The Investment Checklist: The Art of In-Depth Research
Michael Shearn - 2011
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.
Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist
Roger Lowenstein - 1995
His awesome investment record has made him a cult figure popularly known for his seeming contradictions: a billionaire who has a modest lifestyle, a phenomenally successful investor who eschews the revolving-door trading of modern Wall Street, a brilliant dealmaker who cultivates a homespun aura.Journalist Roger Lowenstein draws on three years of unprecedented access to Buffett’s family, friends, and colleagues to provide the first definitive, inside account of the life and career of this American original. Buffett explains Buffett’s investment strategy—a long-term philosophy grounded in buying stock in companies that are undervalued on the market and hanging on until their worth invariably surfaces—and shows how it is a reflection of his inner self.
Geopolitical Alpha: An Investment Framework for Predicting the Future
Marko Papić - 2020
Persuasively written by author, investment strategist, and geopolitical analyst Marko Papic, the book applies a novel framework for making sense of the cacophony of geopolitical risks with the eye towards generating investment-relevant insights.Geopolitical Alpha posits that investors should ignore the media-hyped narratives, insights from smoke-filled rooms, and most of their political consultants and, instead, focus exclusively on the measurable, material constraints facing policymakers. In the tug-of-war between policymaker preferences and their constraints, the latter always win out in the end. Papic uses a wealth of examples from the past decade to illustrate how one can use his constraint-framework to generate Geopolitical Alpha. In the process, the book discusses:What paradigm shifts will drive investment returns over the next decade Why investment and corporate professionals can no longer treat geopolitics as an exogenous risk How to ignore the media and focus on what drives market narratives that generate returns Perfect for investors, C-suite executives, and investment professionals, Geopolitical Alpha belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the intersection of geopolitics, economics, and finance.
Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street
Sheelah Kolhatkar - 2017
Cohen changed Wall Street. He and his fellow pioneers of the hedge fund industry didn't lay railroads, build factories, or invent new technologies. Rather, they made their billions through speculation, by placing bets in the market that turned out to be right more often than wrong and for this, they gained not only extreme personal wealth but formidable influence throughout society. Hedge funds now oversee more than $3 trillion in assets, and the competition between them is so fierce that traders will do whatever they can to get an edge.Cohen was one of the industry's biggest success stories, the person everyone else in the business wanted to be. Born into a middle-class family on Long Island, he longed from an early age to be a star on Wall Street. He mastered poker in high school, went off to Wharton, and in 1992 launched the hedge fund SAC Capital, which he built into a $15 billion empire, almost entirely on the basis of his wizard like stock trading. He cultivated an air of mystery, reclusiveness, and excess, building a 35,000-square-foot mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, flying to work by helicopter, and amassing one of the largest private art collections in the world. On Wall Street, Cohen was revered as a genius: one of the greatest traders who ever lived.That image was shattered when SAC Capital became the target of a sprawling, seven-year investigation, led by a determined group of FBI agents, prosecutors, and SEC enforcement attorneys. Labeled by prosecutors as a magnet for market cheaters whose culture encouraged the relentless pursuit of edge and even black edge, which is inside information SAC Capital was ultimately indicted and pleaded guilty to charges of securities and wire fraud in connection with a vast insider trading scheme, even as Cohen himself was never charged.Black Edge offers a revelatory look at the gray zone in which so much of Wall Street functions. It's a riveting, true-life legal thriller that takes readers inside the government's pursuit of Cohen and his employees, and raises urgent and troubling questions about the power and wealth of those who sit at the pinnacle of modern Wall Street.
Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street
William Poundstone - 2006
One was mathematician Claude Shannon, neurotic father of our digital age, whose genius is ranked with Einstein's. The other was John L. Kelly Jr., a Texas-born, gun-toting physicist. Together they applied the science of information theory—the basis of computers and the Internet—to the problem of making as much money as possible, as fast as possible.Shannon and MIT mathematician Edward O. Thorp took the "Kelly formula" to Las Vegas. It worked. They realized that there was even more money to be made in the stock market. Thorp used the Kelly system with his phenomenonally successful hedge fund, Princeton-Newport Partners. Shannon became a successful investor, too, topping even Warren Buffett's rate of return. Fortune's Formula traces how the Kelly formula sparked controversy even as it made fortunes at racetracks, casinos, and trading desks. It reveals the dark side of this alluring scheme, which is founded on exploiting an insider's edge.Shannon believed it was possible for a smart investor to beat the market—and Fortune's Formula will convince you that he was right.
Lifecycle Investing: A New, Safe, and Audacious Way to Improve the Performance of Your Retirement Portfolio
Ian Ayres - 2010
This strategy, introduced nearly fifty years ago, led to such strategies as index funds. What if we were all missing out on another free lunch that’s right under our noses? In Lifecycle Investing, Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres—two of the most innovative thinkers in business, law, and economics—have developed tools that will allow nearly any investor to diversify their portfolios over time. By using leveraging when young—a controversial idea that sparked hate mail when the authors first floated it in the pages of Forbes—investors of all stripes, from those just starting to plan to those getting ready to retire, can substantially reduce overall risk while improving their returns. In Lifecycle Investing, readers will learnHow to figure out the level of exposure and leverage that’s right for youHow the Lifecycle Investing strategy would have performed in the historical marketWhy it will work even if everyone does itWhen not to adopt the Lifecycle Investing strategyClearly written and backed by rigorous research, Lifecycle Investing presents a simple but radical idea that will shake up how we think about retirement investing even as it provides a healthier nest egg in a nicely feathered nest.
Winning the Loser's Game: Timeless Strategies for Successful Investing
Charles D. Ellis - 1998
This book relies on data and historical facts. It argues that successful investors avoid short-term traps to concentrate on long-term strategies that allow time, compounding, and the natural ebbs and flows of the markets to work.
Candlestick Charting Explained: Timeless Techniques for Trading Stocks and Futures
Gregory L. Morris - 1995
Candlestick Charting Explained features updated charts and analysis as well as new material on integrating Western charting analysis with Japanese candlestick analysis, grouping candlesticks into families, detecting and avoiding false signals, and more.
The Art of Execution: How the world's best investors get it wrong and still make millions
Lee Freeman-Shor - 2015
His instructions were simple. There was only one rule. They could only invest in their ten best ideas to make money.It seemed like a foolproof plan to make a lot of money. What could possibly go wrong? These were some of the greatest minds at work in the markets today - from top European hedge fund managers to Wall Street legends.But most of the investors' great ideas actually lost money. Shockingly, a toss of a coin would have been a better method of choosing whether or not to invest in a stock.Nevertheless, despite being wrong most of the time, many of these investors still ended up making a lot of money.How could they be wrong most of the time and still be profitable? The answer lay in their hidden habits of execution, which until now have only been guessed at from the outside world.This book lays bare those secret habits for the first time, explaining them with real-life data, case studies and stories taken from Freeman-Shor's unique position of managing these investors on a day-to-day basis.A riveting read for investors of every level, this book shows you exactly what to do and what not to do when your big idea is losing or winning - and demonstrates conclusively why the most important thing about investing is always the art of execution.
Backstage Wall Street: An Insider's Guide to Knowing Who to Trust, Who to Run From, and How to Maximize Your Investments
Joshua M. Brown - 2012
Why? BECAUSE THAT'S HOW WALL STREET WANTS IT"[T]he always irreverent author of the Reformed Broker blog has written an excellent narrative that shares all of your broker's dirty little secrets. Much like Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker captured the essence of 1980s institutional Wall Street, Brown's Backstage Wall Street recreates the boiler room retail brokerage culture of the 1990s and early 2000s in vivid color."
--FORBES
"With a smirk, a lashing wit, and an appropriate irreverence, Joshua Brown gives voice to what all investment professionals are--or should be--secretly thinking."--MICHAEL SANTOLI, Barron's columnist"The pages of this book are filled with colorful expos�s of misconduct in the way Wall Street presents and sells itself (and its financial products offerings!). . . . Run don't walk to read Brown's chronicles of deception [perpetrated by] those wonderful folks on Wall Street, who nearly bankrupted the world's fi nancial system a few short years ago."--DOUGLAS A. KASS, Seabreeze Partners Management, Inc."Everything you've ever read about Wall Street is a total lie. Everyone is lying to you every day. Until you read this book."--JAMES ALTUCHER, Formula Capital and author of I Was Blind but Now I See"Joshua wants Wall Street to be awesome. You can feel it every day on his amazing blog and in this great book. He is happy to shout when Wall Street drives him crazy. I guarantee you will enjoy this book that describes the action behind the business of Wall Street and his own experiences along the way."--HOWARD LINDZON, Lindzon Capital and founder of StockTwitsJoshua Brown may be the funniest writer on finance today, but Backstage Wall Street could make you cry more than laugh. The buffoons, manipulators, and incompetents Brown parades before us are the stewards of our retirement accounts....What's important is that investors understand the choices before them. Backstage Wall Street goes a long way to taking us backstage, while making us laugh in the process.--BARRON'SAbout the Book: Wall Street is very good at one thing: convincing you to act against your own interests. And there's no one out there better equipped with the knowledge and moxie to explain how it all works than Josh Brown. A man The New York Times referred to as "the Merchant of Snark" and Barron's called "pot-stirring and provocative," Brown worked for 10 years in the industry, a time during which he learned some hard truths about how clients are routinely treated--and how their money is sent on a one-way trip to Wall Street's coffers.Backstage Wall Street reveals the inner workings of the world's biggest money machine and explains how a relatively small confederation of brilliant, sometimes ill-intentioned people fuel it, operate it, and repair it when necessary--none of which is for the good of the average investor.Offering a look that only a long-term insider could provide (and that only a "reformed" insider would want to provide), Brown describes:THE PEOPLE--Why retail brokers always profit--even if you don't THE PRODUCTS--How funds, ETFs, and other products are invented as failsafe profit generators--for the inventors alone THE PITCH--The marketing schemes designed for one thing and one thing only: to separate you from your moneyIt's that bad . . . but there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Brown gives you the knowledge you need to make the right decisions at the right time.Backstage Wall Street is about seeing reality for what it is and adjusting your actions accordingly. It's about learning who and what to steer clear of at all times. And it's about setting the stage for a bright financial future--your own way.
The ETF Book: All You Need to Know About Exchange Traded Funds
Richard A. Ferri - 2007
Each chapter of The ETF Book offers concise coverage of various issues and is filled with in-depth insights on different types of ETFs as well as practical advice on how to select and manage them.
Rational Expectations: Asset Allocation for Investing Adults (Investing for Adults Book 4)
William J. Bernstein - 2014
Continuing the theme of the Investing for Adults series, this full-length finance title is not for beginners, but rather assumes a fair degree of quantitative ability and finance knowledge. If you think you can time the market or pick stocks and mutual fund managers, or even if you think that you can formulate an optimally efficient mean-variance asset allocation with a black box, then learn some basic finance and come back in a few years.On the other hand, if you know your way around risk premiums and standard deviations and know who Irving Fisher and Benjamin Graham were, and if you want to sharpen your asset class skills, you’ve come to the right place.
Dual Momentum Investing: An Innovative Strategy for Higher Returns with Lower Risk
Gary Antonacci - 2014
Morris, Chief Technical Analyst and Chairman, Investment Committee of Stadion Money Management, LLC, and author of "Investing with the Trend""Dual Momentum Investing" details the author's own momentum investing method that combines U.S. stock, world stock, and aggregate bond indices--a formula proven to dramatically increase profits while lowering risk.Antonacci reveals how momentum investors could have achieved long-run returns nearly twice as high as the stock market over the past 40 years, while avoiding or minimizing bear market losses--and he provides the information and insight investors need to achieve such success going forward. His methodology is designed to pick up on major changes in relative strength and market trend.Gary Antonacci has over 30 years experience as an investment professional focusing on under exploited investment opportunities. In 1990, he founded Portfolio Management Consultants, which advises private and institutional investors on asset allocation, portfolio optimization, and advanced momentum strategies. He writes and runs the popular blog and website optimalmomentum.com. Antonacci earned his MBA at Harvard.
The Ultimate Options Trading Strategy Guide for Beginners: Learn about Options Trading and learn six great strategies to help you profit from it!
Roji Abraham - 2017
The vast majority of retail stock traders in the stock market keep away from trading in stock derivatives such as Options, believing it to be something that is too complex and too risky. Most of the few who venture out into this terrain with half-baked knowledge usually end in substantial losses over the long term because they simply do not know the safe strategies that one needs to deploy in this space and give up after a while. If you are somebody who has shied away from Options Trading in the past thinking it is beyond comprehension or because you always ended losing money, this is the right book for you.This book is for every person who wants to venture out into Options Trading to earn a steady part-time income with minimal risk.Here's what you get to learn from this book:
What stock options are in simple terms!
The various types of options and the common terms used in options trading.
The underlying principles of options trading using easily-understandable scenarios.
Insights into why anyone should trade in options
Basic mistakes made by newcomers and how to avoid them.
6 great strategies you can use to consistently make profits while controlling your risk exposure
Case studies illustrating the working of each strategy.
Note: As an added bonus, this book also gives you access to worksheets you can use to calculate the potential returns and risk exposure for any strategic trade you want to get into or to even just carry out paper-trades! This book adopts an unsophisticated approach to teach options trading to just about anybody and therefore, if you are looking for a place to start learning about options trading and how to earn off it, look no further!