CBS MoneyWatch columnist Larry Swedroe’s bedrock principles for investing success Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make and How to Avoid Them helps anyone from the novice investor to the professional money manager become a more informed investor—and ignore the kind of pervasive “conventional wisdom” that so often leads to financial loss. Swedroe describes how behavioral mistakes and overconfidence can lead you to stray from proven investment principles, and he explains how to reverse these temptations and make the right investing decisions when it counts most. Larry Swedroe is Principal and Director of Research at Buckingham Asset Management. He writes the popular blog “Wise Investing” at CBS MoneyWatch.com.

Identify mistakes standing in the way of investment success With so much at stake in investing and wealth management, investors cannot afford to keep repeating actions that could have serious negative consequences for their financial goals. The Five Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them focuses on what investors do wrong so often so they can set themselves on the right path to success. In this comprehensive reference, readers learn to navigate the ever-changing variables and market dilemmas that often make investing a risky and daunting endeavor. Well-known and respected author Peter Mallouk shares useful investment techniques, discusses the importance of disciplined investment management, and pinpoints common, avoidable mistakes made by professional and everyday investors alike. Designed to provide a workable, sensible framework for investors, The Five Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them encourages investors to refrain from certain negative actions, such as fighting the market, misunderstanding performance, and letting one's biases and emotions get in the way of investing success. Details the major mistakes made by professional and everyday investors Highlights the strategies and mindset necessary for navigating ever-changing variables and market dilemmas Includes useful investment techniques and discusses the importance of discipline in investment management A reliable resource for investors who want to make more informed choices, this book steers readers away from past investment errors and guides them in the right direction.

A Must-Read for Any Investor Looking to Maximize Their Chances of Success Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments explores the ways in which the biggest names have failed, and reveals the lessons learned that shaped more successful strategies going forward. Investing can be a rollercoaster of highs and lows, and the investors detailed here show just how low it can go; stories from Warren Buffet, Bill Ackman, Chris Sacca, Jack Bogle, Mark Twain, John Maynard Keynes, and many more illustrate the simple but overlooked concept that investing is really hard, whether you're managing a few thousand dollars or a few billion, failures and losses are part of the game. Much more than just anecdotal diversion, these stories set the basis for the book's critical focus: learning from mistakes. These investors all recovered from their missteps, and moved forward armed with a wealth of knowledge than can only come from experience. Lessons learned through failure carry a weight that no textbook can convey, and in the case of these legendary investors, informed a set of skills and strategy that propelled them to the top. Research-heavy and grounded in realism, this book is a must-read for any investor looking to maximize their chances of success. Learn the most common ways even successful investors fail Learn from the mistakes of the greats to avoid losing ground Anticipate challenges and obstacles, and develop an advance plan Exercise caution when warranted, and only take the smart risks While learning from your mistakes is always a valuable experience, learning from the mistakes of others gives you the benefit of wisdom without the consequences of experience. Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments provides an incomparable, invaluable resource for investors of all stripes.

Protect and grow your finances with help from this definitive and practical guide to behavioral economics—revised and updated to reflect new economic realities. In their fascinating investigation of the ways we handle money, Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich reveal the psychological forces—the patterns of thinking and decision making—behind seemingly irrational behavior. They explain why so many otherwise savvy people make foolish financial choices: why investors are too quick to sell winning stocks and too slow to sell losing shares, why home sellers leave money on the table and home buyers don’t get the biggest bang for their buck, why borrowers pay too much credit card interest and savers can’t sock away as much as they’d like, and why so many of us can’t control our spending. Focusing on the decisions we make every day, Belsky and Gilovich provide invaluable guidance for avoiding the financial faux pas that can cost thousands of dollars each year. Filled with fresh insight; practical advice; and lively, illustrative anecdotes, this book gives you the tools you need to harness the powerful science of behavioral economics in any financial environment.

In this book, Larry Swedroe offers engaging stories to readers as a way of explaining sound investing concepts.

Just as with raising children or as in nurturing one’s career, “success” with personal investing allows plenty of room for subjectivity. After exploring the common opinion of prominent economic actors, established entrepreneurs and financial advisors, I have come to define a successful investor as someone who, with a moderate of time, devises an investment strategy to achieve financial and personal objectives and who gains access to competitive returns by undertaking a certain degree of financial risk. Upon a careful investigation of recent market trends, investing research and stock market perception, it becomes apparent that stock market-specific decision-making builds both on objective variables (unbiased reports, facts, financial figures, diagrams), and subjective factors, in other words, investors’ reactions to quantifiable market indicators (apprehension, haste, stubbornness, fear, greed, impatience, etc.). Especially among the ranks of inexperienced stock market investors, this overlap renders market actors prone to a number of investing mistakes, some bigger than others. In other words, quality decision-making in stock trading is not limited to staying up to date with the facts; it is more about learning how to perceive and interpret the information you get in order to come up with conscious, well-thought-out action plans. Even the most knowledgeable and intelligent stock market players can succumb to simple mistakes if they base their decisions on pure instinct instead of reasoning. And, in fact, a large majority of mistakes are the consequence of subjective thinking, or, in other words, letting feelings take control when making decisions. Because of that, before we begin enumerating and discussing the most common mistakes and traps of stock market investing, we will first discuss the behavioral aspects of investing and probe into several important aspects of cognitive psychology. Once we have learned a little about behavioral biases and how we can avoid letting our feelings take control over the logical mind, we will move on to the most common subjective factors (mostly emotions and misperceptions) that are known to trigger error-prone thinking. We will analyze in this book each of these emotions in turn and come up with a way to take control over them when making financial decisions. Lastly, we will discuss the deadly mistakes in stock market investing in relation with the subjective factors that produce them and see how we can overcome each of them. Therefore, the last chapter of this article serves as a collection of common obstacles that may keep you from being successful and fully accomplishing your financial goals, which also includes useful tips and advice for overcoming those obstacles on your road to stock market investing success. Happy reading and good luck!

Nofsinger identifies the most common investor mistakes through the prism of the world's most public investment catastrophes. Using other people's money and other people's disasters, "Investment Blunders" teaches a wide range of critical lessons every investor must learn.