Professional tennis and professional golf are a winner's game. the outcome is determined by the actions of the winner. Amature tennis and amature gold are a loser's game. the outcome is determined by the actions of the loser, who defeat himself or herself.
Trying to beat the market in short term will be the loser's game because of the nature of the investment policy. on the other hand, the long term investment is the winner's game.

Great tidbits here:

Market timing does not work because no one person is more knowledgeable than all their peers.

There are old pilots. There are bold pilots. There are no old & bold pilots!

I decided to read this book after seeing it referenced several times by Howard Marks in his own book The most important things. As many other reviews have said, it is a good reminder of the relevance and power of simply avoiding mistakes, passive investment and compounded interest. I especially liked the chapter about Mr Market and Mr Value. Simply explained and so true. That made me want to learn more about his achievements at Yale alongside David Swensen. I also wonder how he would qualify Warren and Charlie's achievements as of 2014.

I read it to revisit the basic concepts of investing. It was a little over a year ago. The content was advanced for me, and I occasionally felt the need for a business-related dictionary. There are limits to what one can do in personal economic activities. Even after reading this book again, my impression remains unchanged.

A short book with lots of difficult vocabulary about investing that concentrates too much on institutional investors especially through the beginning of the book. Ellis highlights a few central themes at the beginning about risk, returns, and portfolios with similarities to the points of Bernstein and Malkiel, but he explains in doing so how your investment manager should be watched. Ellis notes investment managers who happen to do very well, should be doing so within the predetermined risk tolerance of the investment, otherwise they eventually will do very poorly. He reiterates this regression to the mean phenomenon, suggesting that one chooses competent stocks and investors that have recently done poorly like Bernstein. He appears to think very little of bonds, especially for those who are investing longer than 20 years, even noting people at retirement probably don’t risk enough, and thoroughly shows how inflation has a profound affect on shrinking investments. Most of the knowledge is geared to more serious investors and profession investment management like college trusts, but there are enough interesting points to make it worthwhile, especially near the end of the book. Much of it agrees with the other index oriented books of Bernstein and Malkiel highlighted earlier.

I have really mixed feelings about this highly recommended book about investing. Having read a few other classics, I didn't find any new particular idea or principle, but I found a good framework to think about investing in terms of risk, returns, costs, diversification through indexing and the usual ideas and principles. If you have read similar works, this will definitely sound familiar and resonate well.

These are the main issues I encountered:

Issue #1: who is the audience? The novice individual investor or the seasoned institutional one? If you are writing for the first, maybe young and inexperienced, the final chapters about wealth management and institutional investing are probably off-topic, while if you are writing for the latter most of the book reiterates basic and well known concepts (hopefully).

Issue #2: a lot of discussion about the "what you should (not) do", but little guidance on how to do it or where to start. Similar introductory books from John Bogle and Burton Malkiel, who wrote the foreword to this book, contain more useful information to help you start devising your investment policy and plan, besides telling you that you should have one.

Issue #3: this is probably a misunderstanding of the MPT theory and the efficient frontier on my side, but in other works (e.g. from William Bernstein) I got the idea that, given a 100% stock portfolio, you could reduce the risk without reducing returns by adding a little portion of other asset classes (for example 5-10% of bonds) and rebalancing. In this scenario I am confused that the author, while mentioning MPT and emphasizing the importance of risk evaluation, suggests putting all money in a 100% stock portfolio, although in a scenario where you expect to stay invested for a very long time and possibly have investments outlive you.

Overall, I preferred and would recommend Burt Malkiel's "A Randon Walk Down Wall Street" over this one, if you are looking for a nice introduction to personal investment.

The advice is sound, but the book just isn't a pleasant read. It repeats itself quite a bit, too. Financial books in general have a "glass ceiling" of four stars, perhaps. It helps, though, when they contrast people, real or hypothetical, who make wise decisions with those who make poor decisions. In particular, I remember "The Millionaire Next Door" comparing "Dr. North" with "Dr. South", and actually getting a kick out of it. This book fails to do so. It's more a presentation of charts and numbers and logic. The book IS considered part of "the investing canon", but don't expect it to be a burger from Culver's.

A must-read short book by an insightful and experienced professional. The iterating idea throughout the book is that investors, particularly individual investors, should and must invest in index funds which makes it a balanced portfolio in terms of risk and expected returns in the long run. Central theme: Don't play the losers game of active investing, don't try to outsmart/beat the market and go with indexing. Not an exciting book for those who want to get rich quickly but a wise guide for those seeking a comfortable retirement .

Straightforward framework for understanding the challenges of long-term financial success. At times a bit dry and undifferentiated when compared with other investing wisdom, but nonetheless helpful for seeing where individual investment decisions can have an impact and what common mistakes can be avoided.

Charley Ellis's message should resonate with investors: minimize transactions costs and superfluous fees, maintain a long-term investment horizon founded on a well-reasoned investment policy, tune out noise, and benefit from the profound effects of time and compounding on portfolios.

Ellis also highlights the use of trusts as a tax minimization technique to transfer wealth, which will help wealthy readers with succession planning.

Overall, I recommend this book to one starting out in investing. I did not learn much new as I had already read much of what has been written on the merits of investing and cost minimization. I nonetheless appreciated Ellis's book as a reminder of the importance of playing to not lose as opposed to playing to win.

This book could have been an blog post.

hardcopy
kindle copy
soft copy
must listen
very good book for investing mindset
must listen Book
relisten or re-read