A consummately authoritative and valuable examination of retail investing.
A comprehensive guide focuses on investing in commercial real estate.
This third edition of Rappaport’s manual notes that income-producing real estate comes in many forms: residential, office, storage facilities, industrial, and retail. He mentions an insight from Investing 101: Diversifying makes for a portfolio that can withstand the shocks of the financial markets. But his own long experience has been in just one of these real estate types: retail properties. His company has been investing in and representing commercial properties for decades, including brands like Arby’s, Chipotle, Panera Bread, Sephora, Shake Shack, and many others. In these pages, he takes interested readers and prospective financiers through every aspect of investing and cash-flow management, going into granular detail on things like depreciation, net absorption, and the intricacies of loans in both a bull and bear market. There are plenty of charts and a great blast of numbers and statistics—this is a consult-your-calculator, graduate-level, nuts-and-bolts seminar on the specifics of investing in and managing commercial properties like shopping centers. Rappaport’s decision to open his book with an autobiographical sketch may at first seem discordant with this fact-heavy approach, and it can sometimes be self-serving (although also touching, as when during a glowing tribute to his father, he writes simply: “He showed me the way but never told me where to go”). Yet it turns out to be a wise choice, a very effective introduction to a guide that ends up being remarkably readable for both investors and nonspecialists. Rappaport is a terrific storyteller, even when he’s crunching numbers. He smoothly brings this latest edition of his book up to date with references to Covid-19 and recent changes in the Federal Reserve’s finance rates. But ultimately, the wonkish, ethical author at the heart of it all will strike readers the most.
A consummately authoritative and valuable examination of retail investing.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 979-8887503073
Page Count: 664
Publisher: ForbesBooks
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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