Unexpected Returns: Understanding Secular Stock Market Cycles (Hardcover)

by Ed Easterling

Winner ForeWord Magazine Bronze Award for Best Business/Economics Book of the Year. This investment book uses extensive full-color graphics to explain the fundamentals of the markets-an essential resource before reading how-to books or engaging investment advice. It is a unique combination of investment art and investment science that enables the reader to differentiate between irrational hope and a rational view of current market conditions.

From the Publisher
"Ed Easterling has given the world of investing the single best, easy-to-read, study of stock market cycles of which I know. He lays out a path for you to find your own Unexpected Returns, showing you how to confidently navigate the waters of market volatility. Serious investors will devour this book and profit. It should be required reading for investment professionals."

- John Mauldin, President, Millennium Wave Investments; author of Bull's Eye Investing

"Unexpected Returns provides a broad, deep, and provocative exploration of the factors that determine stock market investment returns over a person's lifetime. Of special interest to me, as a Federal Reserve policy advisor on monetary policy, is Easterling's exploration of the critical role of low and stable inflation as a key determinant of stock market performance."

- Harvey Rosenblum, Senior Vice President and Director of Research, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

"Unexpected Returns is at once a penetrating analysis of more than a century of stock market experience and a realistic guide to how we may expect the markets to perform in the years ahead. Easterling's findings and conclusions are grounded on the best economic and financial thinking of our time. This is a book for the serious investor and student of the markets."

- Richard Sylla, Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets, Stern School of Business, New York University; co-author of A History of Interest Rates

"The stock market is one of the few places on earth where people become more excited to buy when things are expensive, and more anxious to sell when things are cheap. Ed Easterling has penned a masterful accounting about why this is so wealth-destructive, presented without preconceived notion or bias."

- Bill Mann, Senior Editor, Investing, The Motley Fool

"People are accustomed to the vagaries of market cycles. Far too few realize that these are subsumed within secular bull and bear markets, spanning decades not years. Ed Easterling has done a fine job of describing how these long cycles work and how the investor can plan investment strategies accordingly." Rob Arnott, Chairman, Research Affiliates, LLC; Editor, Financial Analysts Journal