Highly recommend this book for anyone whether you're managing your own money or not. It's written in a straightforward way and is very clear about why, even if someone promises they can do it, it is not possible to beat the market. Ellis has an excellent resume that gives credibility to his advice.

nice overview of investing pitfalls. of course no winning strategies either - otherwise we will only have winners and that contradicts the main point of the book :)

In a nutshell, don't buy stocks buy stock indexes NOT managed funds. You'll never lose over the long run. This is an enlightening book especially for individuals making their own long term investing decisions for retirement, as many regular folks are doing. It's well written and keeps the non-professional reader engaged and reading till the end. Some interesting points: even if you are retired, keep a long horizon as your investment goal, high costs of money management eats into stock fund gains, and don't think inflation is gone for good -- it's still there and can ravage fixed incomes. I recommend this book highly -- for oldsters, youngsters and all those in between.

Just because you have an IRA or 401K doesn't mean you're an investor. Regular investments in a balanced portfolio of global index funds is the only way to save for retirement. Anything else is entertainment or gambling.

One of the best, most succinct books for the individual investor I've read.

Short and to the point, this is one of the best books I've read for the individual investor. It doesn't go into much detail of specific asset classes, but has a great, high level, evidence based approach to one's overall investment approach. It's probably good to revisit once every few years as one's situation evolves. It may also be good for financial advisers to bridge the gap with clients. Additionally, the high level theme can apply to many of life's endeavors.

DRAFT

This book looked interesting since I was looking for material covering our current 2021 period of low interest rates. I was less interested in the author's coverage of stocks, mutual funds, and asset allocations of equities in a retirement account. These were the questions I was hoping to answer:

- How should I think about bonds during a period of low interest rates?
- How should I think about the various types of bonds and debt instruments?
- If I'm saving for a house downpayment during a time of low interest rates but don't know how much I'll need when I'm ready, what do I do with those funds?

WIP

Sage advice, well updated in its 7th edition. Somewhat repetitive. I particularly enjoyed the concise and simple (yet mostly unadhered) principles in the appendix on investment committees.

Only thing keeping it from 5 stars is how repetitive the book is...you could cut out the middle 15-20 chapters and get the same content. He used the same exact quote from Adam Smith 3 times in the book. Overall fairly insightful especially the last few chapters.

Simple is usually best. In this case, the simplification takes away from real world issues that clients can have regarding their allocation and actual needs for money at inopportune times in the market. But there are worse books.

Guía práctica para los inversores que te llevará con información general de los factores que debes considerar para fortalecer tu toma de decisiones en los momentos importantes de invertir. Algunos conceptos te ayudarán en los procesos que sigas en México otros no aplican.

Really this book is more of a 3.5 stars but a lot of it is better. Charles Ellis clearly explains how the market fluctuates and gives great advice to individual investors. His concept of the institutional investment game being a loser's game is definitely true, however, one can always play a different game and not invest in just the S & P. However, for investors who do not have all of their time to dedicate to investing, going with a great value manager (if you have enough money to invest) or going with an index like Ellis recommends will serve you well. A very intelligent author who really understands the investing game and a great read overall

It feels like a good supplement to Graham's The Intelligent Investor.
This was an echo chamber for views I hold. In other words, I agree with Charles and would recommend this forward to my friends. However, the writing is quite repetitive, and the arguments are diluted so much so that they often sound preachy.
I loved the many adages. I am young - I hadn't heard of many of those, and they are clever fun.