The methods of a modern backer. Alan Potts is a full-time professional punter, who makes a steady and lucrative income from gambling. In this book, he reveals, for the first time, the techniques and methods that consistently give him the edge over bookmakers. Anyone who bets on horses will find valuable insights on how to become - and stay - a winner.

Efficient market theorists contend that markets are random and thus not predictable. With the publication of Trading Against theCrowd, however, noted author, economist, and professional trader John Summa convincingly shows that investor sentiment can be incorporated into profitable stock and stock market trading systems. In this groundbreaking book, Summa explains how to use popular gauges of crowd psychology, such as put/call ratios, option-implied volatility, short sales, investor surveys, and advisory opinion to trade against, or contrary to, prevailing market sentiment. He also makes compelling arguments against the efficient markets hypothesis with the presentation of his own quantitative weekly bear and bull news-flow intensity indices, which he builds from news scans. This data series, and other popular measures of crowd psychology, are processed through custom indicators that are programmed into profitable trading systems, such as Squeeze Play I & II, Tsunami Sentiment Wave, and the Fourth Estate. Trading Against the Crowd is the first book to provide a comprehensive assessment of investor crowd psychology, offering valuable market timing tools and trading techniques, including: MetaStock and Trade Station system and custom indicator code; comparative statistical studies of CBOE, OEX, and equity-only put/call ratios; straightforward instructions for combining price triggers with sentiment indicators; a practical guide to understanding put/call ratios, short sales, investor surveys, newsletter opinion, and stock market news-flow intensity; how to use LEAP options as trading vehicles to avoid use of stop loss orders; use of put/call ratios for trading the Treasury bond futures market; and test results and evaluation of trading system performance. Many of today’s professional money managers rely on investor sentiment for improved market timing. They know that at extremes of market sentiment, markets tend to be the most predictable.Trading Against the Crowd shows how you can begin to profit from these short- to medium-term sentiment waves generated by the actions of the speculative crowd. Put into practice powerful sentiment data using thoroughly back-tested trading systems, and rise above the herd mentality of the investor crowd, where potentially large profits await.

Our creativity is inextricably entwined with our humanity. So what shall we make of the world?

A witty, heartfelt novel that brilliantly evokes the confusions of adolescence and marks the arrival of an extraordinary young talent. Isidore Mazal is eleven years old, the youngest of six siblings living in a small French town. He doesn't quite fit in. Berenice, Aurore, and Leonard are on track to have doctorates by age twenty-four. Jeremie performs with a symphony, and Simone, older than Isidore by eighteen months, expects a great career as a novelist—she's already put Isidore to work on her biography. The only time they leave their rooms is to gather on the old, stained couch and dissect prime-time television dramas in light of Aristotle's Poetics. Isidore has never skipped a grade or written a dissertation. But he notices things the others don't, and asks questions they fear to ask. So when tragedy strikes the Mazal family, Isidore is the only one to recognize how everyone is struggling with their grief, and perhaps the only one who can help them—if he doesn't run away from home first. Isidore’s unstinting empathy, combined with his simmering anger, makes for a complex character study, in which the elegiac and comedic build toward a heartbreaking conclusion. With How to Behave in a Crowd, Camille Bordas immerses readers in the interior life of a boy puzzled by adulthood and beginning to realize that the adults around him are just as lost.

Train your brain to be a real contrarian and outsmart the crowd Beat the Crowd is the real contrarian’s guide to investing, with comprehensive explanations of how a true contrarian investor thinks and acts – and why it works more often than not. Bestselling author Ken Fisher breaks down the myths and cuts through the noise to present a clear, unvarnished view of timeless market realities, and the ways in which a contrarian approach to investing will outsmart the herd. In true Ken Fisher style, the book explains why the crowd often goes astray—and how you can stay on track. Contrarians understand how headlines really affect the market and which noise and fads they should tune out. Beat the Crowd is a primer to the contrarian strategy, teaching readers simple tricks to think differently and get it right more often than not. Discover the limits of forecasting and how far ahead you should look Learn why political controversy matter less the louder it gets Resurrect long-forgotten, timeless tricks and truths in markets Find out how the contrarian approach makes you right more often than wrong A successful investment strategy requires information, preparation, a little bit of brainpower, and a larger bit of luck. Pursuit of the mythical perfect strategy frequently lands folks in a cacophony of talking heads and twenty-four hour noise, but Beat the Crowd cuts through the mental clutter and collects the pristine pieces of actual value into a tactical approach based on going against the grain.

In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.