Book excerpt: If your investing strategy has relied on the facts—financial statements, annual reports, technical charts, and so on—congratulations! You’re on the way to becoming a successful, complete investor. But you’re only partway there. If the markets are about mood swings, turbulence, and uncertainty, if the herd buys like crazy one day, only to sell off the next, doesn’t it make sense for you to have a grip on the way in which your individual psychological makeup and emotional state affect your investing strategy? Doesn’t the complete investor need to understand both the facts in his head and the emotions of his heart? Dr. Richard Geist has combined the art and science of the seemingly unrelated fields of psychology and investing. He shows that investing success means both having and using solid information and expertly understanding, monitoring, and managing your emotions. This is the first book directed at professional and individual investors alike, illustrating how they can use emotions to become more effective at meeting the ever-increasing challenges of today’s investing environment. Dr. Geist’s coverage is stimulating and wide-ranging, including topics such as: •Recognizing emotional reactions such as confidence and anxiety as clues to making investment decisions •Avoiding the most common psychological investment mistakes •Analyzing your psychological risk quotient •Reacting appropriately when you’re caught in a stampeding herd •Learning how patience—or the lack of it—influences investing decisions •Responding in psychologically healthy ways to losing money in the market •Gaining the psychological skills you need to sell a stock and learning why these skills differ from those needed when making a buy decision •Understanding the psychological needs of management while obtaining useful, valid information for making informed investing decisions Conventional wisdom says “park your emotions at the door when making investing decisions.” Dr. Geist brings a new, important perspective to show that the conventional wisdom is not only wrong but harmful to your financial well-being. Success lies in understanding your emotional reactions to the market and its participants and integrating an emotional understanding of yourself into your investing strategies. The successful investor is, above all, a human investor, not a “perfect” machine-like investor.