Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read

In  (sub-titled: The Simple, Stress-Free Way to Reach Your Investment Goals) Daniel Solin presents a quick and easy introduction to Boglehead investing fundamentals. The book sticks to basics and simplicity and makes a strong case that new readers can easily understand. Recommended for that certain someone you are trying to introduce to smart investing ideas.

About the author
Daniel Solin is a leading arbitration lawyer and principal in Academic Wealth Management, LLP, a Registered Investment Advisor. He is author of two other books; Does Your Broker Owe You Money, and The Smartest 401(k) Book You’ll Ever Read.

Summary
The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read is an excellent first book for those who want the simple facts without the intrusion of lots of charts and analytical data. The little book, with 5-1/2X8 page formatting, contains 138 pages of text subdivided into four parts and 43 very short chapters. There is an additional chapter which contains all the reference sources, but you don’t know it’s there until you finish the book. There is also an asset allocation questionnaire included, which can also be found online at link.

The lack of reference notation is at first disconcerting, but for those who are brand new to investing and tend to get bogged down by a technical layout, this approach is probably a good idea.

The first third of the book seemed pretty repetitive as Solin banged away at what he calls hyper-active investing from every angle. First time readers may benefit more from this as the realities of hyper-active investing sink in. The book moves on to the other mainstays of smart investing including risk, volatility, diversification, market noise and the media, support for indexing, and finally the four step process:


 * 1) Decide on an Asset Allocation—questionnaire included.
 * 2) Open an account with one of the suggested fund families: Vanguard, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price.
 * 3) Invest in a simple portfolio, which is basically Taylor Larimore’s thrifty three: Total stock market, total international, and total bond.
 * 4) Rebalance.

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I'm less impressed by this book. Basically another person "discovered" indexing. There's very little fresh content. It feels to me just repackaging of what others have said all along. It has a different presentation style. This small book (177 pages) is divided into 44 chapters and two appendices. The longest "chapter" is 4 pages. The shortest "chapter" is just half of a page. Good for readers with short attention spans.