The Aspirational Investor: Taming the Markets to Achieve Your Life’s Goals

In this astute business manual, Chhabra, chief investment officer of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, urges readers to focus not on beating the market, but on evaluating personal goals and dreams, and formulating ways to reach them. Investing assets wisely, he explains, will have a dramatic impact on the quality of the investor’s life. While the temptation to pour time and effort into hitting an arbitrary number—enabled by a constant stream of readily available financial information—is strong, it’s ultimately not the major contributor to happiness. Instead, Chhabra calls for an orientation toward individual objectives, a viewpoint that he calls “objective portfolio theory.” Investors are both “the victim and the culprit,” falling prey to a dangerous illusion that they, or their financial advisors, understand the market better than they really do. This readable, graphic-heavy book covers the risk-and-reward dynamic, the illusion of control, the aversion to loss, and the volatility of markets. Chhabra gives a good sense of how investments work, and a sensible view of how to work toward goals “by organizing your financial life around what you hope to achieve.” Agent: Max Brockman, Brockman Inc. (June)