Books about Allocation from Amazon.com

Sound, sensible advice from a hero to frustrated investors everywhere

William Bernstein's The Four Pillars of Investing gives investors the tools they need to construct top-returning portfolios­­--without the help of a financial adviser. In a relaxed, nonthreatening style, Dr. Bernstein provides a distinctive blend of market history, investing theory, and behavioral finance, one designed to help every investor become more self-sufficient and make better-informed investment decisions. The 4 Pillars of Investing explains how any investor can build a solid foundation for investing by focusing on four essential lessons, each building upon the other. Containing all of the tools needed to achieve investing success, without the help of a financial advisor, it presents:

• Practical investing advice based on fascinating history lessons from the market
• Exercises to determine risk tolerance as an investor
• An easy-to-understand explanation of risk and reward in the capital markets

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Price: $14.76 [Notify me when price goes down.]

“Bernstein has become a guru to a peculiarly ’90s group: well-educated, Internet-powered people intent on investing well—and with minimal ‘help’ from professional Wall Street.”
--Robert Barker, BusinessWeek

William Bernstein is one of today’s most unlikely financial heroes. A practicing neurologist, he used his self-taught investment knowledge and research to build a popular investor’s website. Now, in the plain-spoken The Intelligent Asset Allocator, he shows independent investors how to build a diversified portfolio—without the help of a financial advisor. A breath of fresh air for investors tired of overly technical investment tomes, this book will help investors:

• Learn the risk/reward characteristics of various investment types
• Understand and apply portfolio theory for an improved risk/reward ratio
• Sharpen their focus, and take control of their investment programs

William Bernstein runs a website—www.efficientfrontier.com—known for its quarterly journal of asset allocation and portfolio theory, Efficient Frontier..
Price: $16.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In today's volatile financial environment, growing numbers of investors are looking to flee the stock market in search of safer ground. While the bond market has often been a safe haven, confusing new bonds and bond funds make it increasingly difficult for unfamiliar investors to choose the correct fixed income investments. The Bond Book provides investors with the information and tools they need to make bonds a comforting, important, and profitable component of their portfolios.

Thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded from its bestselling first edition, this all-in-one sourcebook includes:

*A new section on using the Internet to research, buy, and sell bonds *A new chapter devoted to increasingly popular foreign bonds *Detailed information on the inflation-linked Treasury bonds *Explanation of the new categories of bond funds *Tips on how to evaluate and buy bond funds.
Price: $15.69 [Notify me when price goes down.]

All About Asset Allocation goes beyond sound-bite financial columns and TV programs to explain asset allocation in terms that anyone can under- stand. Using a concise style, it features straight- forward explanations of asset allocation, a review of the asset allocation process, and guidelines for implementing strategies and programs.

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Price: $11.29 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The fully revised classic on employing asset allocation techniques to grow real wealth

A global leader and preeminent expert in asset allocation, David Darst delivers his masterwork on the topic. In a fully updated and expanded second edition of The Art of Asset Allocation, Morgan Stanley's Chief Investment Strategist covers the historic market events, instruments, asset classes, and economic forces that investors need to be aware of as they create asset-building portfolios. He then explains how to use modern asset allocation concepts and tools to augment returns and control risks in a wide range of financial market environments. This completely revised edition shows how to achieve asset balance with the author's proven methods, decades of expertise, relevant charts, practical tools, and astute analyses.

Known as the king of asset allocation, Darst brings his expertise to bear to provide complete asset class descriptions, identifying historical risk, return, and correlation characteristics for all major asset classes. Using actual data, he explains the differences between tactical and strategic asset allocation, outlines clear rebalancing guidelines, and includes an annotated guide to both traditional and Internet-based information sources.

Praise for the first edition:

“You want to be a better investor, a better client, or a better advisor? DEVOUR THIS BOOK NOW!”-James J. Cramer

“David Darst is the expert on Asset Allocation. He has chosen to share his decades of practical experience in The Art of Asset Allocation, to the benefit of professional and individual investors alike.”-Seth A. Klarman

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Price: $21.26 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Index Funds: The 12-Step Program for Active Investors is the treatment of choice for wayward investors. John Bogle called Hebner s book "incredibly handsome and wise," while Burton Malkiel stated that "Hebner gives good advice presented in a very appealing manner." Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson calls it "a valuable reference," and Anders Oldenger of Seligson & Company nominated it as one of the three "All-time Greatest Investment Books," along with the writings of John Bogle and Warren Buffett.

Hebner s book addresses why an overwhelming majority of investors continue to embrace an active investing strategy, despite the extensive academic research demonstrating its ineffectiveness to beat a market index and the overall futility of such a strategy. Speculating on the next winning stock, fund manager, investment style or market timing are all akin to gambling. Below market returns in investment portfolios and pension accounts are the result of investors gambling with their hard earned money. This 12-Step Program will put active investors on the road to recovery. Each step is designed to bring investors closer to embracing a prudent and sound strategy of buying, holding, and rebalancing a risk-calibrated portfolio of passively managed, globally diverse index funds.

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Price: $11.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Officially endorsed by Oracle Corporation, this detailed resource from Oracle Press explains how to maximize the centralized planning, accounting, treasury, purchasing, and management features of Oracle Financials--and revolutionize your company's finance infrastructure..
Price: $36.58 [Notify me when price goes down.]

If where an organization allocates its resources determines its strategy, why is it that so few companies actively manage the resource allocation process? "Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy" goes beyond platitudes about why you should use corporate portfolio management (CPM) by offering a practical methodology to bring this powerful discipline to your organization.

"Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management" takes an expansive view of where CPM can be utilized by demonstrating that it can be used across any business line, product group or functional area, e.g., IT, R&D, innovation, marketing, salesforce, capital expenditure, etc. CPM is appropriate anywhere discretionary investments are being selected and executed. As a result, other terms used to describe portfolio management such as IT portfolio management, enterprise portfolio management, and project portfolio management are all merely subsets or slices of CPM.

The book is written by Anand Sanwal, an expert on CPM, who has led American Express' CPM discipline (referred to as American Express Investment Optimization). American Express' CPM efforts are widely recognized as the most extensive, substantial and progressive deployment of CPM across any organization. Sanwal avoids academic theories and consultant jargon to ultimately deliver pragmatic and proven recommendations on how to make CPM a reality. The book features a foreword by Gary Crittenden, former CFO and EVP of American Express, and several case studies from leading financial services, technology, and government organizations utilizing CPM. Additionally, the book has received significant praise from thought leaders at Google, HP, American Express, The CFO Executive Board, Gartner, Accenture Marketing Sciences, The Wharton School of Business and many others..
Price: $39.30 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The definitive guidebook for successful long-term investing

The third edition of Roger C. Gibson's Asset Allocation: Balancing Financial Risk was released in 2000 on the heels of the biggest bull market in a century and amidst talk of a new economy. The bear market that followed was the worst since 1973-1974 and resulted in the destruction of roughly half of the stock market's value. Through it all, Roger Gibson's advice to investors remained the same.

Gibson once again offers techniques to design all-weather portfolios that improve long-term performance, while mitigating overall risks through widely varying market environments.

Grounded in the principles of modern portfolio theory, this fourth edition of his investing classic explains how and why asset allocation works. Gibson demonstrates how adding new asset classes to a portfolio improves its risk-adjusted returns and how strategic asset allocation uses, rather than fights, the forces of capital markets to achieve investment success.

Gibson also addresses the practical side of investing, advocating an approach based on a disciplined execution of the fundamentals--the most important things that investment professionals and lay investors need to focus on to achieve their financial goals. With more than two decades of experience managing clients' portfolios and expectations, he underscores the importance of identifying and working through the emotional and psychological traps that can impede investment success. In this new edition, Gibson offers his proven guidance on multiple-asset-class investing with updated exhibits and research. New topics include:

• A review of the 2000-2002 stock bear market in the context of bull and bear markets over the last 100 years
• An expanded discussion of the dangers of market timing
• Non-traditional asset classes such as real estate securities, commodity-linked securities, and TIPS in a diversified portfolio
• The challenges of “frame-of-reference” risk--the most significant danger confronting the multiple-asset-class investor
• The role of Monte Carlo simulation in retirement planning

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Price: $36.63 [Notify me when price goes down.]