Mastering the Art of Asset Allocation: Comprehensive Approaches to Managing Risk and Optimizing Returns - Hardcover

Darst, David M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071463348 ISBN 13: 9780071463348

Publisher: McGraw Hill, 2006

Synopsis

Gain new insights into why asset allocation works and learn advanced investing strategies

You know that asset allocation requires much more than cookie-cutter analysis. You want precise, detailed techniques for analyzing and applying asset allocation principles. The high-level, applications-oriented Mastering the Art of Asset Allocation examines the inner working of numerous asset allocation strategies and covers everything from ways to determine the portfolio value of various asset classes to insights into changing patterns of investment returns and standard deviations in different time periods and market environments.

About this title

About the Author

David M. Darst, CFA is a chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, a CFA Charterholder, a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts, and a former vice president and chief financial officer at Goldman Sachs. A popular speaker on asset allocation and related investment strategies, Darst is the bestselling author of The Art of Asset Allocation, The Complete Bond Book, and Handbook of the Bond & Money Markets. He has written numerous articles for Barron's, Euromoney, and other financial publications and is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, where he has also served as a visiting faculty member.

From the Back Cover

Take advantage of advanced investing strategies to strengthen your portfolios

Mastering the Art of Asset Allocation focuses on the knowledge and nuances that will help you achieve asset allocation success. Asset allocation authority David Darst builds upon his bestselling The Art of Asset Allocation

to explore every aspect of asset allocation from foundations through correlations, providing you with detailed techniques for understanding and implementing asset allocation in any portfolio.

Valuable for professional advisors as well as sophisticated individual investors, Mastering the Art of Asset Allocation features proven techniques to:

• Accurately estimate correlations between asset classes in a variety of market environments
• Recognize cyclical and secular turning points in pricing and valuation to optimize portfolio re-weighting
• Structure financial plans, personal trusts, and annuity programs to minimize taxes and better manage liability

Mastering the Art of Asset Allocation takes you well beyond time horizon, risk tolerance, and desired return to detail new thinking and tools on asset classes, correlations, information management, and more. It provides you with the industry's most comprehensive and results-oriented exploration of why asset allocation works and how to apply it to achieve superior short- and long-term returns for your clients.

Maximize risk-adjusted return in every economic environment

Successful asset allocation requires much more than a "one from column A, two from column B" approach. Mastering the Art of Asset Allocation integrates investor needs, market principles, and asset characteristics to help you truly understand asset allocation and use it to construct flexible portfolios that are easily adaptable to all financial and market conditions.

Mastering the Art of Asset Allocation focuses on the inner workings of asset allocation, giving you a solid foundation in:

• Asset allocation principles and tools, and how they are often used and abused
• Techniques for gaining the most advantage from compound interest
• Performance of major asset classes to help you determine historical patterns of returns, likelihood of deviations, and potential ranges for future performance
• Correlations of returns between equities, fixed income securities, and alternative investments as well as 16 specific asset classes
• Fundamental, valuation, and psychological/technical/liquidity forces that are the new indicators of market turning points
• Comprehensive listing of Internet and media information resources for locating relevant case studies, background notes, articles, books, and more

Since college and university endowments are excellent examples of balancing the creative and the conservative when investing in multiple asset classes, the investment programs of Harvard University and Yale University are detailed. Rare strategic insights are provided into the policy, implementation, diversification, and risk management techniques that have helped them become and remain two of America's largest endowments, strategies that can be adapted and replicated in portfolios of any size.

Mastering the Art of Asset Allocation spotlights every aspect of asset allocation today. Rich in both theory and application, it will provide you with a thorough grounding in the hands-on specifics required to understand and apply the science of contemporary asset allocation along with the insight, skill, and judgment required for true mastery of its less tangible elements.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw Hill
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0071463348
• ISBN 13: 9780071463348
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 356