“They tell readers what other investors have successfully achieved in the past, implying that if readers do the same, they can achieve the same dazzling results… These books sell aspiration rather than inspiration,” he adds. “Wishing without the ability to act is not hope, but rather its opposite.”

Great investing, according to Winter, is really about understanding how to evaluate the facts in front of you, how to account for the uncertainties that impede decision-making, and finally, how to do all that rapidly enough so that you can gain an advantage over competitors and thus the market. “The purpose of this book is to link the two skill sets, investing and decision making,” he declares.

What simplifies decision making is the boiling down of mountains of information into binaries, the author finds. Hence the phrase ‘either/or’ in the title of his ‘how-to’ on ‘global investing, one decision at a time.’

The first and most important binary in investing, says Winter, is fear or greed.

“In a time of greed, investors dwell somewhere between optimism and irrational exuberance, driving up the price (if not the value) of everything,” he explains. “When fear dominates the collective investing mind, perfectly sound investments tread water or suffer.”

Interestingly, the chapter titles reflect the binary approach. Sample these: Preservation versus growth, alpha versus beta, fad versus trend, and know-who versus know-how.

Great read that you can trade for a weekend getaway.

Investing in talent should be as systematic as investing in any other vital resource, based on logical frameworks and focused on optimisation rather than simply cost reduction or mimicking best practices, says a new book from the Society for Human Resource Management: Investing in People by Wayne Cascio and John Boudreau ( www.ftpress.com ).

Putting together logic, analytics, measures and process, the authors present the LAMP framework for HR (human resource) measurement. For, “Without a proper logic, it is impossible to know where to look for insights. The logic element of any measurement system provides the ‘story’ behind the connections between the numbers and the effects and outcomes.” Ditto without investments in shares, too, you’d agree.

Towards the end of the well-researched book, the authors argue that intangible doesn’t mean unmeasurable.

“For example, there are several ways to measure the value of differences in performance, changes in employee attitudes, and the responses of employees to investments in employee health and welfare.”

Even where perfect measures are unavailable, solid logic can enhance decisions, using sensitivity analysis, simulation, and risk assessments to make up for measurement imperfections, aver Cascio and Boudreau.

Worthy addition to the shelves of people managers.

The result of writing hundreds of thousands of lines of computer code, constructing numerous financial-history databases, creating new data visualisation tools, and executing more than 3,000 trades, over about a decade, is The Volatility Edge in Options Trading by Jeff Augen ( www.ftpress.com ).

“My goal was to develop an investment strategy based on the fundamental mathematical properties that describe financial markets,” the author describes in the intro. “Properly executed, such a strategy should provide excellent returns in a variety of market conditions. It should also be persistent in the sense that it transcends short-term trends.”

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