FIND OPPORTUNITIES IN THE MARKETPLACE TO ACHIEVE FINANCIAL SECURITY. The Courageous Investor Approach will show you how! Easy to Read and Understand Based on Real-World Experience Strategies for Success Visit us at: www.courageousinvestor.com

"Successful Wall Street fund manager retired at age 35 guides investors to use intuitive and creative right-brained processes to complement traditional left-brain financial analysis. Author describes his principles based on spiritual insights and provides professional anecdotes to support his. theories"--Provided by publisher.

Master the most important investing skill of all—DECISION MAKING “De-risking your investments requires knowing that there is much you don’t know.” –David X Martin Risk exists because of one simple fact: Decisions are always based on incomplete information. Therefore, to meet your investment goals over the long term, you must learn to manage the risks associated with a decision-making process that is by nature flawed. Risk and the Smart Investor provides a framework for making such decisions. Avoiding unrealistic promises of completely risk-free investing, world-renowned risk management expert David X Martin familiarizes you with the principles of risk management. Based on Martin’s experience in managing risk at several of the world’s largest financial institutions, this principlebased approach presents a unique perspective that helps you manage the risk in every investment you make. Risk and the Smart Investor provides not only a framework for managing risk in today’s markets, it also prepares you to handle the next financial crisis—which is coming, sooner or later—by separating risk management into four separate processes: Assessment—know where you are, but accept the fact that you cannot know everything The Rules of the Game—determine your appetite for risk, diversify accordingly, demand transparency, and institute checks and balances Decision Making—consider all alternatives, fit your plans into specific time frames, and always have an exit strategy Reevaluation—continually monitor the outcomes of your decisions and learn from your mistakes Praise for Risk and the Smart Investor “Interesting and instructive. A good book for those who want to learn about risk and build this knowledge into their financial decisions.” —John Reed, former CEO, Citigroup “David Martin has produced a popular yet serious post-financial crisis reflection on the fundamentals of risk management as a living process. Rich in experience and wisdom, Risk and the Smart Investor is both a useful handbook brimming with insights, and a moral tale for our times. Simply a must-read for every serious investor, risk manager, and just about everyone else.” —Michael Power, professor, London School of Economics and Political Science “David Martin knows risk and the active investor and his book proves it.” —Jerry Lieberman “This book is like having your own mentor to guide you through risk management decisions.” —William Rhodes, Chairman, Citigroup and Citibank

Living in Southern California, Gary Carmell has become very familiar with tectonic shifts: cataclysmic changes in the earth’s crust that cause earthquakes and tsunamis. Carmell has also experienced numerous tectonic shifts in the economic landscape in his nearly thirty-year investing career. Correctly anticipating economic trends has allowed his real estate investment and management firm, CWS Capital Partners LLC, to grow from assets of $250 million in the late 1980s to over $3 billion today. CWS foresaw the collapse of manufactured housing in the late 1990s and anticipated a massive shift from homeownership to renting, prompting them to reposition aggressively for growth in apartment construction and management. Carmell feels special pride in the results his company’s delivers for its investors, as a result—long-term average annual returns exceed 13 percent—even during the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Navigating turbulent economic markets and experiencing his two-year-old son’s near-fatal stroke has taught Carmell that real success requires not only financial acumen, but also deep reflection. He credits Shakespeare, Hume, and Schopenhauer as his mentors, with more modern sages like Buffett, Soros, and Munger also guiding his actions. In The Philosophical Investor: From Wisdom to Wealth, he shares the insights he has gained along the way in the hope of inspiring a new cadre of critical thinking investors.

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.

Theoretical and corroborating empirical advancements in the area of investment and portfolio management are presented. Economic concepts and statistical tools needed for this course are reviewed.Fama's efficient market theory (EMT) of markets is discussed-where asset prices "fully reflect" all available information, are accurate signals for asset allocation, and stock prices are uncorrelated with the prior period's price change. Markowitz's modern portfolio theory and the relationship between risk and return are examined.Financial statements and the importance of free cash flow are stressed-for stock valuation and portfolio selection.