The Losing Game: Why You Can't Beat Wall Street - Softcover

T.E. Scott; Stephen Edds

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0981937039 ISBN 13: 9780981937038

Publisher: Hidden Truth Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

This is the book you MUST read to understand why your successful financial future requires not trusting Wall Street!

Now, more than ever, you need a book to navigate you through this financial crisis.

For decades, average Americans have been held captive in their financial lives by their limited knowledge of and an inherent trust in Wall Street, only to see that trust violated time and time again by a system that rewards greed and corruption.

The Losing Game explains why Wall Street is the largest casino in the United States, except the games are fixed and the house ALWAYS wins.

Retired entrepreneur and business owner T.E. Scott, along with writer Stephen Edds, uses well-reasoned arguments, unwavering logic, and common-sense insights to give readers a clear understanding of the stock market and commodity markets. They discuss how Wall Street is brilliantly marketed and designed to separate working families from their money without accountability or prosecution.

Scott excels in his description of the psychological war that Wall Street has implemented over the years using propaganda, marketing and the complexity of the market itself to keep us in the dark about where our investment money is going.

The Losing Game: Why You Can't Beat Wall Street shows the bottom-line basics of how Wall Street is scamming Main Street, with Congress and the media as willing accomplices.

In plain-speaking terminology, Scott presents a revolutionary perspective that uncovers the deceptive conditioning of the American worker to place their trust in Wall Street without question.

Would you take your retirement money to Las Vegas to gamble?
Why are you trusting your 401(k) and pension to a corrupt and unregulated market?

The Losing Game is a must-read for hard-working individuals willing to secure their financial future by ignoring the marketing of Wall Street, and by giving them the confidence to take control of their financial future.

About this title

About the Author:

T.E. Scott founded and spent twenty-five years as CEO of a $50 million pet supply manufactuing company in Indiana. Before starting that business, Scott spent thirty-two years working as a union laborer for Eastern Airlines. When he lost most of his pension when the company went bankrupt in the 1980s, Scott started on the road to investigating the true nature of Wall Street. Scott is retired and resides in Veedersburg, Indiana.

thelosinggame.com

Stephen Edds is a native of Owensboro, Kentucky and is a graduate of Hanover (IN) College. Edds spent fifteen years in corporate marketing communications before striking out on his own as a freelance writer. Edds moved to Indianapolis in 1996, where he still resides with his wife, Erin, and son Levi.

stephenedds.com

Review:

From Book Chase T.E. Scott would be among the first to tell you that it is impossible to call the tops and bottom of the stock market. But Scott has timed one thing perfectly for sure: his book about the dangers of dealing with Wall Street, The Losing Game: Why You Can t Beat Wall Street.

The Losing Game is neither a sophisticated nor a complicated look at the stock market. Rather, it is one man's heartfelt opinion of a system he believes to be little more than legalized gambling on a national scale. The book is not a technical discussion of how the markets function, nor does it offer readers a way to beat the system. In fact, Scott does much the opposite. He believes that the deck is so stacked against the average investor, and that Wall Street has so many opportunities to siphon money from the investor, that very few people walk away from it richer than they began.

No matter what you think about the numbers used in Scott's examples or his blanket indictment of everyone in the investment world, it is difficult to argue with his premise that, for most of us, investing in the stock market is just another way to gamble. In order for us to make money from our investment, someone has to lose an equal amount. We simply bet that our timing will be better than that of our fellow Wall Street gamblers who sell their stock to us just when we want it and buy it back when we are ready to sell. We bet against them they bet against us.

Also hard to argue with is Scott s contention that investors are being hustled constantly by people who could not care less whether the investor makes or loses money. The key for the pros is to keep all that money in motion by encouraging investors to buy and sell shares as often as possible so that the markets and brokers can collect maximum commissions. And that is easy enough for them to do since, for so many investors, playing the market is largely a series of irrational decisions dependent on the emotion of the moment. Investors desperately want to believe that they will hit the big one someday that will recoup all of their prior losses classic gambling behavior.

The book does tend at times to be a bit more repetitive than necessary even when that repetition is seen as a way to highlight the points considered most important by the author. One set of four numeric examples, for instance, is repeated verbatim in four different sections of the book (despite it being more than two pages long) rather than simply referring the reader back to the original set of numbers each subsequent time the example is used. That and a few noticeable editing flaws will test the reader's patience a bit but will not distract from the book's message.

The Losing Game has not convinced me to abandon the market completely but it has reinforced my determination to treat Wall Street the same way that I treat Las Vegas: bring only as much money there as I really can afford to lose and not a dime more. In both cases, I am betting against the House and, if I play too long, the House wins - that is, unless I first take my winnings home and keep myself there. I almost never see Las Vegas style gambling these days and I suspect that I will be seeing less and less Wall Street style gambling in the future.

Rated at: 3.5 --Book Chase

I write a monthly financial/stock column for an online newspaper in Lake County Ohio. Also, I'm a retired accountant (74) and have 40 years experience in the stock market. I manage my wife's and my own IRA accounts at a discount broker. My loses the past year is about 18% and I know the markets and their machinations well. I've lost the past four years profits I've made. Now to my point. In my online columns, I've tried to tell readers that akin to horse racing tracks, the markets have taken up the same revenue producing policies that race tracks did years ago. What I'm saying is; years ago the only types of betting at racetracks were one daily double (1st two races) or a win, place or show type of bet; (1st place, 2nd place or 3rd place), that was it. The race track would take their cut off the top (about 16%) and distribute the balance to the winning betters. In order to stimulate more betting at the racetracks, they came up with exotic betting; exactas, trifects, pick 3, or pick 4, or pick 6, parlays, rolling doubles, etc. Same as what happens in the stock and commodities markets to keep monies in "motion"; more oportunities to bet, and bet and bet. I'm almost finished with your book (The Losing Game) which I started Saturday, and I must say the details you've both described are so accurate that it makes a person like myself think why this kind of book hadn't been written before. I can't believe the book hasn't been somehow bashed verbally by the Wall Street media cronies (CNBC, et al). But you can bet that I'll tell all my readers to buy your book. If this book doesn't stop millions of people throwing their money into Wall Street I don't know what will (except for the market's 55% losses) which might. My congratulations to both of you for explaining ALL the details of why in today's game of investing (gag), we out here cannot win no matter how much we think we know. Yes, it's no longer an "investing" game, It's a cr*p shoot. At least cr*ps, which can be beat if you bet right. My thanks again, Emil Marino The Lake County Sentinel thelakecountysentinel.com/business.html --The Lake County (OH) Sentinel --Lake County Sentinel

When it comes to any significant event or task, there are always various opinions and conspiracy theories. I was fortunate to get my hands on a book targeted to revealing why you just can t beat Wall Street. The book is called The Losing Game: Why You Can't Beat Wall Street and aims at sharing why investing your money in Wall Street is just as good as throwing it away. The author of the book, T.E. Scott, is a former employee of Eastern Airlines. The company eventually went bankrupt, and Scott ended up losing all his preferred stock that he was given by the airlines. He now sees Wall Street as the biggest con game in history. One of the main arguments Scott pushes is that the stock market is a sum-minus game. Meaning that for all the money somebody makes another is losing it, so right off the back the odds are against you for blossoming in the markets. He also looks at the real purpose of the regulatory commissions and how many of these so-called experts make more money selling their schemes and products than using their own advice themselves. While the book brings up some interesting and valid points, it is important to remember that Scott is targeting the investment community as a whole rather than eagle eyeing on only the successful. So while you might have experienced some success, for all those gains, other people had to experience some losses. Regardless of your current thinking or beliefs, The Losing Game is actually a pretty good read. When the book was first brought to my attention I was interested to see what Scott had to say. Overall, it is a pretty easy yet informative read, and combines a little bit of humor with some eye opening data and ideas. I would recommend this book for those with any bit of interest in the stock market. --The Wild Investor

About this edition

• Publisher: Hidden Truth Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0981937039
• ISBN 13: 9780981937038
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200