Investment Management

Investment Management provides a powerful package of systematic principles and cutting-edge applications for intelligent-and profitable-investing in the new world of finance. Its authoritative approach to the investment process is indispensable for coming to grips with today's rapidly changing investment environment-an environment that bombards the investor with an oversupply of information, with novel and complex strategies, with a globalized trading arena in a constant state of flux, and with radical innovations in the development of new financial instruments. Traditional investment methods no longer suffice for investors managing their own funds or for professionals entrusted with the wealth of individual and fiduciary institutions.

Edited by Peter Bernstein and Aswath Damodaran, widely respected experts in the field, this authoritative resource brings together an all-star team that combines Wall Street savvy with profound theoretical skills. The hands-on professionals who have contributed to this volume command high respect among academics in finance; the academic contributors, in turn, are also experienced in the rough-and-tumble of the Wall Street scene.

Together, they have designed the book to look at investing as a process-a series of steps, taken in the proper sequence, that provides the tools and strategies for optimal balancing of the interaction of risk and return. The analysis is at all points comprehensive and lucid as it moves from setting investment objectives to the best methods for selecting securities, from explaining how to measure risk to how to measure performance, from understanding derivatives to minimizing taxes, and from providing the essentials of portfolio strategy to the basic principles of asset allocation. In a unique chapter, the book also offers a searching evaluation of management and governance structures in the modern corporation.

One form of risk management is to make such successful investments that losses do not matter. Only luck can achieve that result; the real world requires decisions whose outcomes are never known in advance. That is what risk is all about. Every stage of the investment process-from executing a trade to optimizing diversification-must focus on making rational choices under conditions of uncertainty. The successful investor's toolkit has more inside of it than just the essential apparatus for selecting securities and allocating assets. The successful investor is also the one who has the knowledge, the confidence, and the necessary control systems to deal with the inevitable moments when forecasts go wrong.

Investment Management explores the investment process from precisely this viewpoint. It is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to investing in today's challenging marketplace-an ideal resource for serious investors and students.

PETER L. BERNSTEIN is President of Peter L. Bernstein, Inc., economic consultants to institutional investors and corporations. A longtime participant in the world of finance as a money manager, teacher, and writer, he was the founder of the Journal of Portfolio Management and is the publisher of the biweekly, Economics and Portfolio Strategy. His seven books include Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (Wiley) and Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street.

ASWATH DAMODARAN is Associate Professor of Finance at New York University's Stern School of Business and the author of numerous books, including Investment Valuation and Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice, both published by Wiley. He was voted one of the top twelve business educators in the United States by BusinessWeek.