In Investors and Markets, Nobel Prize-winning financial economist William Sharpe shows that investment professionals cannot make good portfolio choices unless they understand the determinants of asset prices. But until now asset-price analysis has largely been inaccessible to everyone except PhDs in financial economics. In this book, Sharpe changes that by setting out his state-of-the-art approach to asset pricing in a nonmathematical form that will be comprehensible to a broad range of investment professionals, including investment advisors, money managers, and financial analysts. Bridging the gap between the best financial theory and investment practice, Investors and Markets will help investment professionals make better portfolio choices by being smarter about asset prices. Based on Sharpe's Princeton Lectures in Finance, Investors and Markets presents a method of analyzing asset prices that accounts for the real behavior of investors. Sharpe makes this technique accessible through a new, one-of-a-kind computer program (available for free on his Web site, at http://www.stanford.edu/~wfsharpe/apsim/index.html) that enables users to create virtual markets, setting the starting conditions and then allowing trading until equilibrium is reached and trading stops. Program users can then analyze the final portfolios and asset prices, see expected returns, and measure risk. In addition to popularizing the most sophisticated form of asset-price analysis, Investors and Markets summarizes much of Sharpe's most important previous work and reflects a lifetime of thinking about investing by one of the leading minds in financial economics. Any serious investment professional will benefit from Sharpe's unique insights.

"Nobel Prize-winning financial economist William Sharpe shows that investment professionals cannot make good portfolio choices unless they understand the determinants of asset prices." -- Provided by publisher.

Publisher description

From the Foreword by Charles Schwab "The Investor's Business Daily Guide to the Markets is. . .clear,concise, innovative, and authoritative, giving you the informationyou need to make important investment decisions with confidence.Whether you're a new or experienced investor, you'll learn a greatdeal from this book. What a pleasure it is to discover a book thattells it like it is with no hidden agendas. It's sure to pay youdividends and capital gains again and again in the yearsahead." "Before investing in the markets, you should invest in this book."--Alice Kane Executive Vice President, New York Life InsuranceCompany "Investor's Business Daily Guide to the Markets is thequintessential guide for anyone interested in gaining insight andhelpful information about the financial markets." --Louis G.Navellier, President, Navellier & Associates Inc., Editor, MPTReview. "A great book for people who want to understand the markets. Don'tmiss this comprehensive roundup--the mutual funds chapter alone isworth the price of the book." --James M. Benham, Chairman of theBoard, Benham Funds. "Developing an investment portfolio is like building a house: youmust start with a solid foundation. This book gives you theinvestment foundation you need. Buy it before you put anotherdollar in stocks, bonds, or mutual funds."--Ted Allrich. author,The Online Investor "The On-line Investor" (America Online). "Bill O'Neil, for years the unheralded hero of institutionalinvestors worldwide, began offering his expertise to the individualinvestor over ten years ago through Investor's Business Dailynewspaper. Now his Investor's Business Daily Guide to the Marketstakes the next step for investors by putting basic financialinformation into meaningful terms and useful strategies. This is a'must read' for all investors --big and small." --Richard W.Perkins, CFA, President and Portfolio Manager, Perkins CapitalManagement, Inc.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, a resurgence of interest in economic and financial history has occurred among investment professionals. This book discusses some of the lessons drawn from the past that may help practitioners when thinking about their portfolios. The book’s editors, David Chambers and Elroy Dimson, are the academic leaders of the Newton Centre for Endowment Asset Management at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Behavioral finance presented in Finance for Normal People is a second generation behavioral finance. The first generation, starting in the early 1980s, largely accepted standard finance's notion of people's wants as “rational” wants - restricted to the utilitarian benefits of high returns and low risk. That first generation commonly described people as “irrational” - succumbing to cognitive and emotional errors and misled on their way to their rational wants. The second generation describes people as normal. It begins by acknowledging the full range of people's normal wants - hope for riches and freedom from the fear of poverty, nurturing our children and families, being true to our values, gaining high social status, playing games and winning, and more. It distinguishes normal wants from errors, and offers guidance on using shortcuts and avoiding errors on the way to satisfying normal wants. People's normal wants, even more than their cognitive and emotional shortcuts and errors, underlie answers to important questions of finance, including saving and spending, portfolio construction, asset pricing, and market efficiency. These are presented in this book.We often hear that behavioral finance is nothing more than a collection of stories about irrational people misled by cognitive and emotional errors, that it lacks the unified structure of standard finance. Yet today's standard finance is no longer unified because wide cracks have opened between its theory and the evidence. This book offers behavioral finance as a unified structure that incorporates parts of standard finance, replaces others, and includes bridges between theory, evidence, and practice.

Marketing guru Philip Kotler shows entrepreneurs how to market their companies to investors How can businesses do a better job of attracting capital? The answer: "Marketing!" Marketing expert Philip Kotler teams up with a renowned marketing consultant and an INSEAD professor for this practical, marketing-based approach to raising capital from investors. Based on the premise that entrepreneurs and business owners often don't understand what investors want and how they make their decisions, Attracting Investors offers a larger view of the factors involved, and guides both startup and veteran firms in effectively raising capital.