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 behaviour that guides stock selection, financial services, and corporate financial strategy. Shefrin argues that financial practitioners must acknowledge and understand behavioural finance-the application of psychology to financial behaviour-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.
Review quote:
Hersh Shefrin's book is seeking to make behavioral finance understandable outside the academic community ... Shefrin's book provides us with rich details drawn from the world of investments.... an ideal reference for those who serve the pension and retirement community ... In the academic world, it could be a supplemental reading for undergraduate or MBA investment courses, or it may guide the non-specialist seeking a readable summary of recent literature .. Non-experts looking for a useful reference in the investment realm will certainly want to read this book.
Review quote:
Hersh Shefrin's book is seeking to make behavioral finance understandable outside the academic community ... Shefrin's book provides us with rich details drawn from the world of investments.... an ideal reference for those who serve the pension and retirement community ... In the academic world, it could be a supplemental reading for undergraduate or MBA investment courses, or it may guide the non-specialist seeking a readable summary of recent literature .. Non-experts looking for a useful reference in the investment realm will certainly want to read this book.
This refreshingly iconoclastic book awakens us all to how little we know about financial markets, and how much we have to discover. I particularly enjoyed the reference to the emperor's clothes worn by the mutual fund industry. Shefrin's clear reaffirmation of the fallibility of professional investors will lead even the most impressionable of investors to consider, yet again, the advantages of market indexing strategies.-John Bogle, Founder and Senior Chairman, The Vanguard Group, and author, Common Sense on Mutual Funds