Investments (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

90% new and never reaad by me no marks in the book --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Zvi Bodie is Professor of Finance and Economics at the Boston University School of Management. He is the director of Boston University’s Chartered Financial Analysts Examination Review Program and has served as consultant to many private and governmental organizations. Professor Bodie is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he was director of the NBER Project on Financial Aspects of the U.S. Pension System, and he is a member of the Pension Research Council of The Wharton School. He is widely published in leading professional journals, and his previous books include Pensions in the U.S. Economy, Issues in Pension Economics, and Financial Aspects of the U.S. Pension System.

Alex Kane is professor of finance and economics at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He was visiting professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo; Graduate School of Business, Harvard; Kennedy School of Government, Harvard; and research associate, National Bureau of Economic Research. An author of many articles in finance and management journals, Professor Kane’s research is mainly in corporate finance, portfolio management, and capital markets, most recently in the measurement of market volatility and the pricing of options. Professor Kane is the developer of the International Simulation Laboratory (ISL) for training and experimental research in executive decision making.

Alan Marcus is professor of finance in the Wallace E. Carroll School of Management at Boston College. He received his PHD in Economics from MIT in 1981. Professor Marcus recently has been a visiting professor at the Athens Laboratory of Business Administration and at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and has served as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also established the Chartered Financial Analysts Review Program at Boston College. Professor Marcus has published widely in the fields of capital markets and portfolio management, with an emphasis on applications of futures and options pricing models. His consulting work has ranged from new product development to provision of expert testimony in utility rate proceedings. He also spend two years at the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), where he developed models of mortgage pricing and credit risk, and he currently serves on the Advisory Council for the Currency Risk Management Alliance of State Street Bank and Windham Capital Management Boston. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Richard D Irwin; Book & Solutions Manual edition (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0256262195
• ISBN-13: 978-0256262193
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.8 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,165,080 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jam packed with valuable information, June 14, 2002

By	Craig Matteson (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Investments + S&P Card + Powerweb + StockTrak discount coupon (Hardcover)

This book has a tremendous amount of valuable information for those of us who want to understand what investments are actually about. There is a lot more to it than the simple bromides peddled in the popular press and media. Yet, when you get some basic concepts down, they become easier to understand and evaluate. The popular press is misleading in its oversimplification and silly statements (like "no one is buying today").

I want to praise this edition's organization. Since it is a text designed for use by students, the fifth edition I used is organized most helpfully. Each chapter has an overview and there are concept check questions at key points of the text that help you assess if you really understood the information you just read. The main points are restated in a concise summary at the end of each chapter and you can review the key terms to make sure you are absorbing the vocabulary.

There are valuable websites listed along the way for additional and related information. The authors and publisher also provide a website with materials including spreadsheets directly related to this book. The part of the site with online quizzes has a few typos and scoring errors, and that should be fixed, but the online materials are generally ok.

The chapter problems are another matter. Some are really projects and should be separated, I feel, from the study questions. They are good to do if you have the time and will certainly help your learning, but they can take some time to work through.

Some of the questions are very simple and are really a quick concept check and they seem out of place when placed along side the "projects". One VERY NICE feature of the questions is the inclusion of sample CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) exam questions. This is very useful for those of us thinking about preparing for that process.

It is also worth getting the Solutions Manual. ISBN 0-07-233921-7. Don't by a mismatched solutions manual! As you work through the problems, especially the "projects" it is nice to see how these problems are handled by the authors.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Basic book on investments, June 15, 2002

By	G. Shiau "grumpychicagoguy" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Investments + S&P Card + Powerweb + StockTrak discount coupon (Hardcover)

I've owned an edition of this book since 1993 when I took an Investments class as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. Throughout my career, my return to graduate school, and my pursuit of my CFA charter, I have used and seen others using this book,

This book is an introductory textbook on investments. To get a deeper understanding about the research that developed the theories and the ongoing debates in academia (e.g. APT, efficient markets hypothesis, behavioral finance), I would suggest reading some of the authors/researchers referenced in the book. Despite this limitation, this is an excellent starting point. The book begins with basic introduction of financial markets and instruments, develops the basic finance toolbox (e.g. basic statistical tools - mean, variance; discounted cash flow), and applies them in a portfolio setting. From this base, it goes on to introduce the most basic financial concepts such as beta, CAPM, diversification, efficient frontier, CAL, etc. These are all the basic tools that are used in portfolio contruction and management. The book extends itself by introducing additional concepts such as derivatives (e.g. futures, options, swaps) which can alter the charateristics of portfolios. As other reviewers have noted and I will agree, these topics are only in a cursory fashion, and I recommend further study on these topics through other texts or papers.

Overall, this is a must read (at least as a starting point) for anyone interested in developing knowledge about portfolio theory. For example, this book would be very helpful for anyone who would like to understand with a more critical eye what the commentators/analysts on CNBC or at the brokerage firms are trying to recommend for their own portfolios.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent text book on investments & basic portfolio theory, December 12, 2001

By	hiscapital "hiscapital" (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Investments (McGraw-Hill/Irwin Series in Finance, Insurance, and Real Est) (Hardcover)

I am a lecturer in Finance for a university in the UK. I evaluated this book for use in an Executive MBA course in portfolio management after previously using "Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management" by Reilly and Brown. The Reilly book takes a more quantitative approach to the valuation of various assets and is more comprehensive than "Investments" in terms of its coverage of securities and markets but I ultimately opted for "Investments" due to its clarity, organization, and quality writing style. The authors do an excellent job of communicating fairly complex concepts to a student with little or no background in finance.

If you are studying for the CFA or need a more advanced text, I can recommmend the Reilly book. If you are a practitioner or looking for a very mathematically rigorous text in portfolio management, I can recommend "Active Portfolio Management" by Grinold. But for an undergraduate or graduate student looking for an excellent primer on stocks, bonds, options, futures and the workings of the markets they are traded on, look no further than "Investments".

One note: we were able to obtain a paperback copy of the text at much reduced cost.