In my quest for information about tradable (short and medium-term) share price cycles I erroneously ordered this book due to its promising title and deficiency of reviews. The book is of no use to traders but gets 2 stars for the book that it is (rather than what I wanted).
The stock market cycles explained are those mirroring the economic cycles which usually extend over many years. The author details the central bank (Fed) manipulation of interest rates to control the economy, and how the stock market cycle results from the interaction of economic activity and interest rates. He then explains how assets can be moved between cash, bonds, and stocks to maximize returns through the different stages of the economic cycle. Sector rotation is briefly mentioned. I consider this basic subject would be of interest to an economics student or a portfolio manager, but private investors are generally too passive to practice dynamic asset allocation. And for a reported advantage of 2 – 3% pa, it hardly seems worth the effort.
To fill up the thin book, the final uninspiring chapters cover business life cycles, the P/E ratio, and a few empirical studies too esoteric even for serious investors.
The narrow subject of The Economic Cycle is well described in this book to the point of being over-repeated (probably to make up enough pages to call it a book). I imagine this subject would fill a comprehensive chapter in an economics textbook.
