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| Beyond Greed and Fear: Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Investing (Financial Management Association Survey and Synthesis Series) | 
 enlarge | Author: Hersh Shefrin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $14.95
You Save: $5.04 (25%)
Buy New/Used from $12.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  (14 reviews)
Sales Rank: 93246
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0195304217
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.6019
EAN: 9780195304213
ASIN: 0195304217
Publication Date: May 16, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 A very good book, but quite academic April 29, 2003
18 out of 23 found this review helpful
I had mixed feeling about this book. Content wise, it's incredible. It's full of real life stories, data, analyses, propositions of many so called market anomalies. However, I really find some of the chapters too long, especially those after chapter 5. The author had copied his style of thesis writing and actually many of his own theses (he's a renowed professor after all) into a book which has a big audience group of investors or traders who want quick fix or certain level of entertainment and personal improvement. In these respects, the "Psychology of Finance by Lars Tvede" and the "Devil take the hindmost by Edward Chancellor" are "easier" but not definitely better alternatives.
Anway, this is one of the very few "serious" books about behavioural finance that is relatively practical. If you are abound of time, go for it. Otherwise, you may try the two books I mentioned above.
p.s. I like the following the most: In April 1997 Financial Times ran a contest suggested by economist Richard Thaler. Readers were told to choose a whole number between 0 and 100. The winning entry would be the one closest to two thirds of the average entry. The winning choice is 13. The real point of this game is that playing sensibly requires you to have a sense of the magnitude of the other players' errors. Hope you got it right.
 You won't be overconfident when you've read this! July 8, 2002
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Behavioural finance is an important topic and this book provides a very enjoyable and insightful read for the layman. It will stimulate interest in the topic by being accessible, which is what it set out to do, so four stars from me. It gives you some good 'dinner party anecdotes' (!) when colleagues or friends tell you about 'how markets work'. It is not a textbook on the subject by any means, rather a book for the airport that you will read again and recommend to others. Don't expect to see any matrix algebra or stochastic differential equations in this one!
A good Overview of the Subject May 21, 2001
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Mr. Sherfin has written an entertaining, yet scholarly overview of the subject. It is pitched at the practitioner rather than the layman, so anyone wanting detailed financial planning advice or quick fire trading ideas is going to be disappointed. What you do get however is a fascinating insight into the reasons that long-term stock market anomalies continue to exist, and the forms that they take. This should finally bury the idea that markets are efficient.A couple of beefs though; firstly, as Sherfin points out several times "investors learn slowly" in yet most of the time series he quotes seem to be 3 to 10 years - statistically pretty insignificant in making generalizations about market behavior. Secondly, while he is rightly cynical about he money management industry (and does a good job at exposing some of its less creditable tricks), he at once dismisses active money management - "a combination of private interests and behavioral phenomena provide the basis for the existence of this active segment" - and then goes on to document the success of Fuller & Thaler Asset Management in producing considerable excess return. So which is it Mr.Sherfin?
 Pushing Too Far? March 30, 2001
43 out of 45 found this review helpful
In Beyond Fear and Greed, Mr. Shefrin has written a fairly interesting account of the advances in behavioral finance. He draws heavily on previously published research (although often published in fairly esoteric sources), so people searching for lots of new insights will probably be disappointed. That said, Mr. Shefrin covers most of the common biases that we are prone to including mental accounting, loss aversion, trend following and the like. If a reader doesn't see him or herself in at least some of his illustrations, I suspect he is not being honest with himself.My major problem is that in some instances I think Mr. Shefrin engages in his own form of hindsight bias. For example, in his account of wall street strategists' market predictions I think he finds his bias after he knows the results. If the market had a strong year previously and the strategist predicted another strong year and was proved wrong, then he was guilty of trend following. If however, the same strategist predicted a weak market and proved to be wrong, then he was guilty of gambler's fallacy (mean reversion). So basically either choice represents bias IF YOU ARE WRONG. And yet, just because you are right does not change the mental processes that went into your decision. However, despite the weaknesses of this book, overall it provides much food for thought for any serious investor and is probably worth at least a quick read.
Cut to the chase March 19, 2001
Hersh Shefrin does a superb job of giving a quick overview of the range of behavioral phenomena in the first chapters of this book. After that the story becomes less focused and the reader is well advised to read those subjects that truly interest her/him rather than trying to read the book cover to cover.
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