The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns

John Bogle , founder of Vanguard funds , has been the Guru for many years . Good Read . I gave a copy to each of my children so they coud start investing at a young age . Doesn't take much to get started when your twenty years old - 20 -40 dollars a month .

It's pretty simple - minimize your costs, own all of the market at once. Paired w/ Graham's the Intelligent Investor this book is very helpful. Bogle's strategy dives into what Graham describes as a "defensive" investor - and there's nothing wrong with being defensive.

Although the book was simple, Bogle provides memorable statistics and references that will drive the point home in case your emotions lead you to waver. Easy read.

I have experience investing at the retail level and consider myself a knowledgeable but highly typical retail American investor. I started from zero and believe in personal responsibility, self reliance and I firmly believe SS is going to shift to a welfare program and because of that belief I plan on needing my own money for a retirement that is to involve anything in addition to sitting home and waiting on a government check to barely cover the groceries. I am also a victim of class warfare perpetrated through our current political class and feel a sense of urgency in protecting my future from the witless and covetous hordes at the gate. I invest what I can for my personal wealth advancement, to pay for my children's education and for my retirement. All that I have learned comes from educating myself and through experience.

In my quest for independence I have recently been working on asset allocation fine tuning but also on simplifying my investments for ease of management. This book was a home run. What John Bogle preaches (and I do mean preaches) is that owning the major markets in their entirety is a better strategy than trying to pick individual stocks and a far better strategy than allowing some 'advisor' to chip away at your principle via expenses. Even mutual funds can chip away principle through expenses. The simple analogy given by Bogle is "instead of looking for the needle in the haystack, buy the haystack". He is a 'buy and hold through low cost indexes' disciple. That sums up the thirty thousand foot view of the book but it is worth reading so he can make his case, and make his case he does. Unless you did not know it already, John Bogle is the father of mutual funds and one of the founders of Vanguard. Yet, he even offers some fair criticisms of today's mutual fund industry.

After reading his book I applied much of what John Bogle proffers into my asset allocation strategy and have shifted nearly all of my long term investments into one low cost mutual fund company where asset class diversification is available,where expenses are low, turnover is low and I can see and manage everything from one simple dashboard. Rebalancing, adding to an allocation and the simplicity of doing so was worth the price of the book itself, especially when you see how the author details the method of collecting expenses by the financial industry.

There are no populist boogie men in this book and there are no get rich quick schemes, no pretense that Bogle knows how to better time the market and no pretense that all financial planners are evil doers hell bent on destroying the little people. As for the last point, he rightfully leaves those charges to be leveled by the opportunist politicians to the low information voter.

Available books and literature on personal investing and retirement savings are legion, save yourself the time and cost of all those other choices and simply invest in this book and receive an honest, time tested, straight-talking and wisdom filled work detailing the very best and surprisingly simple investment plan possible! A blue chip double A rated read!

This is a no nonsense approach to investing for beginners and experienced (so called) investors alike. I have been investing for many years and was continually frustrated by the contradictory claims made by mutual fund companies to use their products. Diversification was advised but I can't recall any of them recommending an index fund as a solution. I'm afraid I was also caught in the merry go round of the investment of the month attitude and often chased trends that had already run their course. I can now see the logic and simplicity of the index fund, but even more importantly, I understand I won't be missing out if I invest in them. Many thanks to John Bogle for sharing his decades of knowledge with those who have not made a sufficient study of investing to identify the best approach.

Jack Bogle discusses the humble rules of arithmetic which direct investors toward choosing index funds over other investment options. By total diversification and minimizing expenses, investors can take assurance that index funds will consistently provide returns over the long term.

Jack Bogle's latest book provides an excellent introduction to low-cost and low-risk Boglehead-style investing. The subtitle reads "The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns", but that is too modest. In fact, the content nearly guarantees that an investor can receive better returns than 90% of invested money over the long term.

When buying this book, I was looking for a good book to give friends and family who are still gambling with individual stocks and actively-managed mutual funds. Bogle's new book comes close to the mark, and is especially compelling when demonstrating that index funds are a better investment than active mutual funds for most investors.

The role of taxes, fund expenses and investor behavior on investors' returns is solidly brought home in this book. Not much new information for the already-converted Bogleheads among us, but good intellectual wisdom for investors not familiar with these forms of investment return thievery.

This book also includes a discussion of bonds and bond funds, where similar points are driven home.

Common Sense Investing is less compelling in demonstrating that index funds are better than individual stocks for most investors. The risk of individual stocks is described as uncompensated, but it could have benefited from more persuasive quantitative evidence to bring home the point.

Bogle projects the next decade's stock market returns, which is a bonus. Bogle provides persuasive rational for relying on dividend yields, earnings growth and changes in speculation in describing returns.

The Table of Contents is less than 100% descriptive of the contents and the absence of an index makes it a little difficult to use the book as a reference.

Common Sense Investing is a great book, but would have benefited from more discussion of asset allocation, which is a huge determinate of returns. Thus it does not stand as a single book to guide investment decision-making.

A great gift book to give to stock market gamblers.

After reading this I feel a bit more confident to jump in the market. Fear and lack of knowledge has kept me from it in the past. This book filled in my gaps and I highly recommend it, especially for beginners.

Interesting read ---- I will apply these investment strategies. The only thing is that since this book is a few years old I think some of the info on etfs is not entirely accurate because those have changed so much in the last 5 years.

I have been reading about investing since the current market down turn began, including several other books by John Bogle, founder and ex-CEO of the Vanguard Group. This slim volume makes the case once again for investing in low cost indexed mutual funds rather than trying to beat the market, which most of the professionals fail to do. This book is perfect as a refresher course, or for your significant other who is too busy (or too intimidated) to read more detailed books on investing.

Bogle reiterates the importance of indexing several different times. Only 2% of active managers have beat the stock market so indexes should work for almost everyone. There will still be some who are bitten by the excitement of picking stocks and trading actively. This book is for large majority of people except for active traders.

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Books. Big Profits)I thought this book was very clearly written, and its advise quite compelling. It hammers home the long-term advantages of investing in index funds. Of course, the author sells them for Vanguard, but none-the-less, his advise makes sense. He points out how difficult it is to select a mutual fund which consitently beats the market average over a long time period. According to the book, the odds are stacked heavily against it. So I think his point is for me to let go of my ego, and admit how extraordinarily difficult it is to beat the averages, and just invest in index funds and let it ride. Piled with fact after fact, lots of statistics, and bare logic, the book makes its case superbly. I recoommend it to all who own or plan to own stocks or bonds.

Really really helped with my investment strategies. I used to have a financial advisor that I was paying too much for and this really helps. The problem was advisor was putting me in funds with high expenses and very poor tax consequences for my post tax investments.

Nothing to like "the least" about this book !! Read John Bogle and you have read the Godfather of Index Funds. If you read this book AND pay attention to what it says , you will very likely never put your money in another managed fund. John reveals the secret very clearly : COSTS - COMPOUNDING - MORE COSTS ( mostly concealed ).

Excellent book, easy read for a non-investor. This should be required reading for every high school and college student. I'm a capitalist, not a socialist; but frankly the concepts discussed should be required of every individual like social security and medicare taxes.

I have no doubt that index investing was a revolutionary thing and that every common Joe should invest in them rather than mutual funds or daytrading, but I found myself wondering why I needed so many pages to tell me that. I enjoy Bogle's conversational style of writing, but the entire book is mostly just him pounding it into your head that mutual funds are bad and index funds are good.

Save yourself the purchase and read this summary instead: don't invest in mutual funds, only index funds.

Provides excellent frame of reference for analyzing investment returns. I wish I had read and followed the low cost index fund strategy right at the start of my working career instead of blindly going with mediocre returns from various financial advisory outfits usually associated with the big firms.

Wish I had this information and guidance much sooner - before investing in a front load mutual fund, even though there are some who argue that the fund - Investment Company of America - provides a decent return at low annual expense. I agree with John Bogle that I don't need a financial middleman to take a cut of the return from my investment, and that my investment is an attempt to own American business, not play roulette in a casino.
I came to Vanguard late in life - but I got here.

Once I read this book, investing and the simple math made perfect sense. I read this revised edition, bounced it with current stock info (along with the historic info), and looked at the Vanguard site (specifically their maintenance fees) and it still was in line when this book was revised (2007). I even come across Forbes (their investing issue) and groups still try to beat out the average. You should read the book because it is simple, the only problem some may have is fighting the urge to sit back and not touch the investment (aside from reinvesting the dividends, etc). Please, just check this book out, I am glad I bought it, I'm no longer ignorant or trudging through everyone else's opinion on creating wealth/retirement. At least this guy is credible =)

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.

Bogle's view of the flood of ETFs (exchange traded funds) that slice and dice markets into specialized sectors is that they have only increased risk with the illusion that they have diversified it away. They are a "wolf-in-sheep's clothing". That they can be so actively traded (long and short) defeats the underlying idea of owning the market for its long-term gains. Ultimately ETFs fail to offer the "quintessential" promise of a total stock market index fund to "earn [a] fair share of the stock market's returns". He sarcastically suggests they carry warning labels. Industry insiders will sit-up at Bogle's swipe at noted Wharton professor, Jeremy J. Siegel (author of the widely admired, STOCKS FOR THE LONG RUN). Recently Siegel has helped promote a family of ETF securities that shift the composition of the underlying indexes from a traditional capitalization weighted model to one that emphasizes dividends. For Bogle, these are siren songs based on data mined ideas that my or may not work in the future.

I have read the most recent version of Malkiel’s “A Random Walk Down Mainstreet,” and it made me thankful for those people who actually go out and try to make a return for themselves on the market. It provides a service that current leftist critiques of finance capitalism forget – they provide liquidity and aid price discovery. Now, that is just a small part of what they do, and the bulk of their profits are actual rents, and half of the people will end up losers whatever system they try – because there are some patterns in the market, but I am a believer that the market will stay irrational longer than I can stay liquid. I guess at heart I am pretty conservative about what I do with my money because people like Malkiel and Bogle speak to me so much.

This book is like a cover version of Malkiel’s classic, coming in with a shorter page count and being less of a sales document – though where the recent “Random Walk” made me curious about Wealthfront and reading this made me go to the Vanguard website, I still am paying more in fees than I should to the company-administered 403(b) even in their so-called Index Fund. This is a pretty well-written book, but it does have a bit of an odd structure, with short chapters closed by asides referencing the current point made with an outside source instead of integrating it in the main chapter. Overall, though, it is a strong case for indexing your funds and taking advantage of the work the active traders do. When you are buying the market, you are giving up the chance of some great stock or sector that goes parabolic, but it also prevents you from thinking you are clever and taking a short position in that same sector just before it goes parabolic. Buy and hold and buy again seems to be the best way to ensure that the money you do invest will be there when you need it at the end of your life. I’m not trying to get rich by any means, but I’m also not looking to degrade the quality of my life at the end.

However the first 10 chapters seem to be very repetitively trying to prove the low cost point. I found it more helpful to skip through some of them and get to the last few chapters on asset allocation.

Excellent, simplified explanation of a very complex subject! Mr. Bogle (the author) takes on each aspect of the financial balance scale (returns versus investments) in a concise, informative manner that can't fail to enlighting newby investors and I would expect place their investment strategies in a position to yield positive results.

Great information. Wish I knew about this when I was a young man. A little tedious with the charts and statistics. Repetitive theme thoroughly hammered in. Last chapter is an excellent encapsulation of the entire book.

This book changed the way I think about investing. It changed how I look at financial products and helped me to identify the rules I need to invest. I no longer have to look at being an active investor! I can invest passively and not feel guilty about it.
And john Bogle IS the Guru of Mutual Funds.

very convincing book (it is entirely about why index funds are great and actively managed funds suck). I really like it, and have learned a lot from it. But this isn't for those who have no knowledge about finance, but Bogle uses lots of graphs and talks about P/E ratios and market mentality when he talks about reversion back to the mean. But for those who have a basic understanding about finance great book and worth the money.

John Bogle is an American hero. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing might be his most practical book in terms of implementing a great low-cost strategy of growing and protecting your portfolio. I highly recommend you buy this great book from one of America's true financial heroes.

I would recommend this book for all investors, but especially someone just starting out. The writing style is clear and concise, which makes reading through the fantastic content easy. I learned greatly about mutual funds, investment expenses, and hidden costs (portfolio turnover).

A monstrously valuable book for someone with zero knowledge of investing. This book provides excellent real world examples of index investing. A singular read or an excellent adjunct to The Intelligent Investor.

j purchased as a Kindle in December 2014. The book was written back in 2007 and prior to the big crash in 2008 and 2009. I was fortunate to not lose because I did not sell on the downside and waited until 2013 for the market to recover and then sell on the rising edge, but too soon, and lost the opportunity on some terrific profit, but in a holding pattern for the next crash and in a great position to buy low.

Common sense investing to me is buy low, sell high. Only invest what you can afford to lose. Lastly, if you are approaching retirement and need to rely on payments from a 401k and similar plans like the government TSP, you need to have most of your nest egg in equity type investments to last till you are a hundred years old, and then invest the rest in risky stocks with after tax dollars from a well known investment firm like Vanguard and Fidelity. Remember, not everyone is a millionaire who can invest more in stocks and bonds. The young have more time to invest in mutual funds and bonds and hold throughout ups and downs and ups again. Stocks are meant to be sold, but only after making significant profits, retain in equity till a crash, and buy back in to stocks when low.

Reading Bogle's book helped us to become more confident about overseeing our own investments, and eliminating a financial advisor. Bogle makes a great argument for investing in index funds and making one's investment decisions simple and profitable. Very eye-opening suggestions. Financial investors try to make the process of investing a very complicated process. Bogle shows the reader how to make investing simple. A good book to help one begin understanding investing.