a while, but perseverence is the name of the game.
3) Another possibility is to take a non-investment banking job at an investment bank as an entry into the company and then work on getting the investment banking position. This is not easy. For whatever reason, internal candidates at many banks are looked on differently... I really don't understand it. But sometimes you're actually better off if you're not already working for the company with which you're interviewing. Other times it's an issue of working in a shorthanded back office function that can't afford to let people go to another part of the company. Still, it looks good to have an investment bank on your resume when you're out looking for an investment banking position.
4) Go back to school. Get your MBA at a school where investment banks regularly recruit. Good bets are: Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, MIT, NYU, Chicago, Dartmouth (notice all these schools are up north... except Stanford). Some of the other ivy leagues are also ok, as are a number of schools I didn't mention... I've seen a few UCLA grads... but not many.
Lots of people have jobs or careers they fantasize about. There really is no excuse for not taking home the brass ring this year if what you really want is an investment banking job. Wall Street firms are hiring like crazy right now. They're poaching from each other and sending compensation packages through the roof. I get occasional calls from headhunters asking "might you know someone with two years of experience willing to move to a competing bank?" The situation can't be too much different for new hires. The unemployment rate is 3.9% and among financial types it's probably around 0.0%. Go now! There will never be a better time.
Where there is growth, there are those willing to fuel it.
Asia's booming number of Internet subscribers has garnered the attention of large telecommunications players both inside and outside the region, says Greg Tarr, Founder and General Partner of 3G Capital. The number of Internet subscribers in Asia is predicted to grow from 460,000 in 1999 to 143 million in 2003, while in Japan the number is expected to grow from 3.8 million to 41 million.
However, where there are a myriad of interested companies, there are also a myriad of agendas. One of the greatest challenges facing the rollout of 3G is the lack of standards, said Tarr, who noted that there is "lots of lobbying" to promote various standards. "And who is it that suffers? It's the consumer, unfortunately."
Tarr appeared bedecked in a dark double-breasted suit, French blue shirt and silver tie in New York on June 1 for an IandIAsia-sponsored event, fresh from a trip to Scandinavia, where he was raising money for a new $100 million fund. 3G Capital is a Singapore-based venture capital fund that will focus on wireless Internet software and infrastructure investments.
Another challenge is the sheer amount of financing that it will take to roll out this infrastructure. Tarr noted that it will take approximately $300 million to service 3.8 million people in Singapore. When you extrapolate those numbers to the rest of the region, the result is staggering. Given the costs, telecommunications companies might be relegated to rollouts in more densely populated areas to keep such efforts profitable and the issue of "haves and have-nots" might rear its ugly head. Tarr thus predicts that the implementation of 3G is as much a challenge of political will as it is one of infrastructure and finance.
Countries remain concerned about the country of origin of equipment manufacturers, as they seek to promote their own indigenous industries. Lack of standards and the heavy cost burden serve also as obstacles to startups and other firms, which lack the financial resources and manpower to service an industry where standards remain highly fragmented. In which basket do you put your eggs? One audience member highlighted recent reports that China might not accept the CDMA standard because the Chinese military owns financial interests in companies promoting rival technologies. "How do you focus on the fragmentation problem," asked one engineer. The concern was echoed by several in the audience of approximately 100 people.
Besides the fragmentation of standards that we see, Asia faces a diversity of cultures and languages. Telecommunications companies in the area also must cope with the representation of "double-byte" languages in the area, which can be more memory intensive and taxing on the infrastructure than Western languages.
Tarr's answer was that smaller firms need to seek partnerships with and tap the resources of larger telecommunications companies, which he believes are receptive to hearing ideas from young entrepreneurs. "Will all standards issues be resolved so we can talk worldwide with one phone," asked Tarr, who says that he is optimistic that the quest for profitability will ultimately bring standards together. Given the huge amounts of money at stake, companies-and countries-will want to participate in the globalization of the telecommunications industry.
But is 3G simply a matter of 'if you build it, they will come?' One audience member said that he was "personally, skeptical about Dick Tracy-style video conferencing."
Tarr sees wireless Internet applications developing in six primary areas: finance, entertainment, reservations, basic information, education and lifestyle. In particular stock trading, which caters to the region's "gambling mentality" will be one application driving wireless Internet development in Asia. Already, 40 percent of trading volume in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore is conducted over the Internet, 30 percent over the phone. Essentially, you will need killer applications for each demographic or location, such as companies taking advantage of the penchant for cartoons in Japan. In Helsinki, a subculture has grown around ring tones, where the most popular ones are even heard on radio stations. "The real question [about the adoption of 3G applications] is user interface," said Tarr. If the interface is fast and easy to use, they will attract users. To further illustrate the point,. Tarr showed a digital video of the cell phone's famed use for ordering Pepsis through Helsinki vending machines. "The phone is now a credit card with an antenna." Spring 2000
Bloomberg's Graef Crystal warns that Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette and others firms might be stuck with fixed costs if Wall Street takes a downturn. DLJ and other firms are offering guaranteed bonuses to some junior bankers in order to stem the tide of defections to dot.com startups.
Salomon Smith Barney has given in to complaints about lifestyle from their analysts. To combat the brain drain to such areas as Internet startups, Salomon is now giving incentives such as letting analysts dress in casual clothing and issuing laptop computers, cell phones and pagers, and opening a coffee lounge. The changes are in response to a memo in which analysts griped about work conditions: "Management does not seem to be taking the issue seriously, and is so far removed, that they seem either ignorant or indifferent to the underlying factors/problems that are driving analysts to leave..." said the memo. "Oftentimes, senior officers and associate view analysts as nothing more than 'resources' to be used and abused as they see fit. While we understand that as analysts, we have extraordinary responsibilities, our efforts are often unappreciated and our input is often ignored." February 1, 2000
A lot of times when you hear about athletes who excel at their game, often it is because those athletes put in extra time in the gym or in the film room studying games. I have always wondered what the equivalent of watching game tapes was for investment bankers.
When I was trying to break into derivatives, someone once advised me to buy a copy of John Hull's Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives, read it several times and know it like the back of my hand. Everyone knows that an intimate knowledge of the concepts and the jargon of an industry can be extremely helpful in breaking into that industry. So what is the equivalent of Hull for investment bankers? If you were to press me to name some candidates, I might say Bernstein's Financial Statement Analysis as well as Copeland's Valuation.
Of course, nothing quite replaces game experience, and for us, that translates into transaction experience. Sometimes when we move to a new firm, in our quest to boost our compensation we forget that one of the things at which we should most closely be looking is deal flow. Yet the thing that strikes me about investors like Warren Buffet and Peter Lynch is that they all mention that one of the keys to (being) a great investor is reading annual report after annual report; the trick being that if you do not have the opportunity to do transaction after transaction, at least you should be reading as many business plans as you can. January 2000
I originally got the idea for this web site and message board from a couple hobbies. Those of you who play cards or chess or work on autos know that there are often groups of afficionados that share tips and secrets with each other that they have learned along the way.
Intense, experienced hobbyists seem to enjoy passing knowledge to those
who have newly joined their ranks: you see that among chess players for
instance (suggestions for opening repertoires from experienced players to
beginners). On the vocational side, computer programmers, in particular,
have "knowledge bases" posted on web sites such as Microsoft. With so
many people using particular programming tools, programmers often
bump against problems with which others have grappled before them, and
it does not make sense for them to reinvent the solution if someone else
has already figured one out. Programmers in particular seem to be very
good at posting these solutions for the community at large to share.
Personally, I would love to see financial people do the same on topics such as financial modeling. Thanks for helping us out by participating in our message board. - Wayne