Investments

This has been a good transaction. this investment book was in excellent quality. Thank you.

As a recent college graduate from a university where I used this text and as a current finance professional, I can attest that this is one of the most solid finance text books out there. Its reach is expansive, but it's incredibly easy to follow. This book is particularly great for the undergraduate level. As I prepare for the CFA exams, I am reminded of how many concepts I learned (and still remember!) from this very text. It will definitely be a permanent fixture in my professional library for years to come.

As an investment banking analyst and proprietary investor for Wall Street's two most prestigious firms, I would like to attest to the firm economic underpinnings of this book. It is refreshing to see a chapter devoted to criticisms of the efficient market hypothesis, though a further discussion of behavioral finance would be greatly welcomed. This book is concise and provides a good balance of theory and practical knowledge.

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.

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.