Michael Lewis is a former bond trader turned author, and my opinion of his work is easy to convey: If he wrote it, it's worth reading. Liar's Poker is by far the best non-fiction book about Wall Street in the 1980s; in Moneyball, Lewis brilliantly showed how the concept of "undervalued assets" would change Major League Baseball (which it did).

 

What's more, Lewis' columns and essays are every bit as good as his books. And there's no better example I could recommend than his recent article in the December issue of Portfolio magazine, titled "The End." It's one man's take on what has happened to Wall Street -- and it's a great take indeed.

 

Please indulge me one quote from the article itself. Lewis has a certain rare person in mind: namely, an analyst at a large investment bank who never gave in to the bullish-at-all-costs culture. This person was always forthright, and was an especially harsh early critic of the subprime mortgage sector.

 

"There’s a long list of people who now say they saw it coming all along but a far shorter one of people who actually did. Of those, even fewer had the nerve to bet on their vision. It’s not easy to stand apart from mass hysteria—to believe that most of what’s in the financial news is wrong or distorted, to believe that most important financial people are either lying or deluded—without actually being insane. A handful of people had been inside the black box, understood how it worked, and bet on it blowing up."

 

That's a great quote, and the article has many more great quotes, but here is why I included this one in particular: It made me think of Bob Prechter. The description fits him to a tee.

 

Bob was also an analyst on Wall Street, albeit a good many years ago. He was forthright then, and remains so now. As for his ability to "stand apart from mass hysteria," well, if you've read Bob's work then you know there's nothing to talk about. He defined the idea.

 

If you haven't read Bob's work, then the time really has come to do so. By any reasonable definition the stock market has crashed. The S&P 500 has lost half its value since the highs of late 2007. With the coming weeks and months ahead in mind, you owe it to yourself to read the forecast from the guy who explained this mess before it happened. Click here to get started.