The Portable Financial Analyst: What Practitioners Need to Know, 2nd Edition - Hardcover

Kritzman, Mark P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471267600 ISBN 13: 9780471267607

Publisher: Wiley, 2003

Synopsis

Financial professionals are faced with increasingly technical topics that are theoretically complicated but practically necessary in determining the trade-off between risk and return. The Portable Financial Analyst, Second Edition is a unique collection of essays that address the heart of every analyst's and investor's dilemma: how to make decisions in the face of unknown forces and how to assert some control over the outcome

About this title

About the Author

MARK P. KRITZMAN is Managing Partner of Windham Capital Management Boston, a Senior Partner of State Street Associates, and Research Director of the AIMR Research Foundation. He also serves on the boards of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance and the International Securities Exchange, and on the editorial boards of Emerging Markets Review, Financial Analysts Journal, the Journal of Alternative Investments, the Journal of Asset Management, the Journal of Derivatives, and the Journal of Investment Management. Mr. Kritzman has written numerous articles for academic and professional journals and is the author of six books including Puzzles of Finance (Wiley).

From the Back Cover

To succeed in the world of finance you must have a solid understanding of the concepts and strategies used to perform proper investment analysis. Today, financial analysts are faced with increasingly technical topics that are theoretically complicated but practically necessary. To help you overcome these obstacles, financial expert Mark Kritzman has returned with a completely updated and expanded second edition of The Portable Financial Analyst.

The Portable Financial Analyst, Second Edition is a comprehensive collection of financial insight and advice that addresses the heart of every investor’s and analyst’s dilemma: how to make decisions in the face of unknown forces and how to assert some control over the outcome. Originally covered as columns in the Financial Analysts Journal, these self-contained chapters address often controversial and difficult quantitative topics without the technical jargon and mathematical symbolism that often permeate other writings. With a high degree of lucidity and impeccable logic, Kritzman shows you how to employ the tools of mathematics, statistics, and common sense when evaluating past results and projecting future performance.

Filled with in-depth insights and expert advice, this invaluable resource touches on a variety of financial topics that every financial practitioner must be familiar with, including:

• Uncertainty
• Higher moments
• Time diversification
• Hypothesis testing
• Future value and risk of loss
• Simulation
• Optimization
• Risk budgets
• Hedging
• Option valuation and replication
• And much more

Objective, practical, and essential, The Portable Financial Analyst, Second Edition covers the concepts, methodology, and strategies inherent to thorough and proper investment analysis. With this book as your guide you’ll learn how to make the right investment decisions as well as when to make them.

From the Inside Flap

Risk is an inescapable feature of investing, and risk, more than anything else, is what this fine book is all about.
-Peter L. Bernstein

Praise for this Second Edition

For those looking for a serious introduction to the concepts and tools of quantitative financial analysis, this is a great book. The focus is economics and statistics as applied to financial markets. Though the topics are technical, the author's wit and good sense of humor are evident throughout.
-Bob Litterman, head of the Quantitative Resources Group, Goldman Sachs Asset Management

This book is an essential resource for the thoughtful practitioner and serious student of finance. Kritzman straightforwardly introduces the reader to tools and concepts of huge significance in finance and investment management today. Neither brain candy nor mental steroids, this book is solid intellectual protein. Buy it. Study it. Bulk up.
-Robert F. Bruner, Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Executive Director of the Batten Institute, Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia

This is a wonderful collection of wide-ranging essays on financial analysis written by a preeminent practitioner in a remarkably lucid style . . . don't leave home without it!
-Andrew W. Lo, Harris & Harris Group Professor, MIT Sloan School

Praise for the First Edition

In one book, Mark Kritzman covers the key tools of modern investment practice. Clear, concise, and always to the point, the treatment is succinct but never superficial. This valuable volume should be included in the library of every serious investor.
-Dr. William F. Sharpe, Professor of Finance, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and Nobel Prize Laureate, 1990, Economic Sciences

Mark Kritzman makes the recondite transparent, the technical accessible, and the horrendously complex elegantly simple. Keep this book close at hand and you won't have to figure out these difficult issues again (and again and again).
-Jack R. Meyer, President and CEO, Harvard Management Company, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471267600
• ISBN 13: 9780471267607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 272