ISE Essentials of Investments

Book arrived as described

Essentials of Investments provides a comprehensive and practical introduction to modern investment theory. It masterfully balances academic rigor with real-world applications, making complex topics like asset allocation and security analysis accessible. It is an indispensable resource for students and aspiring finance professionals seeking a solid analytical foundation.

I was assigned this textbook as part of a CFP certification course at Berkeley. I found it to be very comprehensive in its coverage. I was surprised at the number of mistakes (several examples list incorrect answers) and at how the authors often used only a formula to explain a concept, rather than prose followed by a formula. If you have a strong grasp of calculus this will not bother you, but it's been a few decades since I had seen some of these concepts, so I was slightly miffed. All in all, this book is worthwhile. Hopefully they will correct the errors in subsequent printings.

This is probably one of the worst textbooks I’ve ever read. I bought this textbook for my investment management course and after getting about halfway through the book I can say that the writing is insanely hard to follow. Spelling out math equations in sentences instead of showing the math, referencing formulas from 10 pages ago, etc. I understand the material is dense but even my professor has a hard time reading through this book.

Horrible textbook for professors to be relying heavily on. This is a complaint against the authors of this textbook and not the seller. Mathematical examples are not explained in detail and rely on students to automatically retain mathematical information from previous courses. It seems the authors of this textbooks have other objectives rather than helping their readers out. Try to find alternatives rather than purely relying on this textbook for all your information, as concepts in it can be hard to digest. To professors, please stop throwing this textbook in your students face and making it on us to retain all information from it.

The Author takes numerous concept leaps with little explanation while examples do not follow a logical flow. Take Example 5.6. where the investment budget is multiplied by 15% which randomly appears in the example solution with no reference to where this figure comes from. The book is littered with poorly worded examples that expect you to already be well versed in the content. In the online version (could be different for the printed book) there's also no way to confirm your understanding of the "Concept check" questions.

My wife is in college and she loves to save money, she managed to find the books she needed at a very good price. This book helped her keep her grades well above passing. Highly recommend if you need some school books for a good low price.

nice book to learn about investment as well as nice supplier. well received the book. well packed