Investments

The authors of this book have produced a work that offers enough detail to give you a reliable intuition about investment opportunities, and offering a comprehensive explanation about investment theory. I found the book invaluable and absolutely worth its weight in gold. It is, however, not for the faint of heart, or anyone with zero mathematical background. While the math is far from being difficult or esoteric, you have to know what a summation is. Any precalculus background is sufficient. In addition, you have to want a comprehensive explanation that leaves no gaps. If you are looking for a short read, Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street is an excellent choice. This is a TEXT BOOK, which is, by definition, supposed to be detailed.

If one is willing to look aside from the dry substandard humor of the author, they will find one of the best written textbooks around in any subject. Taken as a given that some of this material is mathematically and analytically intensive, I cannot say that this entire book is easy reading. However, you will find that the authors due an excellent job explaining and demonstrating difficult concepts. They also provide a variety of real life examples to supplement their explanations, that help to provide context for some of the seemingly abstract concepts. Moreover, they extensively make use of Microsoft Excel is demonstrating how to perform some complicated aspects of security analysis in a way that is easily reproducible to the reader.

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.

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.

I used this book to help me prepare for the CFA examination. The book presents a wide spectrum of investment information in a easy to understand manner. The authors provide many examples to assist the reader in understanding many complicated investment concepts. I would say that this book is geared to someone already in the industry or for an individual that wishes to enter the industry or become a serious investor. I recommend this book highly without any reservations.