Anatomy of the Bear: Lessons from Wall Street's four great bottoms

This book is worth its weight in all the stocks you own. If you manage your own portfolio as I do, you are probably very interested in what the market is likely to be up to six months or a year down the road, especially when we are in a bear market. I want to know when to reinvest in the market to catch those first explosive bull rallies that signal the end of the bear. This book is an instruction manual that tells what to look for and where to find the information that tells this. Nothing in investing is a sure thing as nothing that involves dealing with the future is a sure thing. Considering that, this book is as close as it gets to showing how to read the clues the bear gives when it is getting ready for hibernation once again, and the ole' bull is again sniffing around Wall Street.If, on the other hand we are in a bull market and you want to know when the bear is on its way, I suggest "Winning on Wall Street" by Martin Zweig, also an instruction manual. Put these two books right up there with your subscriptions to Value Line, Morningstar.com, The Wall Street Journal, and Barron's and you have a substantial set of tools for navigating the business cycles.These books are instruction manuals for seasoned investors; folks who have been through at least one complete business cycle and have lost money to the bear. They are for folks who have developed an investment plan and are able to stay the course. They are not intended for those who rely on brokers and do not participate in their own portfolio's management. They are not light reading but they are extraordinarily interesting.

I really enjoyed this book as I have only myself experienced 2 stock market crashes and have limited experience investing in those times.Napier gives a historic review of the great US bear market bottoms and what we can learn from them. I don't imagine timing the market at the bottom, but I think the book gave me tools to recognise conditions in witch I can be more offensive in my investing. What really baffled me was that is not always speculation that goes to boom and then a bust that gives you the undervaluation of equities.Mind that Napier aint talking about "small bears". He is talking about the great bears of 1921, 1932, 1949 and 1982. And according to this theory 2001 might have been a start on another great bear.

I purchased the 4th edition after listening to Russell Napier on Grant's Interest Rate Observer podcast. His academic answers to current analysis are very detailed and not clear to me. This book (hardcover) is not clear on my eyes, but instructions to get a free download for ereaders are at the beginning.After digging through the beginning, I was hooked starting with Part II 'The Road to July 1932'. The description of the twenties leading to the thirties is vivid and lively. Having had relatives that lived through this time I became engrossed and am now totally impressed with Russell Napier's keen insights. This is a necessity for putting the past in context with the present.

Historical value only, not really relevant to today's markets. provided no real insights into to 2020 crash.

Everyone under 40, has experienced a decline in interest rates their whole life. Everyone under 60 has experienced a decline in interest rates their entire business life! Thus, 87% of the people in the world have zero experience with rising interest rates! This book eloquently summarizes what happens in a serious bear market. “Scientific progress is cumulative. Economic progress is cyclical.” James Grant

Insightful review of the market sentiment and press pulse at the very bottom.

Very long winded with almost zero actionable information.

This is a fascinating book that bears (har har!) repetitive readings. Originally published by CLSA in 2005, it saw a second addition in 2007, a third edition in 2009 by Harriman House and is in its 4th printing again under Harriman House in 2016.Napier studies the great US bear markets which bottomed in 1921, 1932, 1949 and 1982. The "current" bear market at time of original publication was the Tech Bubble crash of 2000 which was ongoing in 2005 when the book was first published. More on that in a moment. Like any historical work, Napier is forced to create a theory from other logical considerations and then selectively apply it by choosing meaningful historical data to interpret through the lens of his chosen theory. There is risk in both having a poorly calibrated logical apparatus for explaining cause-effect relationships and in mischoosing or mishandling chosen data and leading oneself to faulty conclusions as a result. I don't wish to comment on whether or not I think Napier's logical framework and chosen data are successfully employed, I wish only to point out that these kind of endeavors are necessarily speculative in nature and can never be as precise as we might like.The book deserves to be read multiple times in part because it is so dense with data-- numbers, charts, graphs, tables, etc. But also qualitative data, such as descriptions of the structure of the market and economy at each point in time (what were the growth industries? which sectors were most badly bruised? which saw their quantitative data change first or last?), a wealth of newspaper headlines and story clippings from each era that serve as live commentary (think of them as ancient Twitter feeds...) and descriptions of changes in monetary systems and the strategy of prevailing central bank regimes. This is precisely why it's difficult to get a read on the success of Napier's analysis-- it is far from simple and with so many variables to consider there are so many places the analysis could go astray.That being said, there are so many variables and that is what makes the book fascinating. It is chilling to go back in time and hear the echoes of the past in their various moments. It is surprising to see how often they do seem to "rhyme". And oh, if only one COULD pull a predictive model out of this mess and use it to time the markets! But even stopping short of that, some themes emerge fairly clearly:1. When things were about to turn, there were many who could see things getting better but few that would give them credit2. These drastic bear markets were preceded by great instability and uncertainty about the "general price level" as Napier calls it, and only when a consensus formed about the paradigm shift could the bull market return3. These bear markets took far longer to play out than most remember-- we have the violent, dramatic crashes burned into our collective memory, but most of the time these things took almost a decade to fully play out4. No matter what, each cycle brought with it statistically extreme valuations of leading shares based on measures such as the Q Ratio and even P/Es and it seems unlikely there will ever be a bear market without such phenomena almost by definition-- people who have the courage to invest in those moments, however far they are from the bottom, are rewarded with great returns in timeSo, where are we now, the burning question for today's reader? At the end of the book (written 2005, mind you), Napier suggests the "current" (re: 2000) bear market likely won't bottom until 2009 at the earliest and 2014 more probably. Of course, 2009 was a major low in the market and 2014 saw the continuation of the up trend since then. Are we in the midst of a new bull started in 2009, or do lower lows await from the "ongoing" bear started in 2000?The debate rages on!