This book should provide a frame of reference in which better investment decisions can be reached. Account executives, analysts, counselors, or portfolio managers, those who are called upon to manage the investment accounts of other people, must understand the needs and motivations of their clients; the text offers a background for the individual who will invest for others. Many people who achieve financial status and recognition are called upon to serve institutional investors -- for example, colleges and universities -- and the book familiarizes these individuals with the policies and objectives to help them solve the investment problems of these institutions. The approach, therefore, is oriented both to the person about to embark on an investments career and to the decision-making individual who is acting for himself and for others.

In many aspects this is a methodological book. It discusses investment functions, explaining the how of the decision-making process as well as the why. The investor needs a frame of reference in which to make a value judgment based upon the returns and risks of investment. The investor's field of reference will widen and develop with experience. As knowledge grows, the investor will become a better and more sophisticated judge of investment values, and, it is hoped, a more successful investor.

The text presentation is designed to bring principles of investment and good theory into the practical decision-making process. First the principles involved are discussed, and then they are demonstrated by practical cases, providing an analysis that allows a tentative decision to be reached. It is not enough to tell investors what to do; they must be shown a method of decision-making and experience the results. For many years these principles and theories have been successfully applied in the teaching of investments and in the management of substantial sums of money. Self-correcting problems have been introduced to bring realism into the investment process.