Do you think you're a rational investor? Most people do. But the truth is that we are all Emotional Investors. Our emotions often cause us to make hasty and unwise decisions that lead to poor performance. In this insightful book, speaker and behavioral economist Jay Mooreland reveals the hidden emotional biases that affect our actions. He explains the oft-neglected role of the emotions in our investing, and blazes the path to a sustainable investment strategy that embraces (instead of ignores) our emotions. If you care about investing wisely and profitably, The Emotional Investor is a must-read.
The Emotionally Intelligent Investor challenges several long-held assumptions and beliefs, by asserting that a good investment approach starts with introspection. Too many investment gurus tell you to emulate their techniques despite the fact that you may have very different personality traits, motivations and biases. Would Shaquille O'Neal tell a short basketball player to play like him? This book provides a unique template for self-reflection and a framework for developing an investment approach that works best with who you are. Whereas the consensus opinion is that investing success comes from blocking out emotions and making purely rational decisions, the best money managers actually use their feelings. They actively sense what others in the market are thinking, and they employ gut instincts when making decisions. Nevertheless, virtually all investing text books neglect to mention how to best cultivate and utilize empathetic and intuitive realizations. In this book you will learn a process for developing an investing advantage by putting yourself in someone else's shoes. You will also discover how a stock chart is a great tool for understanding what the current holders of a security may be feeling, and you will appreciate why technical analysis works. This book demystifies intuition with respect to investing and provides a method for building and safely harnessing helpful gut instincts. Traditional security analysis is vital, but in this book you will learn why superior returns primarily depend on self-awareness, empathy and intuition. The book is complete with examples and recommendations that illuminate a path towards reaching full investing potential.
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
Achieve investing success by understanding your behavior type This groundbreaking book shows how to invest wisely by managing your behavior, and not just your money. Step by step, Michael Pompian (a leading authority in the practical application of Behavioral Finance concepts to wealth management) helps you plan a strategy targeted to your personality. The book includes a test for determining your investment type and offers strategies you can put into use when investing. It also includes a brief history of the stock market, and easy-to-comprehend information about stocks and investing to help you lay a solid foundation for your investment decisions. Behavioral Finance and Investor Types is divided into two parts. Test Your Type, gives an overview of Behavioral Finance as well as the elements that come into play when figuring out BIT, like active or passive traits, risk tolerance, and biases. The book includes a quiz to help you discover what category you are in. Plan and Act, contains the traits common to your type; an analysis of the biases associated with your type; and strategies and solutions that compliment and capitalize on your BIT. Offers a practical guide to an investing strategy that fits both your financial situation and your personality type Includes a test for determining your tolerance for risk and other traits that will determine your investment type Written by the Director of the Private Wealth Practice for Hammond Associates—an investment consulting firm serving institutional and private wealth clients Behavioral Finance and Investor Types offers investors a better sense of what drives them and what puts on their breaks. By using the information found here, you'll quickly become savvy about the world of investing because you'll come to understand your place in it.
Tuckett argues that most economists' explanations of the financial crisis miss its essence; they ignore critical components of human psychology. He offers a deeper understanding of financial market behaviour and investment processes by recognizing the role played by unconscious needs and fears in all investment activity.
WINNER, Business: Personal Finance/Investing, 2015 USA Best Book Awards FINALIST, Business: Reference, 2015 USA Best Book Awards Investor Behavior provides readers with a comprehensive understanding and the latest research in the area of behavioral finance and investor decision making. Blending contributions from noted academics and experienced practitioners, this 30-chapter book will provide investment professionals with insights on how to understand and manage client behavior; a framework for interpreting financial market activity; and an in-depth understanding of this important new field of investment research. The book should also be of interest to academics, investors, and students. The book will cover the major principles of investor psychology, including heuristics, bounded rationality, regret theory, mental accounting, framing, prospect theory, and loss aversion. Specific sections of the book will delve into the role of personality traits, financial therapy, retirement planning, financial coaching, and emotions in investment decisions. Other topics covered include risk perception and tolerance, asset allocation decisions under inertia and inattention bias; evidenced based financial planning, motivation and satisfaction, behavioral investment management, and neurofinance. Contributions will delve into the behavioral underpinnings of various trading and investment topics including trader psychology, stock momentum, earnings surprises, and anomalies. The final chapters of the book examine new research on socially responsible investing, mutual funds, and real estate investing from a behavioral perspective. Empirical evidence and current literature about each type of investment issue are featured. Cited research studies are presented in a straightforward manner focusing on the comprehension of study findings, rather than on the details of mathematical frameworks.
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
An invaluable resource for wealth managers advising individuals, couples, and families, this book explains why human emotions drive all investor behavior and makes a powerful case for why advisors need to be aware of such emotions in advising clients—especially in high-stakes situations. Despite the fact that wealth advisors may employ algorithms, fancy financial models, economic theory, and predictive reasoning to forecast future investment returns, according to seasoned wealth management advisor Chris White, people—in other words, clients—basically decide how much risk to take with their money based on emotional factors such as the love they received as children, early life experiences of loss and "imperfect love," psychic wounds, and family traumas. A must-read for anyone in the wealth management profession, including wealth advisors, financial consultants, certified financial analysts, and retirement advisors, this groundbreaking book offers a radically new and well-articulated framework for managing relationships with clients as well as the essential tools to advise, mentor, and guide clients in making financial management decisions. Readers will understand how to recognize the emotional and psychological factors behind investor behavior and apply this insight to be a better wealth advisor. The author explains why early childhood experiences of love, joy, and loss and sometimes very subtle family dynamics play a key role in adult investor behavior; why being sensitive to an individual's unique psychological "systems" is key to being able to accurately assess his or her tolerance and acceptance of risk-taking as part of the wealth management process; what can cause a client's personality to change, especially in high-stress or high-stakes situations; and how to employ sophisticated client relationship management practices such as curiosity, appreciative inquiry, and powerful questioning to understand clients' needs at a deep psychological level.
"The key to investment success, if there be just one, is theability to remain emotionally detached. That detachment is onlyachieved through confidence. That confidence is only arrived atthrough knowledge. That knowledge is arrived at through thought,study, hard work, and experience. In this book, I will try toimpart the knowledge and experience I have acquired over the lastthirty years." -- Richard Arms from the Introduction to TradingWithout Fear Richard Arms' revolutionary theories have changed the way investorsperceive the market. His expertise in the field of technicalanalysis has had significant impact, evidenced by the fact that hisEquivolume charting system is now part of the most popular stockand futures software, and his Arms Index--also known as theShort-Term Trading Index or TRIN--has become one of the mostimportant technical tools of Wall Street. In Trading Without Fear, Richard Arms shows investors how to makesound investment decisions "without succumbing to those two verypowerful emotions": fear and greed. Learning to control thoseemotions in ourselves--while recognizing them in others--empowersus to capitalize on that knowledge. The result is informedinvestment choices, tempered by caution, and fueled by confidenceand a strong desire to succeed. Arms' cogent examination of leading strategies will enable theaverage investor to master successfully what is widely regarded asone of the most reliable methods of long-term market forecasting:volume analysis. Volume analysis is rooted in a seminal Armstheory--that volume plays as significant a role in understandingthe markets as price movement. And volume is affected by theemotions at work in the marketplace. "The market is very complex.It is pushed one way or the other in varying degrees as a result ofindividual decisions of millions of participants. Some of thosepartici-pants are acting logically and others are actingemotionally...it is the volume which is giving us the real pictureof the emotions in the marketplace. Price tells us what ishappening, but volume tells us how it is happening." Trading Without Fear offers investors a trading discipline within-depth coverage of: * Technical vs. fundamental analysis * Equivolume charting and the importance of the "Power Box" * Ease of Movement and Volume Adjusted Moving Averages with newinformation not available anywhere else * Market tides--VAMA and cycles * The mechanics of buying * Selling short--how and when to do it * Closing out short positions With his succinct analytical skills and unique approach, RichardArms makes sophisticated investment strategies accessible toeveryday, individual investors. Trading Without Fear "Mr. Arms elegantly combines many different aspects of volumeanalysis in this book. Volume is related to stock market breadthvia the Arms Index, and to price via Equivolume charting. VolumeWeighted Moving Averages and the Ease of Movement Indicatorcomplete the picture. If you are interested in how to quantify thedriving force of the market, this book is for you." -- JohnBollinger, CFA, CMT President, Bollinger Capital Management Editor,The Capital Growth Letter "Analysts and traders will acquire confidence and control fearthrough carefully studying and applying the unique insightsavailable in Trading Without Fear. This book sums up much of theinventive genius of Richard Arms, the 1995 winner of the covetedMarket Technicians Award. The famed Arms Index and other uniqueindicators including Equivolume, Ease of Movement and VolumeCyclicacity are presented in clear terms and in a logicalprogression filled with penetrating insights into how to profit inthe market." -- Henry O. Pruden, PhD Professor, Golden GateUniversity Executive Director, Institute for Technical MarketAnalysts
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.