As the number of investment decisions increases, the quality of decision making deteriorates. What can be done?

Investing is an art and a science. We all know that. The science portion is fairly well understood. Models — discounted cash flow, Black-Scholes, Gordon growth, capital asset pricing — provide systematic support in a field that used to be governed almost entirely by intuition and “gut feel.” But where should we learn about the “art” of investing?

How and why the investment industry fails to give analysts proper training. Enabling skills must be mastered before a successful stock call can be made.

The exact timing of the financial crisis may have been unpredictable, but the trajectory of subsequent events has been entirely average and typical, says Kenneth Rogoff.

THREE YEARS AFTER THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS, events are seeming eerily familiar to Kenneth Rogoff, co-author with Carmen Reinhart of the 2009 book This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Historically, financial crises and their economic effects have tended to follow a similar pattern, and this one is no different, closely tracking the average for financial crises since 1945. In an interview with CFA Magazine, Rogoff, the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and professor of economics at Harvard University, explains his views on the predictability of crises and their aftermath, the likely time frame for recovery, why the current crisis might more accurately be called “the Second Great Contraction,” the link between debt burdens and growth, and the possible return of financial repression.

The investment industry is not equipped to understand the impact of global political instability, says one expert on political risk. What can investors do?