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The Crash and Its Aftermath - Wigmore


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[amazonsearch]The Crash and Its Aftermath - Wigmore[/amazonsearch]

 

This a Prem recommended book from 2 years ago annual meeting.  It describes in detail the bond, stock (including individual industries and companies) and currency markets from 1929 to 1933.  It was written by a Goldman Sachs partner in the 1970s.  It is about 550 pages of text so there is alot here but this the best Depression history book I have read.

 

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Great Depression: A Diary is a great read. It is written by a business lawyer who had clients coming in telling him what really happened. The lawyer teaches himself economics and tries to figure out how to profit. Unfortunately he concludes that the only solution is to sell before the crash. After the crash few have money to take advantage of the depressed prices. Some consequences are unexpected such as landlords getting stuck because rents are not paid or that the time to buy stock was in the middle of the worst of the bank failures before it felt like an upturn. Reading this book will help encourage you to sell assets and build cash now before the depression starts. I suggest reading Hoover's autobiography of the Great Depression as well, particularly the part that the extent of the debt problems being worse than expected, but this diary is better as unlike Hoover, Roth tells it like it is instead of trying to preserve his reputation.

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[amazonsearch]The Crash and Its Aftermath - Wigmore[/amazonsearch]

 

This a Prem recommended book from 2 years ago annual meeting.  It describes in detail the bond, stock (including individual industries and companies) and currency markets from 1929 to 1933.  It was written by a Goldman Sachs partner in the 1970s.  It is about 550 pages of text so there is alot here but this the best Depression history book I have read.

 

Packer

 

Read this after learning of it at the AGM. Have to say I found it heavy going and really hard to get anything useful about investing or economics from it. A lot of data but not too much analysis - that's my take fwiw. People interested in a detailed history of how things unfolded in the 1930s may get more out of it than I did.

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You are right this is more of a detailed narrative from which you can draw value conclusions by looking at the data.  You need a value framework (from Security Analysis or Intelligent Investor) to make sense of the data which is not provided in this book.

 

Some of my takeaway were that gold stocks did great during this period and consumer staple and tobbaco held there ground.  Just about everything else got clobbered.  There was one investment firm (Atlas Corp) that did well by buying cheap stocks during the period.  It also provided some insight into the banking collapse around the world and the currency collapse which led to the end of the gold standard.  I found it interesting to note the similarities to the past and how the crash period rhymes with our current period.  I am a firm believer that what we are going through now has been gone through in the past and studying the past is helpful today.

 

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Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s

Since Yesterday: The 1930's in America, September 3, 1929 to September 3, 1939

 

Both written by Frederick Lewis Allen.

 

Books are not focused on investments.  However, both provide great perspective -- excellent books if interested in understanding the mindset of America during these periods...very well done and enjoyable to read.

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Some of my takeaway were that gold stocks did great during this period and consumer staple and tobbaco held there ground.  Just about everything else got clobbered.  There was one investment firm (Atlas Corp) that did well by buying cheap stocks during the period.  It also provided some insight into the banking collapse around the world and the currency collapse which led to the end of the gold standard.  I found it interesting to note the similarities to the past and how the crash period rhymes with our current period.  I am a firm believer that what we are going through now has been gone through in the past and studying the past is helpful today.

 

Packer

 

Thanks. Looks like I should revisit the book to get the insights you were able to cull. I sort of gave up one-third of the way into the book and after the markets recovered in 2009 it became sort of moot (mayeb not, as we are now seeing!).

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