Managing Equity Portfolios: A Behavioral Approach to Improving Skills and Investment Processes
A groundbreaking framework for improving portfolio performance that goes beyond traditional analytics, offering new ways to understand investment skills, process, and behaviors.

Portfolio management is a tough business. Each day, managers face the challenges of an ever-changing and unforgiving market, where strategies and processes that worked yesterday may not work today, or tomorrow. The usual advice for improving portfolio performance—refining your strategy, staying within your style, doing better research, trading more efficiently—is important, but doesn't seem to affect outcomes sufficiently. This book, by an experienced advisor to institutional money managers, goes beyond conventional thinking to offer a new analytic framework that enables investors to improve their performance confidently, deliberately, and simply, by applying the principles of behavioral finance.

W. Edwards Deming observed that you can't improve what you don't measure. Active portfolio management lacks methods for measuring key inputs to management success like skills, process, and behavioral tendencies. Michael Ervolini offers a conceptually straightforward and well-tested framework that does just that, with evidence of how it helps managers enhance self-awareness and become better investors. In a series of short, accessible chapters, Ervolini investigates a range of topics from psychology and neuroscience, describing their relevance to the challenges of portfolio management. Finally, Ervolini offers seven ideas for improving. These range from maintaining an investment diary to performing rudimentary calculations that quantify basic skills; each idea, or “project,” helps managers gain a deeper understanding of their strengths and shortcomings and how to use this knowledge to improve investment performance.

1120172239
Managing Equity Portfolios: A Behavioral Approach to Improving Skills and Investment Processes
A groundbreaking framework for improving portfolio performance that goes beyond traditional analytics, offering new ways to understand investment skills, process, and behaviors.

Portfolio management is a tough business. Each day, managers face the challenges of an ever-changing and unforgiving market, where strategies and processes that worked yesterday may not work today, or tomorrow. The usual advice for improving portfolio performance—refining your strategy, staying within your style, doing better research, trading more efficiently—is important, but doesn't seem to affect outcomes sufficiently. This book, by an experienced advisor to institutional money managers, goes beyond conventional thinking to offer a new analytic framework that enables investors to improve their performance confidently, deliberately, and simply, by applying the principles of behavioral finance.

W. Edwards Deming observed that you can't improve what you don't measure. Active portfolio management lacks methods for measuring key inputs to management success like skills, process, and behavioral tendencies. Michael Ervolini offers a conceptually straightforward and well-tested framework that does just that, with evidence of how it helps managers enhance self-awareness and become better investors. In a series of short, accessible chapters, Ervolini investigates a range of topics from psychology and neuroscience, describing their relevance to the challenges of portfolio management. Finally, Ervolini offers seven ideas for improving. These range from maintaining an investment diary to performing rudimentary calculations that quantify basic skills; each idea, or “project,” helps managers gain a deeper understanding of their strengths and shortcomings and how to use this knowledge to improve investment performance.

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Managing Equity Portfolios: A Behavioral Approach to Improving Skills and Investment Processes

Managing Equity Portfolios: A Behavioral Approach to Improving Skills and Investment Processes

Managing Equity Portfolios: A Behavioral Approach to Improving Skills and Investment Processes

Managing Equity Portfolios: A Behavioral Approach to Improving Skills and Investment Processes

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$28.99 

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Overview

A groundbreaking framework for improving portfolio performance that goes beyond traditional analytics, offering new ways to understand investment skills, process, and behaviors.

Portfolio management is a tough business. Each day, managers face the challenges of an ever-changing and unforgiving market, where strategies and processes that worked yesterday may not work today, or tomorrow. The usual advice for improving portfolio performance—refining your strategy, staying within your style, doing better research, trading more efficiently—is important, but doesn't seem to affect outcomes sufficiently. This book, by an experienced advisor to institutional money managers, goes beyond conventional thinking to offer a new analytic framework that enables investors to improve their performance confidently, deliberately, and simply, by applying the principles of behavioral finance.

W. Edwards Deming observed that you can't improve what you don't measure. Active portfolio management lacks methods for measuring key inputs to management success like skills, process, and behavioral tendencies. Michael Ervolini offers a conceptually straightforward and well-tested framework that does just that, with evidence of how it helps managers enhance self-awareness and become better investors. In a series of short, accessible chapters, Ervolini investigates a range of topics from psychology and neuroscience, describing their relevance to the challenges of portfolio management. Finally, Ervolini offers seven ideas for improving. These range from maintaining an investment diary to performing rudimentary calculations that quantify basic skills; each idea, or “project,” helps managers gain a deeper understanding of their strengths and shortcomings and how to use this knowledge to improve investment performance.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780262323024
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 10/24/2014
Series: The MIT Press
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
File size: 1 MB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Michael A. Ervolini is CEO of Cabot Research, a global software company that provides innovative analytics to money managers to help them improve portfolio performance.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Terrance Odean ix
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction xix
Part One: Game Change
1 Industry Challenges 3
2 Why Johnny Can't Improve 19
3 New Analytic Framework 39
4 Process and Behaviors 51
5 Feedback in Action 67
6 Phantastic Risks 77
Part Two: Behavioral Matters
7 What Drives Selling? 87
8 Sell the Way You Buy--Strategically 91
9 Bearing Up in a Bear Market 95
10 Aching Conviction 99
11 Unconscious Deliberation 103
12 Investing in Self-Awareness 107
13 Stressing Performance 111
14 Thesis, Narrative, or Just Another Disappointing Story 115
15 Dreaming of Alpha 119
16 Motivated Reasoning 123
17 Regrettable Choices 127
18 Endowing Success 131
19 Counterfactual Investing 135
20 Great Investing Is Not Natural 139
21 Inside-Out Investing 143
22 Beware Phantastic Investments 147
23 Thanks for the Memories 153
24 Skills, Process, and Behaviors 157
25 Processing Success 161
26 Primed for Success 165
27 Fear, Anger, and Risk 171
28 Successful Choices 175
29 Changing for the Better 179
30 Portfolio Thinking 183
31 Promiscuous Thinking 187
32 Getting in the Flow 191
33 Believing is Seeing 195
34 A Storied Portfolio 201
35 The Trouble with Improving 207
36 Tired Investing 211
37 That Winning Feeling 215
38 Hold That Thought 219
39 Overcoming Overconfidence 223
40 The Power of Vulnerability 227
Part Three: Improving Right Away
Project 1 Embracing the Scientific Method 233
Project 2 Maintaining a Diary 239
Project 3 Accounting for Skill 243
Project 4 Learning about Buying Skill 249
Project 5 Measuring Your Sell Effectiveness 253
Project 6 Calibrating Sizing 257
Project 7 Checklists 261
Epilogue 267
Glossary 271

What People are Saying About This

Warren Touwen

The Disciplined Trader meets Moneyball. This book is a worthwhile read for any portfolio manager, analyst, or trader focused on continual improvement and even greater success.

Endorsement

After years of deep, questioning research into the biases and beliefs that can undermine the 'normal' behavior of equity portfolio managers, Michael Ervolini skillfully tells us how to improve our choices. He does this by providing practical ideas for learning how to do more of what we already do well and how to identify and fix what is not working. No asset class and no asset manager are immune from human fallibility when it comes to portfolio decisions, and with the help of this book you can learn how to showcase your skills while modifying behavioral tendencies.

Arnold S. Wood, President and Chief Executive Officer, Martingale Asset Management

From the Publisher

The Disciplined Trader meets Moneyball. This book is a worthwhile read for any portfolio manager, analyst, or trader focused on continual improvement and even greater success.

Warren Touwen, Core Product, Bloomberg

For fund managers seeking to improve their investing skills there are many publications offering tantalizing but fragmented paths for progress. In this book Michael Ervolini brings together topics such as fast and slow thinking, checklists, and self-awareness to construct coherent and pragmatic solutions. Using the principles of the scientific method he shows how a successful investment process can evolve through time, improving the consistency of decision making and keeping investing skills relevant in an ever-changing world.

Simon Savage, Asset Manager, GLG Partners

Michael Ervolini is a clever man in touch with reality. Recognizing that portfolio management is a tough, challenging business full of conflicts, he gets it that rationality is easy to talk about but difficult to implement. It requires recognition of deep uncertainty and the human resource that is emotion. Since passive investing puts you at the mercy of the market, active portfolio management has to be made to work. It can be, Ervolini says, if there is proper feedback. It requires a willingness to be curious about what we do and to create ways to learn from experience. This is what he does in this book. Read it!

David Tuckett, Director, Centre for the Study of Decision-Making Uncertainty, University College, London

After years of deep, questioning research into the biases and beliefs that can undermine the 'normal' behavior of equity portfolio managers, Michael Ervolini skillfully tells us how to improve our choices. He does this by providing practical ideas for learning how to do more of what we already do well and how to identify and fix what is not working. No asset class and no asset manager are immune from human fallibility when it comes to portfolio decisions, and with the help of this book you can learn how to showcase your skills while modifying behavioral tendencies.

Arnold S. Wood, President and Chief Executive Officer, Martingale Asset Management

David Tuckett

Michael Ervolini is a clever man in touch with reality. Recognizing that portfolio management is a tough, challenging business full of conflicts, he gets it that rationality is easy to talk about but difficult to implement. It requires recognition of deep uncertainty and the human resource that is emotion. Since passive investing puts you at the mercy of the market, active portfolio management has to be made to work. It can be, Ervolini says, if there is proper feedback. It requires a willingness to be curious about what we do and to create ways to learn from experience. This is what he does in this book. Read it!

Simon Savage

For fund managers seeking to improve their investing skills there are many publications offering tantalizing but fragmented paths for progress. In this book Michael Ervolini brings together topics such as fast and slow thinking,checklists, and self-awareness to construct coherent and pragmatic solutions. Using the principles of the scientific method he shows how a successful investment process can evolve through time, improving the consistency of decision making and keeping investing skills relevant in an ever-changing world.

Arnold S. Wood

After years of deep, questioning research into the biases and beliefs that can undermine the 'normal' behavior of equity portfolio managers, Michael Ervolini skillfully tells us how to improve our choices. He does this by providing practical ideas for learning how to do more of what we already do well and how to identify and fix what is not working. No asset class and no asset manager are immune from human fallibility when it comes to portfolio decisions, and with the help of this book you can learn how to showcase your skills while modifying behavioral tendencies.

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