Book Price Comparisons
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 Great Compliment Great complimentary text along with "Common Sense On Mutual Funds" and "The Intelligent Asset Allocator". Combined, this is a wonderful trio for investing (as opposed to short-term, completely unreliable speculation).  Investment advice from a pro Although for many investors, the stock market is the only game in town, author David F. Swensen, the experienced manager of Yale University's endowment, suggests investing in logical low-cost, fair, nonprofit index funds that track the market closely. He advocates building a carefully balanced portfolio, and strongly recommends regular rebalancing. He comes to these conclusions based on his rigorous analysis of the returns achieved by a host of other investment media, especially mutual funds. In fact, he builds his investment guidebook around a scathing scolding of the mutual-fund industry, even though mutual funds also have strong supporters. getAbstract believes Swensen's counsel will be useful for individual investors who face a bewildering array of choices. In fact, if you had a rich uncle on Wall Street to advise you, he would probably echo much of Swensen's logical advice. Scathing - nobody is spared Swensen takes aim at EVERYBODY in the money game. Even Vanguard is pilloried. Agency conflicts are the focus of under-performance, and this can only be reconciled by managers who demonstrate clearly that they choose to act in the interests of their clients, even to the detriment of their own business. Given this intensely rigid standard, almost no going concern in the money management game would pass the test. Swensen's disdain for corporate debt is revisted here. With the informational assymetry existing between investor and issuer, it is very hard to win on a risk adjsuted basis, he claims. Ratings more often go down than up, and there is no where to go from AAA. A worthwile read, but something of a rehash of previous work.  Investment to avoid-buying this book While I have a lot of respect for Swensen's practical success with the endowment, his book has some great advice and some really poor advice. Swensen is to be commended for steering the investments from the '85 asset allocation to where it is today. It was visionary, courageous, very rewarding. The author does a great job of advising investors to reduce exposure to US large cap equities, and the rationale behind it. He also makes a logical case for increasing exposure to various international equity and fixed income markets. Where he goes astray, in my opinion, is by suggesting that investors look to index funds as a panacea for investing. While he and his team at Yale have found exceptional managers who bring value (above index returns, on a net of fee basis), he assumes that individual investors cannot. While few investors have the negotiating skill set he has (due to his Assets Under Management), individual investors who spend a few hours a month can find money managers via mutual funds that consistently outperform their peers and benchmarks. Let me sum up his book for you: own a LOT more baskets to put your eggs in, than just the standard 5-6 you may have in your 401k, and invest in low cost index funds. My suggestion: take the first bit of advice, and instead of low-cost index funds, find managers who consistently beat the indexes, and rebalance annually. Oh, and borrow the book from the library instead of padding his wallet. | |||||||||||||