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"Winning the Loser's Game is considered by many to be a classic analysis of investing." ­­Financial Planning The premise of the bestselling Winning the Loser's Game­­that individual investors can achieve far greater success working with financial markets than against them­­has grown increasingly popular in today's hard-to-predict markets. The latest edition of this concise yet comprehensive classic offers updated strategies to leverage the power of time and compounding, protect against down cycles, and more.

The best known and most highly regarded book on financial crises Financial crises and speculative excess can be traced back to the very beginning of trade and commerce. Since its introduction in 1978, this book has charted and followed this volatile world of financial markets. Charles Kindleberger's brilliant, panoramic history revealed how financial crises follow a nature-like rhythm: they peak and purge, swell and storm. Now this newly revised and expanded Fourth Edition probes the most recent "natural disasters" of the markets--from the difficulties in East Asia and the repercussions of the Mexican crisis to the 1992 Sterling crisis. His sharply drawn history confronts a host of key questions. Charles P. Kindleberger (Boston, MA) was the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT for thirty-three years. He is a financial historian and prolific writer who has published over twenty-four books.

A detailed guide to overcoming the most frequently encountered psychological pitfalls of investing Bias, emotion, and overconfidence are just three of the many behavioral traits that can lead investors to lose money or achieve lower returns. Behavioral finance, which recognizes that there is a psychological element to all investor decision-making, can help you overcome this obstacle.In The Little Book of Behavioral Investing, expert James Montier takes you through some of the most important behavioral challenges faced by investors. Montier reveals the most common psychological barriers, clearly showing how emotion, overconfidence, and a multitude of other behavioral traits, can affect investment decision-making.Offers time-tested ways to identify and avoid the pitfalls of investor bias Author James Montier is one of the world's foremost behavioral analysts Discusses how to learn from our investment mistakes instead of repeating them Explores the behavioral principles that will allow you to maintain a successful investment portfolio Written in a straightforward and accessible style, The Little Book of Behavioral Investing will enable you to identify and eliminate behavioral traits that can hinder your investment endeavors and show you how to go about achieving superior returns in the process.Praise for The Little Book Of Behavioral Investing"The Little Book of Behavioral Investing is an important book for anyone who is interested in understanding the ways that human nature and financial markets interact." --Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics, Duke University, and author of Predictably Irrational"In investing, success means�being on the right side of most trades. No book provides a better starting point toward that goal than this one." --Bruce Greenwald, Robert Heilbrunn Professor of Finance and Asset Management, Columbia Business School"'Know thyself.' Overcoming human instinct is key to becoming a better investor.� You would be irrational if you did not read this book." --Edward Bonham-Carter, Chief Executive and Chief Investment Officer, Jupiter Asset Management"There is not an investor anywhere who wouldn't profit from reading this book." --Jeff Hochman, Director of Technical Strategy, Fidelity Investment Services Limited"James Montier gives us a very accessible version of why we as investors are so predictably irrational, and a guide to help us channel our 'Inner Spock' to make better investment decisions. Bravo!" --John Mauldin, President, Millennium Wave Investments

What happens inside our brains when we think about money? Quite a lot, actually, and some of it isn't good for our financial health. In Your Money and Your Brain, Jason Zweig explains why smart people make stupid financial decisions -- and what they can do to avoid these mistakes. Zweig, a veteran financial journalist, draws on the latest research in neuroeconomics, a fascinating new discipline that combines psychology, neuroscience, and economics to better understand financial decision making. He shows why we often misunderstand risk and why we tend to be overconfident about our investment decisions. Your Money and Your Brain offers some radical new insights into investing and shows investors how to take control of the battlefield between reason and emotion. Your Money and Your Brain is as entertaining as it is enlightening. In the course of his research, Zweig visited leading neuroscience laboratories and subjected himself to numerous experiments. He blends anecdotes from these experiences with stories about investing mistakes, including confessions of stupidity from some highly successful people. Then he draws lessons and offers original practical steps that investors can take to make wiser decisions. Anyone who has ever looked back on a financial decision and said, "How could I have been so stupid?" will benefit from reading this book.

An indispensable roadmap for creating a successful investment program from Yale’s chief investment officer, David F. Swensen.In the years since the now-classic Pioneering Portfolio Management was first published, the global investment landscape has changed dramatically -- but the results of David Swensen's investment strategy for the Yale University endowment have remained as impressive as ever. Year after year, Yale's portfolio has trumped the marketplace by a wide margin, and, with over $20 billion added to the endowment under his twenty-three-year tenure, Swensen has contributed more to Yale's finances than anyone ever has to any university in the country. What may have seemed like one among many success stories in the era before the Internet bubble burst emerges now as a completely unprecedented institutional investment achievement. In this fully revised and updated edition, Swensen, author of the bestselling personal finance guide Unconventional Success, describes the investment process that underpins Yale's endowment. He provides lucid and penetrating insight into the world of institutional funds management, illuminating topics ranging from asset-allocation structures to active fund management. Swensen employs an array of vivid real-world examples, many drawn from his own formidable experience, to address critical concepts such as handling risk, selecting advisors, and weathering market pitfalls. Swensen offers clear and incisive advice, especially when describing a counterintuitive path. Conventional investing too often leads to buying high and selling low. Trust is more important than flash-in-the-pan success. Expertise, fortitude, and the long view produce positive results where gimmicks and trend following do not. The original Pioneering Portfolio Management outlined a commonsense template for structuring a well-diversified equity-oriented portfolio. This new edition provides fund managers and students of the market an up-to-date guide for actively managed investment portfolios.

David Dreman's name is synonymous with the term "contrarian investing," and his contrarian strategies have been proven winners year after year. His techniques have spawned countless imitators, most of whom pay lip service to the buzzword "contrarian," but few can match his performance. His Kemper-Dreman High Return Fund has been the leader since its inception in 1988 -- the number one equity-income fund among all 208 ranked by Lipper Analytical Services, Inc. Dreman is also one of a handful of money managers whose clients have beaten the runaway market over the past five, ten, and fifteen years. Now, as the longest bull market in the history of the stock market winds down, there is increasing volatility and a great deal of uncertainty. This is the climate that tests the mettle of the pros, the worries of the average investor, and the success of David Dreman's brilliant new strategies for the next millennium. Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Next Generation shows investors how to outperform professional money managers and profit from potential Wall Street panics -- all in Dreman's trademark style, which The New York Times calls "witty and clear as a silver bell." Dreman reveals a proven, systematic, and safe way to beat the market by buying stocks of good companies when they are currently out of favor. At the heart of his book is a fundamental psychological insight: investors overreact. Dreman demonstrates how investors consistently overvalue the so-called "best" stocks and undervalue the so-called "worst" stocks, and how earnings and other surprises affect the best and worst stocks in opposite ways. Since surprises are a way of life in the market, Dreman shows you how to profit from these surprises with his ingenious new techniques, most of which have been developed in the nineties. You'll learn: Why contrarian stocks offer extra protection in bear markets, as well as delivering superior returns when the bull roars.Why a high dividend yield is just as important for the aggressive investor as it is for "widows and orphans."Why owning Treasury bills and government bonds -- the "safest investments" for centuries -- is like being fully margined at the top of the 1929 market.Why Initial Public Offerings are a guaranteed loser's game.Why you should avoid Nasdaq ("the market of the next hundred years") like the plague.Why crisis, panic, and even market downturns are the contrarian investor's best friend.Why the chances of hitting a home run using the Street's best research are worse than being the big winner in the New York State Lottery. Based on cutting-edge research and irrefutable statistics, David Dreman's revolutionary techniques will benefit professionals and laymen alike.

First published in 1968, translated into 30 languages, and hailed by Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Samuelson as "a modern classic", this extraordinary piece of New Journalism about the go-go years of Wall Street in the 1960s is, in the words of its true author, George Goodman, "a book about image and reality and identity and anxiety and money." As timely and relevant to investors today as it was to those of the Vietnam era, it contains lucid insights into everything from technical analysis and efficient market theory to Random Walks, crowd psychology, and what precipitates a market meltdown.

The world-renowned economist offers "dourly irreverent analyses of financial debacle from the tulip craze of the seventeenth century to the recent plague of junk bonds."—The Atlantic.

Financial Shenanigans is by Howard Schilit, president of the Center for Financial Research and Analysis. It is a very readable step-by-step guide to detecting fraud by reading financial statements.Most of the big corporate scandals in the past few years have been in one way or another accounting scandals. Either accounting was the primary method of committing fraud, or else accounting was used to cover up other malfeasance. Schilit identifies seven "shenanigans" and the ways they are typically performed. They are:1. Recording revenue too soon or of questionable quality2. Recording bogus revenue3. Boosting income with one-time gains4. Shifting a current expense to a later or earlier period5. Failing to record or improperly reducing liabilities6. Shifting current revenue to a later period7. Shifting future expenses to the current period as a special chargeAll of this has to do with accounting arcana, which is what makes these kinds of scandals so opaque to the public. The public understandably doesn’t understand what's been done, much less how anyone was hurt by it. One misunderstanding that one sees in newspapers occasionally is what a reserve is, and why not having one or underestimating one is bad. The impression given is that reserves are actual money--rainy day funds to pay for future litigation or bad debt.That's why a readable book like this is useful. It really goes into accounting detail, and explains what the various financial statements are, and how to read them. It gives lots of examples of specific companies caught engaging in specific shenanigans. (Some, like Sunbeam, seems to have engaged in about every kind of shenanigan possible.) He always shows stock price graphs so one can see what the result is to equity when the chickens come home to roost. (He also uses the graphs as a way to brag on the CFRA's ability to see trouble early. They always seem to issue warnings well before the shenanigan is discovered. But, Cassandra-like, their warnings are ignored by investors. If their record at detecting shenanigans is so good, you would expect stock prices to drop every time they issue a warning on a company. Hmm.) Occasionally he offers a pungent detail or two on the company's story, but it would be better if he gave a little more--like this executive went to jail, or that executive was forbidden by the SEC to ever run a publicly traded company again, etc.I think this would be a good book for undergraduate and graduate business students, especially those interested in becoming analysts. Aside from giving a lot of practical advice, it would be an entertaining counterweight to the (let's face it) fairly tedious accounting textbooks that one necessarily has to read.

Investors are all too often lured by the prospect of instant millions and fall prey to the many fads of Wall Street. The myriad approaches they adopt offer little or no real prospect for long-term success and invariably run the risk of considerable economic loss - they resemble speculation or outright gambling, not a coherent investment program. But value investing - the strategy of investing in securities trading at an appreciable discount from underlying value - has a long history - has a long history of delivering excellent investment results with limited downside risk. Taking its title from Benjamin Graham's often-repeated admonition to invest always with a margin of safety, Klarman's 'Margin of Safety' explains the philosophy of value investing, and perhaps more importantly, the logic behind it, demonstrating why it succeeds while other approaches fail. The blueprint that Klarman offers, if carefully followed, offers the investor the strong possibility of investment success with limited risk. 'Margin of Safety' shows you not just how to invest but how to think deeply about investing - to understand the rationale behind the rules to appreciate why they work when they work, and why they don't when they don't.

The bestselling author of Pioneering Portfolio Management, the definitive template for institutional fund management, returns with a book that shows individual investors how to manage their financial assets.In Unconventional Success, investment legend David F. Swensen offers incontrovertible evidence that the for-profit mutual-fund industry consistently fails the average investor. From excessive management fees to the frequent "churning" of portfolios, the relentless pursuit of profits by mutual-fund management companies harms individual clients. Perhaps most destructive of all are the hidden schemes that limit investor choice and reduce returns, including "pay-to-play" product-placement fees, stale-price trading scams, soft-dollar kickbacks, and 12b-1 distribution charges. Even if investors manage to emerge unscathed from an encounter with the profit-seeking mutual-fund industry, individuals face the likelihood of self-inflicted pain. The common practice of selling losers and buying winners (and doing both too often) damages portfolio returns and increases tax liabilities, delivering a one-two punch to investor aspirations. In short: Nearly insurmountable hurdles confront ordinary investors. Swensen's solution? A contrarian investment alternative that promotes well-diversified, equity-oriented, "market-mimicking" portfolios that reward investors who exhibit the courage to stay the course. Swensen suggests implementing his nonconformist proposal with investor-friendly, not-for-profit investment companies such as Vanguard and TIAA-CREF. By avoiding actively managed funds and employing client-oriented mutual-fund managers, investors create the preconditions for investment success. Bottom line? Unconventional Success provides the guidance and financial know-how for improving the personal investor's financial future.

The core premise of this book is best summarized by the author: "More Than You Know's core premise is simple to explain but devilishly difficult to live: you will be better investor, executive, parent, friend - person - if you approach problems from a multidisciplinary perspectives". He then details his approach: "While the essays cover a range of topics, I categorize them into four parts - investment philosophy, psychology of investing, innovation and competitive strategy, and science and complexity theory. Consider these compartments in a toolbox, each addressing a distinct facet of investing."Michael does an excellent job of explaining his multidisciplinary perspectives for investing in a very accessible and practical way - assuming very little prior knowledge. The separate essays are very focused and direct to the point, making this book very easy and relatively quick to ready. A refreshing and very interesting take on investing that can be extended to numerous other fields. A must read!Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:1- "Rubin - "It's not that results don't matter. They do. But judging solely on results is a serious deterrent to taking risks that may be necessary to making the right decision. Simply put, the way decisions are evaluated affects the way decisions are made."2- "I would argue that many of the performance challenges in the business stem from an unhealthy balance between the profession and the business. Many of the investment managers that do beat the market seem to have the profession at the core."3- "...The leading thinkers and practitioners from somewhat varied fields have converged on the same formula: focus not on the frequency of correctness but on the magnitude of correctness."4- "The lesson from the process of theory building is that sound theories reflect context. Too many investors cling to attribute-based approaches and wring their hands when the market doesn't conform to what they think it should do."5- "Investors need to pay a great deal of attention to what influences their behavior. Three of Cialdini's six tendencies are particularly relevant for investors: consistency and commitment, social validation, and scarcity."6- "A dominant idea in Western society is that we should separate emotion and rationality. Advances in science show that such a separation is not only impossible but also undesirable. Yet successful investing requires a clear sense of probabilities and payoffs. Investors who are aware of affect are likely to make better decisions over time."7- "In markets, a symbiotic relationship between positive and negative feedback generally prevails...But the evidence shows that positive feedback can dominate prices, if only for a short time."8- "So The issue is not whether individuals are irrational (they are) but whether they are irrational in the same way at the same time."9- "In effect, when the environment is uncertain, it helps to start with lots of alternatives (e.g., synaptic connections) and then select (via pruning) the ones that are best given the environment. The process is undoubtedly costly because lots of energy and resources necessarily go to waste, but it's the best one going."10- "Chess master Bruce Pandolfini observes four behaviors that are consistent among chess champions and useful in thinking through the short-term/long-term debate. 1) Don't look too far ahead...2) Develop options and continuously revise them based on the changing conditions...3) Know your competition...4) Seek small advantages."11- "Idea diversity allows you to find what Johnson calls "weak signals." A weak signal may be the start of a trend away from the dominant path (such as new technology or development) or the right piece of information at the right time from an unexpected source."12- "In his 2001 letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett distinguishes between experience and exposure. Experience, of course, looks to the past and considers the probability of future outcomes based on occurrence of historical events. Exposure, on the other hand, considers the likelihood - and potential risk - of an event that history (especially recent history) may not reveal. Buffett argues that in 2001 the insurance industry assumed huge terrorism risk without commensurate premiums because it was focused on experience, not exposure."13- "If the stock market is a system that emerges from the interaction of many different investors, then reductionism - understanding individuals - does not give a good picture of how the market works. Investors and corporate executives who pay too much attention to individuals are trying to understand markets at the wrong level. An inappropriate perspective of the market can lead to poor judgments and value-destroying decisions."14- "The stock market has all of the characteristics of a complex adaptive system. Investors with different investment styles and time horizons (adaptive decision riles) trade with one another (aggregation), and we see fat-tail price distributions (nonlinearity) and imitation (feedback loops). An agent-based approach to understanding markets is gaining broader acceptance. But this better descriptive framework does not offer the neat solutions that the current economic models do."

Why do so many otherwise smart people make foolish financial choices? Why do investors sell stocks just before they skyrocket -- and cling to others as they plummer? Why do shoppers overspend when using credit cards rather than cash? What do our habits of tipping or buying lottery tickets indicate about our relationship with money?In this fascinating investigation of the ways we spend, invest, save, borrow, and waste money, Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich reveal the psychological causes -- the patterns of thinking and decision making -- of irrational behavior. Most important, they focus on the decisions we make every day and, using entertaining examples, provide invaluable tips on avoiding the financial faux pas that can cost thousands of dollars each year.

Praise for Damn Right! From the author of the bestselling WARREN BUFFETT SPEAKS. . . "Charlie Munger, whose reputation is deep and wide, based on an extraordinary record of brilliantly successful business strategies, sees things that others don't. There is a method to his mastery and, through this book, we get a chance to learn about this rare individual." -MICHAEL EISNER, Chairman and CEO, The Walt Disney Company "Janet Lowe uncovers the iconoclastic genius and subtle charm behind Charlie Munger's curmudgeonly facade in this richly woven portrait of our era's heir to Ben Franklin. With a biographer's detachment, an historian's thoroughness, and a financial writer's common sense, Lowe produces a riveting account of the family, personal, and business life of the idiosyncratically complex and endlessly fascinating figure." -LAWRENCE CUNNINGHAM, Cardozo Law School, Author of The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America "For years, Berkshire Hathaway shareholders and investors worldwide (me included) have struggled to learn more about Warren Buffett's cerebral sidekick. Now we can rest and enjoy reading Janet Lowe's book about this rare intellectual jewel called Charlie Munger." -ROBERT G. HAGSTROM, Author of The Warren Buffett Way "Charlie has lived by the creed that one should live a life that doesn't need explaining. But his life should be explained. In a city where heroism is too often confused with celebrity, Charlie is a true hero and mentor. He lives the life lessons that he has studiously extracted from other true heroes and mentors, from Ben Franklin to Ben Graham. This book illuminates those life lessons." -RONALD L. OLSON, Munger, Tolles & Olson llp "Janet Lowe's unprecedented access to Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett has resulted in a first-class book that investors, academics, and CEOs will find entertaining and highly useful."-TIMOTHY P. VICK, Money Manager and Author of How to Pick Stocks Like Warren Buffett

As Robert Shiller’s new 2009 preface to his prescient classic on behavioral economics and market volatility asserts, the irrational exuberance of the stock and housing markets “has been ended by an economic crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.” As we all, ordinary Americans and professional investors alike, crawl from the wreckage of our heedless bubble economy, the shrewd insights and sober warnings, and hard facts that Shiller marshals in this book are more invaluable than ever. The original and bestselling 2000 edition of Irrational Exuberance evoked Alan Greenspan’s infamous 1996 use of that phrase to explain the alternately soaring and declining stock market. It predicted the collapse of the tech stock bubble through an analysis of the structural, cultural, and psychological factors behind levels of price growth not reflected in any other sector of the economy. In the second edition (2005), Shiller folded real estate into his analysis of market volatility, marshalling evidence that housing prices were dangerously inflated as well, a bubble that could soon burst, leading to a “string of bankruptcies” and a “worldwide recession.” That indeed came to pass, with consequences that the 2009 preface to this edition deals with. Irrational Exuberance is more than ever a cogent, chilling, and astonishingly far-seeing analytical work that no one with any money in any market anywhere can afford not to read–and heed.

Recently, there was an article about Chinese IPOs in a Shanghai newspaper. The writer spoke to Yan Ding, head of Ceibs Research Center in Shanghai about the merits of investing in the avalanche of IPOs coming the market’s way this year. “If somebody asks me whether to invest in an IPO, my answer is ‘Yes’! If they should read the prospectus? ‘No’! If they should borrow money? ‘Yes’!” Feeling somewhat dizzy and rudderless, now seemed like a particularly good point in time to re-read Thornton O’glove’s classic Quality of Earnings, built on his ground- breaking monthly report with the same name first published in 1971. The report was conceived during the author’s early days working as a stock- broker in the 1960s, during which time an “issue craze” swept through the market, rendering prospectus-reading irrelevant. Considering today’s +40 percent opening-day rigged China IPOs, this reviewer for one hears alarm-bells ringing. Hence, entrée of the seminal work on how diligent reading of corporate accounting does matter over time.Quality of Earnings first and foremost deals with market inefficiencies via secrets hidden in (almost) plain sight. Accounting is said to be the language of business and some companies tell more lies than others. But who is the chicken and where is the egg? The companies? Investors? Auditors? Clients of investors? Society? Chapter 7, dealing with the differences between shareholder reporting and tax reporting is a case in point. But then of course it all circles back to the meta-debate of whether any of this matters, i.e. will it impact stock prices during the fund manager’s tenure? Hence, the derogatory naming of these matters as “academic”. Wouldn’t the more appropriate designation be as part of the time-arbitrage playbook?One of the most important questions upon re- reading the book is the issue of aging. Quality of Earnings is likely a cornerstone in most investors’ bookshelves, albeit somewhat dusty. But this 1987- book can certainly be read with your 2014 glasses on. But obviously, some aspects of breaking new ground are lost 27 years later. Howard Schilit’s Financial Shenanigans and Financial Fine Print by Michelle Leder are more contemporary examples of successor books. The common denominator is the passion of teaching the reader the importance of forensic study of the accounting. As they say, offense wins games but defense wins championships. Doing tedious, time-consuming, mostly dead-end forensic accounting work is tough. And it won’t make you the next-play hero. But over time plain ol’ number crunching is a requirement to avoid permanent losses of capital. And the reasoning and case studies in this book will help you on that path.The book is organized alongside order-of- complexity, common-sensical first. I found the early chapters “Don ́t Trust Your Analyst” and “Don’t Trust Your Auditor” slightly clichéd and over- simplified. Despite the overflow of events in this direction since the book’s publishing, has anything really changed? Do portfolio managers read more 10Ks and proxy statements now, skipping sell-side reports? Not likely. As the book progresses through the common snake pits in the P&L – non- recurring income, tax-reporting, working capital, debt, accounting changes etc. - complexity is turned-up a notch. The main drawback is the lack of actuality aspect in the case studies. They are certainly instructive still, but it does require a more dedicated reader. Overall, the book certainly fits in the mold of literature whose modus operandi centers on the “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and he’ll feed himself for life”. The irony of course is that the Quality of Earnings® report, Footnoted® et al, live off of unwilling fishers.“Because the documents were lengthy, very few [people] would take time out to read them. Accordingly, I concluded that one could obtain some edge on the market by diligently reading a prospectus from cover to cover”. I believe this to be true today as well, even though Mr. Ding and his friend Mr. Market might burst out laughing.

The volume is Benjamin Graham's timeless guide to interpreting and understanding financial statements. It has long been out of print, but now joins Graham's other masterpieces, The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis, as the three keys to understanding Graham and value investing. Readers will learn to analyze a company's balance sheets and income statements and arrive at a true understanding of its financial position and earnings record. Graham provides simple tests any reader can apply to determine the financial health and well-being of any company. This volume is an exact text replica of the first edition of The Interpretation of Financial Statements, published by Harper & Brothers in 1937. Graham's original language has been restored, and readers can be assured that every idea and technique presented here appears exactly as Graham intended.

A revealing look at Wall Street, the financial media, and financial regulators by David Einhorn, the President of Greenlight CapitalCould 2008's credit crisis have been minimized or even avoided? In 2002, David Einhorn-one of the country's top investors-was asked at a charity investment conference to share his best investment advice. Short sell Allied Capital. At the time, Allied was a leader in the private financing industry. Einhorn claimed Allied was using questionable accounting practices to prop itself up. Sound familiar? At the time of the original version of "Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story" the outcome of his advice was unknown. Now, the story is complete and we know Einhorn was right. In 2008, Einhorn advised the same conference to short sell Lehman Brothers. And had the market been more open to his warnings, yes, the market meltdown might have been avoided, or at least minimized.Details the gripping battle between Allied Capital and Einhorn's Greenlight CapitalIlluminates how questionable company practices are maintained and, at times, even protected by Wall StreetDescribes the failings of investment banks, analysts, journalists, and government regulatorsDescribes how many parts of the Allied Capital story were replayed in the debate over Lehman Brothers"Fooling Some of the People All of the Time" is an important call for effective government regulation, free speech, and fair play.