hardly working

Breean checked out Mad Money by Jim Cramer from the library for me the other day. I was pretty skeptical cause he’s such a nutcase but the book is actually pretty good. I recommend it for some pretty simple but reasonable investing advice.

Interesting Malcolm Gladwell piece in the New Yorker about “Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information.” In short, the world has changed and many fields have moved from puzzles (not enough information) to mysteries (too much information).

Let’s just quote from the end:

In the spring of 1998, Macey notes, a group of six students at Cornell University’s business school decided to do their term project on Enron. “It was for an advanced financial-statement-analysis class taught by a guy at Cornell called Charles Lee, who is pretty famous in financial circles,” one member of the group, Jay Krueger, recalls.
…
The students’ conclusions were straightforward. Enron was pursuing a far riskier strategy than its competitors. There were clear signs that “Enron may be manipulating its earnings.” The stock was then at forty-eight dollars—at its peak, two years later, it was almost double that—but the students found it over-valued. The report was posted on the Web site of the Cornell University business school, where it has been, ever since, for anyone who cared to read twenty-three pages of analysis. The students’ recommendation was on the first page, in boldfaced type: “Sell.”

Found the report on this page.