Investment Madness

This book describes the important psychological biases that influence investment decisions. By recognizing, understanding, and avoiding these problems, investors can minimize the negative effects on their wealth.

Investment Euphoria and Money Madness is essential reading for anyone seeking to make a profit in today's fast-paced financial markets. Written specifically for brokers, money managers, and sophisticated investors, Investment Euphoria provides a compelling view of human behavior in a money environment. Because money has a way of stirring the emotions and clouding the judgment, it can change the way that people behave. By understanding yourself, Prof Gunn maintains, you will learn the keys to better financial performance. Thoughtful, helpful, clear and concise, Investment Euphoria and Money Madness contains a wealth of insights for successful and stress-free investing and money management.

Nofsinger identifies the most common investor mistakes through the prism of the world's most public investment catastrophes. Using other people's money and other people's disasters, "Investment Blunders" teaches a wide range of critical lessons every investor must learn.

Market Insanity: A Brief Guide to Diagnosing the Madness in the Stock Market is an engaging and accessible primer which applies modern behavioral finance to equity markets. It helps readers understand how logical investment decisions can be betrayed by what Taillard calls "the insanity," all those behavioral quirks which cause us to achieve less than optimal utility. The book describes how limited information, habit, the rules of the game, asymmetric information and ego blend together in potentially toxic ways in market environments, thus creating bubbles, stock runs, and more prosaically, even ‘normal’ equity prices. In addition, the book discusses the implications of these behaviors in-depth. In so doing, it helps the reader to not only predict the madness within equity markets, but also helps them develop solutions that address and mitigate outcomes. Provides detailed and accurate descriptions of the most relevant behavioral anomalies for finance Entertainingly written by a veteran consultant with 15+ years experience helping companies explain anomalous finance behavior in non-economic language Shows how educated finance professionals can use behavioral insights to help build finance solutions Addresses the implications for equity markets in deviations from rationality paradigms Draws on a vast range of literature in explaining anomalous behavior, including economic psychology, economic psychology, evolutionary psychology, anthropology and animal behavior

In a highly readable and engaging style, this paperback edition of Mark Shipman's classic book takes readers step-by-step through every aspect of disciplined and lucrative investing. Starting with the how and why of taking responsibility for your money, it goes on to describe specific investment strategies that Shipman has used himself with great success. In the second half of the book, the commodity markets are described in detail, an area he himself predicts as a major investment opportunity that could last well over a decade. Both those new to investing and those looking to brush up their skills will find sound and solid advice on: how long-term investing works; why investing is a mental game; how to develop a personal investment strategy and why you should invest in commodities. The Next Big Investment Boom will not only show you how to avoid making bad investments, but also how to make the right investments, at the right time, and make a significant amount of money.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a history of popular folly by Charles Mackay. The book chronicles its targets in three parts: "National Delusions," "Peculiar Follies," and "Philosophical Delusions." Learn why intelligent people do amazingly stupid things when caught up in speculative edevorse. The subjects of Mackay's debunking include alchemy, beards (influence of politics and religion on), witch-hunts, crusades, and duels. Present day writers on economics, such as Andrew Tobias, laud the three chapters on economic bubbles.

A practical guide to making more informed investment decisions Investors often buy or sell stocks too quickly. When you base your purchase decisions on isolated facts and don't take the time to thoroughly understand the businesses you are buying, stock-price swings and third-party opinion can lead to costly investment mistakes. Your decision making at this point becomes dangerous because it is dominated by emotions. The Investment Checklist has been designed to help you develop an in-depth research process, from generating and researching investment ideas to assessing the quality of a business and its management team. The purpose of The Investment Checklist is to help you implement a principled investing strategy through a series of checklists. In it, a thorough and comprehensive research process is made simpler through the use of straightforward checklists that will allow you to identify quality investment opportunities. Each chapter contains detailed demonstrations of how and where to find the information necessary to answer fundamental questions about investment opportunities. Real-world examples of how investment managers and CEOs apply these universal principles are also included and help bring the concepts to life. These checklists will help you consider a fuller range of possibilities in your investment strategy, enhance your ability to value your investments by giving you a holistic view of the business and each of its moving parts, identify the risks you are taking, and much more. Offers valuable insights into one of the most important aspects of successful investing, in-depth research Written in an accessible style that allows aspiring investors to easily understand and apply the concepts covered Discusses how to think through your investment decisions more carefully With The Investment Checklist, you'll quickly be able to ascertain how well you understand your investments by the questions you are able to answer, or not answer, without making the costly mistakes that usually hinder other investors.

The authors teach readers about the new rules of investing, which include investing with inflation-protected bonds, reaching retirement goals, and investing safely for college.

A new, evolutionary explanation of markets and investor behavior Half of all Americans have money in the stock market, yet economists can’t agree on whether investors and markets are rational and efficient, as modern financial theory assumes, or irrational and inefficient, as behavioral economists believe. The debate is one of the biggest in economics, and the value or futility of investment management and financial regulation hangs on the answer. In this groundbreaking book, Andrew Lo transforms the debate with a powerful new framework in which rationality and irrationality coexist—the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis. Drawing on psychology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and other fields, Adaptive Markets shows that the theory of market efficiency is incomplete. When markets are unstable, investors react instinctively, creating inefficiencies for others to exploit. Lo’s new paradigm explains how financial evolution shapes behavior and markets at the speed of thought—a fact revealed by swings between stability and crisis, profit and loss, and innovation and regulation. An ambitious new answer to fundamental questions about economics and investing, Adaptive Markets is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how markets really work.

A companion to the world of great investment writing, bringing together in one volume a selection of the best investors and market commentators.