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Outsmarting the Smart Money : Understand How Markets Really Work and Win the Wealth Game
 
 
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Outsmarting the Smart Money : Understand How Markets Really Work and Win the Wealth Game [Hardcover]

Lawrence A. Cunningham (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)


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Book Description

April 15, 2002

How to invest using straightforward common sense instead of misleading"hot tips"

While market pundits argue the rational market theory, one theory gets almost universal consensus­­that of the irrational investor. Outsmarting the Smart Money outlines where most investors go wrong and explains how to instead approach the markets with intelligence and calm. Filled with hard-hitting insights and useful lessons, it shows how to use market-proven techniques and strategies to overcome biases, myths, and mistakes­­and beat the pros at their own game. Cunningham presents flexible security analysis guidelines for investors who want to guide their own portfolios, but don't want to devote all of their free time to the effort including:

  • How to overcome personal biases, misleading information, and market inefficiencies
  • Methods to avoid being cheated by money managers, and identify "spin" reporting

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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Forget Almost Everything You've Ever Learned About Investing...

Most investors­­despite the fact their hard-earned savings are on the line­­fall victim to human nature and bet their financial futures on hot tips, headlines, and Wall Street spin. Outsmarting the Smart Money instead provides investors with authoritative insights and hands-on lessons for moving beyond emotions and unreliable guesswork to build a portfolio based on market-proven strategies, simple-to-understand analytical techniques, and a history of long-term performance.

Praise for Outsmarting the Smart Money...

"Individuals too often focus exclusively on the mechanics of investing without considering the mistakes that occur from emotional, but predictable, missteps. Larry Cunningham has done a great service by explaining the psychology of investing in clear and easy to understand principles."­­Robert G. Hagstrom, CFA, Senior Vice President, Legg Mason Funds Management; Author, The Warren Buffett Way

"This book is a fascinating account of market psychology, of how professionals lose their shirts because of it, and of how a small investor can profit from it. A fun, useful and readable book."­­Andrei Shleifer, Professor of Economics, Harvard University; Author, Inefficient Markets

"Outsmarting the Smart Money reveals the many foibles of today's markets, and provides sound strategies the typical investor should pursue to achieve security and profits."­­James D. Cox, Brainerd Currie Professor of Law, Duke University

"An exploration of the ways our psyches play financial tricks on us, Outsmarting the Smart Money will return its cost many times over."­­Gary Belsky, Author, Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes­­And How to Correct Them

"Lucid guidance for investors dealing with the post-bubble investment world, while also preparing them for the next period of irrational exuberance."­­Steve Galbraith, U.S. Equity Strategist, Morgan Stanley

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."­­Walt Kelly's Pogo

Like it or not, most investors are their own worst enemies. They buy only when glowing reports and rumors have bid stocks to outlandish, unsupported price levels; sell only when bad news has left stock prices at or near their bottoms; and ignore reams of independent research and data to bet thousands of dollars on a coworker's hot stock tip.

Is it any wonder that stock investing, which should represent one of the easiest and most straightforward paths to long-term wealth, has instead become a hotbed of wasted hours, lost opportunities, and outright misery?

Lawrence Cunningham's Outsmarting the Smart Money outlines where most investors go wrong and explains how to approach the markets with self-knowledge, intelligence and, most of all, calm. It examines the cognitive biases that afflict most investors, discusses how professional money managers are trained to take advantage of these biases (and the pricing inefficiencies that regularly result), and reveals how investors can help themselves by steering clear of the "smart money" to adopt a long-term, value-oriented investment philosophy.

Outsmarting the Smart Money offers you dozens of easy-to-follow tips and techniques for investing both sensibly and successfully, including:

  • How the market really works, and why the safest ways to use it to your advantage are actually also the easiest
  • The folly of investing in initial public offerings­­and how and when IPOs actually can present valuable opportunities
  • Accounting games and gimmicks that managers use to hide information and mislead investors
  • The differences between price and value­­and how to ignore the former to focus on the latter
  • Techniques for understanding­­and overcoming­­personal investment biases and shortcomings

Thousands of books promise to tell you how to beat the markets by grabbing the low-hanging fruit of fast turnaround profits. But only Outsmarting the Smart Money tells you the truth­­that long-term investment success requires time, self-knowledge, and discipline. Follow its simple step-by-step program to become a more intelligent investor, and construct a sensible long-term portfolio that is solidly constructed, easy to manage, and virtually certain­­given time­­to grow into a sizable fortune.

About the Author

Lawrence A. Cunningham is a professor at New York's Cardozo Law School, director of the school's Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Center on Corporate Governance, and a visiting professor at Boston College Law School. The author of bestsellers including The Essays of Warren Buffett and How to Think Like Benjamin Graham and Invest Like Warren Buffett, Cunningham has been featured in Forbes and Money, as well as on CNBC, CNN, and PBS's The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (April 15, 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0071386998
  • ISBN-13: 978-0071386999
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,518,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Title promises, but book doesn't deliver., September 1, 2002
By 
2many2read (United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Outsmarting the Smart Money : Understand How Markets Really Work and Win the Wealth Game (Hardcover)
Doesn't this book sound like a battle plan for investment success, maybe one filled with value-based accounting lessons? It's not.

In fact, we are spared math, and we are not given practical counsel, either. That was what I looking for, as the title suggests. The title should be How Can The Smart Money Be So Dumb.

Instead, this is an interesting run-through of recent horror stories on Wall Street from the Internet bubble to IPO's to pro forma accounting and Enron. Behavioral finance is discussed here, but Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes by Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich is far superior.

Or read Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein. Or John Neff On Investing instead.

Mr. Cunningham is one of the new wave of Buffett explainers. (Where were you people 15 years ago when there was money to be made buying Berkshire?) And why does someone so incisive, so downhome funny as Mr. Buffett need so much explanation?? (Try Cunningham's The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America or the Berkshire Hathaway annual report.)

Unfortunately, the author lets slip his idea of a five-year holding period for stocks. That may turn out to be good advice, but which stocks would he choose to hold? We have no idea. (Tech stocks, big winners 2 years ago, have crashed back down to their 1997 prices. And non-tech Walt Disney is well below its 1997 prices.)

I think Mr. Cunningham is an extremely brave and patient investor.

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Barron's Is Right: Top Book of 2002, January 25, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Outsmarting the Smart Money : Understand How Markets Really Work and Win the Wealth Game (Hardcover)
I read Cunningham's book based on the review in Barron's rounding up the best investment books of 2002. They were right. The book is a eye-opening intro to the psychology of investing, important to investors and market observers/regulators. (Cunningham's other books have more of the basics for investors--also very good books.)
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Mind-field, June 21, 2002
By 
dennis wentraub (schenectady, new york USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Outsmarting the Smart Money : Understand How Markets Really Work and Win the Wealth Game (Hardcover)
In a perfect investment world the price of a stock embodies its value. And those who believe this 'efficient' market hypothesis will be buying index mutual funds certainly not this book. But those who dismiss this academic construct to profit from the inefficiencies evident in the market still run substantial risks not adequately addressed by most investment books. The minefield of risks that Cunningham guides us through is that the biases of others, the cause of those price vs. value anomalies, are also our own biases and can trigger money-losing investment decisions. Overconfidence and the "pattern seeking" bias to project short term trends into the future are just two examples, but they do so some of the worst damage. They lead to a dangerous reliance on margin borrowing and excessive trading activity. Also, recognize that companies make many of the same behavioral errors. It is the author's "smart" investor who can spot the folly of manic acquisitions by companies acting as if they were on steroids - grasping for growth at a fiscal cost. Cunningham dismisses technical analysis as "hokum" (Here he agrees with the proponents of an efficient market who maintain market movements cannot be predicted accurately). Stay away from IPO's, companies relying on pro-forma accounting, and sector funds. Read analyst reports with caution, but do study closely "management's discussion" of their business in the annual report. Be wary of stock buybacks, stock option programs, stock splits, spin-offs, secondary offerings, and performance-based incentive plans. Any of these programs can be abused and rise out of corporate hubris. Above all: Recognize your biases, your tolerance for risk, be objective, and have criteria to know when to sell your positions. A lot of territory is covered in this book with some of the best material appearing in Chapters 10 and 11. Cunningham builds a persuasive case for adopting a long term, value oriented investment philosophy which is least affected by these biases.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
The United States is richer than ever, yet also more financially illiterate. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
efficiency story, investor alert, seasoned equity offerings, frame dependence, prudential algebra, social proof, availability bias, loss aversion, share repurchases, investor education, cognitive biases, share buybacks, intelligent investors, margin debt, mental accounts, selling shareholders, investor psychology, efficiency theory
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Rite Aid, United States, New York Stock Exchange, Royal Dutch, Computer Associates, Larry the Liquidator, University of Chicago, Nobel Prize, Warren Buffett, World War, Great Depression, Ben Graham, Federal Reserve Board, Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation, Home Depot, Salomon Brothers
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