Investor Personality Tests
If you take these tests quickly and truthfully perhaps you will gain insights into your strengths/weaknesses as an investor. Have fun. http://www.marktier.com/Main/ipp.php
http://www.marketpsych.com/personality_test.php#T3
http://www.myprivatebanking.com/UserFiles/file/MyPrivatebanking%20Investment%20Personality%20Test.pdf
Unfortunately, if your test results were like mine, you will have little choice but to receive therapy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpL3ncoK99U
A Recommended Web-Site
Jason Zweig: http://www.jasonzweig.com/resources.html
Successful investing is about controlling the controllable. You can’t control what the market does, but you can control what you do in response. In the long run, your returns depend less on whether you pick good investments than on whether you are a good investor.
The first step to reaching your financial goals is to make sure you set goals that are reachable. Your expectations must be realistic. The stock market is not going to provide a high return just because you need it to.
The second step is to recognize what you are up against. Despite what all the daily market reports make it sound like, investing is not a game, a sport, a battle, or a war; it is not an endurance contest in a hostile wilderness. Investing is simply the struggle for self-control – the unrelenting effort to keep yourself from becoming your own worst enemy.
The market is not perfectly efficient, but it is mostly efficient most of the time. Attempting to beat the market may often be entertaining, but it is seldom rewarding. There’s nothing wrong with gambling on poor odds, as long as you admit honestly that what you’re doing is gambling and as long as you put only a tiny proportion of your wealth at risk……
Risk is a function of probabilities and consequences – not just how likely you are to be right but how badly you will suffer if you turn out to be wrong. Investors tend to be overconfident about the accuracy of their own analysis-and to underestimate how keenly they will kick themselves if that analysis is mistaken. Understanding your own shortcomings as an investor is far more important to your long-term success than analyzing the pros and cons of individual investments.
In the short run, hares have more fun; but in the long run, it’s always the tortoises who win the race.
The Strategy of Rich vs. Poor Countries
Video Lecture–How the world became rich: The Birth of Plenty by William Bernstein (58 minutes). This is an enjoyable romp through economic, political and financial history that explains how countries create wealth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTUZXwQwUJM from http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ Another great resource.
TREASURE CHEST for Research Sources
An amazing collection of academic research on securities and historical financial data here (need prices on stock from 1825? How about on the Shanghai Stock Exchange?): http://viking.som.yale.edu/ Follow the links.
For example: MBA course on hedge funds: Strategy and tactics here: http://viking.som.yale.edu/will/hedge/Hedge%20Funds%202005.htm
Strategy Lesson: The benefits of focus and specialization-A Gunslinger. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks7-A-7Zvak&feature=related & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeFpM2OEWPs&feature=related
The duality of man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMEViYvojtY
