The Little Book of Common Sense Investing Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B000NJXF6E | Format: PDF
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing Description
Investing is all about common sense. Owning a diversified portfolio of stocks and holding it for the long term is a winner's game. Trying to beat the stock market is theoretically a zero-sum game (for every winner, there must be a loser), but after the substantial costs of investing are deducted, it becomes a loser's game. Common sense tells us, and history confirms, that the simplest and most efficient investment strategy is to buy and hold all of the nation's publicly held businesses at very low cost. The classic index fund that owns this market portfolio is the only investment that guarantees you your fair share of stock market returns.
To learn how to make index investing work for you, there's no better mentor than legendary mutual-fund industry veteran John C. Bogle. Over the course of his long career, Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group and creator of the world's first index mutual-fund, has relied primarily on index investing to help Vanguard's clients build substantial wealth. Now, with The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, he wants to help you do the same.
Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing will show you how to incorporate this proven investment strategy into your portfolio. It will also change the very way you think about investing. Successful investing is not easy. (It requires discipline and patience.) But it is simple - for it's all about common sense.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 5 hours and 7 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: February 20, 2007
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000NJXF6E
John Bogle created the world's first index fund in 1975. In this book, he describes why you should make index funds the core of your investment portfolio.
Bogle starts off with introducing index funds through a parable that describes how middle-man costs in finance eat away at investors' profits. He discusses why speculation doesn't work and why business reality (in his definition, divident yields plus earnings growth) is more important that market expectation (changes in P/E based on what investors are willing to pay for various equities).
Bogle spends a few chapters discussing various problems with regular actively managed mutual funds, covering issues with performance (he asserts that less than 1% of all mutual funds were able to beat the market consistently over the past half century), various costs (expense ratios, sales charges, advertising fees, turnover costs, tax implications), poor market timing, and finally the difficulty of choosing a mutual fund (he states that there's no good way to pick a fund, since we can't foretell the future, and past performance is not an indicator of what's to come). He brings the reader to the "common sense" conclusion that index funds, in their pure simplicity, are the logical choice for any investor, as they provide the diversified return of the entire market with miniscule fees and minimal effort.
The last few chapters cover bond funds, ETFs, and a few pages of investment advice - which boils down to keeping at least 50% (if not all) of your money in broad-market index funds. Interestingly, Bogle spends a chapter discussing what Benjamin Graham would have thought about index funds, citing various quotes from Graham's "The Intelligent Investor" and certain blurbs from Warren Buffet.
Who better to make a straightforward argument for the index mutual fund than the man who developed the first of its kind for Vanguard in 1975. The stock market offers the return of the businesses it represents to investors. These returns are not received, because rather than 'buying' the market with a fund that tracks those returns, investors are sold actively managed funds that try to outperform the market and in the end dilute those returns with crippling fees and costs from excessive trading. The argument has been made by other distinguished writers in recent years, but investors will find this industry giant's take on the matter forceful.
What's new is Bogle's sobering expectations for future market returns. Over the past century companies have produced a 4.5% dividend yield and a 5% earnings growth rate (9.5%) for investors - before actively managed fund costs have stripped away much of that wealth. Today dividend yields on equities are under 2%. Earnings growth rates in the future may or may not be lower than the historical average. What seems apparent is that investors are less willing to pay for those earnings than they have in the past - as measured by a decline in price earnings ratios. Bottom line: we may be looking at a period of market returns of just 7-8%, and after all the "intermediary" costs of the mutual fund industry, investors will see that return dramatically reduced. This is why costs matter. The index mutual fund is the least expensive way to get the market's return into your pocket. Unfortunately, many 401 (k) retirement plans do not include some of the key U.S. and international indexes recommended by Bogle.
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