The five best financial and risk management journals

When I returned from vacation Monday after a week out of the office, the pile of financial journals cluttering my desk that I received while away sparked an idea for my blog this week. At FactSet, we receive numerous questions from our clients asking for suggestions on which financial publications are most relevant as there are so many places to read articles on finance in general and in the areas of risk management and quantitative investing in particular.

Among the scores of websites, magazines, journals, and newsletters vying for our attention each day, these are my top five recommendations:

1. CFA Institute Financial NewsBrief. I start each day reading this morning e-mail, which summarizes top news stories of the day on topics such as the global financial markets, business, economics, and politics. All summaries contain links to the full article. You can sign up to receive the daily NewsBrief here.
   
   
2. Financial Analysts Journal. Published six times per year by the CFA Institute, the Journal is a collection of papers on general finance topics from some of the top names in the industry. The most recent issue includes articles from John Bogle, Harry Markowitz, and Emanuel Derman.
   
   
3. CFA Digest. Another CFA Institute publication, this one comes out once each quarter and provides brief summaries of approximately 50 recent papers. After skimming the topics and authors on the contents page, I then read the summaries of the topics I find interesting. The summaries list the publication in which the complete paper was published. (The CFA Institute also puts out some other worthwhile publications such as the CFA Magazine.)
   
   
4. Journal of Portfolio Management and 5. GARP Risk review. For topics more directly related to portfolio, quantitative, and risk management, these are the two publications I read most frequently.

Honorable Mention: Other great sources of research on these topics can be found on the websites of FactSet’s risk model vendors. Northfield, Barra, APT, and Axioma all produce an extensive number of research papers on their websites.

Please share your thoughts on which publications you find most valuable in the comments below.

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