More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places (Updated and Expanded)

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Columbia University Press, Jun 11, 2013 - Business & Economics - 320 pages
Since its first publication, Michael J. Mauboussin's popular guide to wise investing has been translated into eight languages and has been named best business book by BusinessWeek and best economics book by Strategy+Business. Now updated to reflect current research and expanded to include new chapters on investment philosophy, psychology, and strategy and science as they pertain to money management, this volume is more than ever the best chance to know more than the average investor.

Offering invaluable tools to better understand the concepts of choice and risk, More Than You Know is a unique blend of practical advice and sound theory, sampling from a wide variety of sources and disciplines. Mauboussin builds on the ideas of visionaries, including Warren Buffett and E. O. Wilson, but also finds wisdom in a broad and deep range of fields, such as casino gambling, horse racing, psychology, and evolutionary biology. He analyzes the strategies of poker experts David Sklansky and Puggy Pearson and pinpoints parallels between mate selection in guppies and stock market booms. For this edition, Mauboussin includes fresh thoughts on human cognition, management assessment, game theory, the role of intuition, and the mechanisms driving the market's mood swings, and explains what these topics tell us about smart investing.

More Than You Know is written with the professional investor in mind but extends far beyond the world of economics and finance. Mauboussin groups his essays into four parts-Investment Philosophy, Psychology of Investing, Innovation and Competitive Strategy, and Science and Complexity Theory-and he includes substantial references for further reading. A true eye-opener, More Than You Know shows how a multidisciplinary approach that pays close attention to process and the psychology of decision making offers the best chance for long-term financial results.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
Investment Philosophy In troduction
5
Process and Outcome in Investing
9
2 InvestingProfession or Business? Thoughts on Beating the Market Index
15
Frequency Versus Magnitude in Expected Value
23
The Importance of CircumstanceBased Categorization
29
Risk Uncertainty and Prediction in Investing
35
6 Are You an Expert? Experts and Markets
40
21 Is There a Fly in Your Portfolio? What an Accelerating Rate of Industry Change Means for Investors
143
How to Balance the Long Term with the Short Term
148
Fitness Landscapes and Competitive Advantage
153
The Folly of Using Average PEs
159
Mean Reversion and Turnarounds
165
Considering Cooperation and Competition Through Game Theory
171
On the Limits of Corporate Growth
176
Science and Complexity Theory Introduction
185

What Streaks Tell Us About Perception Probability and Skill
46
Myopic Loss Aversion and Portfolio Turnover
52
Management Evaluation and the Investment Process
60
Psychology of Investing Introduction
67
Linking Stress to Suboptimal Portfolio Management
71
What Tupperware Parties Teach You About Investing and Life
77
Emotion and Intuition in Decision Making
83
The Role of Imitation in Markets
89
Misuse of Behavioral Finance Can Lead to Bad Thinking
94
LongTerm Expectations the El Farol Bar and Kidding Yourself
99
Investing with Naturalistic Decision Making
104
What Did You Learn from the Last Survey?
110
Innovation and Competitive Strategy Introduction
117
Why Innovation Is Inevitable
121
What Brain Development Teaches Us About Innovation
130
Linking Creative Destruction and Expectations
137
Thoughts on Organizing for Investing Success
187
The Wisdom and Whims of the Collective
193
Using the Collective to Find Solve and Predict
198
Fat Tails and Investing
203
Two Lessons from the St Petersburg Paradox
209
Why Listening to Individuals Can Be Hazardous to Your Wealth
216
The Role of Cause and Effect in Markets
221
Power Laws and What They Mean for Investors
229
Firm Size Growth Rates and Valuation
235
Exploring the Markets Mood Swings
243
Exploring SelfAffi nity in Return on Investment
249
The Future of Consilience in Investing
255
Notes
259
References and Further Reading
291
Index
315
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About the author (2013)

Michael J. Mauboussin is head of global financial strategies at Credit Suisse and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. He is the author of The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing and Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition.

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