The Anxious Investor

A revelatory new guide to becoming a smarter investor, drawing upon behavioral psychology, economic modeling, and market history to offer practical advice for reaching your financial goals "With the equity and fixed-income markets off to a rough start in 2022, investors might do well to review the lessons shared in Mr. Nations’s book." —Wall Street Journal The human brain is ill-suited to making wise investment decisions. We are overconfident in our own knowledge and hunches, terrible at assessing risk, and prone to chasing financial thrills rather than measured long-term goals. Making matters worse, periods of severe market turbulence—whether the dotcom bubble of the late 90’s, the Great Recession a decade later, or the brief, vertiginous COVID crash of 2020—bring out our most irrational selves, at the exact moment when the consequences for investment mistakes are most severe. Scott Nations has spent his career studying market volatility. His firm, Nations Indexes, is the world’s leading independent developer of volatility and option-enhanced indexes. In The Anxious Investor, he teaches readers how to understand markets, master their own fear, and make the most of their money. Drawing upon cutting-edge research in behavioral psychology, Nations shows that the secrets to excellent investing lie in mastering the quirks of human psychology. How are some investors able to make prudent decisions under pressure, while others rely on gut instinct to disastrous effect? How can we prepare for a market crash before it happens? And what can help us stay the course when the waters get choppy? Using the stories of three infamous market bubbles as his backdrop, Nations offers readers history’s hard-earned lessons about greed, volatility, and value. Whether you’re saving for retirement, a home, or a child’s college education, The Anxious Investor offers a blueprint for achieving your goals. While we can never know exactly which financial surprises may loom ahead, here is an indispensable resource for investors to make sense of them.

A pioneer in the field of behavioral finance presents an investment guide based on what really drives investors Perfectly timed to give readers a real edge for investing in post-crash markets Author is a leading authority on the theory and application of behavioral finance and a fixture in The Wall Street Journal and other leading media outlets Poised to become the definitive text on how investors and managers make financial decisions—and how these decisions are reflected in financial markets

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

A practical guide to the math behind options and how that knowledge can improve your trading performance No book on options can guarantee success, but if a trader understands and utilizes option math effectively, good things are going to happen. The idea behind Options Math for Traders + Website is to help retail option traders understand some of the basic tenants and enduring relationships of options, and option math, that professional and institutional traders rely on every day. This book skillfully highlights those strategies that are inherently superior from an option math point of view and explains what drives that superiority while also examining why some strategies are inherently inferior. The material is explained without complex equations or technical jargon. The goal is to give you a solid conceptual foundation of options behavior so you can make more informed decisions when choosing an option strategy for your market outlook. Topics covered include the volatility premium, because over time, options will cost more than they are ultimately worth; skew, wherein far out of the money put options may seem cheap from an absolute term, but are very expensive in relative terms; and the acceleration in option price erosion. The book also has a companion Website, which includes links to those sites that can scan for the best strategies discussed in the book. Explains, in a non-technical manner, the mathematical properties of options so that traders can better select the right options strategy for their market outlook Companion Website contains timely tools that allow you to continue to learn in a hands-on fashion long after closing the book Written by top options expert Scott Nations Most independent traders have an imperfect understanding of the math behind options pricing. With Options Math for Traders + Website as your guide, you'll gain valuable lessons in this area and discover how this information can improve your trading performance.

Is an investors’ “perfect storm” brewing? If you’re not careful, it could sweep your wealth away. Long-dormant inflation looks to be catching fire. A stock market in overdrive may crash and burn for years. And taxes to fund deficits and social programs look to be rising to punishing levels not seen in a generation. This triple threat could mean a financial apocalypse from which many investors won’t ever recover. Getting straight talk on smart wealth management has never been more critical. With Social Security and Medicare tracking to go belly-up in a few short years, there will be dire consequences for millions. Already-retired boomers, living far longer than ever expected, will strain government resources and risk running out of money. Who will pay for it all? Without smart planning, your taxes may rise to confiscatory levels, sapping net worth and lifestyle quality. Your retirement lifestyle and legacy for your kids could get crushed. Some may never be able to retire. Investors and savers of every age and stripe will want to pay careful attention to the concentrated wisdom in this book and take proactive steps to protect themselves while there’s still time.

How to overcome barriers to the long-term investments that are essential for solving the world’s biggest problems There has never been a greater need for long-term investments to tackle the world’s most difficult problems, such as climate change, human health, and decaying infrastructure. And it is increasingly unlikely that the public sector will be willing or able to fill this gap. If these critical needs are to be met, the major pools of long-term, patient capital—including pensions, sovereign wealth funds, university endowments, and wealthy individuals and families—will have to play a large role. In this accessible and authoritative account of long-term capital investment, two leading experts on the subject, Victoria Ivashina and Josh Lerner, highlight the significant hurdles facing long-term investors and propose concrete ways to overcome these difficulties.

Worth It shows women how to view money as a source of personal power and freedom and live life on their terms.

If your investing strategy has relied on the facts—financial statements, annual reports, technical charts, and so on—congratulations! You’re on the way to becoming a successful, complete investor. But you’re only partway there. If the markets are about mood swings, turbulence, and uncertainty, if the herd buys like crazy one day, only to sell off the next, doesn’t it make sense for you to have a grip on the way in which your individual psychological makeup and emotional state affect your investing strategy? Doesn’t the complete investor need to understand both the facts in his head and the emotions of his heart? Dr. Richard Geist has combined the art and science of the seemingly unrelated fields of psychology and investing. He shows that investing success means both having and using solid information and expertly understanding, monitoring, and managing your emotions. This is the first book directed at professional and individual investors alike, illustrating how they can use emotions to become more effective at meeting the ever-increasing challenges of today’s investing environment. Dr. Geist’s coverage is stimulating and wide-ranging, including topics such as: •Recognizing emotional reactions such as confidence and anxiety as clues to making investment decisions •Avoiding the most common psychological investment mistakes •Analyzing your psychological risk quotient •Reacting appropriately when you’re caught in a stampeding herd •Learning how patience—or the lack of it—influences investing decisions •Responding in psychologically healthy ways to losing money in the market •Gaining the psychological skills you need to sell a stock and learning why these skills differ from those needed when making a buy decision •Understanding the psychological needs of management while obtaining useful, valid information for making informed investing decisions Conventional wisdom says “park your emotions at the door when making investing decisions.” Dr. Geist brings a new, important perspective to show that the conventional wisdom is not only wrong but harmful to your financial well-being. Success lies in understanding your emotional reactions to the market and its participants and integrating an emotional understanding of yourself into your investing strategies. The successful investor is, above all, a human investor, not a “perfect” machine-like investor.