". . . shining clarity and enviable originality" --Peter L. Bernstein, author of Against the Gods "Mark Kritzman presents the reader with an entertaining way of learning some serious finance." --Harry Markowitz, Nobel Prize Recipient, 1990, Economic Sciences President, Harry Markowitz Company Six challenging questions . . . six entertaining solutions, profound yet straightforward, and relevant to the everyday challenge of investing and investment management. Puzzles of Finance takes on today's most persistently challenging financial questions and, through clever examples and just plain logic, helps you move beyond those questions to arrive at a deeper understanding of finance and the daily management of money. From Siegel's Paradox ("Is it possible to profit from asymmetry of exchange rate changes?") to questions of option value ("Why is the value of an option unaffected by the underlying asset's expected return?"), Puzzles of Finance goes beyond vague theoretical suppositions to supply practical, concrete solutions that investors and money managers can benefit from every day. While the intellectually curious will be drawn to Puzzles of Finance, it is the day-to-day finance professional who will derive the most benefit from this remarkable book. In clear, concise language-with more than a touch of humor-renowned author and financial professional Mark Kritzman simplifies six of today's most perplexing financial riddles. Along the way, he presents a finance primer as practical as it is profound, as illuminating as it is entertaining. Kritzman artfully explores the relationship of such seemingly disparate fields as botany and thermodynamics to options. These proofs propel Puzzles of Finance forward with the pace of a novel. An easy-to-understand primer on financial concepts and quantitative methods combined with a technical glossary ensures that no concept is misunderstood. The result is an unprecedented book that will change the way you view finance and investing. When you invest your time in reading Puzzles of Finance, you will uncover some of the most probing and insightful lessons in financial literature today. For updates on new and bestselling Wiley Finance books: wiley.com/wbns Critical Praise for Puzzles of Finance ". . . an extraordinary combination of the elements of finance, commonsense wisdom, sparkling humor, shining clarity, and enviable originality. This is a potent blend by any standard of measurement. Long time Kritzman watchers, however, would anticipate nothing less." --Peter L. Bernstein, Author, Against the Gods "A modest, lively, clever, little book. Kritzman's puzzles range from party tidbits to the profound, and each is presented with a bit of history, a lot of insight, and just the right measure of wit. While he may not have intended it to be more than a collection of interesting conundrums, Kritzman has actually created a wonderful introduction to finance for the uninitiated with challenges for even the most sophisticated." --Stephen A. Ross, Franco Modigliani Professor of Finance and Economics, Sloan School, MIT; Co-Chairman, Roll and Ross Asset Management Corp. "Some people do crosswords. Mark Kritzman does financial puzzles and his explications amuse and instruct. Financial theory has never been this much fun."-Jack R. Meyer, President, Harvard Management Company "Puzzles of Finance should be a joy to finance mavens and even their friends! Perhaps all students of the field should be required to solve these six puzzles; they go to the heart of the intuitions for essential contributions, such as the pricing of options, the meaning of efficient diversification, and the definition of risk." --Kenneth A. Froot, Andre R. Jakurski Professor of Business Administration and Director of Research, Harvard Business School

Mit einigen wichtigen Theorien muß jeder Finanzexperte vertraut sein, wenn er die Grundlagen der Finanzanalyse verstehen will. In der Regel jedoch, werden diese Theorien nur unzureichend verstanden. "Puzzles of Finance" befaßt sich eingehend mit diesen komplizierten Finanzthemen und liefert dem Leser verständliche Erklärungen und Definitionen, die sich auf ein absolutes Minimum an Terminologie und Mathematik beschränken.

A money manager who handles millions of his own and others wealth describes his struggles with loving money vs. giving it away to the needy.

Fun Activities to Introduce Your Kids to Money and Finance at Early Age to Help Prepare Them for the Future! With this awesome activity book, your child can learn about money through engaging activities like word searches, crossword puzzles, rhymes, quizzes, and other games. By doing the activities in this book, your child will learn how to: Count money Earn Money Save Money Spend Money Share Money Borrow Money Grow Money And More! A lot of people never learn how to properly manage their finances, or only learn when it’s too late. Rarely are children introduced to the principles of finance at a young age, but doing so can prepare them for life. This book not only teaches kids the principles of money, but also advises them on how to make smart money choices. Laying the basic groundwork at an early age can help your kids one day achieve financial success and independence, and better equip them for the real world.

Finance for Normal People teaches behavioral finance to people like you and me - normal people, neither rational nor irrational. We are consumers, savers, investors, and managers - corporate managers, money managers, financial advisers, and all other financial professionals. The book guides us to know our wants-including hope for riches, protection from poverty, caring for family, sincere social responsibility and high social status. It teaches financial facts and human behavior, including making cognitive and emotional shortcuts and avoiding cognitive and emotional errors such as overconfidence, hindsight, exaggerated fear, and unrealistic hope. And it guides us to banish ignorance, gain knowledge, and increase the ratio of smart to foolish behavior on our way to what we want. These lessons of behavioral finance draw on what we know about us-normal people-including our wants, cognition, and emotions. And they draw on the roles of these factors in saving and spending, portfolio construction, returns we can expect from our investments, and whether we can hope to beat the market. Meir Statman, a founder of behavioral finance, draws on his extensive research and the research of many others to build a unified structure of behavioral finance. Its foundation blocks include normal behavior, behavioral portfolio theory, behavioral life-cycle theory, behavioral asset pricing theory, and behavioral market efficiency.

This paper presents a survey of two basic puzzles in international finance. The first puzzle is the `predictable excess return puzzle.' The returns on foreign currency deposits relative to domestic currency deposits should be equalized based upon uncovered interest parity. However, not only do researchers find that deviations from uncovered interest parity are predictable ex ante, but their variance exceeds the variance in expected exchange rate changes. In the paper, I describe different explanations of this phenomenon including the view that excess returns are driven by a foreign exchange risk premium, peso problems or learning, and market inefficiencies. While the research to date has been able to better define the `predictable excess return puzzle' and to suggest the most likely directions for future progress, no one explanation has provided a full answer to the puzzle. The second puzzle is the `home bias puzzle.' Empirical evidence shows that domestic residents do not diversify sufficiently into foreign stocks. This evidence is clear whether looking at models based on portfolio holdings or outcomes of consumption realizations across countries. In this paper, I examine several possible explanations including non-traded goods and market inefficiencies, although even after considering these possibilities, the puzzle remains.

Financial professionals are faced with increasingly technical topics that are theoretically complicated but practically necessary in determining the trade-off between risk and return. The Portable Financial Analyst, Second Edition is a unique collection of essays that address the heart of every analyst's and investor's dilemma: how to make decisions in the face of unknown forces and how to assert some control over the outcome

From the world's most prolific puzzle creator comes a series of puzzle books aimed at building Bible knowledge for all skill levels.

A weekly review of politics, literature, theology, and art.

By enabling the storage and transfer of purchasing power, money facilitates economic transactions and coordinates economic activity. But what is money? How is it generated? Distributed? How does money acquire value and that value change? How does money impact the economy, society? This book explores money as a system of "tokens" that represent the purchasing power of individual agents. It looks at how money developed from debt/credit relationships, barter and coins into a system of gold-backed currencies and bank credit and on to the present system of fiat money, bank credit, near-money and, more recently, digital currencies. The author successively examines how the money circuit has changed over the last 50 years, a period of stagnant wages, increased household borrowing and growing economic complexity, and argues for a new theory of economies as complex systems, coordinated by a banking and financial system. Money: What It Is, How It’s Created, Who Gets It and Why It Matters will be of interest to students of economics and finance theory and anyone wanting a more complete understanding of monetary theory, economics, money and banking.