Frank's Vista

Over the years clients have placed an enormous amount of responsibility in our hands, and in return they should have a very clear idea of exactly how we think and process ideas. When we intimately know the client and the client knows us the foundation for trust has been consummated.

I spend an enormous amount of time writing. Inherently enjoyable, I do so primarily as an exercise in mental calibration. By documenting my thoughts, I can learn from my mistakes and be encouraged by my successes.

Speculative Contagion: An Antidote for Speculative Epidemics

by Frank K. Martin

Synopsis: How did an investment advisory firm in obscure Elkhart, Indiana, find the antidote to remain rational in the highly contagious speculative pandemic of the late 1990s? Speculative Contagion is an insider's riveting real-time and real-money account of the inflating tech-driven Great Bubble, which gradually affected more and more feverish investors.

After it all, Martin Capital Management commanded the capital and the conviction to be able to step up to the plate and lay wood to the fat pitches that at last came floating his firm's way. The reader is in for a delightful and eye-opening romp through an extraordinary era in U.S. financial history.

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Frank's Book Recommendations

Given these unsettled but hardly unprecedented times, the following books should help readers better frame the current iteration. "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9-14 NIV)

A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation

by Rick Bookstaber

As financial innovation reached its apex, no one pinpointed the threat of complex and tightly coupled systems, with mechanical feedback loops, to systemic stability as well as Bookstaber. Shockingly, the book is as relevant today, for a different but equally dire set of circumstances.

 

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

by Niall Ferguson

Ferguson, a historian, reminds us with powerful anecdotes that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. More than a diatribe, Ferguson makes the present so much more understandable with his fascinating presentation of the past. Also a four-hour DVD.

 

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression

by Amity Shlaes

A radically different and profoundly relevant look at the 1930s. The evolution of sociopolitical ideology from Coolidge through Roosevelt is a prequel to what's happening today.

 

The Road to Serfdom

by FA Hayek

While certainly not far down the road to serfdom, Hayek's elegant and strident warning of a clear and present danger should not be taken lightly. Central planning and democracy are incompatible.

 

Atlas Shrugged

by Ayn Rand

Published in 1957, earlier this year this magnum opus on the threat that collectivism poses to the vitality of capitalism reached fifty on Amazon's bestseller list. Its sales are a barometer of public concern about government intervention in the private sector.