The Art of Execution: How the world's best investors get it wrong and still make millions Paperback – September 14, 2015

The author provides us something unique; a behavioral analysis of actual trades for a reasonable cross section of professional traders over a five-year timespan, including bearish and bullish time periods. Thus, this book is not about what traders think they are doing via interviews, opinions, narrative, and other filtered understandings, but what they are actually doing. This is very useful, because even the best managers may be unable to articulate what they are actually doing, and why they are doing it. By evaluating the data, the author provides a taxonomy of the underlying patters of success and failure among this rich dataset of trades and traders. While we have to trust that the author "got it right" in terms of grouping the failure and success behavioral patterns, the final result is a very readable book whose taxonomy seem both reasonable and familiar. Moreover, he supports his observations by referencing developed theories of behavioral finance, thus leaving me with the impression that he did get it right.

First about me b/c you can't understand an investor's book review without understanding the investor. I have been reading about investing for twenty years and I have probably been a retail market participant for twelve to fifteen years, mostly in strategic asset allocation. I see myself as an investor and not a trader. I have branched off recently into individual stock picking. I bought the book primarily b/c I was looking for information on how to improve my selling decisions. (As an asset allocation guy, I rarely sold anything.) This book certainly fit that bill and the information provided helped me in developing my checklist for quarterly monitoring of investments and clarifying when and why to sell. THe realization that even the pros are only right 50% of the time means they are wrong the other 50% literally blew my mind. As a novice retail investor, I need to always be aware that more than likely any single pick is wrong. This is tough pill to swallow, so I will be reading this book over and over.It is somewhat rare to find information on what works in selling in books on 'investing' for 'investors'. It may be more prevalent in the books for 'traders' on 'trading', but I don't know b/c that is not my style and not what I read.I am a value guy, as well, and I found that cost of the book to be a 'good value' for the info I gleaned from the book even though I read whole thing in three to four hours. Knowing what I know now, I'd still buy it again ;-)That said, if you haven't read What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars, you will want to read it as well.

I learned I got a few things right now, and it explained all my bad behaviorsI have made changes to my investments because of this book, and will be doing some more changes .I know most people won't take the action needed, but that is on them.Thank You for sharing this information.Life changing.

Some of the basic concepts were right, but seriously do people really invest in this way? Behaviors described in this book feels incredibly amateurish. Also, the style of this allocator -- questioning the managers over every little decision -- how can anyone perform under such circumstances

I've often struggled to have a valuable recommendation on hand for those asking me about reading material for beginners in the market. Sure, the 'Market Wizards', 'Intelligent Investor' etc. may come to mind, but I think at the most basic level, any new investor should be primed on risk management before hearing/learning anything else. This is now at the top of my recommendation list. Short, relatively easy read with data to back up the perspectives. And even if you're a 'veteran', this is a great value add that touches not just on methodology, but behavioral psychology as well.

I'll write in arabic for Arabic people (الكتاب ممتاز للغاية ويشرح نفسية المتداولين بشكل مختصر وعملي وماذا يجب عليك ان تتبنى كمنهج تداول. أيضا إن كنت تعاني من الخروج السريع للصفقة, هذا الكتاب بيشرح لك ليه انت تعمل هالشيء وكيف كان المضاربين المحترفين يتخلصون منه)so as i wrote above, this book is great and explain the psychology of traders in a brief way, what to do, what to avoid, if you want to be a successful trader like those mentioned in the book.

The book is short, very readable with good ideas, though a bit simplistic at times.

Great book, well written, and a quick read. It highlights issues we all contend with, but is geared toward long term equity investors/managers. The examples are real and vivid, not theoretical what-if scenarios. All traders and investors will benefit from this book.