The Foundations of Smarter Stock Picking

The market is increasingly becoming a shark pool of quantitative algorithms that are eating day traders and old fashioned investment funds for lunch - so if you want to win in the stock market you need to get smart. As we detailed in our manifesto you can beat the market if you learn to understand its nature, act contrarian to your own emotions and ignore the advertisements that implore you to trade every 5 minutes. There are many sites on the web that give a good introduction to the basics of 'what is a share' or 'what is a pe ratio' and so on - if you do wish to learn the very basics please check out the Motley Fool or Investopedia where there are some excellent resources for beginners. These pages of curated articles are designed for those investors who want to take things further. Herein you will find summaries of research papers, books and advanced investment thinking that will help you build a latticework of mental models to defeat the market and profit from inefficiencies. Best of luck!



Why should you own shares?

What have Bill Gross, John Paulson, Anthony Bolton and Bill Miller all got in common?…

For much of the last 35 years, most of the investment management world has promoted…

The amount of evidence stacking up that hedge funds, mutual funds and even private equity…

It's sure been a difficult time of late for stocks & shares. Over the last…




Understanding Market Prices

From 1981 until very recently the key strategy of equity investors was 'buy and hold'.…

There are a few books that I turn to time and again which I find…




On Buying and Selling

“To have a true investment, there must be a true margin of safety. And a…

Knowing when to sell stocks is one of the most difficult aspects of investing. While…

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the thorny issue of when to sell…

With the art of picking lowly valued stocks playing such a central role in any…



You are buying a share in a business - what are the signs of a great business?

In spite of a dozen years of sideways markets that have just about ground the…

The stock market is basically full of dirt. The majority of companies listed are like…

Value Investing is all about identifying stocks with unidentified or underappreciated potential and waiting for…




Risk & Portfolio Management

Given that the law of diversification is about as close as one can find to…

For some reason they let the loons out of the mad house in finance a…




Know the essentials of Fundamental and Technical Analysis

Anybody who reads financial statements without a calculator in hand, or a spreadsheet open, is…

Basing my company valuations on book value is nice and everything, and has a lot…

Book values are something I often think about as an investor, but haven't really ever…

While the PE Ratio may be the classic equity investors valuation ratio, with reams of…

When it comes to valuing stocks, the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is the number one metric…

Famously, people aren’t too good with statistics. Every day in the newspaper you can read…

Many stock market traders follow “momentum” strategies that focus on buying stocks in line with…




You are not so smart - know and manage yourself!

Over the hundreds of articles published on the Psy-Fi Blog we've generated a long list…

It is often said that investing is all about judgement but, regrettably, as investors, we…

We reviewed in an earlier article Daniel Kahnemann's Prospect Theory, his latest book "Thinking Fast…

Following the recent discussion on Prospect Theory and the ways in which human nature leads…








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