Opportunity Investing: How To Profit When Stocks Advance, Stocks Decline, Inflation Runs Rampant, Prices Fall, Oil Prices Hit the Roof, ... and Every Time in Between

While Appel's previous books offered advice on technical analysis of stocks and price movement charts aimed at aggressive day traders, this one covers tamer versions of those strategies for conservative retail investors. Despite the sensational subtitle, the advice is generally solid, calling for broad diversification with a little excitement from a moderate level of turnover. However, unlike conventional wisdom, which advises buy-and-hold diversification, the book recommends aggressive market timing, moving in and out of various investment types based on market and economic conditions. The strongest aspect of the book is the clear explanations of how these diverse sectors work, and how ordinary investors can put money into them conveniently and at a reasonable cost. But the advice on how to tell when different market sectors are attractive or unattractive for investment is much less clear. There is extensive discussion of how much money one could have made if one had known what was going to happen, but the rules for switching investments in the future are hard to understand and not backed by systematic statistics. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.