This book represents my endeavour to disseminate financial knowledge and empower individuals to make well-informed investment decisions. Presently, there is a significant lack of awareness surrounding personal finance, leading many to make costly investment errors and incur losses. In my view, personal finance is a crucial component of individual well-being, and reliance on others for investment decisions should be minimized. It is my aspiration that this book will foster a broader understanding of personal finance across all age groups.

A companion to the world of great investment writing, bringing together in one volume a selection of the best investors and market commentators.

Let the legends of finance be your money managers! Imagine having the opportunity to ask Babe Ruth how to hit, or Charles Lindbergh how to fly. Investment Titans assembles an unprecedented panel of Nobel laureates and great financial thinkers--including Harry Markowitz, Paul Samuelson, John Bogle, and others--to ask: "How can investors make smart decisions that minimize risk and uncertainty and maximize return?" Their answers are thought-provoking, innovative, and certain to provide profitable insights for readers to use in their own investing. Each contributor's field of knowledge--hedging risk, defeating psychological negatives, picking stocks, choosing strategies--is featured in its own concise, hands-on chapter. The result is a rare, fascinating look inside the minds and techniques of some of today's greatest financial thinkers.

CFA Institute Research Foundation is honored and delighted to present these insights from 25 years of Vertin Award recipients. These legends of the investment industry range in stature from Nobel Prize winners to billionaire hedge fund managers, from distinguished professors of finance who have shaped thousands of young minds to editors of prestigious academic journals and authors of some of the most popular investment books ever published. Although their backgrounds vary widely, they hold one thing in common: They all made substantial lifetime contributions to the field of investments. In this publication, these investment luminaries share: Their proudest accomplishments The most influential investment publications they have written and read The critical investment lessons they have learned Their expectations for the future Any professional regrets they may have had In a longer summary section, the Vertin Award winners discuss in more detail what has been most important to their professional and personal success and may be important to you and your career. The publication contains forewords from CFA Institute CEO Marg Franklin, CFA, Managing Director of Research, Advocacy, and Standards Paul Andrews, and Research Foundation Chair Joanne Hill. There are also testimonials about the importance of these investment legends from various charterholders, CFA candidates, and members of the Research Foundation. An introduction by the editor and Executive Director of the Research Foundation, Bud Haslett, CFA, describes how this publication evolved and why it is essential. Suggestions on how you can best learn from the Vertin Award winners’ insights are provided as a convenient index section so you can easily compare the various recipients’ responses to specific questions.

Over more than 30 years of research and portfolio management, we developed 10 key insights that inform our investment process. These insights all stem from the realization that the market is a complex system and that it is this very complexity that offers investors the opportunity to outperform. Creating a successful investment practice requires examining a wide array of issues, from a philosophical inquiry into the nature of financial markets to the fine details about the definition of earnings. Our early empirical research indicated that, contrary to the prevailing belief in efficient markets, the equity market is not totally efficient. Opportunities for profitable active investment existed and continue to exist despite the rapid evolution of financial markets. Detecting and exploiting these opportunities to achieve excess returns at reasonable risk requires continuous research to keep up with an ever-changing world. However, research alone will not ensure success. With more than 30 years of experience managing portfolios, we have gained many insights described in the article into the nature of the markets and the investing process.

This book identifies and discusses the most successful investing practices with an emphasis on the academic articles that produced them and why this research led to popular adoption and growth in $AUM. Investors are bombarded with ideas and prescriptions for successful investing every day. Given the steady stream of information on stock tips, sector timing, asset allocation, etc., how do investors decide? How do they judge the quality and reliability of the investment advice they are given on a day-to-day basis? This book identifies which academic articles turned investment ideas were the most innovative and influential in the practice of investment management. Each article is discussed in terms of the asset management process: strategy, portfolio construction, portfolio implementation, and risk management. Some examples of topics covered are factor investing, the extreme growth of trading instruments like Exchange Traded Funds, multi-asset investing, socially responsible investing, big data, and artificial intelligence. This book analyzes a curated selection of peer-reviewed academic articles identified among those published by the scientific investment community. The book briefly describes each of the articles, how and why each one changed the way we think about investing in that specific asset class, and provides insights as to the nuts and bolts of how to take full advantage of this successful investment idea. It is as timely as it is informative and will help each investor to focus on the most successful strategies, ideas, and implementation that provide the basis for the efficient accumulation and management of wealth.

Says Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management about The Art of Value Investing: "I learned the investment business largely from the work and thinking of other investors. The Art of Value Investing is a thoughtfully organized compilation of some of the best investment insights I have ever read. Read this book with care. It will be one of the highest-return investments you will ever make." Based on interviews with the world's most-successful value investors, The Art of Value Investing offers a comprehensive set of answers to the questions every equity money manager should have thought through clearly before holding himself or herself out as a worthy steward of other people's money. What market inefficiencies will I try to exploit? How will I generate ideas? What will be my geographic focus? What analytical edge will I hope to have? What valuation methodologies will I use? What time horizon will I typically employ? How many stocks will I own? How specifically will I decide to buy or sell? Will I hedge, and how? How will I keep my emotions from getting the best of me? Who should read The Art of Value Investing? It is as vital a resource for the just starting out investor as for the sophisticated professional one. The former will find a comprehensive guidebook for defining a sound investment strategy from A-to-Z; the latter will find all aspects of his or her existing practice challenged or reconfirmed by the provocative thinking of their most-successful peers. It also is a must read for any investor – institutional or individual – charged with choosing the best managers for the money they are allocating to equities. Choosing the right managers requires knowing all the right questions to ask as well as the answers worthy of respect and attention – both of which are delivered in The Art of Value Investing.