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| Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich | 
 enlarge | Author: Jason Zweig
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $6.95
You Save: $19.05 (73%)
Buy New/Used from $6.43
Avg. Customer Rating:  (25 reviews)
Sales Rank: 92629
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 074327668X
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.6019
EAN: 9780743276689
ASIN: 074327668X
Publication Date: August 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 21-25 of 25 | | « PREV | | |
 Your Money & Your Brain September 26, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Excellent reading for investors on how our thought process effects the day to day investing decisions we use in buying and selling stocks.
Great Science, Great Advice September 24, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Zweig has packed a lot of cutting-edge neuroscience into a very entertaining book. The lessons are clearly presented and the advice is very simple and very practical.
Money & Brains September 9, 2007
26 out of 27 found this review helpful
In my professional life I advise high net worth individuals on making smart decisions with their money. I've read a number of the behavioral finance books but this one is different. It was fascinating to read how our brains work and it explains a lot of what I've observed in my clients and in myself. I plan to buy several copies as gifts for my clients.
I would have given the book 5 out of 5 except that it seemed like a number of the studies and stories in the book were mentioned more than once or they were just similiar. Either way, some of it got a bit tedious.
Inner Workings of the Investing Brain September 4, 2007
25 out of 26 found this review helpful
As the title reveals, this book is about the inner workings of the investing brain. It not only explains the mistakes we all make, it takes the next step by telling us what we can do to become better investors.
First of all, this book will dispel any notion that our brains are predisposed to act only in ways that are about increasing wealth. As it happens, our financial decision-making is more about intangibles, such as avoiding regret and achieving pride. Never underestimate the value that comes with bragging about some brilliant investment to anybody who will listen.
Mr. Zweig explains that we really have two brains. Our reflexive brain gets the first crack at decision making, and is essentially based on intuition or how we feel. Our reflective brain, on the other hand, is more logical. The problem is that we usually don't know which part of the brain is at the switch when we make any decision. One key to maximizing wealth is to give the reflective brain some time to respond, and not to react immediately to our gut instinct.
Just when I thought the book couldn't get any better, I read the last chapter on "happiness." It explored the relationship between money and happiness. In spite of the lip service that is paid to believing that money doesn't buy happiness, we all seem to be on the treadmill of acquiring as much of it as we can. The disappointment sets in when we find that raise we got, or that windfall profit, doesn't actually make us happier for long periods.
In summary, content is fascinating but it is Mr. Zweig's writing style that kept me reading when I could barely keep my eyes open. It is a rare gem in its genre, a book that will change your way of investing and your life, and be fun to read.
To Optimize Your Wealth, First Optimize Your Mind September 4, 2007
52 out of 54 found this review helpful
The above is the premise of Jason Zweig's Your Money & Your Brain. As the research continues to mount that we are indeed more hardwired like our animal ancestors than we care to admit, it helps to know these hardwired systems in ourselves to more understand our response mechanisms that can and do trigger our emotions and ultimately our actions. To assist in this effort, the book highlights and goes into some detail of the more recognized emotions like Greed, Fear, Regret, and Confidence of which all play on our performance in life, as well, and even more so in optimizing our wealth in the investing process. Since the investment world and markets themselves are full of triggers that fool our brains into taking actions that in the end are not good for wealth optimization, this book will help you understand some of these triggers and hopefully avoid some of the actions they promote.
It was a treat to read this very well written (read as not too technical) on the pitfalls of our decision making and how we sometimes unknowingly do things that are against our own best interests. To illustrate with one of the topics of Confidence, we are hardwired to be confident because if we weren't we would more often then not be paralyzed to never be able to make a decision. However; when it comes to investments, we are mostly too confident in our own abilities which itself leads to overconfidence. For example, we believe that our own selected lottery ticket has a better chance of winning than someone else's selected ticket even though all of us know that the odds are the same for everyone. But when asked to give your ticket up for someone else's, the response is usually -- no way. This fact has been tested over and over with the same conclusion that we believe our own cognitive skills or luck is better than someone other than ourselves. In the investment world, the path to ruin is full of disasters where investors were overconfident. Let us just be reminded of the ".com" boom or Long Term Capital Management episode.
Or let's take another look and topic in the book of Risk. What is your Risk tolerance? This may entirely depend on what your mood was when the question was asked, or what was the last color you saw prior to being asked, or more importantly of how the question was asked. For example, if you were asked that a said portfolio has a 78% chance of meeting your financial goals does this meet your risk tolerance? You may answer in the affirmative, yes, that this is a good risk profile for me. However, if you were told that said portfolio has a 22 out of 100 chance of not meeting your financial goals and you may be eating beans for the next 10 years, your risk profile may have changed drastically though these are exactly the same. Its all in the framing.
As you move on and educate yourself on the other hardwired triggers like Fear, Regret, Greed, plus others, you should be in better shape to improve your investment results, or at a minimum to at least recognize some of the pitfalls. All in, required reading if you're a serious investor or have not read some other excellent books on the subject, such as, Mean Markets and Lizard Brains by Terry Burnham, Psychology of Judgment by Scott Plous, or How We Know What Isn't So by Thomas Gilovich.
Side note: The footnotes and background information are very well documented in the back. However, some of the figures referenced are in the middle of the book. For example, when I read (See Figure 3.1) and could not find it, I thought that they had left it out though it was between Chapters 6 & 7 in a separate section. This did not distract from the book too much as it was probably a technical issue to place all color pictures in one section, but thought it odd of not telling the reader up front.
Though not to leave with a negative feeling, with praise from the likes of Daniel Kahneman, Bill Miller, and David Dreman -- it is hard to go too wrong and I believe Jason Zweig has indeed succeeded. So enjoy an educating and fun read :)
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