Making sound investments is tough enough without having toworry about unscrupulous financial advisers and outright frauds.But recently strengthened laws aren't enough to stop the"professionals" intent on profiting from - or just plain stealing -your money. As an Enforcement Branch Chief at the Securities andExchange Commission, Pat Huddleston witnessed countless people losetheir life savings to reckless stockbrokers and fraudulent schemes.Now an SEC-recommended Receiver and CEO of a securities andinvestment fraud investigation agency, Huddleston has intimateknowledge of how scam artists and bad brokers operate. In TheVigilant Investor, he explains WHY we fall for investment scams,HOW con artists play on our emotions, and WHAT we can do to protectourselves from predators. With its unique look into the science offinancial decision making, the book blows up the popular myths andsimplistic "do's and don'ts" of investing while sharing techniquesanyone can use to perform due diligence even better than the"experts.

The Devil's Derivatives charts the untold story of modernfinancial innovation--how investment banks invented new financialproducts, how investors across the world were wooed into buyingthem, how regulators were seduced by the political rewards of easycredit, and how speculators made a killing from the near-meltdownof the financial system. Author Nicholas Dunbar demystifies the revolution that brieflygave finance the same intellectual respectability as theoreticalphysics. He explains how bankers created a secret trillion-dollarmachine that delivered cheap mortgages to the masses and richesbeyond dreams to the financial innovators. Fundamental to this saga is how "the people who hated to lose"were persuaded to accept risk by "the people who loved to win." Whydid people come to trust and respect arcane financial tools? Whowere the bankers competing to assemble the basic components intoincreasingly intricate machines? How did this process achieve itsown unstoppable momentum, ending in collapse,

INVESTING PRINCIPLES FROM THE MASTER Ignore Sound Bites ThatRattle Markets Treat Market Pessimism as Your Friend Do the LittleThings Right Protect Your Capital When the Facts Turn Upside DownRely on CEOs Who Nurture Healthy Corporate Cultures Remember ThatLarge, Unfathomable Derivatives Are Still Financial Weapons of MassDestruction Seek Simplicity and Candor Millions of people downloadWarren Buffett’s shareholder letters, searching for tips from theworld’s greatest investor. Many miss the best part of his letter:his principles. It is their loss. Following these principles

If you read the original Buffettology, you know exactly half of what you need to know to effectively apply Warren Buffett's investment strategies. Published in 1997, the bestselling Buffettology was written specifically for investors in the midst of a long bull market. Since then we've seen the internet bubble burst, the collapse of Enron, and investors scrambling to move their assets -- what remains of them -- back to the safety of traditional blue chip companies. As price peaks turned into troughs, worried investors wondered if there was any constant in today's volatile market. The answer is yes: Warren Buffett's value investing strategies make money. T he New Buffettology is the first guide to Warren Buffett's selective contrarian investment strategy for exploiting down stocks -- a strategy that has made him the nation's second-richest person. Designed to teach investors how to decipher and use financial information the way Buffett himself does, this book guides investors through opportunity-rich bea

The intimate, fly-on-the wall tale of the decline and fall of anAmerica icon With one notable exception, the firms that make up what we know asWall Street have always been part of an inbred, insular culturethat most people only vaguely understand. The exception was MerrillLynch, a firm that revolutionized the stock market by bringing WallStreet to Main Street, setting up offices in far-flung cities andtowns long ignored by the giants of finance. With its “thunderingherd” of financial advisers, perhaps no other business, whether infinancial services or elsewhere, so epitomized the American spirit.Merrill Lynch was not only “bullish on America,” it was a bigreason why so many average Americans were able to grow wealthy byinvesting in the stock market. Merrill Lynch was an icon. Its sudden decline, collapse, andsale to Bank of America was a shock. How did it happen? Why did ithappen? And what does this story of greed, hubris, and incompetencetell us about the culture of Wall Street that continues to

Before I became “Phil Town, teacher of investing principles tomore than 500,000 people a year,” I was a lot like you: someone whoviewed individual stock investing as way too hard to dosuccessfully. As a guy who barely made a living as a river guide, Iconsidered the whole process pretty impenetrable, and I wasconvinced that to do it right you had to make it a full-time job.Me, I was more interested in having full-time fun. So I was tempted to do what you’re probably doing right now:letting some mutual fund manager worry about growing your nest egg.Let me tell you why that decision could one day make you absolutelymiserable.

What does it take to create your New American Dream? Suze Orman, the woman millions of Americans have turned to forfinancial advice, says it’s time for a serious reconsideration ofthe American Dream—what promise it still holds, what aspects are inneed of revision, and how it must be refashioned to fit our livesso that we can once again have faith that our hard work will payoff and that a secure and hopeful future is within our reach. In nine electrifying chapters, Orman delivers a master class onpersonal finance for this pivotal moment in time. She addressesevery aspect of the American Dream—home, family, career,retirement. She teaches us that in order to create lasting securitywe must learn to stand in our truth. We must recognize, embrace,and be honest about what is real for us today and allow thatunderstanding to inform the choices we make. The New AmericanDream is not the things we accumulate, says Orman, but theconfidence that comes from knowing that which we’ve worked so hard

Even after the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, America isstill beset by the depredations of an oligarchy that is now bigger,more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever.Anchored by six megabanks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase,Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—whichtogether control assets amounting, astonishingly, to more than 60percent of the country’s gross domestic product, these financialinstitutions (now more emphatically “too big to fail”) continue tohold the global economy hostage, threatening yet another financialmeltdown with their excessive risk-taking and toxic “business asusual” practices. How did this come to be—and what is to be done?These are the central concerns of 13 Bankers, a brilliant,historically informed account of our troubled politicaleconomy. In 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson—one of the most prominent andfrequently cited economists in America (former chief economist ofthe International Monetary Fund, Professor of Entre

Diversification provides a well-known way of getting something close to a free lunch: by spreading money across different kinds of investments, investors can earn the same return with lower risk (or a much higher return for the same amount of risk). This strategy, introduced nearly fifty years ago, led to such strategies as index funds. What if we were all missing out on another free lunch that’s right under our noses? In Lifecycle Investing, Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres—two of the most innovative thinkers in business, law, and economics—have developed tools that will allow nearly any investor to diversify their portfolios over time. By using leveraging when young—a controversial idea that sparked hate mail when the authors first floated it in the pages of Forbes—investors of all stripes, from those just starting to plan to those getting ready to retire, can substantially reduce overall risk while improving their returns. In Lifecycle Investing, readers will learn How to figure out the level of

This book presents the theory of capital utilization, adiscussion of the econometrics of capital utilization, andeconometric tests of the theory using international data. Capitalutilization, defined as the proportion of time that capital isworking productively, is mainly affected by shift-working. Capitalutilization is an important economic variable that has receivedserious attention from economists only since the mid-1960s In thefirst part, the authors provide a synthesis of current knowledge,combining a consistent statement of existing theory with some majorextensions. In the second part, they turn to the econometrics,first discussing the appropriate methodology and then testing thetheory on data from several countries. This empirical work isconsiderably more sophisticated than previous studies on thistopic. Having established the theory and tested it, they move on toconsider policy, the relationship between capital utilization andeconomic growth, and the place of shift-work in the dualeconomy.

In this follow-up to his bestselling book, Using Technical Analysis, Clifford Pistolese reveals how to effectively apply technical analysis in your day-to-day trading decisions in order to select stocks with the greatest profit potential. Selecting Winning Stocks Using Technical Analysis gives you practical techniques and exercises for quickly evaluating stocks using simple methods of technical analysis. Pistolese shows you how to conduct your own independent research to obtain objective data and identify investment opportunities, allowing you to shed broker fees and avoid conflicts of interest. He provides expert advice on tactical trading errors, controlling your emotions, and steering clear of the “herd mentality,” as well as how to: Locate companies with effective business models Use free technical analysis resources on the Internet. Readjust your portfolio for bull, range-bound, and bear market phases. Diversify your investments to control risk. Recognize th

Recommended by finance experts and used extensively byinstitutional investors, index funds and exchange-traded funds(ETFs) provide unmanaged, diversified exposure to a variety ofasset classes. Index Investing For Dummies shows activeinvestors how to add index investments to their portfolios and makethe most of their money, while protecting their assets. It featuresplain-English information on the different types of index funds andtheir advantage over other funds, getting started in indexinvesting, using index funds for asset allocation, understandingreturns and risk, diversifying among fund holdings, and applyingwinning strategies for maximum profit.