tactical trader

Scarcely a week goes by without a reference to the impending collapse of the US economy and the unstoppable march of China’s progress along with several other dramatic stories concerning the global scenario we all operate in and try to make money from.

Clearly much of this is rhetoric as calm assessments do not make particularly great headlines and news stories have to be sold. If we ignore the rhetoric and seek calmer views then at the other end of the scale we find starchily written academic reports that few of us have neither the time nor the inclination to read.

For these reasons I was particularly attracted to a new book that, from a quick review of the contents at least, appeared to bring all the strands together in an easily readable yet well researched format.

Wake Up! by Jim Mellon and Al Chalabi is positioned as able to show us how to ‘survive and prosper in the coming economic turmoil’. The overall tone of the book is that any investor regardless of experience, time frame or portfolio size needs to be acutely aware of what is going to happen and position themselves accordingly. There are no options here, the authors are convinced that something very serious is going to happen in the very near future and try to convince the reader to believe it for their own good.

Does the book succeed in this goal? Does the wake up message make sense and, most importantly are there clear recommendations as to what to do in preparation for the worse case scenario?

The answer is yes and no, and personally I found this disappointing.

The bulk of the work is very well written and makes compelling reading; I even took it with me on a weekend trip to Italy which shows how keen I was to get through it (or how sad I am depending on your point of view, especially as it was a wedding anniversary trip!).

The writers clearly know their subject and feel passionately about the issues they raise, they are clearly not plodding through this like so many writers do and it shows in the quality on the writing and depth of content. My disappointment actually came quite late in the book, the part of it devoted to recommendations for action. This is particularly irksome as many readers will buy the book for the ‘what’ rather than the lessons of history that make up much of the ‘why’…