Sometimes you can observe that what you are doing is not really working. Sometimes you think – “what if I would change my methods? What if I would go back to the basics?”. In my opinion, the investments management is not different – no matter how many new investing techniques you learn, no matter how many investment blogs you are reading, you still have to go back to the fundamental theory and revisit it. It is useful to do it at least each couple of years, since the human mind has the nasty habit to forget essential principles. Take a quick test – what do you remember from the high-school mechanics of physics? (please do not do it if you are a physicist :)) ).
McGraw Hill’s handbook called “Fundamentals of Investment Management” is one of those books which make your bookshelf bend, but still you will never ever give up to it, since it is packed with useful references. It takes you from the very basics of the securities and the financial markets, feeding you with lots of definitions and context cases. Nothing really new for McGraw Hill Professional, which stands above other publishing houses for its teaching orientation. What is interesting is its relative completeness – takes you from the tyoes of investments to alternative methods of investing.
As any cookbook of such type, “Fundamentals of Investment Management” is written at an introductory level and does not go too deep in the world of investment management. Still, it has several nice resources packed within, as well as an accompanying website which has flashcards. Now this is new for me, since usually in such an accompanying website you see only the usual stuff – e.g. the chapter outline/objectives, web resources, study cases (called here stock investor pro) and exercises/questions. Flashcards are visual aids for the key topics of “Fundamentals of Investment Management” and they look nice and easy, making you studying a bit easier.
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If you ask me, I liked more the “Handbook of Finance, Volume III – Valuation, Financial Modeling and Quantitative Tools” by Frank J. Fabozzi. This is because that book has many more pieces of information on specific topics, whilst “Fundamentals of Investment Management” is rather a general introductory book. Yet, both are useful tools to use and to come back to from time to time. What I liked in “Fundamentals of Investment Management” was the behavioral approach springing up periodically in the handbook – it even has a dedicated chapter for it.
So much about the book itelf. Here’s the content of it and… enjoy.
Fundamentals of Investment Management, 7/e
Geoffrey A. Hirt, DePaul University
Stanley B. Block, Texas Christian University
Contents:
Chapter 1: The Investment Setting
Chapter 2: Security Markets: Present and Future
Chapter 3: Participating in the Market
Chapter 4: Sources of Investment Information
Chapter 5: Economic Activity
Chapter 6: Industry Analysis
Chapter 7: Valuation of the Individual Firm
Chapter 8: Financial Statement Analysis
Chapter 9: A Basic View of Technical Analysis and Market Efficiency
Chapter 10: Investments in Special Situations
Chapter 11: Bond and Fixed-Income Fundamentals
Chapter 12: Principles of Bond Valuation and Investment
Chapter 13: Duration and Reinvestment Concepts
Chapter 14: Convertible Securities and Warrants
Chapter 15: Put and Call Options
Chapter 16: Commodities and Financial Futures
Chapter 17: Stock Index Futures and Options
Chapter 18: International Securities Markets
Chapter 19: Mutual Funds
Chapter 20: Investments in Real Assets
Chapter 21: A Basic Look at Portfolio Management and Capital Market Theory
Chapter 22: Measuring Risks and Returns of Portfolio Managers