Readers are forever prodding me to do a list of the best books of the year. My inclination is to resist, in part because my list is inevitably idiosyncratic, in part because I don’t relish being a prize committee of one. But, with apologies to the authors of books that on any other given day might well have bumped chosen titles off this list, here’s my stab at the best books of 2016, with links to my reviews.
Howard B. Bandy, Foundations of Trading
Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, Peak
William N. Goetzmann, Money Changes Everything
Aron Gottesman, Derivatives Essentials
Wesley R. Gray and Jack R. Vogel, Quantitative Momentum
Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project
Mark Andrew Lim, The Handbook of Technical Analysis
Richard L. Peterson, Trading on Sentiment
More on Wesley R. Gray and Jack R. Vogel, Quantitative Momentum below
Quantitative Momentum brings momentum investing out of Wall Street and into the hands of individual investors. In his last book, Quantitative Value, author Wes Gray brought systematic value strategy from the hedge funds to the masses; in this book, he does the same for momentum investing, the system that has been shown to beat the market and regularly enriches the coffers of Wall Street’s most sophisticated investors. First, you’ll learn what momentum investing is not: it’s not ‘growth’ investing, nor is it an esoteric academic concept. You may have seen it used for asset allocation, but this book details the ways in which momentum stands on its own as a stock selection strategy, and gives you the expert insight you need to make it work for you. You’ll dig into its behavioral psychology roots, and discover the key tactics that are bringing both institutional and individual investors flocking into the momentum fold.
Systematic investment strategies always seem to look good on paper, but many fall down in practice. Momentum investing is one of the few systematic strategies with legs, withstanding the test of time and the rigor of academic investigation. This book provides invaluable guidance on constructing your own momentum strategy from the ground up.
- Learn what momentum is and is not
- Discover how momentum can beat the market
- Take momentum beyond asset allocation into stock selection
- Access the tools that ease DIY implementation
The large Wall Street hedge funds tend to portray themselves as the sophisticated elite, but momentum investing allows you to ‘borrow’ one of their top strategies to enrich your own portfolio. Quantitative Momentum is the individual investor’s guide to boosting market success with a robust momentum strategy.
