It got [1] bad review on Amazon, but I liked the parts of Aswath Damodaran’s “Investment Philosophies” that I read.
People respond to different things, but I liked to get to the philosophical aspect of stuff “Why is this approach sensible? why does it work? when is it likely to underperform?” before investing all that energy in learning specific tools and techniques. Otherwise you may learn a bunch of sutff that doesn’t actually work except during the 3 years your boss made you do it before he got fired because it stopped working.
The other thing is that different investment approaches suit different personality types. Getting to know which one resonates with you and which one fits your skills best is pretty useful, and also knowing what other approaches are out there and why they might or might not work is also useful, even if you have a preference for a particular one.
The CFAI curriculum is imo not a very good source of information. There are better books out there for investment advice. People don’t realize that there is a difference between information and knowledge. True knowledge is only known by a few. All we are doing now is accumulating information. That’s all.
The two important parts of investing in the CFAI curriculum is Equity and Fixed Income.
Since there are a lot more deep and more interesting books to read on equity, and the fixed income section is mostly ripped off a certian author, it doesn’t make the CFAI books all that glamourous to use. Although they are up there with the best.
I agree with both of these statements, in a certain way. I view “the news” as a valuable way to keep up-to-date on the propaganda being launched in various parts of the world. For example I use Bloomberg. The “news” articles there are around 40% facts, 60% Western spin. If you believe their analysis of the situation you are an idiot, but really the avg person is unable to sort thru the misinfomration no matter their intelligence, therefore I agree with Geo. Also “the news” focuses on some things while excluding others, your attention is brought to where they want you to look. But you as an investor need to be looking at what the masses who watch the news ARE NOT looking at. However the propaganda does tell you two important things. It tells you 1) what the masses are being brainwashed with, and where their attention is being drawn, and 2) hints at what the insiders really think (since they authored the propaganda).