Investment-decisions

My rating has got these origins: Empirical research on Compensation,EVA and CFROI-Fade: A+. Discussion of EVA/CFROI: D-. Terminology: D value for 'Hands-on-valuation': F- Structure: F- Style: F-.

This book does contain interesting empirical research on EVA etc, but it does not offer 'A practical Guide to Implementation' because it does not contain a STAGE-Approach. Its terminology differs from any other book I've read, you must often guess, which formulas the authors used, because they did not have the courtesy to express their formulas. Some formulas are wrong nad their discussion of the 'metrics war' betweenn EVA and CFROI lags 5 years behind reality. They attack old methods of CFROI,which Boston Consulting and Holt Value published 5 (!) years ago. They fail to know, that BCG have refined CVA/CFROI and that BAYER. Lufthansa,and VEBA have implemented these refined CFROI-techniques,which are way better, than the old methods, which the book attacks.

Moreover, this book is terrible to read due to a lack of structure, the absence of clear definitions, the lack of formulas, a wordy style,which exhausts your nerves, and many value judgements....

The topics are covered in enough detail to answer all those small questions I have. In addition, it's the only book I've found that leads the reader through the details of building a simple prepayment model. There are some advanced questions in the book for more mathematically inclined readers.

The book itself explains things for the lay-person in non-complicated language. Sections on stocks, bonds and high level elementary strategies are also explained. Enough to get you started. What is best about this book is that you can read this book, buy a newspaper and get started.

Highly recommended. Buy the book.

You can indeed purchase a a photocopied version at the University of Chicago bookstore(Fama uses it as required reading in B432, the finance course he teaches).

John Magee also wrote another book in 1958 named The General Semantics of Wall Street, which is out of print, but can be purchased secondhand at places like www.biliofind.com. The book has nothing to do with actual trading, and deals with the most important subject: the mental aspect of trading, thinking and perceiving the world in an accurate fashion. After 13 years of trading, this old book has earned a place on my recommended reading list.

As a primer on the basic findings of behavioral economics, this book is great -- interesting, well-explained, and much more fun to read than pouring through academic journals. It's quite interesting to see that how we make money decisions is based as much on psychological principles (namely loss aversion, sunk costs and framing of the gain or loss) as on a rational calculation of cost and benefits. Also explained somewhat here are money mistakes that people make not because of emotional tainting of financial decisions but simply because they draw incorrect conclusions from incomplete calculations, such as not correcting for inflation in the housing market, not calculating total interest payments over the terms of different loans, not realizing the power of compound interest.

While it's a great book to explain certain irrational behaviors of your own and to explain a few financial chestnuts such as ignoring the financial pages, this book is not really an investment guide and is thin on suggestions for changing irrational behavior (other than realizing what you are doing will make you less likely to repeat the same mistakes).

I would disagree with some reviewers who suggested that the book is insulting to their financial acumen. While it's true that there are people who have been able to 'beat the market', the authors merely report studies suggesting that most people who choose their own investments under-perform the market, and why this happens (framing of investment decisions, emotional investing, loss aversion, sunk costs, etc.). I think that's important information to have as an investor. If you choose your own investments, you will make smarter decisions by understanding understanding this research.