The early 21st century has been a period of extreme fear and greed in the world's financial markets. Vast sums of wealth have been lost by some, but also made by others. Faith in the investment industry is now at its lowest-ever ebb, and the crisis remains far from resolution. "Fear and Greed" aims to prepare investors for the financial challenges and opportunities of the next few years. Having successfully guided his firm's investors through the turmoil since 2007, leading investment manager Nicolas Sarkis draws upon the lessons of history in order to illuminate the way ahead. In particular, Sarkis explores the plight of equities in the developed world since the millennium and considers when they might finally recover, as well as the likely effects of reducing government indebtedness upon markets. He also offers his insights into the outlook for stocks in emerging nations, for gold and for the single European currency. In addition to the prospects for the leading asset classes, "Fear and Greed" examines some of the biggest issues confronting the financial world as a whole.Sarkis focuses on the behaviour of central banks, regulators, and financial wrongdoers, especially in relation to their contribution to the current crisis. In this lively and engaging book, Sarkis offers a clear vision of the coming years and plenty of inspiration for investors.

Securities exchanges play a significant role in macroeconomics. They engage in the allocation process, which assures that savings are allocated to the most profitable investment opportunities. But what are the forces driving the supply side, namely, the services offered by exchanges? It is not just a matter of market microstructure and the rules governing the price discovery. Rather, it embraces a much wider perspective involving the balance of interests of multiple stakeholders, the competitive strategies of exchanges and other platform operators and the impact of regulation.
This book provides an economic analysis of the stock exchange industry. It draws on theories from micro- and industrial economics to provide a detailed analysis of the industry structure, the strategic behaviour of key participants and a methodological framework for assessing the performance of stock exchanges. It provides an overview of the factors driving the consolidation of the industry, and examines the implications of ongoing changes in the regulatory environment. It investigates the functioning of securities exchanges and other trading platforms as firms, assuming an industrial organization perspective and focusing on the competitive behaviour of exchanges, regulation and governance arrangements and their impact on the structure of the industry.

Headed by Bernstein, the quantitative equity and equity derivatives strategies group at Merrill Lynch is noted for their proprietary research on market segmentation and style investing. In this book, he highlights the macroeconomic, microeconomic and expectational factors that can affect equity market segment performance. The first section focuses on the definition and identification of market segments and reviews the major equity market segments that concern today's institutional investors. Part two analyzes the historical result of each segment of style strategy within the context of the economic and expectational framework. Lastly, it describes current issues and problems in equity markets and their implications for pension plan sponsors.

The Success Secrets of a Stock Market Legend. .

Jesse Livermore was a loner, an individualist-and the most successful stock trader who ever lived. Written shortly before his death in 1940, "How to Trade Stocks" offered traders their first account of that famously tight-lipped operator's trading system. Written in Livermore's inimitable, no-nonsense style, it interweaves fascinating autobiographical and historical details with step-by-step guidance on: . . . Reading market and stock behaviors. Analyzing leading sectors. Market timing. Money management. Emotional control. . .

In this new edition of that classic, trader and top Livermore expert Richard Smitten sheds new light on Jesse Livermore's philosophy and methods. Drawing on Livermore's private papers and interviews with his family, Smitten provides priceless insights into the Livermore trading formula, along with tips on how to combine it with contemporary charting techniques. Also included is the Livermore Market Key, the first and still one of the most accurate methods of tracking and recording market patterns . .

In Artificial Intelligence in Finance and Investing, authors Robert Trippi and Jae Lee explain this fascinating new technology in terms that portfolio managers, institutional investors, investment analysis, and information systems professionals can understand. Using real-life examples and a practical approach, this rare and readable volume discusses the entire field of artificial intelligence of relevance to investing, so that readers can realize the benefits and evaluate the features of existing or proposed systems, and ultimately construct their own systems. Topics include using Expert Systems for Asset Allocation, Timing Decisions, Pattern Recognition, and Risk Assessment; overview of Popular Knowledge-Based Systems; construction of Synergistic Rule Bases for Securities Selection; incorporating the Markowitz Portfolio Optimization Model into Knowledge-Based Systems; Bayesian Theory and Fuzzy Logic System Components; Machine Learning in Portfolio Selection and Investment Timing, including Pattern-Based Learning and Fenetic Algorithms; and Neural Network-Based Systems. To illustrate the concepts presented in the book, the authors conclude with a valuable practice session and analysis of a typical knowledge-based system for investment management, K-FOLIO. For those who want to stay on the cutting edge of the "application" revolution, Artificial Intelligence in Finance and Investing offers a pragmatic introduction to the use of knowledge-based systems in securities selection and portfolio management.

This survey of portfolio theory, from its modern origins through more sophisticated, "postmodern" incarnations, evaluates portfolio risk according to the first four moments of any statistical distribution: mean, variance, skewness, and excess kurtosis. In pursuit of financial models that more accurately describe abnormal markets and investor psychology, this book bifurcates beta on either side of mean returns. It then evaluates this traditional risk measure according to its relative volatility and correlation components. After specifying a four-moment capital asset pricing model, this book devotes special attention to measures of market risk in global banking regulation. Despite the deficiencies of modern portfolio theory, contemporary finance continues to rest on mean-variance optimization and the two-moment capital asset pricing model. The term postmodern portfolio theory captures many of the advances in financial learning since the original articulation of modern portfolio theory. A comprehensive approach to financial risk management must address all aspects of portfolio theory, from the beautiful symmetries of modern portfolio theory to the disturbing behavioral insights and the vastly expanded mathematical arsenal of the postmodern critique. Mastery of postmodern portfolio theory's quantitative tools and behavioral insights holds the key to the efficient frontier of risk management.

For all but the most credit-worthy companies, it is more efficient to finance large pools of assets that have predictable behavioral characteristics through non-standard arrangements. These off-balance sheet structures allow credit exposures to be tailored to investor risk, asset class, and an ever-increasing diversity of idiosyncratic needs on the part of issuers and investors. The discipline that addresses these structures, which is called structured finance or securitization, is almost twenty years old, and has become a pervasive element of modern financial management. Yet, it has not been systematically covered in a textbook designed for both the school and workplace contexts. The Elements of Structured Finance, the text version of a program of instruction in structured finance that the authors have offered at NYU and Hong Kong University, as well as in private training programs and consultancies, fills this void spectacularly. Raynes and Rutledge, two very highly regarded teachers and consultants in the field, bring clarity and logic to an inherently complex and frightening area of finance, using their extensive experience working with many of the top Wall Street securities houses. The book begins with the relatively simple concepts of static valuation models and the benchmark pool, and takes the reader through the more esoteric features of dynamic risk analysis, thus serving as both an introduction for the beginner and a helpful reference for the professional. In addition to participants in structured finance programs, this book will appeal to structured finance analysts and managers at banks, asset management companies, insurance companies, and a wide variety of other corporations.

This book analyzes the post-subprime crisis world from the global, Asian and Chinese perspectives. It dispels some of the myths about the crisis's effects on Asia and China; and exposes the ugly truth of bailout policies and their distortion and hindering of the world's economic rebalancing effort in the post-subprime era.

Financial markets are growing in complexity, and there is an increased risk that investors are led to investment products and strategies they do not fully understand. The crisis-ridden decade of the 2000s is a stark reminder of how poorly managed finances can wreak havoc on household finances. Traditional finance assumes that all investors are risk-averse and require a risk premium from investing in risky assets such as stocks. However, recent developments in behavioural finance show that many individual investors often adopt strategies that lead to serious investment missteps, including over-investing in lottery-type stocks and securities. Lottery-type securities in fact attract investors who may be risk-seeking or are strongly influenced by cognitive biases ranging from overconfidence to being over-optimistic about future investment returns, especially during periods of high sentiment. Drawing on existing and new research, The Lottery Mindset summarizes the behavioural motivations and detrimental impact of investment strategies which are popular with individual investors. Wai-Mun Fong provides insight and guidance on behavioural biases, and successful investment. By both reviewing and contributing to exiting literature on this topic, this book will be of use to academics and general readers alike.

There is a prevailing view among researchers and practitioners that abnormal risk-adjusted returns are an anomaly of financial market inefficiency. This outlook is misleading, since such returns only shed light on the imperfect models commonly used to measure and benchmark investment performance. In particular, using static asset pricing models to judge the performance of a dynamic investment strategy leads to flawed inferences when predicting market indicators. Market Timing and Moving Averages investigates the performance of moving average price indicators as a tactical asset allocation strategy. Glabadanidis provides a rationale for analyzing and testing the market timing and predictive power of any indicator based on past average prices and trading volume. He argues that certain trading strategies are best implemented as a dynamic asset allocation without selling short, in turn achieving the effect of an imperfect at-the-money protective put option. This work contains an empirical analysis of the performance of various versions of trading strategies based on simple moving averages.

In an organized and organic way, this book covers all the possible theoretical and empirical facets of delisting, adding to the well-developed literature on IPOs. IPO and delisting are strictly related; the reasons for delisting may be found in the loss of the incentives that drove the firm to the public market in the past. However, the book presents unique motivations not directly related to the IPO decision. This book covers what the existing literature has not in focusing on specific aspects such as market liquidity and microstructure, listing costs, market for corporate control, corporate governance issues and so on. Of interest to academics and students, this contribution puts all pieces in order and finds a thread that can link each theory to the others.

As financial markets expand globally in response to economic and technological developments of the twenty-first century, our understanding and expectations of the people involved in these markets also change. Unmasking Financial Psychopaths suggests that an increasing number of financiers labeled "financial psychopaths" are not truly psychopathic, but instead are by-products of a rapidly changing personal and professional environment. Advances have been made in identifying psychopaths outside of situations accompanied by physical violence, yet it is still difficult to differentiate psychopaths in cultural settings that have adopted psychopathic behavioral tendencies as the norm. Within the investment sector, a fundamental transformation has occurred: the type of person employed by financial firms and the environment within which finance is conducted have both changed. Society's expectation of financiers adapted to these subtle, behind-the-scenes shifts, resulting the public at large perceiving more individuals in the financial sector as acting in a psychopathic manner. Being able to distinguish the truly psychopathic financier from individuals who conform to behavioral expectations is the first step towards a cultural shift away from accepted psychopathic behaviors in the financial sector.

The financial markets industry is at the same crossroads as the automotive industry in the late 1970s. Margins are collapsing and customization is rapidly increasing. The automotive industry turned to quality and its no coincidence that in the money management industry many of the spectacular failures have been due largely to problems in quality control. The financial industry in on the verge of a quality revolution.
New and old firms alike are creating new investment vehicles and new strategies that are radically changing the nature of the industry. To compete, mutual funds, hedge fund industries, banks and proprietary trading firms are being forced to quicklyy research, test and implement trade selection and execution systems. And, just as in the early stages of factory automation, quality suffers and leads to defects. Many financial firms fall short of quality, lacking processes and methodologies for proper development and evaluation of trading and investment systems.
Authors Kumiega and Van Vliet present a new step-by-step methodology for such development. Their methodology (called K-V) has been presented in numerous journal articles and at academic and industry conferences and is rapidly being accepted as the preferred business process for the institutional trading and hedge fund industries for development, presentation, and evaluation of trading and investment systems. The K-V model for trading system development combines new product development, project management and software development methodologies into one robust system. After four stages, the methodology requires repeating the entire waterfall for continuous improvement.
The discussion quality and its applications to the front office is presented using lessons learned by the authors after using the methodology in the real world. As a result, it is flexible and modifiable to fit various projects in finance in different types of firms. Their methodology works equally well for short-term trading systems, longer-term portfolio management or mutual fund style investment strategies as well as more sophisticated ones employing derivative instruments in hedge funds.
Additionally, readers will be able to quickly modify the standard K-V methodology to meet their unique needs and to quickly build other quantitatively drive applications for finance. At the beginning and the end of the book the authors pose a key question: Are you willing to change and embrace quality for the 21st century or are willing to accept extinction?
The real gem in this book is that the concepts give the reader a road map to avoid extinction.
* Presents a robust process engineering framework for developing and evaluating trading and investment systems
* Best practices along the step-by-step process will mitigate project risk, model risk, and ensure data quality.
* Includes a quality model for backtesting and managing market risk of working systems.

As an asset manager or pension trustee, you should worry less about the stocks and products you pick for your clients and more about getting your fundamental investment beliefs right.
After a steep decline in the global stock markets and a recovery that is still uncertain, it is simply is not enough to have a good organization, good staff and a well-defined mission. You need to formulate your own set of investment beliefs: a clear view on how you perceive the way capital markets work and how your fund can add value and strive for excellence. Funds which establish and implement a well-defined investment philosophy have been shown to earn consistently better results.
This practical book provides the framework for determining your own investment beliefs and guidance on how to imbed, communicate and monitor them. Its research is based on a survey of the world's leading fund managers, viewed as excellent companies in the asset management industry. The book includes a speed-read summary at the start of each chapter, useful checklists, and case-studies spanning organizations from a variety of different countries and industries. It also provides a timely overview of the major debates in the industry and an introduction to the issues that matter for long-term survival in financial markets
With investment beliefs firmly in place, you will be able to more easily navigate the investment options available, knowing that your choices and decisions are in accordance with your values and objectives. Successful implementation of investment beliefs might well be one of the decisive factors in becoming a winner or loser in the investment management industry in 2020.

The next bull market is here. It's not in stocks. It's not in bonds. It's in commodities - and some smart investors will be riding that bull to record returns in the next decade. Before Jim Rogers hit the road to write his best-selling books Investment Biker and Adventure Capitalist, he was one of the world's most successful investors. He co-founded the Quantum Fund and made so much money that he never needed to work again. Yet despite his success, Rogers has never written a book of practical investment advice - until now. In Hot Commodities, Rogers offers the low-down on the most lucrative markets for today and tomorrow. In late 1998, gliding under the radar, a bull market in commodities began. Rogers thinks it's going to continue for at least fifteen years - and he's put his money where his mouth is: In 1998, he started his own commodities index fund. It's up 165% since then, with more than $200 million invested, and it's the single-best performing index fund in the world in any asset class. Less risky than stocks and less sluggish than bonds, commodities are where the money is - and will be in the years ahead. Rogers's strategies are simple and straightforward. You can start small - a few thousand dollars will suffice. It's all about putting your money into stuff you understand, the basic materials of everyday life, like copper, sugar, cotton, corn, or crude oil. Once you recognize the cyclical and historical trading patterns outlined here, you'll be on your way. In language that is both colourful and accessible, Rogers explains why the world of commodity investing can be one of the simplest of all - and how commodities are the bases by which investors can value companies, markets, and whole economies. To be a truly great investor is to know something about commodities. For small investors and high rollers alike, Hot Commodities is as good as gold ...or lead, or aluminium, which are some of the commodities Rogers says could be as rewarding for investors.

This book investigates the going-concern principle in the non-financial disclosure by companies in the international scenario proposing concepts and challenges to come. Following the main accounting literature, requirements and regulations, this book proposes the current state of the art in the non-financial disclosure, collecting main mandatory and voluntary frameworks and standards (e.g. European Directive 2014/95/UE on non-financial information, Global Reporting Initiative, International Integrated Reporting Council, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, Climate Disclosure Standard Board, Carbon Disclosure Project, AA1000). This is a useful proposition for the investigation of the presence versus absence of the going concern in the sustainability and non-financial reports and disclosure by companies. Through a qualitative methodology, this book is intended to show the incidence of the going-concern in the non-financial disclosure and to what content and meaning it is refereed. Several issues and characteristics of information provided to stakeholders are drafted.