Schaum's Outline of Investments

This is a very informative and useful learning tool for investors, and recommended highly. You will need a financial calculator and be good at algebra for some of the chapters. The only problem is the age of this book: the copyright is 1992 and 2000, and some information maybe obsolete. Investment is a subject that tends to change rapidly. It is quite useful to have so many different and important subjects all gathered in one book. Those chapters that covered subjects that I know very little about were quite useful; you get enough info to get you started and orient you. Of course, the coverage of subjects is very shallow; for an in-depth discourse, there are many books that are focused on specific subjects (there are oodles of such books), but here you get a very nice intro to the various aspects of investing. This rather remarkable study guide has 26 chapters, each covering a different subject and functions as a mini-primer on the subject. Since the chapters are independent, you can skip around to different subjects that interest you. To the investor, some chapters (discounted cash flow, risk calculations, market efficiencies, stock evaluation, capital market theory, portfolio performance evaluation, financial statements) are more important than others, and you can skip directly to these chapters. It covers a wide range of subjects that are of interest to the investor. There are 2 types of chapters: those with calculations, and those without. The math ones have many questions at the end of the chapter for you to practice using the various mathematical formulas. For those that do not have math, the questions introduce new material. With the help of this book, I was able to program several very useful financial calculations into Excel (beta, Black-Scholes, adjusting returns for inflation or foreign exchange, portfolio performance, value of stocks). The only thing that bothers me is the time factor. This book is actually a study guide for the CFA exam (certified financial analyst); I know nothing of this, but assume that it is now out of date for that purpose. As a beginning investor, there is no way for me know which material is still relevant, and which is either obsolete or no longer true, or just partly true.

Schaum's Outlines consistently provide good topical studies. I have read several of their finance and accounting books to supplement my CFA curriculum studies. The "solved problems" present a myriad of practical questions / scenarios, followed by detailed solutions. I consider this format a great way to learn! INVESTMENTS helps round out a finance students' or investment professionals' understanding of a variety of concepts. The book excels at presenting topical material in an orderly way. Chapters nicely segue into others. Authors Francis and Taylor's early chapters cover various financial instruments (money market securities, common and preferred stock, corporate bonds, US securities, municipal bonds) and then progress to the financial environment in which these instruments operate. The book explores financial statement analysis, portfolio management and analysis and also specific applications of short positions, hedging, arbitrage, security valuation, put and call options, and capital market theory. I give this book a 4-star rating instead of 5 because the end-of-chapter problems (true false and multiple choice) are not supplemented with detailed explanations to the correct answer. This being said, I give much credit to the effectiveness of the Solved Problems throughout the book. They are practical and have enhanced my understanding of topics. The book could be improved if the authors would provide problem-solving guidance using financial calculators. I use an HP 12-C calculator extensively and perhaps had an easier time solving problems with it rather than mulling through the algebraic formulas. All in all, for the serious CFA candidate or student of investments, I highly recommend this book for supplemental reading. I've learned a lot and hope you do too!

This book gives an excellent elementary introduction to investment techniques and concepts for the beginning student of business or economics. It is full of useful examples and solved problems as is characteristic of all books in this series, and it also gives adequate explanation of the terms and results in most areas of investment activity. Some of the parts of the book which are particularly well-written or helpful include: 1. The diagram of the corporate bond rating process . 2. The flowchart detailing a primary offering made through a syndicate of investment bankers. 3. The summary of the different security market indices. 4. The discussion of the "naive buy-and-hold strategy" and their use as benchmarks against which other investment strategies may be compared. 5. The discussion of the Dupont framework for analyzing equity returns and growth to reveal the sources of the growth of the firm. 6. The discussion of time-series comparisons for the ratios of a firm. 7. The discussion of the various problems involved when doing financial statement analysis. 8. The discussion on arbitrage. 9. The treatment of moving averages and the accompanying illustration of different moving averages. 10. The discussion of the random walk theory in the context of the efficient markets theory. The random walk theory has been been taken to be axiomatic by most financial analysts but has recently been challenged recently by empirical studies of financial data. 11. The treatment of the different levels of market efficiency, including the weakly efficient, the semistrong efficient, and the strongly efficient market hypotheses. 12. The discussion of the anomalies in market data that point to deviations from the efficient market hypothesis. 13. The chapter on portfolio analysis via the use of covariance and the treatment of the efficient frontier. 14. The treatment of the capital asset pricing model.