Financial Speculation

Jacket text

When we deal in the financial markets are we investing, speculating or gambling?

Does it really matter what we call it?

As this book shows, the world of finance is not an easily defined game. Simple labels, such as gambling and speculation, won't help us grasp the underlying forces that drive the markets.

It's far more important to understand the behaviour and biases of the players - their actions and motivations are the vital components that drive everything; bubbles, crashes, huge fortunes, reckless borrowing and complex instruments and strategies, all flow from this simple fact.
And the markets are not just an external object, to be studied dispassionately under a microscope. How we act within our inner self, and apply our own set of risk and reward values to the seeming chaos of the market, is absolutely crucial. Clearly whatever games that are going on in the market are also going on inside our heads.

In this fully updated and revised edition, Gerald Ashley gets to the heart of the financial markets. He draws on a wealth of revealing and instructive market insights, stories and anecdotes, challenges all the tired cliches about speculation, and slaughters many of the outdated sacred cows of finance.

The book ranges across all the major asset classes, looks at past masters of the art, examines modern thinking on finance and risk, and assesses the value of experts, economists, chartists, market gurus and analysts. Simple examples are used to explain how the basic tools of finance fit together and how to profit in this often complex and unforgiving landscape.

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Contents

1. Losers Anonymous

2. Past Masters

3. Basic Building Blocks

4. Mental Curves

5. Assorted Killers

6. Chartists, Economists and Gurus

7. Quantum(ish) Finance

8. This is the First Time since the Last Time

9. The Divine Right of Failure

10. Signposts

About the author

Gerald Ashley has over thirty years experience in international financial markets, having worked for Baring Brothers in London and Hong Kong, and the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. His primary financial market experience is in foreign exchange, currency options, precious metals and money markets. He is now Managing Director of St Mawgan & Co Limited, a London-based strategy and risk consulting firm. He is also a well-known speaker on the benefits and applications of behavioural economics in decision-making and risk taking; and is a regular columnist in the financial press.

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Reviews

"If one adds Gerald Ashley's innovative thinking to his track record as a successful trader and his wealth of experience in international banking, this book makes compulsive reading"
- David Buik, BGC Partners