The Economist Guide To Investment Strategy 3rd Ed

Supported by numerous charts and detailed analysis, The Economist Guide to Investment Strategy outlines how to construct investment strategies appropriate for individual investors. It looks at risk and comes with wealth-warnings for those who wish to explore more sophisticated and fashionable investment approaches, and it emphasises the importance of taking into account insights from behavioural analysis as well as the principles of traditional finance. It highlights how habitual patterns of decision-making can lead any of us into costly mistakes, and it stresses how markets are most dangerous when they appear to be most rewarding. The book is in two parts: The big picture Setting the scene - including might I have been suckered by Madoff? Understanding your behaviour - including why do we rely on lazy shortcuts? Market investment returns - including who can investors trust to provide a safe haven? How investor strategies evolve - including what has changed since the financial crisis? The time horizon and the shape of strategy: keep-it-simple - including are government bonds and some equities all you need? Implementing more complicated strategies Setting the scene - including does an illiquid investment mean a premium return? Equities - including are high returns just a reward for taking more risk ? Credit - including do changes in credit spreads echo stock market volatility rather than bankruptcy risk? Hedge funds - including when will investors routinely get decent hedge fund risk statistics? Private equity - including are excessive fees strangling the goose that laid the golden eggs? Real estate - including should I buy REITs or bricks and mortar? Art and investments of passion - including how the Federal Reserve and the internet have boosted prices of fine art and classic cars. In addition, there is a glossary and other useful appendices.

Supported by numerous charts and detailed analysis, The Economist Guide to Investment Strategy outlines how to construct investment strategies appropriate for individual investors. It looks at the risks and opportunities of uncomplicated strategies and it comes with wealth-warnings for those who wish to explore more sophisticated and fashionable investment approaches. It emphasizes the importance of taking into account insights from behavioral analysis as well as the principles of traditional finance. It highlights how habitual patterns of decision-making can lead any of us into costly mistakes, and it stresses how markets are most dangerous when they appear to be most rewarding.

Now in its fourth edition, this classic guide to investment strategy has been revised to give up-to-date ideas on pensions, investments of passion and more. Peter Stanyer and Stephen Satchell's Guide to Investment Strategy looks at the risks and opportunities of uncomplicated strategies and comes with wealth warnings for those who wish to explore more sophisticated approaches. It explains the importance of insights from behavioral analysis, the principles of traditional finance, and highlights how habitual patterns of decision-making can lead any of us into costly mistakes. After all, markets are most dangerous when most rewarding.

The revised and updated 7th edition of this highly regarded book brings the reader right up to speed with the latest financial market developments, and provides a clear and incisive guide to a complex world that even those who work in it often find hard to understand. In chapters on the markets that deal with money, foreign exchange, equities, bonds, commodities, financial futures, options and other derivatives, the book examines why these markets exist, how they work, and who trades in them, and gives a run-down of the factors that affect prices and rates. Business history is littered with disasters that occurred because people involved their firms with financial instruments they didn't properly understand. If they had had this book they might have avoided their mistakes. For anyone wishing to understand financial markets, there is no better guide.

The first edition of The Economist Guide to Investment Strategy explained the fundamentals of investment risk, how to put together "keep-it-simple" investment strategies, and the need to guard against our own behavior leading to dreadful investment mistakes. The global crisis that erupted in 2008 exposed the flaws in many more complicated investment strategies. The second edition starts with a new section on financial fraud and how investors can help to protect themselves against this "hearty perennial." It also includes a new section on risk profiling and discusses the role of risk tolerance questionnaires. In Chapter 3 data are provided pointing to underperformance of equities between 1978 and 2008. Against this background, there is a new Chapter 4—"Which should we do: buy-and-hold or time markets?" Chapter 5, which discusses the design of short-term and long-term strategies, includes a new section—"How safe is cash?"—and the discussion of bond ladders is extended to reflect issues of bond selection in the light of corporate credit risk and the financial difficulties of some US municipal authorities. Part 2 has been updated extensively to reflect developments in the past four years and the impact of the financial crisis on credit instruments, hedge funds, private equity, and real estate. The book concludes with a new chapter on investing in art and collectibles. It explores the argument that art prices "float aimlessly," discusses financial investment in art, and provides some reasons for expecting that a portfolio of art might perform well in the future.

The classic guide for the individual investor, The Economist Guide to Investment Strategy sets out the basic - and the not-so-basic - principles for putting your wealth to work. It looks at risk, pointing out the hazards for those who wish to explore a variety of investment approaches. It also teaches the importance of sophisticated self-knowledge in finance, distilling insights from behavioural analysis as well as the principles of traditional finance. It highlights how habitual patterns of decision-making can lead any of us into costly mistakes, and it stresses how markets are most dangerous when they appear to be most rewarding. This fourth edition includes new material on private investment and non-standard asset classes - art, wine, collectibles and the like - helping readers to navigate those areas in which prudence meets passion.

The absolute and relative performance of various asset classes is systematically related to macroeconomic trends. In this new book, Robert McGee provides a thorough guide to each stage of the business cycle and analyzes the investment implications using real-world examples linking economic dynamics to investment results.

In today's volatile, complex and fast-moving business world, it can be difficult to gauge how sound a company really is. An apparently strong balance sheet and impressive reported profits may be hiding all sorts of problems that could even spell bankruptcy. So how do you: Know whether a company is well run and doing well? Decide which ratios and benchmarks to use to assess performance? Work out if a company has massaged its results? Recognise the danger signs on the corporate horizon? Compare companies operating in different sectors or countries? These and many other important questions are answered in a completely updated and revised sixth edition of this clear and comprehensive guide. It is aimed at anyone who wants to understand a company's annual report, judge a customer's creditworthiness, assess a company's investment potential, and much more.