Investment Philosophies: Successful Strategies and the Investors Who Made Them Work

by Aswath Damodaran

The guide for investors who want a better understanding of investment strategies that have stood the test of time This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Investment Philosophies covers different investment philosophies and reveal the beliefs that underlie each one, the evidence on whether the strategies that arise from the philosophy actually produce results, and what an investor needs to bring to the table to make the philosophy work.

The book covers a wealth of strategies including indexing, passive and activist value investing, growth investing, chart/technical analysis, market timing, arbitrage, and many more investment philosophies.

Presents the tools needed to understand portfolio management and the variety of strategies available to achieve investment success Explores the process of creating and managing a portfolio Shows readers how to profit like successful value growth index investors Aswath Damodaran is a well-known academic and practitioner in finance who is an expert on different approaches to valuation and investment This vital resource examines various investing philosophies and provides you with helpful online resources and tools to fully investigate each investment philosophy and assess whether it is a philosophy that is appropriate for you.

Genres: Finance, Business, Economics, Personal Finance, Money, Nonfiction

855 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 20, 2003

About the author

Aswath Damodaran is a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University (Kerschner Family Chair in Finance Education). He is well known as the author of several widely used academic and practitioner texts on Valuation, Corporate Finance and Investment Management; as well as a provider of comprehensive data for valuation purposes.

Reviews

[Nick]

An excellent book providing a quantitative analysis of various investment philosophies. It's not really a how-to book (you could read it that way, but this would be inflexible and perhaps financially dangerous) but more of a book that provides checks and balances to your own philosophy. Damadoran shows several philosophies of investment can out-perform the market or alternative strategies, provided the former are used consistently and sensibly. It's not a light read, but certainly not a difficult one either.

[Palash Kulshrestha]

Ashwath presents all the different types of investment methodologies but crux of the matter comes out to be index funds wins in every study (mostly) . feeling nihilistic about investing after reading this masterpiece. kudos

[Alireza]

Most essential reading in financial markets; An academic review of most important papers about trading and finance in last 50 years with an emphasis on the stock market but lessons are applicable to all financial markets.
within the book, there's an explanation of "Efficient market theory" and scientific proof of why technical analysis is bullshit, and also some studies of hedge funds functionality which isn't very promising.
In a nutshell, by reading this book you will gain a clear vision of what wouldn't work in financial markets and a few ideas of strategies that might be profitable for you.

[Francisco]

prof.Aswath Damodaran is one of a kind! His approach is suited for any level, I like the factor that he focus more on the application part of finance and investment rather than the stories and theories. Highly recommendable for any one !

[Mustafa Maher Tawfik]

A must-read Handbook for Investment.

[Ricardo Teixeira]

Good book to debunk investment myths and start to gain a perspective of which is your investment philosophy.

Chapters could be better organized and a few key ideas and “philosophies” of investing seem to be missing - not a comprehensive book in that said.

That being sais, no one should read one investing book and expect to gain a full perspective about investing.

[Gautom]

Will make you a confident investor.
Completed online course offered by NYU.

[Santhosh Kumar]

Pragmatic and underrated