Use the power of behavioral finance to make smarter, better-informed decisions through every step of the investing process In an economy where markets are more unpredictable than ever, emotions can derail the efforts of even the most experienced investors and wreak havoc on portfolio returns. Applying powerful behavioral finance concepts, Stop. Think. Invest. provides a framework for identifying personal biases and avoiding mistakes that can cost big profits. Based on the author’s extensive research and 100 key behavioral finance concepts, this guide provides a winning 12-step process you can use to successfully manage your trading and investing for long-term success, including: Begin the initial research into a new stock Create an investment thesis—why are you buying the stock? Trade timing and size—when are you buying and how much? Make the initial purchase Review the trade—round up or round down Test your original investment thesis Stop. Think. Invest. reveals critical information about behavioral finance flaws, such as anchoring, confirmation bias, recency bias, and loss aversion. Unlike other behavioral investing guides, Stop. Think. Invest. offers a fully organized and practical approach to applying behavioral finance to everyday investing.

"The case for investing in your own career before anything else Michael Ellsberg and Bryan Franklin think you've been fed a lie: that if you save for decades and invest in 401(k)s, IRAs, and a home, these investments will grow steadily over decades, allowing twenty to thirty years of secure, peaceful retirement. This might have been true at some point in the last century, but it is not true any longer. If you want to get ahead and enjoy a life of prosperity, the authors argue that you must invest in the most powerful source of wealth you'll ever know: your own earning power. Ellsberg and Franklin reveal how investing in yourself in various ways can guarantee a return much higher than the stock market or real estate. Boosting your skills, leadership, persuasion ability, and your network enriches the quality and meaning of your life at the same time that it enriches your wallet. Why wouldn't you bet on yourself?"--

Foreword By Morgan Housel Psychology and the Secret to Investing Success In The Laws of Wealth, psychologist and behavioral finance expert Daniel Crosby offers an accessible and applied take on a discipline that has long tended toward theory at the expense of the practical. Readers are treated to real, actionable guidance as the promise of behavioral finance is realized and practical applications for everyday investors are delivered. Crosby presents a framework of timeless principles for managing your behavior and your investing process. He begins by outlining 10 rules that are the hallmarks of good investor behavior, including ‘Forecasting is for Weathermen’ and ‘If You’re Excited, It’s Probably a Bad Idea’. He then goes on to introduce a unique new classification of behavioral investment risk that will enable investors and academics alike to understand behavioral risk in a coherent and comprehensive manner. The Laws of Wealth is a finance classic and a must-read for those interested in deepening their understanding of how psychology impacts financial decision-making. “Should be read by all those new to investing.” JIM O'SHAUGHNESSY, International Bestselling Author “Don’t let your mind ruin your investing outcomes.” LOUANN LOFTON, The Motley Fool “Step away from CNBC and into financial therapy!” MEREDITH A. JONES, Author, Women of The Street

The End of Modern Portfolio Theory Behavioral Investment Management proves what many have been thinking since the global economic downturn: Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) is no longer a viable portfolio management strategy. Inherently flawed and based largely on ideology, MPT can not be relied upon in modern markets. Behavioral Investment Management offers a new approach-one addresses certain realities that MPT ignores, including the fact that emotions play a major role in investing. The authors lay out new standards reflecting behavioral finance and dynamic asset allocation, then explain how to apply these standards to your current portfolio construction efforts. They explain how to move away from the idealized, black-and-white world of MPT and into the real world of investing--placing heavy emphasis on the importance of mastering emotions. Behavioral Investment Management provides a portfolio-management standard for an investing world in disarray. PART 1- The Current Paradigm: MPT (Modern Portfolio Theory); Chapter 1: Modern Portfolio Theory as it Stands; Chapter 2: Challenges to MPT: Theoretical-the assumptions are not thus; Chapter 3: Challenges to MPT: Empirical-the world is not thus; Chapter 4: Challenges to MPT: Behavioural-people are not thus; Chapter 5: Describing the Overall Framework: Investors and Investments; PART 2- Amending MPT: Getting to BMPT; Chapter 1:Investors-The Rational Investor; Chapter 2: Investments-Extracting Value from the long-term; Chapter 3: Investments-Extracting Value from the short-term; Chapter 4: bringing it together, the new BMPT paradigm; PART 3- Emotional Insurance: Sticking with the Journey; Chapter 1: Investors- the emotional investor; Chapter 2: Investments- Constraining the rational portfolio; PART 4- Practical Implications; Chapter 1: The BMPT and Wealth Management; Chapter 2: The BMPT and the Pension Industry; Chapter 3: The BMPT and Asset Managemen

Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors—-both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities—-seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities—-both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks—-vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors.

This book is essential in understanding, investing and risk managing the holy grail of investments - structured products. The book begins by introducing structured products by way of a basic guide so that readers will be able to understand a payoff graphic, read a termsheet or assess a payoff formula, before moving on to the key asset classes and their peculiarities. Readers will then move on to the more advanced subjects such as structured products construction and behaviour during their lifetime. It also explains how to avoid important pitfalls in products across all asset classes, pitfalls that have led to huge losses over recent years, including detailed coverage of counterparty risk, the fall of Lehman Brothers and other key aspects of the financial crisis related to structured products. The second part of the book presents an original approach to implementing structured products in a portfolio. Key features include: A comprehensive list of factors an investor needs to take into consideration before investing. This makes it a great help to any buyer of structured products; Unbiased advice on product investments across several asset classes: equities, fixed income, foreign exchange and commodities; Guidance on how to implement structured products in a portfolio context; A comprehensive questionnaire that will help investors to define their own investment preferences, allowing for a greater precision when facing investment decisions; An original approach determining the typical distribution of returns for major product types, essential for product classification and optimal portfolio implementation purposes; Written in a fresh, clear and understandable style, with many figures illustrating the products and very little mathematics. This book will enable you to better comprehend the use of structured products in everyday banking, quickly analyzing a product, assessing which of your clients it suits, and recognizing its major pitfalls. You will be able to see the added value versus the cost of a product and if the payoff is compatible with the market expectations.

Financial economics is a fascinating topic where ideas from economics, mathematics and, most recently, psychology are combined to understand financial markets. This book gives a concise introduction into this field and includes for the first time recent results from behavioral finance that help to understand many puzzles in traditional finance. The book is tailor made for master and PhD students and includes tests and exercises that enable the students to keep track of their progress. Parts of the book can also be used on a bachelor level. Researchers will find it particularly useful as a source for recent results in behavioral finance and decision theory.