The Battle for Investment Survival: A straight-forward, uncompromising revelation of stock-market technique and philosophy that you can apply profitably to your own investment thinking, by G. M. Loeb (HC, 1952 edition of 1935 work, enlarged by 18 additional chapters, $59, which is a steal, because the listed internet price is $505!)
Writes Loeb, "When I started investing about 1921, it seemed a peaceful enough occupation. By 1943, I started calling it a 'battle', though a lot of people might have used that term much earlier during 1929 to 1932. But now in 1952 it seems to me a 'war'.
The person who studies a problem from every angle and defines the risks, aims and possibilities correctly before he starts is more than half-way to his goal.
Atom bomb or no, there is nothing really new in 1952's investment hazards, though they seem so novel and terrifying. Inflation and deflation, taxation, social reform, regulation, war, rationing, confiscation, even revolution all have played their parts regularly in the past. It is only that at times these forces seem to be quiescent, and at other times dynamic."
What would he say about today's stock market? Do his techniques still work?
Be sure to catch the table on changes in the Dow Jones Industrials- a wild swing down from 1929 to 1930 (381 to 41), and then up and down but generally upward until this book was released (41 to 280). Hey, you mathematically inclined, how much of drop is it anyway when you go from 381 to 41 in one year? And we complain when the market drops a few percentage points!
You can find this book in the front glass case.
