Drawing upon his extensive research studies on emotional behavior, Albert Mehrabian, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UCLA, has provided a wealth of insights into the investment styles and habits of different kinds of individuals. In "Your Inner Path to Investment Success," Dr. Mehrabian goes beyond P/E ratios and market conditions to help investors recognize and understand their innermost secrets and reflex-driven investment patterns.
Knowledge gleaned from these pages about (a) characteristic emotional styles (temperament) and (b) differing emotions that are generated by various types of investments can help investors fine tune their investment choices so as to maximize profits.
Investments, like our most intimate relationships, arouse strong and varied emotions, bringing out many personal and deep-seated reactions. Such intangible psychological factors can allow an amateur to achieve great success or hinder the performance of a seasoned professional.
Investor, know thyself! While knowledge of the technical and fundamental factors that affect price movement is, of course, a large part of investment success, individuals vary widely in how well they use that information. Market knowledge does not mean market control -- the individual cannot control the market, he can only control his own reactions to it.
Gaining and losing money are a natural part of investing and arouse strong emotional responses in the most analytical of players. The risk involved in a single investment has the power to elicit reactions of distress, anxiety, buoyancy, greed, restlessness, excitement, cold fear, and even psychosomatic symptoms and ailments. The danger of any one of these emotions is that, unrecognized and unchecked, it can become a driving force in an individual's investment patterns. The ability to identify these emotions and to evaluate them is the key to managing them before they manage you!
This volume contains a comprehensive approach for investors to understand their own temperaments and to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses associated with each. It presents an analysis of the various groups of investments that are best suited for each personality or temperament type. Also, it deals with the prevailing emotional reactions that are generated by a person's work and family situations. These ever-present and major sources of emotional stimulation also influence one's investment style (i.e., good and bad behavioral patterns bearing on how investments are handled).
Detailed lists of criteria are offered so investors can evaluate the separate and combined emotional impact of (a) their own temperament and of (b) their life circumstances. Additionally, groups of investment types suited to various combinations of these emotion-generating factors are noted. Increased self-awareness generated through this process of self-examination teach an investor to avoid situations that expose his/her Achilles' heel and to choose investment opportunities that exploit his/her strengths -- profitably!
In short, knowledge about typical behaviors that are associated with specific groups of emotional reactions can be invaluable to investors and can help them fine tune their investment choices so as to maximize profits.