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With Christmas right around the corner, Financial Post Family Finance columnist Andrew Allentuck brings you five worthy books for the investor or economist on your last-minute shopping list.

Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought

By Andrew W. Lo, (Princeton University Press, 2017).

483 pages, $47.95.

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When we make an investment, we set up the adrenalin-fuelled fight or flight reaction that can take over from the rational evaluations business schools teach. The adrenalin reaction — save yourself at any cost — may lead an investor to cut and run, taking a loss rather than waiting for the stock to bounce back. Emotion trumps mean reversion, an intellectual understanding. Our glands win and our portfolios lose.

But the reasons why investors make the wrong decisions is more than just psychology packaged with asset prices.

In Adaptive Markets, author Andrew Lo, who holds an endowed chair at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also practices quantitative investing at a hedge fund, demonstrates that risk management is a moving target that should be adjusted continuously as our exposure to financial hazards changes.