Active Investment Management: Finding and Harnessing Investment Skill (The Wiley Finance Series) [Hardcover]

"Good introductory books on investment are hard to find – but Active Investment Management by Jackson falls into that rare category." (Professional Investor, May 2004)

"…analyses investment and business strategies that he (the author) says will shape the future fund management." (Stanford Business, May 2004)   

“Good introductory books on investment are hard to find – but Active Investment Management by Jackson falls into that rare category.” (Professional Investor, May 2004)

“…analyses investment and business strategies that he (the author) says will shape the future fund management.” (Stanford Business, May 2004)

"...analyses investment and business strategies that he (the author) says will shape the future fund management."

Active Investment Management looks at where active management has come from, where it is today, what problems it faces and where the answers to these questions are leading it. The book addresses the major issues concerning the key groups within the industry.

Charles Jackson′s wonderfully readable book will be essential reading for the practitioner and is broken down into five sections covering the whole spectrum of active investment management:

∗ asset classes and products
∗ balancing risk and return
∗ active product selection
∗ the nature of skill
∗ the price of skill

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"As a description of the challenges faced in seeking out the elusive alpha of active management, Charles Jackson′s book merits an alpha–plus."
—Alastair Ross Goobey, Chairman, Hermes Focus Asset Management.

"Charles Jackson presents in lucid prose and elegant mathematics a concise guide to the ecology of the jungle. He describes the landscape and history of the habitat, classifies its successful predators, examines how they are themselves hunted and concludes with an acute analysis of the investment and business strategies that will shape the industry’s future."
—Colin Matby, Chief Executive, BP Investment Management Ltd

"Charles Jackson′s book is highly topical and a veritable tour de force on issues facing the fund management industry today. His discussion on portfolio managers′ skill, intuitive versus systematic investment approaches and how this impacts on portfolio manager remuneration, and ultimately industry structure, is particularly insightful."
—Andreas EF Utermann, Global Chief Investment Officer/Chief Executive Office, Allianz Dresdner Asset Management

"Active Investment Management masterfully blends the theoretical and the practical. This is not a quick fix book with three easy lessons on actively managing your investment portfolio. Instead it carefully shows how the battle for excess returns can be fought and won."
—Daniel L White, Professor of Finance Emeritus, Georgia State University

The investment management industry faces a number of well–publicised problems and difficulties. Charles Jackson shows how these all relate to the same underlying problem: that investors find investment skill very hard both to find and to put to work in a way that profits them.

Active Investment Management starts with the fundamentals of what active management is and why investors find it desirable. It goes on to show how these fundamentals have given rise to the industry’s problems, how these problems affect each other and how they can be resolved.

Written by a leading authority in the field, this book is an invaluable tool for the practitioner. It is broken down into five sections covering the whole spectrum of active investment management:

• asset classes and products
• balancing risk and return
• active product selection
• the nature of skill
• the price of skill

Active Investment Management concludes by projecting industry trends, and outlining the future developments in active investment management implied by those trends.

CHARLES JACKSON holds an MA from Oxford University and an MBA from Stanford University, where he was a Harkness Fellow. He has 25 years experience in the investment management industry. For 13 years, he was the Head of the Fixed Interest and Currency Division of Mercury Asset Management, for most of the period the largest publicly quoted firm in Europe specialising exclusively in active investment management. He also served on Mercury′s Asset Allocation Committee and Chairman′s Committee. He was appointed a Vice Chairman of Mercury′s Main Board in 1993. He is married, with two children, and lives near Oxford.