Nicholas Mitsakos has published a new book, “Investment Principles: Strategies for an Irrational World.”

Nicholas Mitsakos has recently published his new book, “Investment Principles: Strategies for an Irrational World” (here is the Amazon link:  Investment Principles: Strategies for an Irrational World.) The book is unique in its description of what's really required for successful investing. While most authors try to give quick and easy tips, Nicholas Mitsakos believes that a disciplined and methodical approach to investing is essential for true success. This means that Mr. Mitsakos is advocating analytical work and an understanding that goes far beyond a simple summary description. 

Nicholas Mitsakos

He advocates that successful investing requires understanding global economics, competitive, corporate, and micro-level analysis, game theory, and human emotions and behavior. That's a lot to understand all at once, but Nicholas Mitsakos’s approach segments each of these complex topics, gives sufficient depth to understand what is fundamentally going on in each area, and then, most valuably, shows how these areas interact, enabling much more effective investment decision making, according to Mr. Mitsakos. 

Essentially, Nicholas Mitsakos's goal is to share an informed and distinctive way to think, predict the future with that combined information, and then make choices. In his new book, he states quite clearly that real investment success combines predicting the future, the confidence to make bold choices, and the fortitude to stay with those choices. There is a lot to unpack there because, essentially, this is an accurate summary of the challenges and the qualities for investment success. 

Looking at the first component, analyzing data ranging from economic analysis, global statistics on finance and trade, along with elements of human behavior and, quite bluntly, irrationality, form the combination that ultimately gives an understanding about what is going to happen. 

Next, understanding that difficult choices need to be made and that diversification is essentially equivalent to owning an index fund (so why bother going any further if that is really your goal), knowing that focused investment choices require bold commitments. But, once these bold choices are made, the real challenge begins. 

Nicholas Mitsakos quite accurately defines the most important component of this whole process as having the fortitude to stick with your choices. Most bad investment decisions are made when an investor sells. He points this out with examples of both Amazon and Apple. At what point should an investor have sold these? Essentially, they continue to be fantastic investments outperforming the market. So, even if an investor chalks up an impressive return, selling that investment and putting performance on the books is actually a bad and inefficient investment decision. He makes this quite clear.

The best decisions come from complex analysis, difficult choices, and then fortitude to stick with those choices. There is no better way to summarize an effective investment strategy. 

In this new book, Investment Principles: Strategies for an Irrational World Nicholas Mitsakos understands that financial and economic analysis is insufficient to understand the potential value of an investment. Human behavior and emotions play just as important a role. An informed and distinctive approach that integrates typical financial and economic analysis with understanding human behavior as well as game theory. Essentially, thoughtful observation of complex factors, understanding their interrelation, and predicting the outcome of those interactions cannot be reduced to a simple formula Human behavior and emotions are at the core of this understanding. After all, what else can explain the appeal of social media and other superficial analyses that, while extremely popular and can have temporary impacts on the market in specific securities, are almost always misguided nonsense. 

It is within this world of nonsense that Nicholas Mitsakos's new book, Investment Principles: Strategies for an Irrational World describes the depth and complexity that requires investment success. This success depends not only on discipline but also on understanding that human behavior and emotions play a critical role.