Taming the Beast: Wall Street's Imperfect Answers to Making Money

The book, Taming the Beast: Wall Street's Imperfect Answers to Making Money by financial journalist Larry Light, is a very thorough and complete analysis of all the various investment strategies and types of investments. He discusses how investors can't just rely on one technique such as value investing, growth investing, and asset allocation.

Light provides extensive coverage of international investing, real estate investing, short selling and bonds. The chapter I found most interesting was Chapter 8 on Alternatives. On page 169, he reported how Hillary Clinton turned $1,000 into $100,000 in just ten months by trading cattle futures.

Chapter 12 on Behaviorism is also very fascinating, covering the emotional side of investing. Key pitfalls are loss aversion, anchoring (relying on information that is irrelevant), and recency (believing that what happened recently is more important than what happened in the past.

The book has extensive anecdotes, and provides the various strengths and weaknesses of the many approaches to investing. In addition to Light's many articles in BusinessWeek, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal, you will find Taming the Beast: Wall Street's Imperfect Answers to Making Money an interesting read.