Return of the Active Manager: How to apply behavioral finance to renew and improve investment management - Hardcover

Howard, C. Thomas; Voss, Jason Apollo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857197630 ISBN 13: 9780857197634

Publisher: Harriman House, 2019

Synopsis

Emotional behavior and biases run throughout financial markets. This is the diagnosis of behavioral finance.

But it is not enough to know that investors make biased decisions. What do we do about it? How do we move beyond diagnosis, to prescription?

In this groundbreaking new book, investing and behavioural finance experts Thomas Howard and Jason A. Voss fill this void and show the new way ahead for investment managers and advisors. Return of the Active Manager provides a set of tools for investment professionals to overcome and take advantage of behavioral biases.

Across seven compelling chapters, Return of the Active Manager details actionable advice on topics such as behaviourally-enhanced fundamental analysis, active equity fund evaluation and selection, harnessing big data, and investment firm structure. You learn how to exploit behavioural price distortions, how to recognize and avoid behavioural biases (in both yourself and clients), how to extract behavioral insights from the executives of prospective investments, and how manager behaviour can be used to predict future fund performance.

An indispensable tool, Return of the Active Manager rationalizes the financial markets and prescribes actionable strategies that build on the lessons of behavioural finance.

About this title

About the Author:

Jason A. Voss, CFA, is the CEO of Active Investment Management (AIM) Consulting, a firm dedicated to helping small- and medium-sized active investment managers to deliver alpha for the benefit of their end clients. He is the retired co-portfolio manager of the Davis Appreciation and Income Fund. During his tenure the Fund bested the S&P 500 by 49.1%, was Lipper #1, a Morningstar Analyst Pick, and one of the first ten funds awarded Morningstar’s Stewardship Grade “A.” Jason also served as the Director of Content for CFA Institute, the world’s largest organization of financial professionals. He is a frequent go-to interview for the likes of the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Marketplace Morning Report, the BBC’s Today Programme, and many others. Jason earned his BA in Economics and MBA from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Dr. Howard is co-founder of AthenaInvest, a Greenwood Village-based SEC Registered Investment Advisor. He led the research project that resulted in Strategy Based Investing, the methodology which underlies AthenaInvest's investment approach. He oversees Athena's ongoing research, which has led to a number of industry publications and conference presentations. Dr. Howard currently serves as CEO, Director of Research, and Chief Investment Officer at Athena. Dr. Howard is a Professor Emeritus at the Reiman School of Finance, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver, where for over 30 years he taught courses and published articles in the areas of investment management and international finance. For many years he presented stock analysis seminars throughout the US for the American Association of Individual Investors, a national investment education organization headquartered in Chicago. Dr. Howard has been a guest lecturer at SDA Bocconi, Italy’s leading business school and at Handelsho/jskole Syd in Denmark and was a 2004 Summer lecturer in international finance at EM Lyon in France. He consulted with a number of firms, most recently First Data Corp and Janus Capital Group, and served for 10 years on the Board of Directors for AMG National Trust Bank N.A., a financial counseling and investment management firm headquartered in Denver.

Review:

The book offers a convincing alternate view to look at active investment management and is a must for asset owners, irrespective of asset class, and wealth professionals. (Biharilal Deora, FCA, CFA, CIPM, Director, Abakkus Asset Manager)

Wow! I expected a terrific book from Howard and Voss, but ROAM knocked me back. It’s a once-a-decade genre-defining must-have-on-every-investor’s-bookshelf type of book. Read this and your wealth (and life!) will be wiser and smoother for it. (Richard L. Peterson M.D., author of 'Inside the Investor’s Brain' (Wiley, 2007) and CEO of MarketPsych)

Even as a decades-long trend toward passive investing continues without any signs of slowing, mounting evidence shows many active fund managers have superior performance that will likely improve as indexation increases. This book provides the very timely service to readers of synthesizing several of the key insights and findings from this recent evidence and providing actionable principles for identifying profitable investments in the actively-managed fund space. (Andrew Detzel, Assistant Professor of Finance, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver)

Voss and Howard shine a practical light on the massive opportunity that exists for truly active fund managers in this day and age – if they are willing to focus on identifying and mitigating their own behavioral biases, in addition to exploiting those of other market participants. It's a must-read for all next-generation fund managers. (Clare Flynn Levy, Founder & CEO, Essentia Analytics)

Tom and Jason have combined their extensive knowledge and direct experience to create a standout. Managers and advisors should delight in the fact this exceptionally capable duo has written a comprehensive book about behavioral investment management specifically for them. (Richard Lehman, Adjunct Professor of Behavioral Finance, UC Berkeley Extension and founder of BehavioralFinance.com)

If you do not believe in active management, please read this book, it will challenge you to think differently about it. If you are a believer, please read this book, it will provide you with entirely new insights to work with. I just wish this book had been written 20 years ago, I may have had a more successful career in investment management. (Prasad Ramani, CFA, FRM, CAIA, CEO, Syntoniq)

Advisors – drop everything and read this book! (Barbara Stewart, CFA, Barbara Stewart, Author of the Rich Thinking series of white papers on women and finance)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harriman House
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0857197630
• ISBN 13: 9780857197634
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212