Jeremy Siegel: Dr. Siegel has compiled an excellent long-term analysis of the investment markets over the last century with good risk/return measurements in his two best-selling books, Stocks for the Long Run, and The Future for Investors. He is particularly adept at putting short-term political crises into perspective and explaining why they tend to be great buying opportunities. In his new book, The Future for Investors, Dr. Siegel has focused increasingly on the long-term demographic trends that favor Asia in the future. The flaw in Dr. Siegel’s approach is that he fails to see that markets deviate from their long-term average growth, sometimes underperforming to an extreme, as they did from 1930 – 1942 and as we anticipate they will from 2010 – 2022, due to demographic and technology cycles. To learn more about Dr. Siegel’s research, refer to his website: http://www.jeremysiegel.com

Robert Shiller: Dr. Shiller called the stock bubble peak in early 2000 better than any one and more conclusively than we did at first. His Irrational Exuberance is one of the best books written on the topic of speculative bubbles, with special reference to the stock market and real estate. His thorough analysis of the housing bubble uses long-term trends in housing and construction costs adjusted for size and quality back to 1890. His new book The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century is an analysis of an expanding role of finance, insurance, and public finance in our future. Dr. Shiller does not incorporate demographic and technology cycles into his analysis. To learn more about Dr. Shiller’s research, refer to his website at Yale University: http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/

Ed Yardeni: Dr. Yardeni is the Chief Investment Strategist at Oak Associates and has been one of the best Wall Street economists at incorporating demographic spending trends into traditional research and forecasts. He tends not to see the broader demographic impacts as well as we would like, but he has been a continued bull, despite major market setbacks, and his credibility in the real world of investing and financial planning is rock solid. He has good long and short term forecasting tools. Dr. Yardeni has a wealth of market data and analysis available on his website: http://www.yardeni.com.

Robert Prechter: Mr. Prechter is a major innovator and has been instrumental in reviving and refining Elliott Wave theory for short-term technical analysis and longer-term cycles as well. His insight on long-term cycles is stellar, but he has been bearish since 1989 and missed the incredible 1990s bull market — and largely missed this one. We agree with him that there is a major, secular bear market coming that will be greater than anyone else expects; our differences lie in the timing. We forecast the bear commencing in 2010, while he up until recently believed it began in 2000. For more information on Mr. Prechter and Elliot Wave theory, see the Elliot Wave International site: http://www.elliottwave.com/info/prechter_bio.htm

Ned Davis: Mr. Davis has been the greatest tracker of recurring cycles, including the most critical Decennial Cycle that has back tested by our analysis to be the greatest single risk/return strategy over the last century. He has a tendency to be more bearish now than his own Decennial Cycle would warrant and misses the broader demographic and technology trends. But his cycle analysis from annual to 4-year to Decennial is the best in the field, and he has managed to combine them all into one excellent model. For a closer look at Mr. Davis’s research, refer to his site: http://www.ndr.com

Don Hays: Mr. Hays is one of the finest in the business at tactical asset allocation, and he has the best arsenal of technical indicators for calling near term buy and sell signals (without getting into “day trading”) of any newsletter we follow. He also has a good grasp of the long-term fundamentals and of the trends in globalization and capitalism that are reshaping our world. Hence, we recommend his newsletter as the single best complement to ours: http://www.haysmarketfocus.com

Jared Diamond: Dr. Diamond is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Phi Beta Kappa award for his groundbreaking study of the development of human societies. His book Guns, Germs and Steel offers incredible insight and represents the best summary view of the last 10,000 years of human history, particularly the “Big Bang” of the Agriculture Revolution, which created the dominant cultures of today. His work is a must read for an understanding of the great revolutions that have shaped the development of modern society. Dr. Diamond is a professor of geography at UCLA: www.geog.ucla.edu

Stephen Oppenheimer: Dr. Oppenheimer is a world-renowned expert in the synthesis of DNA studies and archaeology in the tracking of ancient population migrations. He is a member of Green College, Oxford University. His book, The Real Eve, is the best summary for new applications of DNA analysis, using it to augment anthropological and climatic study, for explaining human evolution and progress over the entire expanse of our history. To learn more about Dr. Oppenheimer’s research, see the Bradshaw Foundation: www.bradshawfoundation.com

Thomas Friedman: Mr. Friedman has established himself as the expert on trends in globalization. His most recent book, The World is Flat, adds valuable insight to his prior work, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Both books should be read by anyone interested in understanding the profound changes that are revolutionizing world trade - including the IT technology boom, the worldwide embrace of free market capitalism, and the rise of China and India as economic powers – and the risks that could derail the revolution, such as terrorism, protectionism, and nationalism. www.thomaslfriedman.com

Ray Kurzweil: Mr. Kurzweil is a leading innovator/inventor in the technology field, especially artificial intelligence, and a futurist with a strong track record of accurate long term predictions. He, better than anyone, documents the exponential nature of long term technological progress in his recent book, The Singularity Is Near. His forecasts always sound too outlandish, but a review of the rapid progress of modern technologies supports his views. He outlines in great detail the next revolution revolving around biotech, nanotech and robotics that will bring a melding of humans and micro machines by the 2030s, which concurs with our forecast of the next concerted S-Curve acceleration of technologies between 2022 and 2036. Visit his two websites at: www.singularity.com

Philip Longman: Phillip Longman is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of numerous articles and books on demographics and public policy. His book, The Empty Cradle, is a sobering analysis of demographic trends for the developed world, arguing that reduced fertility and global aging will threaten world prosperity, jeopardize national economies, and will fundamentally change our economy, culture, and way of life for decades to come. Mr. Longman’s bio can be viewed at the New America Foundation website: www.newamerica.net

William F. Ruddiman: Climate change is a big current issue and represents the greatest long term cycle beyond demographics and technology. In his recent book Plows, Plagues and Petroleum, he shows how humans have caused deviations from very clear 22,000-, 41,000- and 100,000-year climate cycles since the Agricultural Revolution began. He shows how warming is recently accelerating and will continue due to climatic lags even if we slow down CO2 emissions in the coming decades – but also that long term climate cycles clearly point towards cooling. The most interesting insight from this book is how predictable very long term climate cycles are — similar to the long term demographic cycles we document.

Kevin O’Keefe: Kevin O’Keefe wrote a fascinating study, The Average American, in which he cuts through the endless reams of tracked data to paint a colorful and statistically accurate picture of the average American Joe or Jane. More than just economic statistics, O’Keefe’s study covers real cultural issues as well. His findings will challenge long-held, often even dogmatic views, held by most Americans about the “average” among them. This book is good reading for anyone who wants to understand the real world in which we operate our lives and businesses.

Benoit Mandelbrot: Benoit Mandelbrot is one of the few truly original minds in the study of finance. After developing his reputation as a brilliant mathematician and the founder of fractal geometry, Mandelbrot applied his insights to the financial markets in The (mis)Behavior of Markets. Mandelbrot explodes many of the myths that modern finance is built on, namely that returns are normally distributed and that volatility is constant over time. Markets do not follow a “random walk’ but follow what Mandelbrot calls “market time.” Perhaps most importantly, Mandelbrot correctly points out that volatility tends to come in short, violent clusters. Mandelbrot’s work should be read by anyone involved in trading or portfolio management.

Michael Mauboussin: Michael Mauboussin is the chief investment strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management and is the author on an excellent investing guide, More Than You Know. This is not a “how to” book, but it is certainly a “how to think” book. Mauboussin tackles several behavioral topics and points out many of the flaws that erode investor performance over time, largely revolving around the broad misconception that stock market returns have a normal distribution. He shows that the risks of extreme up and downside moves are higher than we assume and that they cluster together – which reinforces our model of “the seasons of our economy”. Mauboussin takes numerous complex topics and weaves them into a very readable investing primer that should be required reading for all investors. This book touches on some of the same themes as the recent best-seller, The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, which is also very much worth reading, as is Taleb’s first book Fooled By Randomness. But since Mauboussin’s book came first, we like to give him the credit.

Mark Buchanan: In his 2007 book, The Social Atom, he makes the very point that is critical to our demographic and technology adoption forecasting tools: individuals may be unpredictable, but there are clear patterns to the behavior of large groups of people – just as atomic level chaos gives way to the clockwork precision of thermodynamics. In other words, he applies the most basic principles of physics to human behavior to bring the social domain into a scientific realm that allows much greater prediction. He shows how the key driver of human trends is the tendency to imitate the successful behaviors of people like you or just above you. That is the very principle of the S-Curve.

Don Tapscott: Best-selling author of many books, including The Digital Economy, Tapscott and his partner Anthony D. Williams released in 2006 the most important book on organizational principles in many years, Wikinomics. They show how new software platforms like wikis and blogs are transforming the leading edge organizations beyond even the bottom-up organizational structures we outlined in The Roaring 2000s. Mass collaboration around open platforms and organizations are the future, and that allows inputs from outside specialists and experts as well as direct involvement of your customers in the design and delivery of your products or services. This is the radical organizational revolution that would parallel the modern corporation by Sloan in the 1920s. It has begun right on cycle in this decade and will reshape companies and society for decades to come. This is “the book” to read in this realm.

Gregory Clark: Rarely does an economist or historian come along that changes our view of history, as we have studied it so conclusively for decades. But A Farewell to Alms brings important new insights into economic history and progress. He shows how “the Malthusian Trap” ruled all of human history up to the Industrial Revolution. Land was the limiting factor and the very slow technological innovations that did occur only allowed greater population, not significantly higher standards of living. Rising population would limit the resources per person and bring living standards back down. Plagues were the best instigator of rising real wages. The rich may have gotten richer with new innovations, but the average person stayed at a largely subsistence level of living and diet for thousands of years – and not really better (if as good) than the hunting and gathering or caveman era before the Agricultural Revolution. He argues that it was a unique culture that evolved in England and northwestern Europe that allowed the Industrial Revolution to flower and to foster population growth and consistently rising standards of living that spread even faster to everyday people than to the rich by reducing the power of land. We think he understates the advances over history by focusing solely on diet, but this is a breakthrough book in economics. It causes us to wonder how fast most third world cultures can catch up with the slowing, affluent Western cultures.