Investing Through the Looking Glass

Investing Through the Looking Glass
Author: Tim Price
Publisher: Harriman House Limited
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2016-11-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0857195379

The investment markets have never been more dangerous. Interest rates are at all-time lows; the sanctity of cash deposits is under threat; government bonds are expensive and offer ultra-low or negative yields; equity markets are largely detached from reality after years of loose monetary policy. Investors need to calibrate themselves to the realities of this extraordinary new environment so that they can protect their wealth and, ideally, prosper. In Investing Through the Looking Glass, longstanding portfolio manager and investment columnist Tim Price identifies and shatters a number of investment myths and misconceptions. He questions whether stock markets inevitably rise over the longer term, whether bonds continue to be relevant as a failsafe low-risk asset, whether professional fund managers represent "smart money", and much more besides. But this is not just a counsel of despair. Having identified the problems besetting today's investor, the focus then moves on to practical guidance to help investors preserve and grow their capital in this age of inflationary and deflationary uncertainty. Tim Price provides ideas on how to find attractive investments in distorted equity markets, on what might be the best-kept secret in finance, and how best to insure portfolios in an environment of heightened systemic risk. Investing Through the Looking Glass presents a route map for navigating one of the most challenging financial environments that anyone has ever seen. For the sake of your wealth, can you afford not to read it?

Conscious Investing

Conscious Investing
Author: Christin ter Braak-Forstinger
Publisher: Harriman House Limited
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2017-10-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0857196189

Excess Returns

Excess Returns
Author: Frederik Vanhaverbeke
Publisher: Harriman House Limited
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2014-06-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0857194119

An analysis of the investment approach of the world's top investors, showing how to achieve market-beating returns It is possible to beat the market. Taking this as a starting point, Excess Returns sets out to explore how exactly the most famous investors in the world have done it, year after year, sometimes by huge margins. Excess Returns is not a superficial survey of what investors have said about what they do. Rather, Frederik Vanhaverbeke applies a forensic analysis to hundreds of books, articles, letters and speeches made by dozens of top investors over the last century and synthesises his findings into a definitive blueprint of how exactly these investment legends have gone about their work. Among the legends whose work has been studied are Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Anthony Bolton, Peter Lynch, Charles Munger, Joel Greenblatt, Seth Klarman, David Einhorn, Daniel Loeb, Lou Simpson, Prem Watsa and many more. Among the revealing insights, you will learn of the striking similarities in the craft of great investors, crucial subtleties in their methods that are ignored by many, and the unconscious errors investors commonly make and how these are counter to successful investing. Special attention is given to two often overlooked areas: effective investment philosophy and investment intelligence. The investing essentials covered include: • Finding bargain shares • Making a quantitative and qualitative business analysis • Valuation methods • Investing throughout the business cycle • Timing buy and sell decisions • And much, much more! Excess Returns is full of timeless and practical insights, presented in a unique style, to help investors focus on the most promising opportunities and lead the way to beating the market.

How to Pick Quality Shares

How to Pick Quality Shares
Author: Phil Oakley
Publisher: Harriman House Limited
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2017-05-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0857196073

How To Pick Quality Shares provides a three-step process for analysing company financial information to find good investments. The three steps boil down to finding quality companies, avoiding dangerous or risky companies, and not paying too much for companies’ shares. Applying the in-depth techniques described here will give investors a better understanding of companies, and an edge over other investors, including professional investors and analysts. Phil Oakley, an experienced investment analyst and private investor, guides the reader step-by-step through these three stages: 1. For the first step, he shows how to identify the kind of high-quality companies that are capable of being profitable investments over the long term. Important themes are how much a company earns on the money it invests, reliable measures of profit and the importance of cash flow. 2. Next, he shows how to spot the dangers and risks that could lead to a company being a bad investment. Here the focus is on how to analyse debt, in particular hidden debt and pension fund deficits. 3. Lastly, he shows how to value a company’s shares and determine what is a reasonable price to pay to invest in that company. Phil shows why some common shortcuts to valuing shares are not very useful and how to use cash profits to value shares more reliably. At each stage, Phil explains where the investor needs to look in company financial statements to get the information they need and how to analyse this information. Illustrative examples of analysis of real company financial statements are used throughout. If you have a company’s latest annual report and its current share price you have all the information you need to be a successful investor. How To Pick Quality Shares shows you how.

The Average is Always Wrong

The Average is Always Wrong
Author: Ian Shepherd
Publisher: Harriman House Limited
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0857198130

Everywhere you look people are talking about data. Buzzwords abound – ‘data science’, ‘machine learning’, ‘artificial intelligence’. But what does any of it really mean, and most importantly what does it mean for your business? Long-established businesses in many industries find themselves competing with new entrants built entirely on data and analytics. This ground-breaking new book levels the playing field in dramatic fashion. The Average is Always Wrong is a completely pragmatic and hands-on guide to harnessing data to transform your business for the better. Experienced CEO and CMO Ian Shepherd takes you behind the jargon and puts together a powerful change programme anyone can enact in their business right now, to reap the rewards of simple but sophisticated uses of data. Filled with practical examples and case studies, readers will come away with a powerful understanding of the real value of data and the analytical techniques that can drive profit growth.

7 MISTAKES EVERY INVESTOR MAKES (AND HOW TO AVOID THEM)

7 MISTAKES EVERY INVESTOR MAKES (AND HOW TO AVOID THEM)
Author: Joachim Klement
Publisher: Harriman House Limited
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0857197711

Every investor makes mistakes. Private or professional, amateur or experienced, there is no exception. And many of these are common mistakes. Whether or not they want to admit it, many investors have committed the same errors. How can you avoid these mistakes? How can you distinguish yourself as an investor and improve your performance? Joachim Klement, research analyst and former Chief Investment Officer with 20 years’ experience in financial markets, has the answers. Seven Mistakes Every Investor Makes (And How To Avoid Them) calls upon years of experience and scientific research to deliver expert insight into the most common mistakes plaguing investors. From there, Klement outlines his personal tools and techniques, developed, refined and successfully implemented over many years in the finance industry, to help avoid and mitigate such mistakes. His ultimate aim: to help you help yourself. The mistakes covered include forecasting, short- and long-term orientation, repeating past errors, confirmation bias, not delegating to experts, and blind trust of traditional assumptions. Seven Mistakes Every Investor Makes (And How to Avoid Them) is a must-have guide for every investor. Packed with scientific research and personal wisdom, this book draws together the most common investing mistakes in order to practically reveal how to overcome and eliminate them. Don’t make another avoidable mistake by missing out on this book.

7 FINANCIAL MODELS FOR ANALYSTS, INVESTORS AND FINANCE PROFESSIONALS

7 FINANCIAL MODELS FOR ANALYSTS, INVESTORS AND FINANCE PROFESSIONALS
Author: Paul Lower
Publisher: Harriman House Limited
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2019-06-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0857195778

Financial models in Excel allow investment analysts and other finance professionals to take the laborious number crunching out of financial analysis and forecasting. Models help them to gain meaningful insights into the way that a business is working and focus attention on areas to improve bottom-line results. They can also be used as powerful tools to test the potential impact of various risks on business performance. In this brand new guide, financial modelling expert Paul Lower presents step-by-step instructions for seven spreadsheet models that will help the user to gain a better understanding of the financial data coming out of a business. These seven models can be used to: 1. Assess how a business is performing on key financial indicators. 2. Produce sales and cost forecasts. 3. Create a cash flow forecast. 4. Understand the impact of product price changes on profitability. 5. Assess potential investment decisions. 6. Check the sensitivity of key financial measures to risk events. 7. Produce a business valuation. The book also includes downloadable spreadsheets of the author’s original Excel models and introductory chapters about best practice when modelling in Excel. With this suite of seven tools, a financial analyst will be equipped to use Excel to achieve a deep understanding of a business and its financial data.

Behavioral Portfolio Management

Behavioral Portfolio Management
Author: C. Thomas Howard
Publisher: Harriman House Limited
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2014-03-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0857193252

The investment industry is on the cusp of a major shift, from Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) to Behavioral Finance, with Behavioral Portfolio Management (BMP) the next step in this transition. BPM focuses on how to harness the price distortions that are driven by emotional crowds and use this to create superior portfolios. Once markets and investing are viewed through the lens of behavior, and portfolios are constructed on this basis, investable opportunities become readily apparent. Mastering your emotions is critical to the process and the insights provided by Tom Howard put investors on the path to achieving this. Forty years of Behavioral Science research presents a clear picture of how individuals make decisions; there are few signs of rationality. Indeed, emotional investors sabotage their own efforts in building long-horizon wealth. When this is combined with the misconception that active management is unable to generate superior returns, the typical emotional investor leaves hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on the table during their investment lifetimes. Howard moves on to show how industry practice, with its use of the style grid, standard deviation, correlation, maximum drawdown and the Sharpe ratio, has entrenched emotion within investing. The result is that investors construct underperforming, bubble-wrapped portfolios. So if an investor masters their own emotions, they still must challenge the emotionally-based conventional wisdom pervasive throughout the industry. Tom Howard explains how to do this. Attention is then given to measureable and persistent behavioral factors. These provide investors with a new source of information that has the potential to transform how they think about portfolio management and dramatically improve performance. Behavioral factors can be used to select the best stocks, the best active managers, and the best markets in which to invest. Once the transition to behavioral finance is made, the emotional measures of MPT will quickly be forgotten and replaced with rational concepts that allow investors to successfully build long-horizon wealth. If you take portfolio construction seriously, it is essential that you make the next step forward towards Behavioral Portfolio Management.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (Harriman Definitive Edition)

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (Harriman Definitive Edition)
Author: Charles Mackay
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-12-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0857197428

Charles MacKay's groundbreaking examination of a staggering variety of popular delusions, crazes and mass follies is presented here in full with no abridgements. The text concentrates on a wide variety of phenomena which had occurred over the centuries prior to this book's publication in 1841. Mackay begins by examining economic bubbles, such as the infamous Tulipomania, wherein Dutch tulips rocketed in value amid claims they could be substituted for actual currency. As we progress further, the scope of the book broadens into several more exotic fields of mass self-deception. Mackay turns his attention to the witch hunts of the 17th and 18th centuries, the practice of alchemy, the phenomena of haunted houses, the vast and varied practices of fortune telling and the search for the philosopher's stone, to name but a handful of subjects. Today, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds is distinguished as an expansive, well-researched and somewhat eccentric work of social history.