Author: Michael Bailey
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 1264268394
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
Use the power of behavioral finance to make smarter, better-informed decisions through every step of the investing process In an economy where markets are more unpredictable than ever, emotions can derail the efforts of even the most experienced investors and wreak havoc on portfolio returns. Applying powerful behavioral finance concepts, Stop. Think. Invest. provides a framework for identifying personal biases and avoiding mistakes that can cost big profits. Based on the author’s extensive research and 100 key behavioral finance concepts, this guide provides a winning 12-step process you can use to successfully manage your trading and investing for long-term success, including: Begin the initial research into a new stock Create an investment thesis—why are you buying the stock? Trade timing and size—when are you buying and how much? Make the initial purchase Review the trade—round up or round down Test your original investment thesis Stop. Think. Invest. reveals critical information about behavioral finance flaws, such as anchoring, confirmation bias, recency bias, and loss aversion. Unlike other behavioral investing guides, Stop. Think. Invest. offers a fully organized and practical approach to applying behavioral finance to everyday investing.
Stop. Think. Invest.: A Behavioral Finance Framework for Optimizing Investment Portfolios
Author: Michael Bailey
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 1264268394
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
Use the power of behavioral finance to make smarter, better-informed decisions through every step of the investing process In an economy where markets are more unpredictable than ever, emotions can derail the efforts of even the most experienced investors and wreak havoc on portfolio returns. Applying powerful behavioral finance concepts, Stop. Think. Invest. provides a framework for identifying personal biases and avoiding mistakes that can cost big profits. Based on the author’s extensive research and 100 key behavioral finance concepts, this guide provides a winning 12-step process you can use to successfully manage your trading and investing for long-term success, including: Begin the initial research into a new stock Create an investment thesis—why are you buying the stock? Trade timing and size—when are you buying and how much? Make the initial purchase Review the trade—round up or round down Test your original investment thesis Stop. Think. Invest. reveals critical information about behavioral finance flaws, such as anchoring, confirmation bias, recency bias, and loss aversion. Unlike other behavioral investing guides, Stop. Think. Invest. offers a fully organized and practical approach to applying behavioral finance to everyday investing.
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 1264268394
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
Use the power of behavioral finance to make smarter, better-informed decisions through every step of the investing process In an economy where markets are more unpredictable than ever, emotions can derail the efforts of even the most experienced investors and wreak havoc on portfolio returns. Applying powerful behavioral finance concepts, Stop. Think. Invest. provides a framework for identifying personal biases and avoiding mistakes that can cost big profits. Based on the author’s extensive research and 100 key behavioral finance concepts, this guide provides a winning 12-step process you can use to successfully manage your trading and investing for long-term success, including: Begin the initial research into a new stock Create an investment thesis—why are you buying the stock? Trade timing and size—when are you buying and how much? Make the initial purchase Review the trade—round up or round down Test your original investment thesis Stop. Think. Invest. reveals critical information about behavioral finance flaws, such as anchoring, confirmation bias, recency bias, and loss aversion. Unlike other behavioral investing guides, Stop. Think. Invest. offers a fully organized and practical approach to applying behavioral finance to everyday investing.
The Last Safe Investment
Author: Bryan Franklin
Publisher: Portfolio
ISBN: 1591846110
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
"The case for investing in your own career before anything else Michael Ellsberg and Bryan Franklin think you've been fed a lie: that if you save for decades and invest in 401(k)s, IRAs, and a home, these investments will grow steadily over decades, allowing twenty to thirty years of secure, peaceful retirement. This might have been true at some point in the last century, but it is not true any longer. If you want to get ahead and enjoy a life of prosperity, the authors argue that you must invest in the most powerful source of wealth you'll ever know: your own earning power. Ellsberg and Franklin reveal how investing in yourself in various ways can guarantee a return much higher than the stock market or real estate. Boosting your skills, leadership, persuasion ability, and your network enriches the quality and meaning of your life at the same time that it enriches your wallet. Why wouldn't you bet on yourself?"--
Publisher: Portfolio
ISBN: 1591846110
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
"The case for investing in your own career before anything else Michael Ellsberg and Bryan Franklin think you've been fed a lie: that if you save for decades and invest in 401(k)s, IRAs, and a home, these investments will grow steadily over decades, allowing twenty to thirty years of secure, peaceful retirement. This might have been true at some point in the last century, but it is not true any longer. If you want to get ahead and enjoy a life of prosperity, the authors argue that you must invest in the most powerful source of wealth you'll ever know: your own earning power. Ellsberg and Franklin reveal how investing in yourself in various ways can guarantee a return much higher than the stock market or real estate. Boosting your skills, leadership, persuasion ability, and your network enriches the quality and meaning of your life at the same time that it enriches your wallet. Why wouldn't you bet on yourself?"--
Quit Like a Millionaire
Author: Kristy Shen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525538690
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
From two leaders of the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement, a bold, contrarian guide to retiring at any age, with a reproducible formula to financial independence A bull***t-free guide to growing your wealth, retiring early, and living life on your own terms Kristy Shen retired with a million dollars at the age of thirty-one, and she did it without hitting a home run on the stock market, starting the next Snapchat in her garage, or investing in hot real estate. Learn how to cut down on spending without decreasing your quality of life, build a million-dollar portfolio, fortify your investments to survive bear markets and black-swan events, and use the 4 percent rule and the Yield Shield--so you can quit the rat race forever. Not everyone can become an entrepreneur or a real estate baron; the rest of us need Shen's mathematically proven approach to retire decades before sixty-five.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525538690
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
From two leaders of the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement, a bold, contrarian guide to retiring at any age, with a reproducible formula to financial independence A bull***t-free guide to growing your wealth, retiring early, and living life on your own terms Kristy Shen retired with a million dollars at the age of thirty-one, and she did it without hitting a home run on the stock market, starting the next Snapchat in her garage, or investing in hot real estate. Learn how to cut down on spending without decreasing your quality of life, build a million-dollar portfolio, fortify your investments to survive bear markets and black-swan events, and use the 4 percent rule and the Yield Shield--so you can quit the rat race forever. Not everyone can become an entrepreneur or a real estate baron; the rest of us need Shen's mathematically proven approach to retire decades before sixty-five.
The Laws of Wealth
Author: Daniel Crosby
Publisher: Jaico Publishing House
ISBN: 9391019781
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 179
Book Description
Foreword By Morgan Housel Psychology and the Secret to Investing Success In The Laws of Wealth, psychologist and behavioral finance expert Daniel Crosby offers an accessible and applied take on a discipline that has long tended toward theory at the expense of the practical. Readers are treated to real, actionable guidance as the promise of behavioral finance is realized and practical applications for everyday investors are delivered. Crosby presents a framework of timeless principles for managing your behavior and your investing process. He begins by outlining 10 rules that are the hallmarks of good investor behavior, including ‘Forecasting is for Weathermen’ and ‘If You’re Excited, It’s Probably a Bad Idea’. He then goes on to introduce a unique new classification of behavioral investment risk that will enable investors and academics alike to understand behavioral risk in a coherent and comprehensive manner. The Laws of Wealth is a finance classic and a must-read for those interested in deepening their understanding of how psychology impacts financial decision-making. “Should be read by all those new to investing.” JIM O'SHAUGHNESSY, International Bestselling Author “Don’t let your mind ruin your investing outcomes.” LOUANN LOFTON, The Motley Fool “Step away from CNBC and into financial therapy!” MEREDITH A. JONES, Author, Women of The Street
Publisher: Jaico Publishing House
ISBN: 9391019781
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 179
Book Description
Foreword By Morgan Housel Psychology and the Secret to Investing Success In The Laws of Wealth, psychologist and behavioral finance expert Daniel Crosby offers an accessible and applied take on a discipline that has long tended toward theory at the expense of the practical. Readers are treated to real, actionable guidance as the promise of behavioral finance is realized and practical applications for everyday investors are delivered. Crosby presents a framework of timeless principles for managing your behavior and your investing process. He begins by outlining 10 rules that are the hallmarks of good investor behavior, including ‘Forecasting is for Weathermen’ and ‘If You’re Excited, It’s Probably a Bad Idea’. He then goes on to introduce a unique new classification of behavioral investment risk that will enable investors and academics alike to understand behavioral risk in a coherent and comprehensive manner. The Laws of Wealth is a finance classic and a must-read for those interested in deepening their understanding of how psychology impacts financial decision-making. “Should be read by all those new to investing.” JIM O'SHAUGHNESSY, International Bestselling Author “Don’t let your mind ruin your investing outcomes.” LOUANN LOFTON, The Motley Fool “Step away from CNBC and into financial therapy!” MEREDITH A. JONES, Author, Women of The Street
Strategic Asset Allocation
Author: John Y. Campbell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019160691X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors—-both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities—-seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities—-both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks—-vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors.
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019160691X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors—-both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities—-seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities—-both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks—-vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors.
Licence to be Bad
Author: Jonathan Aldred
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241325447
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
'It is going to change the way in which we understand many modern debates about economics, politics, and society' Ha Joon Chang, author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism Over the past fifty years, the way we value what is 'good' and 'right' has changed dramatically. Behaviour that to our grandparents' generation might have seemed stupid, harmful or simply wicked now seems rational, natural, woven into the very logic of things. And, asserts Jonathan Aldred in this revelatory new book, it's economics that's to blame. Licence to be Bad tells the story of how a group of economics theorists changed our world, and how a handful of key ideas, from free-riding to Nudge, seeped into our decision-making and, indeed, almost all aspects of our lives. Aldred reveals the extraordinary hold of economics on our morals and values. Economics has corrupted us. But if this hidden transformation is so recent, it can be reversed. Licence to be Bad shows us where to begin.
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241325447
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
'It is going to change the way in which we understand many modern debates about economics, politics, and society' Ha Joon Chang, author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism Over the past fifty years, the way we value what is 'good' and 'right' has changed dramatically. Behaviour that to our grandparents' generation might have seemed stupid, harmful or simply wicked now seems rational, natural, woven into the very logic of things. And, asserts Jonathan Aldred in this revelatory new book, it's economics that's to blame. Licence to be Bad tells the story of how a group of economics theorists changed our world, and how a handful of key ideas, from free-riding to Nudge, seeped into our decision-making and, indeed, almost all aspects of our lives. Aldred reveals the extraordinary hold of economics on our morals and values. Economics has corrupted us. But if this hidden transformation is so recent, it can be reversed. Licence to be Bad shows us where to begin.
Behavioral Investment Management: An Efficient Alternative to Modern Portfolio Theory
Author: Greg B. Davies
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071748350
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
The End of Modern Portfolio Theory Behavioral Investment Management proves what many have been thinking since the global economic downturn: Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) is no longer a viable portfolio management strategy. Inherently flawed and based largely on ideology, MPT can not be relied upon in modern markets. Behavioral Investment Management offers a new approach-one addresses certain realities that MPT ignores, including the fact that emotions play a major role in investing. The authors lay out new standards reflecting behavioral finance and dynamic asset allocation, then explain how to apply these standards to your current portfolio construction efforts. They explain how to move away from the idealized, black-and-white world of MPT and into the real world of investing--placing heavy emphasis on the importance of mastering emotions. Behavioral Investment Management provides a portfolio-management standard for an investing world in disarray. PART 1- The Current Paradigm: MPT (Modern Portfolio Theory); Chapter 1: Modern Portfolio Theory as it Stands; Chapter 2: Challenges to MPT: Theoretical-the assumptions are not thus; Chapter 3: Challenges to MPT: Empirical-the world is not thus; Chapter 4: Challenges to MPT: Behavioural-people are not thus; Chapter 5: Describing the Overall Framework: Investors and Investments; PART 2- Amending MPT: Getting to BMPT; Chapter 1:Investors-The Rational Investor; Chapter 2: Investments-Extracting Value from the long-term; Chapter 3: Investments-Extracting Value from the short-term; Chapter 4: bringing it together, the new BMPT paradigm; PART 3- Emotional Insurance: Sticking with the Journey; Chapter 1: Investors- the emotional investor; Chapter 2: Investments- Constraining the rational portfolio; PART 4- Practical Implications; Chapter 1: The BMPT and Wealth Management; Chapter 2: The BMPT and the Pension Industry; Chapter 3: The BMPT and Asset Managemen
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071748350
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
The End of Modern Portfolio Theory Behavioral Investment Management proves what many have been thinking since the global economic downturn: Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) is no longer a viable portfolio management strategy. Inherently flawed and based largely on ideology, MPT can not be relied upon in modern markets. Behavioral Investment Management offers a new approach-one addresses certain realities that MPT ignores, including the fact that emotions play a major role in investing. The authors lay out new standards reflecting behavioral finance and dynamic asset allocation, then explain how to apply these standards to your current portfolio construction efforts. They explain how to move away from the idealized, black-and-white world of MPT and into the real world of investing--placing heavy emphasis on the importance of mastering emotions. Behavioral Investment Management provides a portfolio-management standard for an investing world in disarray. PART 1- The Current Paradigm: MPT (Modern Portfolio Theory); Chapter 1: Modern Portfolio Theory as it Stands; Chapter 2: Challenges to MPT: Theoretical-the assumptions are not thus; Chapter 3: Challenges to MPT: Empirical-the world is not thus; Chapter 4: Challenges to MPT: Behavioural-people are not thus; Chapter 5: Describing the Overall Framework: Investors and Investments; PART 2- Amending MPT: Getting to BMPT; Chapter 1:Investors-The Rational Investor; Chapter 2: Investments-Extracting Value from the long-term; Chapter 3: Investments-Extracting Value from the short-term; Chapter 4: bringing it together, the new BMPT paradigm; PART 3- Emotional Insurance: Sticking with the Journey; Chapter 1: Investors- the emotional investor; Chapter 2: Investments- Constraining the rational portfolio; PART 4- Practical Implications; Chapter 1: The BMPT and Wealth Management; Chapter 2: The BMPT and the Pension Industry; Chapter 3: The BMPT and Asset Managemen
Hooked
Author: Michael Moss
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812997301
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Salt Sugar Fat comes a “gripping” (The Wall Street Journal) exposé of how the processed food industry exploits our evolutionary instincts, the emotions we associate with food, and legal loopholes in their pursuit of profit over public health. “The processed food industry has managed to avoid being lumped in with Big Tobacco—which is why Michael Moss’s new book is so important.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit Everyone knows how hard it can be to maintain a healthy diet. But what if some of the decisions we make about what to eat are beyond our control? Is it possible that food is addictive, like drugs or alcohol? And to what extent does the food industry know, or care, about these vulnerabilities? In Hooked, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Michael Moss sets out to answer these questions—and to find the true peril in our food. Moss uses the latest research on addiction to uncover what the scientific and medical communities—as well as food manufacturers—already know: that food, in some cases, is even more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. Our bodies are hardwired for sweets, so food giants have developed fifty-six types of sugar to add to their products, creating in us the expectation that everything should be cloying; we’ve evolved to prefer fast, convenient meals, hence our modern-day preference for ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food industry—including major companies like Nestlé, Mars, and Kellogg’s—has tried not only to evade this troubling discovery about the addictiveness of food but to actually exploit it. For instance, in response to recent dieting trends, food manufacturers have simply turned junk food into junk diets, filling grocery stores with “diet” foods that are hardly distinguishable from the products that got us into trouble in the first place. As obesity rates continue to climb, manufacturers are now claiming to add ingredients that can effortlessly cure our compulsive eating habits. A gripping account of the legal battles, insidious marketing campaigns, and cutting-edge food science that have brought us to our current public health crisis, Hooked lays out all that the food industry is doing to exploit and deepen our addictions, and shows us why what we eat has never mattered more.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812997301
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Salt Sugar Fat comes a “gripping” (The Wall Street Journal) exposé of how the processed food industry exploits our evolutionary instincts, the emotions we associate with food, and legal loopholes in their pursuit of profit over public health. “The processed food industry has managed to avoid being lumped in with Big Tobacco—which is why Michael Moss’s new book is so important.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit Everyone knows how hard it can be to maintain a healthy diet. But what if some of the decisions we make about what to eat are beyond our control? Is it possible that food is addictive, like drugs or alcohol? And to what extent does the food industry know, or care, about these vulnerabilities? In Hooked, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Michael Moss sets out to answer these questions—and to find the true peril in our food. Moss uses the latest research on addiction to uncover what the scientific and medical communities—as well as food manufacturers—already know: that food, in some cases, is even more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. Our bodies are hardwired for sweets, so food giants have developed fifty-six types of sugar to add to their products, creating in us the expectation that everything should be cloying; we’ve evolved to prefer fast, convenient meals, hence our modern-day preference for ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food industry—including major companies like Nestlé, Mars, and Kellogg’s—has tried not only to evade this troubling discovery about the addictiveness of food but to actually exploit it. For instance, in response to recent dieting trends, food manufacturers have simply turned junk food into junk diets, filling grocery stores with “diet” foods that are hardly distinguishable from the products that got us into trouble in the first place. As obesity rates continue to climb, manufacturers are now claiming to add ingredients that can effortlessly cure our compulsive eating habits. A gripping account of the legal battles, insidious marketing campaigns, and cutting-edge food science that have brought us to our current public health crisis, Hooked lays out all that the food industry is doing to exploit and deepen our addictions, and shows us why what we eat has never mattered more.
Why a Students Work for C Students and Why B Students Work for the Government
Author: Robert T. Kiyosaki
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781612680767
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Personal Success
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Offers advice to parents on providing children with a financial headstart without giving them money, encouraging parents to focus less on their children's letter grades and more on helping them cultivate their passions.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781612680767
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Personal Success
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Offers advice to parents on providing children with a financial headstart without giving them money, encouraging parents to focus less on their children's letter grades and more on helping them cultivate their passions.
An Economist Walks into a Brothel
Author: Allison Schrager
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525533966
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
A Financial Times Book of the Month pick for April! Is it worth swimming in shark-infested waters to surf a 50-foot, career-record wave? Is it riskier to make an action movie or a horror movie? Should sex workers forfeit 50 percent of their income for added security or take a chance and keep the extra money? Most people wouldn't expect an economist to have an answer to these questions--or to other questions of daily life, such as who to date or how early to leave for the airport. But those people haven't met Allison Schrager, an economist and award-winning journalist who has spent her career examining how people manage risk in their lives and careers. Whether we realize it or not, we all take risks large and small every day. Even the most cautious among us cannot opt out--the question is always which risks to take, not whether to take them at all. What most of us don't know is how to measure those risks and maximize the chances of getting what we want out of life. In An Economist Walks into a Brothel, Schrager equips readers with five principles for dealing with risk, principles used by some of the world's most interesting risk takers. For instance, she interviews a professional poker player about how to stay rational when the stakes are high, a paparazzo in Manhattan about how to spot different kinds of risk, horse breeders in Kentucky about how to diversify risk and minimize losses, and a war general who led troops in Iraq about how to prepare for what we don't see coming. When you start to look at risky decisions through Schrager's new framework, you can increase the upside to any situation and better mitigate the downside.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525533966
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
A Financial Times Book of the Month pick for April! Is it worth swimming in shark-infested waters to surf a 50-foot, career-record wave? Is it riskier to make an action movie or a horror movie? Should sex workers forfeit 50 percent of their income for added security or take a chance and keep the extra money? Most people wouldn't expect an economist to have an answer to these questions--or to other questions of daily life, such as who to date or how early to leave for the airport. But those people haven't met Allison Schrager, an economist and award-winning journalist who has spent her career examining how people manage risk in their lives and careers. Whether we realize it or not, we all take risks large and small every day. Even the most cautious among us cannot opt out--the question is always which risks to take, not whether to take them at all. What most of us don't know is how to measure those risks and maximize the chances of getting what we want out of life. In An Economist Walks into a Brothel, Schrager equips readers with five principles for dealing with risk, principles used by some of the world's most interesting risk takers. For instance, she interviews a professional poker player about how to stay rational when the stakes are high, a paparazzo in Manhattan about how to spot different kinds of risk, horse breeders in Kentucky about how to diversify risk and minimize losses, and a war general who led troops in Iraq about how to prepare for what we don't see coming. When you start to look at risky decisions through Schrager's new framework, you can increase the upside to any situation and better mitigate the downside.