Tuesday, July 7, 2009
In a different economy, Billy Mitchell and Nicole Drucker of San Francisco might have splurged on a $10,000 engagement ring. But Ms. Drucker is out of work and they need to save for a house. So in April, Mr. Mitchell got down on one knee on the Golden Gate Bridge and proposed with a $4,000 diamond ring he had bought on the Internet.
“We had to decide, where do we want the money?” Mr. Mitchell said. “On her finger?”
In this economy, many consumers would rather keep their money in their wallets than on their fingers, necks or ears. As people re-examine their budgets, jewelry is turning out to be one of the easiest places to cut back — or trade down.
“The half-carat is the new three-carat,” explained Hayley Corwick, who writes under the pseudonym Lila Delilah for Madison Avenue Spy, a blog about designer sales.
Yet the understandable penny-pinching by consumers is putting a painful squeeze on the jewelry industry.
The new frugality has forced diamond mines to curtail production, led to deep discounting at jewelry chains, spurred hundreds of store closings and resulted in job cuts at boutiques and department stores. Because jewelry is expensive inventory that moves slowly even in better economic times, many stores are laden with debt — even though wholesale global prices of polished diamonds were down 15.4 percent in June compared with a year earlier.
Experts say that when the shakeout is over, far fewer jewelers will be left standing. About 20 percent more American jewelers will go out of business this year than did last year, according to Kenneth Gassman, president of the Jewelry Industry Research Institute, an independent research practice.
The jewelry chains that have filed for bankruptcy in the last year or so include Fortunoff, Whitehall Jewelers, Friedman’s, Christian Bernard and Ultra Stores (which operated jewelry departments inside Filene’s Basement and other chains).
Still in business but posting losses, meanwhile, are big jewelry chains, both high end and low — from Harry Winston and Bulgari to Zales and Claire’s Stores.
And while the venerable Tiffany & Company is still making money, sales have dropped 34 percent at its stores in this country that have been open at least a year.
Major mass-market retailers including Wal-Mart, J. C. Penney, BJ’s Wholesale Club and Costco have cited jewelry as one of their worst-performing categories this year. Even online jewelry and watch sales are down, declining 7 percent in the first quarter, according to the Web analysis firm comScore.
“You’re seeing the traffic fall off a cliff at all price points,” said Stacey Widlitz, a retailing analyst with Pali Research.
Of the consumers still buying jewelry, many are trading down. Blue Nile, the giant online jeweler, said some people were opting for less costly engagement rings made of semiprecious stones instead of diamonds.
And yet, sales of diamond rings and wedding bands seem to be holding up better than for other kinds of jewelry. Retailers and analysts say a decent engagement ring is still seen as a necessity for men hoping to get a yes to a marriage proposal.
Even Mr. Mitchell, of San Francisco, who knew the outcome because his fiancée had collaborated in the planning, considered the ring to be “hugely” important. And he spent hours learning about diamonds on BlueNile.com. But “we knew that we only wanted to spend so much,” he said, “and this Web site really enabled you to get the best diamond for the dollar.”
Many consumers still intent on expanding their jewelry collections are now doing so with costume and vintage pieces instead of new, fine jewelry.
Megan Wishnow of Long Island City, Queens, trolls eBay for pieces. “It’s become a little bit gauche in a way to walk around, to flaunt, whether you have it or not,” said Ms. Wishnow, who sells vintage clothes on the Web after years of working in public relations for high-end fashion brands like Gucci. “I think women are definitely more conscious of how they come off. And everyone wants to be respectful of what’s going on, especially in New York City.”
Instead of buying jewels, some people are even renting them by the week or month for glamorous events or for gallivanting around town, as one might do in a leased Mercedes. At Avelle, an online rental site for swanky goods, more and more consumers are signing up to rent jewelry by the likes of Chanel and Louis Vuitton, resulting in double-digit year-over-year growth in jewelry rentals, according to the company’s senior vice president of product management, Dana Palzkill.
Some bargain hunters have taken to haggling — even at Tiffany. After all, consumers are loath to overpay in a down market.
“I think everyone feels compelled to ask the question for fear of being, feeling foolish after the fact,” Michael J. Kowalski, chairman and chief executive of Tiffany, said last month at a Thomson Reuters luxury and retail industry conference in New York.
Tiffany has lowered prices on diamond engagement rings, a core part of its business, by about 10 percent since the holiday season.
“We’re not going to discount or run short-term sales,” Mark L. Aaron, vice president for investor relations at Tiffany, said in a telephone interview. “We’re simply going to take a little bit less gross margin in the engagement category. It was our gesture to a young couple. We just made it a little bit more affordable.”
Tiffany hopes it is laying the groundwork for a lifelong relationship with the newly betrothed.
Not surprisingly, the more expensive the jewelry, the greater the sales declines in the last year. In Tiffany’s most recent reporting period, sales of jewelry above $50,000 were softest.
Even selling midpriced jewelry has been brutal for chains because the market is awash in marked-down goods from so many liquidation sales. “This is forcing luxury players to make one of two decisions,” said Ms. Widlitz of Pali Research. “You either chase the consumer downstream or you stay the course. Tiffany is staying the course.”
As a result, Tiffany is among the jewelers expected to gain market share amid the industry shakeout.
“Tiffany has the balance sheet to really withstand a prolonged period of weakened demand,” said Bob Drbul, a retailing analyst with Barclays Capital who tracks the company. The company’s stock price peaked around $56 in autumn 2007 and fell to about $17 this March before rebounding. The shares closed Monday at $24.70, up 41 cents.
To weather the recession, many chains are slowing new store growth and making cuts to capital expenditures, inventory and their advertising budgets. Harry Winston, Tiffany, Zales and De Beers have collectively cut hundreds of jobs.
In February, Finlay Enterprises — a major operator of licensed fine jewelry counters in department stores like Macy’s, Dillard’s and Lord & Taylor — said it would exit the department store business and close about 40 of its approximately 100 specialty jewelry stores, which include Bailey, Banks & Biddle.
For the retailers the good news, relatively speaking, is that the chains say the rate of deceleration has slowed in the last three months. No one is declaring a recovery, or even that the market has reached a bottom. But Tiffany, which has been selling its signature six-pronged diamond solitaire engagement rings through booms and busts since 1886, is confident the sparkle will return once again.
“We’re going through a business cycle,” said Mr. Aaron of Tiffany. “There will eventually again be a rising tide of affluence around the world.”
Thursday, June 11, 2009
I will attempt to do a reflection of what happened since our last bull run and the events that occured during this period. For those you who have followed the events closely might find this boring, so just bear with me.
In the year end of 2008, the credit crunch, threatened to be Wall Street’s biggest crisis since the Great Depression. Hundreds of billions in mortgage-related investments soured and reputable investment banks crumbled.
Borrowings almost went to a stop due to liquidity worries affecting businesses of all sizes.
In response, the
The last credit crisis is the burst of the tech bubble of the late 1990’s. Sock market began a steep decline in 2000 and US went into recession the following year and interest rates were sharply in hope to limit the damage.
Due to the lower interest rates, houses became cheaper and demand for homes increased, sending prices up. It also gave homeowners the opportunities to refinance their loans.
Things turned sour when home buyers had to leverage themselves to the max to make a purchase. Defaults began to rise in 2006, but lending/borrowing did not slow. The highly intelligent institutions, Banks and other financial institutions, devised complex financial instruments to distribute and resell the mortgage-backed securities and to hedge against any risks.
“The First Bomb”
The first bomb was when2 hedge funds owned by the MIGHTY Bear Stearns collapse. Foreclosures, in fact, helped speed up the fall of housing prices, and default on mortgages increased.
In a very bold move, the Fed helped in “closing the deal” by selling Bear Sterns to JP Morgan at the initial price of USD $2/share. This amount I think/read/assume should be lower than the price of the Manhattan Office building, Bear Stearns owned.
“The Giants”
In August, stock prices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into a free fall and the
“It never rains but pours.” In Sept again, talks to salvage Lehman Bro broke down and the news of this investment giant’s collapse sent shockwaves throughout the globe, not only the financial systems. In the same time frame, Merrill Lynch another GIANT, sold itself to Bank of American to avoid bankruptcy. At this point, things became very clear. All hopes seemed lost.
In the same month, American Insurance Group, was thankfully bailed out by
Such companies which were supposed to be known for it’s capital management intelligence, failed in their own playing field.
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Long story... to be continued.
Monday, June 1, 2009
President Obama will push General Motors into bankruptcy protection on Monday, making a risky bet that by temporarily nationalizing the onetime icon of American capitalism, he can save at least a diminished automaker that is competitive.
The company will also have to shed 21,000 union workers and close 12 to 20 factories, steps that most analysts thought could never be pushed through by a Democratic president allied with organized labor.
To assist in the restructuring, the automaker is expected to hire the consulting firm Alix Partners, which has worked on several major bankruptcies, including those for Enron and Kmart. One of the firm’s partners, Al Koch, is expected to manage the liquidation of corporate assets that G.M. will shed during its Chapter 11 restructuring, people with knowledge of the strategy said.
On Monday, Mr. Obama is expected to argue that any alternative to his plan would be worse, and that a liquidation of G.M. — the only other real option — would send the unemployment rate soaring over 10 percent and would radiate damage throughout the economy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/business/01auto.html?pagewanted=1
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Article by Jason Zweig, Author of the Intelligent Investor
It is sometimes said that to be an intelligent investor, you must be unemotional. That isn't true; instead, you should be inversely emotional.
Even after recent turbulence, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up roughly 30% since its low in March. It is natural for you to feel happy or relieved about that. But Benjamin Graham believed, instead, that you should train yourself to feel worried about such events.
At this moment, consulting Mr. Graham's wisdom is especially fitting. Sixty years ago, on May 25, 1949, the founder of financial analysis published his book, "The Intelligent Investor," in whose honor this column is named. And today the market seems to be in just the kind of mood that would have worried Mr. Graham: a jittery optimism, an insecure and almost desperate need to believe that the worst is over.
You can't turn off your feelings, of course. But you can, and should, turn them inside out.
Stocks have suddenly become more expensive to accumulate. Since March, according to data from Robert Shiller of Yale, the price/earnings ratio of the S&P 500 index has jumped from 13.1 to 15.5. That's the sharpest, fastest rise in almost a quarter-century. (As Graham suggested, Prof. Shiller uses a 10-year average P/E ratio, adjusted for inflation.)
Over the course of 10 weeks, stocks have moved from the edge of the bargain bin to the full-price rack. So, unless you are retired and living off your investments, you shouldn't be celebrating, you should be worrying.
Mr. Graham worked diligently to resist being swept up in the mood swings of "Mr. Market" -- his metaphor for the collective mind of investors, euphoric when stocks go up and miserable when they go down.
In an autobiographical sketch, Mr. Graham wrote that he "embraced stoicism as a gospel sent to him from heaven." Among the main components of his "internal equipment," he also said, were a "certain aloofness" and "unruffled serenity."
Mr. Graham's last wife described him as "humane, but not human." I asked his son, Benjamin Graham Jr., what that meant. "His mind was elsewhere, and he did have a little difficulty in relating to others," "Buz" Graham said of his father. "He was always internally multitasking. Maybe people who go into investing are especially well-suited for it if they have that distance or detachment."
Mr. Graham's immersion in literature, mathematics and philosophy, he once remarked, helped him view the markets "from the standpoint of eternity, rather than day-to-day."
Perhaps as a result, he almost invariably read the enthusiasm of others as a yellow caution light, and he took their misery as a sign of hope.
His knack for inverting emotions helped him see when markets had run to extremes. In late 1945, as the market was rising 36%, he warned investors to cut back on stocks; the next year, the market fell 8%. As stocks took off in 1958-59, Mr. Graham was again pessimistic; years of jagged returns followed. In late 1971, he counseled caution, just before the worst bear market in decades hit.
In the depths of that crash, near the end of 1974, Mr. Graham gave a speech in which he correctly forecast a period of "many years" in which "stock prices may languish."
Then he startled his listeners by pointing out this was good news, not bad: "The true investor would be pleased, rather than discouraged, at the prospect of investing his new savings on very satisfactory terms." Mr. Graham added a more startling note: Investors would be "enviably fortunate" to benefit from the "advantages" of a long bear market.
Today, it has become trendy to declare that "buy and hold is dead." Some critics regard dollar-cost averaging, or automatically investing a fixed amount every month, as foolish.
Asked if dollar-cost averaging could ensure long-term success, Mr. Graham wrote in 1962: "Such a policy will pay off ultimately, regardless of when it is begun, provided that it is adhered to conscientiously and courageously under all intervening conditions."
For that to be true, however, the dollar-cost averaging investor must "be a different sort of person from the rest of us ... not subject to the alternations of exhilaration and deep gloom that have accompanied the gyrations of the stock market for generations past."
"This," Mr. Graham concluded, "I greatly doubt."
He didn't mean that no one can resist being swept up in the gyrating emotions of the crowd. He meant that few people can. To be an intelligent investor, you must cultivate what Mr. Graham called "firmness of character" -- the ability to keep your own emotional counsel.
Above all, that means resisting the contagion of Mr. Market's enthusiasm when stocks are suddenly no longer cheap.
Credit to: Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Monday, May 11, 2009
STI is currently near a resistance as seen from the insert and we are now faced with a gap to cover.
Last Friday we had a selling volume, if my chart is right, and a spinning top on resistance.
In my opinion, we are now at another critical level which might decide if this will become a bearish or bullish scenario. For me, as long as Monday did not break out.. it's bad. But to not be so negative, Wednesday should be the latest we will see any movement.
Personally, I'm still in the camp of... we are too optimistic. Ha! I'm sorry.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Have you ever wondered why do companies always seem to declare liquidity problems only when it's too late?
Saturday, March 14, 2009
The last time I shared my opinion on a bottom is on 7th Jan 09 when Dow Jones seems to break a resistance of 8900. But in that post I did not refer to the charts. To read about my previous post, click here
However, this time round, I'd still see this as a potential rally but not the end of the bear run.
I've used arrows to indicate technical support formed in recent times and highlight the levels with a horizontal line, as you can see from the chart. This time round, I am in the opinion that we should have the "strength" to test 7,500 again, the resistance line formed since Aug 08, a breach of this resistance line would then lead me to rethink abt a sustained rally. Previously, a rally don't last longer than a week, 7 days and at this current time, we have about 3 days left.
I've removed all indicators in my analysis as I think indicators do not work in the current market. The tracking of the change in sentiments by indicators is too slow, in a way. Nevertheless, I do hope that most of you saw the bottom and caught the rally the last 2 days.
Finally, this is just my opinion and open for discussion/critics.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
“I AM the most offensively possessive man on earth. I do something to things. Let me pick up an ashtray from a dime-store counter, pay for it and put it in my pocket—and it becomes a special kind of ashtray, unlike any on earth, because it’s mine.”
The endowment effect is a hypothesis that people value a good more once their property right to it has been established. In other words, people place a higher value on objects they own relative to objects they do not.
The endowment effect was described as inconsistent with standard economic theory which asserts that a person's willingness to pay for a good should be equal to their willingness to accept compensation to be deprived of the good. This hypothesis underlies consumer theory.
‘Thaler (1980) coined the term “endowment effect” to refer to the finding that randomly assigned owners of an object appear to value the object more than randomly assigned non-owners of the object.
Example: Look around your house. Pick something. How much would you sell it for? How much would people really pay for it? How much would you pay for something like this at a second-hand store?
Monday, March 2, 2009
Saturday, February 28, 2009
<--- Before you start going further, image your brain as a box.Wednesday, February 25, 2009
What is Gambler's Fallacy?
Am i having a traits of a gambler in my investment decisions
Gambler's Fallacy, in Behavioral Finance, is the belief that if deviations from expected behavior are observed in repeated independent trials of some random process then these deviations are likely to be evened out by opposite deviations in the future.
This simply means this:
If a coin is tossed repeatedly and heads comes up more often than tails, a gambler may incorrectly believe that heads is more likely to appear in the future. But as a matter of fact, a coin has two sides and the chance of heads or tails is always 50-50.
An experiment carried out by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman shows that people see (streaks of) random events as being non-random when they are actually much more likely to occur in small samples than expectations.
In relation to investing:
Do you gamble on the bottom more often at the start of a certain drop?
Have you considered the reasons of an entry/exit or are you just hopeful?
Do you see IPO as a sure-win opportunity?
Make sensible decisions based on analysis and not hear say or gut feeling as regret on a loss is always a worse feeling that the joy of a profit, Loss Aversion.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
What is Loss Aversion in Behavioral Finance?
How important is it to understand this aspect of yourself when it comes to your investing/ trading strategy.
"More money has probably been lost by investors holding a stock they really did not want until they could 'at least come out even' than from any other single reason." -- Philip Fisher
Loss aversion refers to the tendency for people to strongly prefer avoiding losses than acquiring gains. Some studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains.
Investors have been shown to be more likely to sell winning stocks in an effort to "take some profits," while at the same time not wanting to accept defeat in the case of the losers.
It also doesn't help that we tend to feel the pain of a loss more strongly than we do the pleasure of a gain. It's this unwillingness to accept the pain early that might cause us to "ride losers too long" in the vain hope that they'll turn around and won't make us face the consequences of our decisions.
The mental framework of an individual is very important is this aspect.
Think of the following:
1. Would you rather get a $2 discount, or avoid a $2 ERP surcharge?
2. Will you lose more satisfaction if you made a loss of $1000 than gain satisfaction from a profit of $1000. In absolute terms, the figures are the same.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
First and foremost. I am not a guru in this area but I've been interested in this for some time and did some readup. My posts on this topic, for sharing, might be fairly shallow and critics would be apppreciated.
"Behavioral finance is a rapidly growing area that deals with the influence of psychology on the behavior of financial practitioners."
"Behavioral finance is the application of psychology to financial behavior—the behavior of practitioners."
"Behavioral finance is the study of how psychology affects financial decision making and financial markets."Shefrin (2001)
For a while, theoretical and empirical evidence suggested that CAPM, EMH and other rational financial theories did a respectable job of predicting and explaining certain events. However, as time went on, academics in both finance and economics started to find anomalies and behaviors that couldn't be explained by theories available at the time. While these theories could explain certain "idealized" events, the real world proved to be a very messy place in which market participants often behaved very unpredictably.
Important Characters to BF:
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky
- Fathers of behavioral economics/finance in the late 1960
- Published about 200 works, relating to psychological concepts with implications for BF
- In 2002, Kahneman received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to the study of rationality in economics
- Focused much of their research on the cognitive biases and heuristics that cause people to engage in unanticipated irrational behavior.
- This field would not have evolved if it weren't for economist Richard Thaler.
- During his studies, Thaler became aware of the shortcomings in conventional economic theoryies as they relate to people's behaviors.
- After reading a draft version of Kahneman and Tversky's work on prospect theory, Thaler realized that, unlike conventional economic theory, psychological theory could account for the irrationality in behaviors.
- Thaler went on to collaborate with Kahneman and Tversky, blending economics and finance with psychology to present concepts, such as mental accounting, the endowment effect and other biases.
Examples of Anomalies: The Winner's Curse, January Effect, Equity Premium Puzzle and etc.
Conventional financial theory does not account for all situations that happen in the real world. This is not to say that conventional theory is not valuable, but rather that the addition of behavioral finance can further clarify how the financial markets work.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
It has been a long time since I last posted and I wonder if my site is still being visited.
But nevertheless, I will be posting on a series of posts about something in Behavioural Finance. Something which I think will help everyone understand a little bit more about themselves in their investing journey.
This series of posts will be done and completed by End Feb. I am expecting to post about 10 posts which will be completed by end Feb, early March.
So stay tuned!
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
This post is just to bring about some thoughts to the current situation which hopefully some of you might find interesting.
1. The first huge spike from the left of the chart on 1929.
Right before the run-up, we can see some resistance from 1900 to 1926 before a bull run that ended in 1929. This run increased Dow Jones by a good 138% within 4 years.
That spike happened in 1929 before it collapsed to 44.17 points, this also meant that within 4 years, Dow Jones lost almost 89.2% of it's value.
I stress again, 89.2%.
2. The recovery from 1929.
If an investor added a position at the peak of the bull run on 1929, he would have to wait 30 years before he managed to break even, not considering the dividends that he might received throughout the entire holding period.
This once again stresses the importance of entry price for long term holding as it determines the yield thereafter from divvy.
After the recovery to it's previous high which took 30 years, the stock market tanked for almost another 30 years, from 1958 - 1986 thereabout.
3. The break of the 1000 mark and beyond
This historical peak of 1,000 was finally breached around 1983. This is the start of a monstrous run which was never seen in history.
Since 1983 till 2008, a period of 25 years, Dow Jones not only broke the 10,000 mark but in fact hit 13,930. In 25 years, Dow Jones increased 1393%.
Once again, I repeat myself, in 25 years, DOW JONES went up 1393%.
A few questions which I think can be pondered on would be:
1. Did the economy improve so much in the last 25 years to warrant such an astronomical increase, if we consider that the saying of the stock market being a reflection of the economy is true.
2. What then could be the reasons for such a sudden increment in Dow Jones
3. If PE ratio is a reflection of the investor's confidence in the company's future earnings, what motivated them to push PE ratios upwards
4. What causes Dow Jones to lose almost 90% back in 1929 (This can be easily found online, just google it.)
5. Lastly, will this be a repeat of 1929 or rather, has the run-up been way too strong to be justified by current share prices implying room for further drop, back to the times when the stock market reflects the economy in that time.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Here is my view on the million dollar question. First let us take a look at the property cycle.
There is a constant opine throughout that property lags the economy as an asset class. Even recently, we can see this trend even in Singapore. There was a good run uptrend in the economy and property prices started rising till the point when everyone was saying that it's too expensive. Then "BAM!", we all know what happen after this. Now property prices are coming back down again. A boring cycle indeed, but can you identify with it? Are there lessons to be learnt?
Why then does the property lags the economy.
A booming economy will bring in the monies to the bank and for this to happen, time is required. When everyone seems to be very comfortable with the amount of money set aside, they look to invest in the most physical asset, property. When the demand increases, prices increases. It's normal. A property asset require a huge amount of money and housing loans would normally be subscribed for their very purpose. This result in a man laden debt, who still holds the positive mindset that the good economy will last. When a crisis hits long enough for everyone to realise that the good times are gone, a primitive man's psychological reaction would be to protect himself and his needs, thus the demand for property drops resulting in the drop in property prices/value. This will generally also cost a reduction in expenditure in the economy throughout.
How does that relate to a bottom then.
In a crisis like this, companies bankrupt and employees retrenched. Both these incidents will have negative effect on the economy but the time before the impact is felt also require time. This I think is pretty easy to comprehend and I won't spend too much time explaining. In 2H2008, we see the liquidation of banks and retrenchment of staffs and at the start of 2009, more retrenchment news (Alcoa)and liquidation of operations (LyondellBasell) was announed.
If companies are not making profits and unemployment rate is high worldwide, why is there a good reason for a rebound or rather, should any rebound be taken seriously and result in you jumping into a position?
Although I also know that it's been said that share prices are at their lowest even before the economy shows it. (I forgot the term used to relate this but try to understand.. haha!) But do you think things might be rosy again soon? If so, how soon?
Share with me your thoughts!
Toyota is one of the best-run companies in the world. Much of its success is due to "lean thinking," a concept that aims to create additional value for the end customer, according to Mike Morrison, Dean of Toyota University
I was rather shocked when I heard this news over the TV, not by the fact that such a decision was made but the length of time it has decided to stop it's production. That's effectively 1/3 of a month !! Can your company stop production for 11 days ?
Obviously, this recession has effectively affected Toyota that it has decided to make such a drastic move. By the way, Toyota is considered world wide as one of the few companies which has a fantastic culture and management system. Just look at their rise to their current status.
Toyota Management Style is influenced by Taiichi Ohno, who developed the Toyota Production System. Quote: "I feel strongly that the word 'work' refers to the production of perfect goods only. If a machine is not producing perfect goods, it is not 'working'."
- Many of you till now may think that this is just another IDEAL but Personnel in the production line has the power to halt the production when malfunction occurs.
Toyota Coporate Strategy: “Cut down on the distance that things move throughout the plant.”
Toyota Strategic Management: “Utilise the inherent talent of your workers.”
Toyota Leadership Model: "Never fail to reward merit, but never let a fault go unremarked."
To know more about Toyota: The Toyota Way - Jeffery K. Liker