Plan to Win

Nugent, John H. (2001) Plan to Win: Analytical and Operational Tools. Second Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. Plan to Win: Analytical and Operational Tools makes a stunning and bold claim to its readers. In today's economic state of hand-wringing and repentance by financial analysts, it is almost dogma that the economic bust and recession of recent years could not have been predicted by the ordinary investor, given the financial chicanery of accountants and the over-enthusiasm expressed by technicians about the glories of the internet.

However, Nugent alleges that such accepted financial wisdom is in fact false. Nugent states that indeed, in the dot.com financial world it was difficult to distinguish between real and false wealth. But "by keeping an eye on the vital few" rather than the insignificant many, one might have still enabled one's self to keep financially afloat, if one remained sufficiently aware and educated about the market.

(Nugent, citing "Pareto's Rule," 4) Critical to Nugent's theoretical overview is the conception of what he terms 'inflection points.' Inflection points refer to managerial decisions as they might and will impact the present environmental conditions. Such managerial decisions lead to logical, determinable consequences for the ordinary investor, states the author, consequences that can be predicted if companies' development stages are properly monitored. When manager's decisions are in disharmony with the economic factors that drive supply and demand in the market one's business is operating, inflection points are the result.

Inflection points thus signal a shift in the underlying business market. Individuals who correctly identify these shifts in inflection points can keep their money ahead, rather than behind or with the overall business cycle. Nugent acknowledges that ordinary investors are often at a disadvantage in interpreting such data, given the positive spin corporate accounting and advertising departments give to their legally required, financial disclosures.

Nugent tries to draw attention to the financial basics of any given corporate structure through examining test cases, such as AT&T, rather than facts and figures from a purely statistical point-of-view. Nugent astutely pinpoints what figures are of value and of use to investors, rather than simply giving a gloss of the economy as a whole.

For instance, if 5% of a company's wealth is due to 75% of its consumers, the economic impact upon those consumers is what the investor's eye must be drawn to, rather than viewing either the industry or the economy as a seamless whole. (4-5) Nugent uses Michael Porter's 'Five Forces Model' to encourage investors to examine a business from the point-of-view of a financial life cycle within itself that is part of a larger life cycle, that of the larger economy.

The stress upon the Porter Five Forces Model highlights Nugent's intense personalization of investor strategy. Rather than seeing the market as a whole as either good or bad, or bullish or bare, as was common to during the most heated and heady days of buying in the mid-1990's, investors must view each industry and indeed each company's development within the context of its own and the industry's own life cycle, as well as the American or international growth cycle as a whole.

Nugent essentially demands that individuals take responsibility for learning about the companies' managerial decisions they invest in and the state of growth of the specific economic sphere companies are a part of, rather than gleefully watching the tickertape.