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Investment Philosophies

Why Your Investing Strategy Probably Fails

Beginner ⏱ 11 hours 📚 39 lessons 🌐 en 🏆 Certificate 📅 Last updated May 2026
Created by Aswath Damodaran

Aswath Damodaran explains how markets really work—and how to build a strategy that survives reality.

1 section • 39 lectures • 11.1h total length

  • Investment Philosophies: Overview of class 5 min
  • Session 1: Introduction 14 min
  • Session 2: Understanding Risk - The Risk in Bonds 16 min
  • Session 3: Understanding risk - The risk in stocks 28 min
  • Session 4: Financial Statement Analysis 20 min
  • Session 5: Valuation - The Basics 28 min
  • Session 6: Trading Costs & Taxes 27 min
  • Session 7: Market Efficiency - Laying the Groundwork 18 min
  • Session 8: Market Efficiency - Testing Market Beating Schemes 30 min
  • Session 9: Random Walks and Momentum 15 min
  • Session 10: Temporal Patterns 12 min
  • Session 11: Technical Analysis 18 min
  • Session 12: Introduction to Value Investing 25 min
  • Session 13: Value Investing - The Passive Screeners 24 min
  • Session 14: Value Investing - The Contrarians 12 min
  • Session 15: Value Investing - The Activists 22 min
  • Session 16: Value Investors - where's the beef? 22 min
  • Session 17: Investing on Hope - Growth & Small Cap Investing 16 min
  • Session 18: Get in on the ground floor - The IPO story 14 min
  • Session 19: Growth Investing - Growth at a reasonable price (GARP) 14 min
  • Session 20: Activist Growth Investing - Be your own change agent 14 min
  • Session 21: Growth Investing - Against the tide of history? 11 min
  • Session 22: Information Trading - Trading on the news 9 min
  • Session 23: Information Trading - Following the insiders 13 min
  • Session 24: Information Trading - Following the analysts 15 min
  • Session 25: Information Trading - Public InformatIon - Earnings Reports 11 min
  • Session 26: Information Trading - Public information, other than earnings 21 min
  • Session 27: Too Good to be true? Pure Arbitrage 26 min
  • Session 28: Close Enough? Near Arbitrage 13 min
  • Session 29: Not Riskless - Pseudo & Speculative Arbitrage 15 min
  • Session 30: Market Timing - Setting the Table 10 min
  • Session 31: Market Timing - Nonfinancial & Technical Indicators 20 min
  • Session 32: Market Timing Approaches - Mean Reversion & Macro Fundamentals 19 min
  • Session 33: Market Timing Approaches - Valuing the Market 13 min
  • Session 34: Market Timing - Does it Work? 18 min
  • Session 35: The case for passive investing -Active Investor Track Records 15 min
  • Session 36: More in Investor Performance- Continuity & Consistency 16 min
  • Session 37: Passive Investing Choices 14 min
  • Session 38: The Grand Finale 14 min
Aswath Damodaran

Aswath Damodaran

YouTube Channel

📚 2 courses ► YouTube channel

I teach corporate finance, valuation and investment philosophies at the Stern School of Business at New York University. I have online versions of all three courses here, as well as other finance-related videos.
1. The Corporate Finance Online playlist has an introductory video and 36 sessions that cover all of corporate finance (at least as I see it).
2. The Valuation playlist has 25 sessions that cover valuation approaches, issues and questions.
3. The Investment Philosophies playlist has sessions that cover different investment philosophies.
4. The Accounting and Statistics playlists reflect my quirky and unorthodox introductions to two disciplines that are critical to my valuation and corporate finance classes.
5. The Blog Posts playlist has sessions that go wit my blog posts and reflect my standing as a dabbler, rather than expert, in all things finance-related.
If you need the supporting material for any of the classes, check the links below.

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