Beyond Greed and Fear


Book Description

Even the best Wall Street investors make mistakes. No matter how savvy or experienced, all financial practitioners eventually let bias, overconfidence, and emotion cloud their judgement and misguide their actions. Yet most financial decision-making models fail to factor in these fundamentals of human nature. In Beyond Greed and Fear, the most authoritative guide to what really influences the decision-making process, Hersh Shefrin uses the latest psychological research to help us understand the human behavior that guides stock selection, financial services, and corporate financial strategy. Shefrin argues that financial practitioners must acknowledge and understand behavioral finance--the application of psychology to financial behavior--in order to avoid many of the investment pitfalls caused by human error. Through colorful, often humorous real-world examples, Shefrin points out the common but costly mistakes that money managers, security analysts, financial planners, investment bankers, and corporate leaders make, so that readers gain valuable insights into their own financial decisions and those of their employees, asset managers, and advisors. According to Shefrin, the financial community ignores the psychology of investing at its own peril. Beyond Greed and Fear illuminates behavioral finance for today's investor. It will help practitioners to recognize--and avoid--bias and errors in their decisions, and to modify and improve their overall investment strategies.




Navigating the Factor Zoo


Book Description

Bridging the gap between theoretical asset pricing and industry practices in factors and factor investing, Zhang et al. provides a comprehensive treatment of factors, along with industry insights on practical factor development. Chapters cover a wide array of topics, including the foundations of quantamentals, the intricacies of market beta, the significance of statistical moments, the principles of technical analysis, and the impact of market microstructure and liquidity on trading. Furthermore, it delves into the complexities of tail risk and behavioral finance, revealing how psychological factors affect market dynamics. The discussion extends to the sophisticated use of option trading data for predictive insights and the critical differentiation between outcome uncertainty and distribution uncertainty in financial decision-making. A standout feature of the book is its examination of machine learning's role in factor investing, detailing how it transforms data preprocessing, factor discovery, and model construction. Overall, this book provides a holistic view of contemporary financial markets, highlighting the challenges and opportunities in harnessing alternative data and machine learning to develop robust investment strategies. This book would appeal to investment management professionals and trainees. It will also be of use to graduate and upper undergraduate students in quantitative finance, factor investing, asset management and/or trading.




The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report


Book Description

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.




Glimpses of Indian Economic Policy


Book Description

This is a biographical account of I.G. Patel's views on the evolution of Indian economic policy over the past five decades. His discussion of events in modern India's economic history are highly relevant for understanding contemporary policy issues that are often hotly debated.




Exchange Rate Economics


Book Description

''In summary, the book is valuable as a textbook both at the advanced undergraduate level and at the graduate level. It is also very useful for the economist who wants to be brought up-to-date on theoretical and empirical research on exchange rate behaviour.'' ""Journal of International Economics""




Tail Risk Killers: How Math, Indeterminacy, and Hubris Distort Markets


Book Description

Reshape your investing strategy for an increasingly uncertain world “An engrossing, fast-paced, terrific read for anyone interested in the financial imbalances due to too much reliance on math and too little respect for indeterminacy.” —Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge.com The world does not unfold according to a fixed set of rules. It is a dynamical system whose evolution looks like a bell curve with fat “tails.” The same is true of financial markets. However, every day we rely on the certainty and precision of mathematical strategies that assume the contrary to control and grow wealth in markets. Tail Risk Killers shows you how the rigidity of model-based thinking has led to the fragility of today’s global financial marketplace, and it explains how to use adaptive trading strategies to mitigate risk in impending market conditions. Risk management veteran Jeff McGinn pokes holes in prevalent assumptions about how financial markets act that tend to underestimate the likelihood of occurrence of extreme events. Through clear, conversational writing, real-world anecdotes, and easy-tofollow formulas, he provides a glimpse into the way tomorrow’s successful traders are viewing financial markets—with an eye for probability distributions. While illustrating how to protect your assets from tail risk, he shows you how to: Implement the six axioms for risk management Prepare for the unintended consequences of central banks suppressing tail risk Identify and avoid the dark risks hidden in today’s derivative-laden financial system Anticipate the fate of credit default swaps that may not face extinction McGinn argues that the intervention of central banks has robbed global markets of their opportunities to adapt, but this highly relevant book shows you that it is not too late to adapt your portfolio to survive the extreme events that happen more often than popular financial models suggest. Tail Risk Killers helps you discover useful information and processes beyond the focus of industry standards, helps you connect the dots of evolving trading strategies and time your next trade for maximum profitability.




The Globalization Paradox


Book Description

For a century, economists have driven forward the cause of globalization in financial institutions, labour markets, and trade. Yet there have been consistent warning signs that a global economy and free trade might not always be advantageous. Where are the pressure points? What could be done about them? Dani Rodrik examines the back-story from its seventeenth-century origins through the milestones of the gold standard, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Washington Consensus, to the present day. Although economic globalization has enabled unprecedented levels of prosperity in advanced countries and has been a boon to hundreds of millions of poor workers in China and elsewhere in Asia, it is a concept that rests on shaky pillars, he contends. Its long-term sustainability is not a given. The heart of Rodrik’s argument is a fundamental 'trilemma': that we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. Give too much power to governments, and you have protectionism. Give markets too much freedom, and you have an unstable world economy with little social and political support from those it is supposed to help. Rodrik argues for smart globalization, not maximum globalization.




Global Trends


Book Description

This edition of Global Trends revolves around a core argument about how the changing nature of power is increasing stress both within countries and between countries, and bearing on vexing transnational issues. The main section lays out the key trends, explores their implications, and offers up three scenarios to help readers imagine how different choices and developments could play out in very different ways over the next several decades. Two annexes lay out more detail. The first lays out five-year forecasts for each region of the world. The second provides more context on the key global trends in train.




Making Globalization Work


Book Description

Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz focuses on policies that truly work and offers fresh, new thinking about the questions that shape the globalization debate.