The Portable MBA in Investment

by Peter L. Bernstein

Book Overview

The Portable MBA in Investment

Edited by Peter L. Bernstein

a state-of-the-art program in investment principles andapplications from top-flight professionals

"Peter Bernstein and his Dream Team tackle the entire investmentspectrum--from soup to nuts--and emerge triumphant. Must readingfor all investors--even those who already have their MBAs." --JackR. Meyer, President and CEO Harvard Management Company, Inc.

"This...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471106615
• ISBN13: 9780471106616
• Release Date: October 1995
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.9" x 10.1"

Customer Reviews

Solid information

Although the book was edited in 1995, many of the topics are very relevant to today's investor. Managing Risk, valuation, investment strategy are among the pertinent topics that you can learn alot from. It is however, complex and you do need to understand the basics of economics and finance to fully take advantage of the concepts and topics discussed.

A good survey and conceptual introduction

As an undergraduate, I studied political science; as a graduate student, I studied history (among other things) - however, few if any of my classes ever dealt with the actual mechanics of business, despite dealing with business in a more general sense (as it would fit in the context of history and politics). I decided that it was important to learn some of the basic concepts of business administration, and the Portable MBA series by John Wiley & Sons publishers fit the bill. This book on investment covers topics such as investment strategy, setting objectives, valuation, risk, evaluating performance, corporate governance, and the general process of investing. The introduction looks at many of the myths of investing - author Peter Bernstein highlights many of the clichés of Wall Street, such as 'nothing ventured, nothing gained', 'buy low, sell high', and 'don't put all your eggs in one basket', in order to look at the truth or false aspects behind each one. He also states, 'If you're so smart, how come you're not rich? The answer is disarmingly simple: The essence of investment theory is that being smart is not a sufficient condition for being rich.' This book fills in some of the gaps, but it is not a get-rich-quick guide by any means. It presents investing as an ongoing process - investment is dynamic, and pulls in many different strands and elements; investment is not 'collecting things' like stock and bonds, and the authors work to minimize the importance of artificial barriers such as foreign vs. domestic investing, which in a global economy means less than it used to. The authors who contributed to this volume have both academic and professional experience, and tend to do a good job at explaining things in terms that the non-professional can understanding. Anyone with a basic undergraduate background should find this volume accessible. Because investing deals with numbers, there is a fair amount of math in some of the sections. An understanding of graphs, charts, and simple equations will be useful. This is not really a how-to guide for investing; for one thing, such guides generally need to be updated more frequently. However, as a guide to general understanding of the system of investment and finance in the modern Western economic system, this is a good survey and reference.