This compelling book examines the price-based revolution in investing, showing how research over recent decades has reinvented technical analysis. The authors discuss the major groups of price-based strategies, considering their theoretical motivation, individual and combined implementation, and back-tested results when applied to investment across country stock markets. Containing a comprehensive sample of performance data, taken from 24 major developed markets around the world and ranging over the last 25 years, the authors construct practical portfolios and display their performance-ensuring the book is not only academically rigorous, but practically applicable too. This is a highly useful volume that will be of relevance to researchers and students working in the field of price-based investing, as well as individual investors, fund pickers, market analysts, fund managers, pension fund consultants, hedge fund portfolio managers, endowment chief investment officers, futures traders, and family office investors.

This book provides a preliminary attempt to understand the impact investors' preferences and characteristics. It offers an empirical insight of the main features characterizing social risk of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) and explores the correlation existing between social risk and financial return. It assesses case studies of social impact investment architectures and their legal and operational limits. It also analyzes new trends in social impact measurement, focusing on the Spanish and Swedish experiences. The book concludes with a road map of priorities and policy strategy for social impact investments development.

This book, unique in its composition, reviews the academic empirical literature on how CDSs actually work in practice, including during distressed times of market crises. It also discusses the mechanics of single-name and index CDSs, the theoretical costs and benefits of CDSs, as well as comprehensively summarizes the empirical evidence on important aspects of these instruments of risk transfer. Full-time academics, researchers at financial institutions, and students will benefit from the dispassionate and comprehensive summary of the academic literature; they can read this book instead of identifying, collecting, and reading the hundreds of academic articles on the important subject of credit risk transfer using derivatives and benefit from the synthesis of the literature provided.

This book explores contemporary issues and trends facing Islamic banks, businesses and economies as presented at the International Conference of Islamic Economics, Banking and Finance. The authors leverage current empirical research and statistics to provide unique and fresh perspectives on the changing world of Islamic finance. They focus specifically on to the implementation of Islamic financial instruments and services in global capital markets and how their success can be evaluated. Chapters feature case studies from all over the world including examples from Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the United Kingdom, to name a few. The breadth and immediacy of the research presented by the authors will appeal to practitioners and scholars alike. The global outlook and rich data-based approach adopted in this book guarantee that it is a timely and valuable addition to the field of Islamic finance.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has soared and multinational enterprises (MNEs) have grown in numbers and complexity as globalization has intensified. This volume takes stock of important new issues relating to FDI and MNEs in a changing world. Contributors are distinguished international business scholars who have written specifically for the book in their areas of expertise. The volume focuses on four key areas: How do managers and firms make internationalization decisions? How does the national origin of MNEs affect their competitive advantages and strategies, particularly those spawned by emerging markets? How is the scope of MNEs changing, in terms of what gets done inside and outside the firm, product vs. geographic diversification, manufacturing vs. services, and the pace of internationalization? And finally, what can or should governments do to harness MNEs for the greater good? In each area, authors propose interesting and important questions for further research. The volume is a Festschrift to Yair Aharoni of Tel Aviv University, whose pioneering research, including the seminal book, The Foreign Investment Decision Process (1966), helped launch the systematic study of FDI and MNEs almost fifty years ago.

Institutions now dominate trading in equities around the world. Mutual funds are the most prominent, and doubly important as custodians of retirement savings. Despite this, there is no comprehensive description of fund manager behaviour, much less a matching theory. This is troubling because one of the most economically significant puzzles in finance is why experienced, well-resourced fund managers cannot outperform the market. Applied Investment Theory: How Equity Markets Behave, and Why brings together academic research, empirical evidence and real market experience to provide new insights into equity markets and their behaviours. The book draws upon the author's rich industry experience and academic research, plus over 40 interviews with fund managers on three continents and across different markets. The result is an innovative model that explains the puzzle of poor performance by mutual funds in terms of structural features of markets, the managed investment industry, and the conduct of fund managers. This book provides a fully integrated depiction of what markets and investors do, and why - insights that will resonate with the needs of investors, wealth managers and industry regulators. It is fully documented, but free of jargon and arcane math, and provides a grounded theory that is relevant to anyone who wants to pierce the opacity of mutual fund operations. Applied Investment Theory sets out a new paradigm in investment that is at the forefront of what should be an industrial-scale development of new finance theory following two decades of almost back-to-back financial crises.

This book analyzes the legal system for the protection of retail investors under the European Union law of investment services. It identifies the regulatory leitmotiv driving the EU lawmaker and ascertains whether and to what extent such a system is self-sufficient, using a set of EU-made and EU-enforced rules that is essentially different and autonomous from the domestic legal orders. In this regard, the book takes a double perspective: comparative and intra-firm. Given the federal dimension of the US legal system and, thus, the "role-model" it plays vis-a-vis the EU, the book compares the two systems. To fully highlight the existing gaps and measure how self-sufficient the EU system is against its American counterpart, the Union/Federal level as such is analyzed - i.e., detached from the national (in EU terms) and State (in US terms) level. Regulating Investor Protection under EU Law also showcases the unique intra-firm perspective from a European investment firm and analyzes how EU-produced public-law rules become a set of compliance requirements for investment services providers. This "within-the-firm" angle gauges the self-sufficiency of the EU system of retail investor protection from the standpoint of an EU-regulated entity. The book is intended for both compliance professionals and academic scholars interested in this topic while also including illustrative sections intended to provide a broader regulatory view for less-experienced readers.

Highlighting an important emerging trend in FDI to Africa, this book consists of important contributions focusing on an increase in trade and investment between African countries. An area that until now has received little attention, this volume aims to define the key issues and explores the challenges and outcomes that have characterized Africa-to-Africa internationalization, providing guidance on directions for future research. Africa-to-Africa Internationalization includes both conceptual and empirical contributions, illustrating the practical issues in intra-African trade and investment. Providing readers with a deep sense of the realities and challenges of cross-border investments within the region, the cases included in the book are useful pedagogical materials for faculty members interested in teaching international business in the African context.

Thinking of launching your own hedge fund? Want to learn more about the different steps involved in setting up and scaling a hedge fund? Want to understand what are the global best practices in order to grow your existing hedge fund and attract institutional investors? This book is the first hands-on publication to set out in concrete and practical terms the various steps and considerations necessary to successfully launch and manage a hedge fund in Asia, with a particular focus on Hong Kong and Singapore. Whilst most other hedge fund books cover the investment side of the hedge fund business, this book specifically provides in-depth insights into the crucial - and often misunderstood - non-investment aspects involved in launching a hedge fund business.It places particular focus on the legal, regulatory, fund structuring, tax, governance, capital raising, fund terms, budgeting, talent, office space, technology, operational and service provider selection considerations, from the pre-launch phase to the expansion and institutionalisation of the business. It is written for: any individual or team aiming to launch a hedge fund and seeking practical and experienced guidance; any existing hedge fund manager looking to grow and attract institutional-quality capital and investors; any fund manager or other industry participant globally intending to set up a presence in Asia any academic looking to learn more about the practical aspects of the hedge fund industry any student hoping to discover more about the hedge fund industry as a career choice.

This book offers 14 contributions that examine key questions in bank decision-taking,constitution of confidence in banks and risk management practices from Early Modernity to the twentieth century. It explores how the various mechanisms of bank decision taking changed over time. Chapters also analyse the types of risk management techniques used, the contributory factors to the constitution of confidence and the methods that banking historians can use to analyse and describe bankers risk management and decision taking - from system theory to behavioural finance, new institutional economics to praxeology and convention theory to network analysis. The different methodological approaches are put to the test in case studies based on archive material from four hundred years of banking in order to connect banking history more closely to political and cultural history.

Learn to understand and implement the latest machine learning innovations to improve your investment performance Machine learning (ML) is changing virtually every aspect of our lives. Today, ML algorithms accomplish tasks that - until recently - only expert humans could perform. And finance is ripe for disruptive innovations that will transform how the following generations understand money and invest. In the book, readers will learn how to: Structure big data in a way that is amenable to ML algorithms Conduct research with ML algorithms on big data Use supercomputing methods and back test their discoveries while avoiding false positives Advances in Financial Machine Learning addresses real life problems faced by practitioners every day, and explains scientifically sound solutions using math, supported by code and examples. Readers become active users who can test the proposed solutions in their individual setting. Written by a recognized expert and portfolio manager, this book will equip investment professionals with the groundbreaking tools needed to succeed in modern finance.

This book, which is written from a practitioner's perspective, fills the void by providing the reader with a toolkit and guiding principles to manage money when markets are in turmoil. It features ten case studies beginning with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system through the current situation in which investors are assessing whether China could become the next bubble. Each chapter discusses how the respective crisis or bubble unfolded at the time, the way policymakers and markets responded, and the optimal strategy for positioning portfolios. The goal is to share these experiences and the lessons from them, so investors will be better prepared for future shocks. The opening chapter explores whether there are common patterns in movements of interest rates and exchange rates that investors can exploit. A conceptual framework is presented that helps explain why this is the case for traditional currency crises, but less so for asset bubbles. The concluding chapter ties the episodes together and considers how the nature of financial crises has evolved since the collapse of Bretton Woods. We cite factors that make it difficult for policymakers and investors to detect problems in advance of an asset bubble. The good news is investors get a second chance to outperform when markets are over-sold; however, they need to formulate a strategy to limit the damage during the sell-off phase and to capitalize on the eventual recovery.

This book analyses the connections between the banking industry in Europe and the companies it finances. Ferretti specifically studies how these bonds have evolved over time and questions whether now is the time for a change in the relationship's dynamics. Chapters discuss the role of bank lending in firms' financing during the recent financial crisis, as well as issues in credit risk management. The discussion also examines regulatory requirements impacting banks and firms (Basel III) and how they intersect with banks' internal purposes. Moreover, the book explores how the financial crisis has impacted the relationship between banks and businesses, and seeks to identify the strengths and weaknesses inherent to it. Through this timely discussion, Ferretti looks to the future of the relationship between banks and non-financial organizations to see how they can be revitalised, adapted and reimagined in a post-crisis economy.

This edited volume brings together contributions from experts on a range of food security issues, and examines them through a number of case studies. A Millennium Development goal and important policy concern, food security is experiencing renewed interest due to globalisation, which has led to population affluence, changing consumption, and production and trade patterns. The authors discuss how globalisation brings a new dimension to the discussion on public policy on food security, and consider the extent to which Global Value Chains (GVCs) dominate trade, investment and international agricultural markets. Food Security and Sustainability therefore sheds new light on the nexus of food security and globalization, as well as its implications for investment and financing in the agro-food sector. The volume draws on papers presented at the inaugural Workshop of the Mediterranean Center for Food Security and Sustainable Growth (MED-SEC), an international network of academics focusing on issues of development, sustainability and food security.

This book provides insight into the multi-dimensional process of coordinating and supervising mutual funds. This book focuses on the management of mutual funds within financial markets, with an emphasis on how corporate governance and benchmarking influence asset and portfolio management. Chapters explore four important aspects of this process in particular detail: corporate governance, benchmarking, asset management and portfolio management. The author shows that the mutual fund industry provides wider access to payment systems and to a savings safety-net that operates similarly to deposit insurance. Furthermore, he demonstrates that the Indian government's focus is on establishing the right of every person to have access to affordable basic financial services offered by banks and non-banks.

This book presents selected papers on the factors that serve to influence an individual's capacity in financial decision-making. Initial chapters provide an overview of the cognitive factors affecting financial decisions and suggest a link between limited cognitive capacity and the need for financial education. The book then expands on these cognitive limitations to explore the tendency for overconfidence in decision-making and the interplay between rational and irrational factors. Later contributions show how credit card companies benefit from limitations in consumer financial literacy, how gender and cognition intersect to play an important role in financial decision-making, and how to improve financial capacity through financial literacy and education campaigns, including those addressing developed marketplaces. This comprehensive collection of papers will be of value to all readers who seek to better understand the multi-factorial and complex nature of personal financial management in today's economic climate.

This book presents a series of contributions on key issues in the decision-making behind the management of financial assets. It provides insight into topics such as quantitative and traditional portfolio construction, performance clustering and incentives in the UK pension fund industry, pension fund governance, indexation, and tracking errors. Markets covered include major European markets, equities, and emerging markets of South-East and Central Asia.

This book provides insight into current research topics in finance and banking in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In this volume, authors present empirical research on liquidity risk discussed in the context of Basel III and its implications. Chapters also investigate topics such as bank efficiency and new bank business models from a business diversification perspective, the effects on financial exclusion and how liquidity mismatches are related with the bank business model. This book will be of value to those with an interest in how Basel III has had a tangible impact upon banking processes, particularly with regard to maintaining liquidity, and the latest research in financial business models.

Praise for The Poker Face of Wall Street

"Playing high-level poker, trading options, marketing bonds, and being a professor of finance--Aaron Brown has done them all."
--Edward O. Thorp, author of Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One and Beat the Market: A Scientific Stock Market System

"The first attempt to help individual investors profit from a better understanding of the art of gambling. There may be few individuals better suited to take on such a controversial argument with such authority."
--Stephen Schurr, Financial Times

"Brown's model is instantly graspable, but contrary to the conventional wisdom on both economics and gambling."
--Publishers Weekly

"The author provides investment professionals an immensely valuable benefit by challenging them to consider familiar issues from new angles. His book is not only entertaining, but also full of provocative ideas that merit lengthy and serious engagement."
--Martin Fridson, Financial Analysts Journal

"How to be a poker pro and much more . . . a delightful journey through risk concepts with a Wall Street derivatives trader. A great read and a good manual for understanding risk."
--Dr. William T. Ziemba, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

This book takes up unique agent-based approaches to solving problems related to stock and their derivative markets. Toward this end, the authors have worked for more than 15 years on the development of an artificial market simulator called U-Mart for use as a research and educational tool. A noteworthy feature of the U-Mart simulator compared to other artificial market simulators is that U-Mart is an ultra-realistic artificial stock and their derivative market simulator. For example, it can simulate "arrowhead," a next-generation trading system used in the Tokyo Stock Exchange and other major markets, as it takes into consideration the institutional design of the entire market. Another interesting feature of the U-Mart simulator is that it permits both human and computer programs to participate simultaneously as traders in the artificial market. In this book, first the details of U-Mart are explained, enabling readers to install and run the simulator on their computers for research and educational purposes. The simulator thus can be used for gaming simulation of the artificial market and even for users as agents to implement their own trading strategies for agent-based simulation (ABS).The book also presents selected research cases using the U-Mart simulator. Here, topics include automated acquisition of trading strategy using artificial intelligence techniques, evaluation of a market maker system to treat thin markets such as those for small and regional businesses, systemic risk analysis of the financial market considering institutional design of the market, and analysis of how humans behave and learn in gaming simulation. New perspectives on artificial market research are provided, and the power, potential, and challenge of ABS are discussed. As explained in this important work, ABS is considered to be an effective tool as the third approach of social science, an alternative to traditional literary and mathematical approaches.

This book analyses investment management policies for institutional investors. It is composed of four parts. The first one analyses the various types of institutional investors, institutions which, with different objectives, professionally manage portfolios of financial and real assets on behalf of a wide variety of individuals. This part goes on with an in-depth analysis of the economic, technical and regulatory characteristics of the different types of investment funds and of other types of asset management products, which have a high rate of substitutability with investment funds and represent their natural competitors. The second part of the book identifies and investigates the stages of the investment portfolio management. Given the importance of strategic asset allocation in explaining the ex post performance of any type of investment portfolio, this part provides an in-depth analysis of asset allocation methods, illustrating the different theoretical and operational solutions available to institutional investors. The third part describes performance assessment, its breakdown and risk control, with an in-depth examination of performance evaluation techniques, returns-based style analysis approaches, and performance attribution models. Finally, the fourth part deals with the subject of diversification into alternative asset classes, identifying the common characteristics and their possible role within the framework of investment management policies. This part analyses hedge funds, private equity, real estate, commodities, and currency overlay techniques.

A CLASSIC REVISITED—AND JUST IN TIME

The most popular and respected guide to every facet of the stock market has now been thoroughly updated to reflect the dramatic shifts that have taken place over the past several years. This Wall Street classic continues to provide the most current and comprehensive coverage of the market's participants, principles, and practices.

In easy-to-follow, straightforward terms, The Stock Market, 7th Edition shows you how the market works. Beginning with the basics, it takes you from the market's history and products to its basic structure and operation, to the actual techniques used by shareholders and traders. Based on the authors' more than 70 years' combined experience in the field of finance, it shows you how to buy stocks, transact a buy order, and master the often tricky techniques of money management, pyramiding, options, and much more. Every topic is examined from both a broad top-down perspective and with step-by-step guidance.

Packed with clear definitions, cutting-edge strategies, and helpful examples, this new edition provides in-depth information on topics that have changed how stocks perform, as well as how they should be handled. In addition to the globalization of the securities business, regulatory changes, program trading, and advances in online services, you'll find details on key developments in several important areas, including the derivatives market, index fund investing, and technical and fundamental analysis.

Covering everything from municipal securities and maintenance calls to serial bonds and NASDAQ, this exhaustive reference is invaluable for understanding stock market fundamentals. Now more than ever, it is the one guide every market participant—whether individual investor, broker, or financial advisor—should own.

Averages

• Bearer Bonds
• Breakpoints
• Bull and Bear Spreads Common Stock
• Covered Options
• Derivatives
• Dollar Averaging
• Excess Equity
• Exempt Securities
• Flash Prices
• Hedging
• Municipal Securities
• New York Stock Exchange
• Price-Earnings Ratio
• Puts and Calls
• Reverse Splits
• Rolling Over
• Stock Splits Straddles
• Transfer Agents
• Zero Coupon Bonds.

Praise for previous editions of The Stock Market.

"This is a terrific primer on the industry. The authors have created an easy-to-understand and thorough update of this investment classic."—Michael Holland, Vice Chairman, Oppenheimer & Co., Inc.

"The classic every investor who has ever read a book grew up on . . . for both the beginner and the experienced professional alike, this [new] edition is a marvelous reference tool. A must for every investment library."—Stock Market Magazine.

This book analyzes Africa's unprecedented economic growth, the state of its financial sector, and the varied opportunities for Islamic finance investors. It considers the role - potential and realized - of Islamic finance in fostering financial inclusion in areas such as banking, microfinance, capital market development, insurance, and private equity business. The book stresses that investing in Africa through Islamic finance will open new markets, ensure higher profit margins, diversify risk, and create business competition; and that these changes that will provide financial products that can satisfying the desires and beliefs of all consumers and unlock the real potential of the continent's financial system. The book also looks into the rise of international interest in Africa and concludes by scrutinizing the challenges impeding further economic growth, as well as the specific barriers that need to be addressed in order to promote the implementation of Islamic finance. Investors, policymakers, and academics ready to confront these challenges will find much of value in this book.

Most family business owners and wealth creators share an important vision: perpetuating family and wealth for many generations to come. To ensure wealth continuity, many families put into place various structures, plans, and processes, including estate plans (which may include multiple trusts), ownership succession plans, governance structures/strategies, and others. These sometimes-elaborate plans are aimed at preserving family wealth. In reality, for many families, they don't. In fact, it has been estimated that a majority of estate plans in place fail, largely as a result of family conflict or communication problems. Author David Lansky reveals here that too many one-size-fits-all and elaborate continuity plans fail to take into account the idiosyncratic family factors that can interfere with continuity planning. Lansky details further how building the right foundation will help families implement the best continuity plans. Addressing that foundation effectively includes understanding the building blocks that make it up, assessing their strengths, and developing strategies to improve them. The specific building blocks include:* Learning Capacity * Familyness * Safe Communication Culture * Commitment to Personal Development* Effective Leadership of Change While richly informative, this book is not intended as a training manual, but rather as a starting point for important ideas and conversations. In fact, the goal of this book is to help families consider several related factors that go into a foundation for continuity, and to build more effective continuity plans and strategies based on their assessments.

The book addresses the truly interdisciplinary and highly controversial subject of international financial regulation and supervision, which has been at the center of academic, political, and public attention since the start of the current economic and financial crisis. Drawing on international financial regulatory and supervisory experience and in line with the European Monetary Union's gradual transformation into a Genuine Economic and Monetary Union, it proposes the transformation of the European financial supervisory framework into a hybrid twin-peaks model to create the previously missing necessary legal foundation for the adoption of the so-called Group Support Regime (GSR). The latter is a relatively simple and transparent capital management tool for (re)insurance groups operating in a parent-subsidiary structure proposed by the European Commission under the new Solvency II insurance supervisory framework, which despite lengthy consideration was eventually rejected by Member States.