Pioneering Portfolio Management (David F. Swensen)
The sub-title is "An unconventional approach to institutional investment", although I think the author's approach should be the conventional one.
The author is the Chief Investment Officer of Yale University and has been successfully managing its endowment fund.
Rather than relying on the common wisdom ("Follow the hot pick. What's the next big thing?"), he set a clear long-term objective for the fund (the balancing between preserving purchasing power of assets and providing substantial flows of resources to the operating budget) and understood the proper use of quantitative and qualitative analyses for capital allocation. This enabled the fund to be among the best performing endowments funds in US.
The book is very easy to read, but never boring, and I do not believe any heavy mathematical or finance background is required to understand his message.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in institutional investment.
What did I say then?
We are going down, down, down.....
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