The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns by John C. Bogle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a funny little book. It starts out very fun, making a strong case to attach itself to Thomas Paine's Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings, the book that led to the American Revolution.

While the idea doesn't exactly feature all throughout this piece of good advice, it does underscore the obvious idiocies and point to a classy, simple solution. Kinda like the causes for the Revolution.

So, what, we need to overthrow the stock market? Um.. no. The actual idea is pretty damn simple and backed up with massive proof in the massive pudding.

*Buy* *Hold*

It outperforms almost everything. Second-guessing, day trading, money managers, almost everything else performs worse. It's pretty simple. Don't pay for middlemen, diversify for yourself, and have it rock out with compound interest.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book is just a lot of repeating the same good idea, always pushing for the value of ETFs, and it highlights how the system OUGHT to work, without interference or bad actors. All good, as far as that goes. So, if we live in a perfect world, this is just about perfect. And maybe it'll work fine for most, even so, but the point is to get going EARLY so the compound works FOR you.

Honestly, the book could have been even shorter but what is here is still good. I've seen most of these ideas many times before, even so.


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