Earn More (Sleep Better): The Index Fund Solution

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This step-by-step, jargon-free guide to investing with index mutual funds is coauthored by the bestselling author of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street". Charts. Index.
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Overview

This step-by-step, jargon-free guide to investing with index mutual funds is coauthored by the bestselling author of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street". Charts. Index.
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Editorial Reviews

From The Critics
The book lays out a persuasive, clearly articulated argument in favor of index mutual funds, those that don't try to beat the market but merely match the performance of a market benchmark.

Evans and Malkiel do a superior job of tying everything together in a logical, straightforward, easy- to- understand and even entertaining narrative. Better yet, they show investors how to use the information by suggesting divesified portfolios of index funds.
Dallas Morning News
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780684852508
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Publication date: 2/16/1999
  • Pages: 272
  • Product dimensions: 6.43 (w) x 9.55 (h) x 1.09 (d)

First Chapter

Chapter 2

The Emperor Has No Clothes

On Water Street near the tip of lower Manhattan, a man sits at his desk on the thirty-second floor of a gleaming office tower. It's dark out. Looking north, a visitor sees a checkerboard of light revealing the financial center of the world.

The office is dimly lit, but the visitor can make out a free-form sculpture in one corner, offset in another by a covey of floor-to-ceiling plants. Abstract oils grace the walls. The chalky glow of a computer monitor lights the man's face as he talks on the phone and stares, frowning, at numbers on the screen. He's telling his wife in their $2 million Montclair, New Jersey, home that he'll be home late, as usual. His clothes display his status: A $2,500 Armani suit; a custom-made, $225 shirt (light blue, with a white collar) from his favorite shop in Hong Kong; paisley-patterned, $125 braces; and $500 shoes (black, of course) from Church of London.

He manages a mutual fund. A sales brochure says his fund has grown by an average of 21 percent a year for the last five years. A stylish graph suggests this was good enough to beat Standard & Poor's Composite Index of 500 Stocks (S&P 500) by a wide margin. He is quoted in Barron's and The Wall Street Journal and mentioned in Money. He has appeared twice on Rukeyser's Wall Street Week. For his astute advice, his firm charges investors 1.5 percent of assets per year. Last year he earned $545,000.

What's wrong with this picture?

Strange question. The manager's investors have done well, and he has beaten a universally accepted measure of the stock markets. The fund shareholders are delighted when they see him quoted in business publications. they pride themselves on having entrusted their money to a brilliant, hard-working manqager. As for his high income, who could deny he has earned it?

I think you will. objective evidence will show you why this manager's performance is not what it seems. in fact, you'll learn why he has not earned a nickel's worth of his fee. The same can be said for most of the thousands of alleged wizards who manage $5 trillion in more than 7,000 seperate stock or bond mutual funds. The numbers are new; the point is not.

The $5 Trillion Question

Way back in 1975, in the summer issue of The Financial Analysts journal, Charles Ellis, founder of Greenwhich Research Associates, stated:

The investment management business is built upon a simple and basic premise: professional managers can beat the market. that premise appears to be false. The ultimate outcome (of the game) is determined by who can lose the fewest points, not who can win the most. Money management has been transformed from a Winner's Game to a lLoser's Game.

Mr. Ellis was referring to the fact that the average manager trails his or her relevant index by a significant margin. And there's no reliable way to pick out,
in advance, which managers will rise above the average. Yet all managers charge substantial fees. Given these facts, index funds are the logical way to invest.

Why pay a premium for inferior performance? that's the $5 trillion question.<>br>
A look at the record shows why it's a good question. For the fifteen-year period ending June 30, 1998, a Standard & Poor's (S&P) index fund beat 84 percent of diversified stock funds. And this is not a one-time event. The Vanguard Index 500 Portfolio, the largest stock index fund, has outpaced the pack over a wide rangfe of time periods:

Vanguard Percent of Non-index
Index 500 Fund Funds Outperformed
1 year...................................................81
3 years.................................................94
5 years.................................................94
10 years...............................................87
15 years...............................................84
20 years...............................................72
Results as of June 30, 1998.
Source: The Vanguard Group

Good as it is, this record actually understates the power of indexing. The superior performance stated here is based on using gross returns -- the figures you see published in magazines and sales brochures. I call these figures "gross" because they don't reflect sales charges and other factors that reduce the apparent return of conventional funds. As you'll see in chapter 5, indexing wins even on a gross basis in many different asset classes, from large capitalization stocks to short-term bonds. When net figures are used, indexing leaves conventional funds even farther behind. More on that to come.

BASIC IDEAS

As you go through this book, you'll notice certain terms and ideas come up again and again. Might as well learn what they mean right now.

Index

Roughly, a group of stocks or bonds representing a specified portion of the stock or bond markets. Instead of someone's selection, an index includes all the securities that meet certain objective criteria, such as market price, country of origin, and type of industry. The Dow Jones Industrial Average -- the one you see quoted all the time -- is an index that measures the average price of stocks representing thirty massive U.S. companies. The Standard and Poor's Index of 500 Stocks reflects the stock price of more than 500 mostly large companies. When measuring the performance of a conventional fund, you need to compare it with a "relevant" index -- one that's in the same asset class as the fund.

Index fund

A mutual fund containing either all or a statistically valid sa mple of the stocks or bonds in a specified index. The dollar value of each security in the fund is usually proportional to its market capitalization (price times number of securities outstanding). An index fund does not exactly match its index, because it has operating expenses that must be deducted from the total return. Also, there may be "tracking error," a slight difference between the fund and the index, caused by technical factors. You can invest in an index fund, but not in an index. In the Introduction, my coauthor Burton G. Malkiel explained what makes indexing such a powerful way to invest. In simple terms, it's as though you said to yourself:

Let's be realistic. There's no way I can pick out which handful of mutual funds may outperform their relevant index. And based on the record, I don't think anybody else can, either. So what I'll do is buy a fund with all the stocks or bonds in a given index. I'll sleep better, because I'll always come very close to matching the index, rain or shine. And I'll earn more, because index funds have proved they can outperform the average non-index fund in their asset class.

Asset class

A group of stocks, bonds, or other kinds of assets with similar characteristics, such as size, price range, growth rate, and industry. Important asset classes include large U.S. corporations (like those in the S&P 500) and large foreign companies in developed countries. In this book, asset classes are divided into "major" asset classes (stocks, bonds, cash) and "subasset" classes -- specific kinds of stocks and bonds. Asset classes can be represented by indexes, many of which have a corresponding index fund. L oosely, you can think of "asset class" and "index" as different ways of saying the same thing.

Index versus non-index

Many investment professionals call conventional funds "actively managed" and refer to index funds as "passively managed." I'm not going to do that. "Passive" implies something negative -- people sitting on their hands. On the contrary, index funds require expert management to minimize costs and make sure they stay close to the indexes they represent. Since both types of funds require active management, I call the conventional funds "non-index" funds.

ONWARD AND UPWARD

Index funds held by individual investors have been growing at a remarkable clip. There are now more than 150 publicly available index funds. Rex Sinequefield, Chairman of Dimensional Fund Advisors, summed up the situation as follows:

Indexing has grown...from essentially nothing in 1973 to well over $1 trillion now, and indexing has invaded nearly every asset class....[Pensions & Investments, 9/30/96]

Some of these gains can be attributed to publicity in financial and business publications, even though the coverage is often less than it should be. These publications depend on advertisers advertising non-index funds and brokerage operations. You can't expect them to go to the wall for index funds. But there are exceptions. One was the August 1995 issue of Money. The Executive Editor's page proclaims:

Bogle wins: Index funds should be the core of most portfolios today.

("Bogle" refers to John Bogle, chairman of The Vanguard Group.) The headline for the cover story states: "The New Way to Make More Money in Funds." This article wa s an act of courage and integrity. Money, take a bow.

A LETTER THAT WAS NEVER SENT

There are no guarantees in the stock and corporate bond markets; almost anything can happen. But the inherent advantages of index funds put the wind at your back. We're going to spend the rest of part one of this book establishing the truth of that statement. In the meantime, here's a way to think about the difference between index funds and non-index funds:

Dear Investor:

We are pleased to inform you that the Ajax Fund grew by 20 percent over the past twelve months. We are proud of this achievement.

However, the fund did not outperform its relevant index, the S&P 500. Funds based on this index grew by 23 percent during the same time period. This means, of course, that you would have earned higher gains in one of the S&P 500 index funds. (Fortunately, Ajax is a no-load fund, or you would have fared even worse.)

Since the only purpose of an actively managed fund is to outperform a relevant index fund, we enclose our check for $11,372 to compensate you for the following items:

* $1,400 to cover our higher administrative, management, and transaction costs. (Index funds commonly operate at one-seventh to one-tenth of the cost of actively managed funds.)

* $8,432 to cover the difference between what you earned in our fund and what you would have earned in an S&P 500 index fund.

* $1,540 to cover the extra taxes you will have to pay because the Ajax fund made hundreds of transactions last year, thus generating capital gains distributions, which, in an index fund, would have been deferred.

We sincerely hope that you choose to leave your money in the Ajax Fund, in the hope of bett er relative performance during the next twelve months. At the same time, we are obliged to report that the Ajax Fund -- along with thousands of other large company growth funds -- has failed to outperform an S&P 500 index fund over the most recent ten-year period.

We are most grateful for your confidence in the Ajax Fund and wish you the best of luck in the years ahead.

Sincerely,
J. Winthrop Ajax
President

THE RIGHT PROMISE

This bit of fantasy makes a valid point. You give a fund family a good part of your life savings, and they charge you an average of 1.5 percent (plus .5 percent for transaction fees) to invest your money -- assuming there's no sales charge. What you get in return is a service. The fund managers, using their vast resources and legendary skills, promise to try to make your money grow as much as possible, consistent with the fund's rules and objectives.

Now here's the problem: That's the wrong promise. What the fund managers should promise is that they will try to beat a specified, relevant index fund. As stated in the letter:

The only purpose of non-index funds is to outperform relevant index funds.

Because if they don't, who needs them? Who needs to go through all the work (and anxiety) of trying to select a non-index fund that will do well in the future? Why pay operating expenses that are seven to ten times those of an index fund? Why pay extra capital gains taxes because your fund made so many buy/sell transactions? The existence of a broad variety of index funds changes the investor's basic perspective. Now, when you're choosing a mutual fund, you shouldn't ask, "Will this fund make money for me?" You shouldn 't even ask, "Will it do better than similar funds?" The right question is, "Will this fund outperform a relevant index fund?"

There's another basic change wrought by index funds (as opposed to indexes). They provide an objective benchmark that is also a practical investment vehicle. It's like the idea of par in golf. It provides an exact, numerical goal representing what a good player should achieve. Not everybody agrees with using indexes -- or index funds -- as a benchmark. Michael Lipper, president of Lipper Analytical Services, the New York City fund research company, was quoted in Money as saying, "It makes much more sense to compare funds to other funds that have a similar investment style and offer the same services."

I do not lightly disagree with a person of his stature, but I do disagree. The two methods of comparing are not mutually exclusive. You can do both, which is exactly the way golf scores are counted -- the number of strokes a player has taken, and the number of strokes above or below par for the course. Golfers adopted this approach to deal with the possibility that all the players turn in a lousy score. In that case, comparing one with another would give you an incomplete picture, which a comparison with par would correct. It's the same with mutual funds -- all well and good to compare a fund with its peers, but unless you also compare it with a relevant index fund, you're missing a vital fact.

SLEEP BETTER

Anything can happen to an individual company. You could not only lose, but lose big. If you decide that's not for you, and turn to non-index mutual funds, you've still got problems. There are more than 7,000 separate m utual funds out there. How do you know which ones will suit your needs and beat the average? The quick answer is, "You don't." You'll see why as we move along.

Contrast that with index funds, where you deal with a relatively small number of important asset classes (such as big-company stocks, real estate stocks, long-term bonds). Yes, they fluctuate in market value. But here's the point:

With index funds, you know your money will always equal its relevant index (minus low operating expenses and a small tracking error) -- guaranteed.

This is inherently more comforting than having to worry about your non-index funds underperforming their relevant index. Also, index funds relieve you of the burden of trying to time the market. By their nature, index funds are long-term investments, not appropriate for trading in and out. Index funds give you less to think about, less to worry about, less to do. Which brings up a useful idea.

DEMOCRACY COMES TO INVESTING

Index funds simplify investing. You don't have to confront the forbidding task of choosing from thousands of stocks and bonds or thousands of mutual funds. You don't have to belong to that elite club known as "active investors," trying to find needles in a haystack. Equally important, you don't have to hire somebody else to do it for you. That's good, because the average professional has rarely matched the long-term performance of a relevant index fund, yet charges a significant fee. The wall of mystique that Wall Street has erected in front of you is no longer an obstacle. You just walk around it. Index funds have brought democracy to investing.

A NEW WAY OF THINKING

Wall Street has been afraid to recognize the obvious: Index funds have ushered in a new approach to investing, a new paradigm. To make that clear, let's look at a quick sketch of the history of investing. I've divided it into five basic approaches:

1. Buy individual stocks and bonds from brokerage firms (from the 1890s)

Stock brokerage firms peddled securities directly to individual investors, many of whom hoped to make a killing in the market. The panic of 1929-1930 showed that the killing could cut both ways. In the fifties and sixties, brokerage firms hired security analysts to bring professional discipline to the analysis of stocks and bonds. Paradoxically, this did not necessarily make the firms' recommendations more useful. Competing security analysts made the markets more sensitive and competitive, which tended to offset the potential benefits of improved analysis.

2. Supplement stocks and bonds with mutual funds offered by salespeople (from the 1950s)

Mutual funds were a great leap forward. They enabled individual investors of modest means to diversify their investments and get professional management. That was important, because diversification lowers risk. Mutual funds also brought a useful simplicity to the process of investing. It became easy to invest every month, and monthly statements recorded your progress.

3. Buy no-load mutual funds directly from a mutual fund company (from the 1970s)

Gradually, some mutual fund companies began offering to invest people's money directly, dispensing with the need for a salesperson -- and a sales commission. Some people argued that load funds must be better because they charge more. But they weren't (and aren't). Nearly all the s ales commission goes to the salesperson or into advertising the funds. The "load" contributes little or nothing to hiring better managers, building better software, or doing better research.

4. Buy mutual funds where you work through a tax-deferred savings plan (from the late 1970s)

In 1978 Congress passed a law allowing individuals to accumulate savings and investments on a tax-deferred basis, provided they were enrolled in a "defined contribution plan." For employees of profit-making companies, the plan is called a 401(k) (referring to a section of the law). For nonprofit employees, it's a 403(b). And for government workers, it's a 457. In some organizations, employers add to the employee's contribution to enhance loyalty. Defined contribution plans have become a major form of individual investing. ("Defined contribution" means the amount you contribute is specified; what you take out is not.) You may not think of yourself as an investor, but if you're in a defined contribution plan, you may have many thousands of dollars invested in the stock and bond markets.

5. Buy no-load index mutual funds instead of individual securities or non-index funds (mainly from the early 1990s)

This is the new paradigm for investing by individuals. Index funds have been around since the early 1970s, when professional investors started using them for pension programs. One of the first champions of indexing was my co-author, Burton G. Malkiel. In his best-selling book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, he states:

What we need is a no-load, minimum-management-fee mutual fund that simply buys the hundreds of stocks making up the broad stock market averages and does no tradi ng from security to security in an attempt to catch the winners. Whenever below-average performance on the part of any mutual fund is noticed, fund spokesmen are quick to point out, "You can't buy the averages." It's time the public could.

Quite independently, John Bogle, Chairman of The Vanguard Group, came to the same conclusion. He started an S&P 500 index fund for individual investors in 1976. It often beat the average performance of diversified stock funds, but not many people took notice until the mid-nineties, when the fund doubled in market value. Critics like to say that indexing is "settling for mediocrity." "Go for a home run," they urge. So much for that argument.

The recent success of this and other index funds has led the business press to give index funds more attention. Today you can use index funds to invest in a wide range of stock and bond asset classes -- from the huge stocks in the Dow all the way down to funds that mirror the Russell 2,000 index of small capitalization stocks.

Another important development in the nineties was the birth of the mutual fund supermarket, a central source from which you can buy any of thousands of mutual funds and be treated like a single customer. Charles Schwab & Co. launched the first one in 1992. They soon had major competition from Fidelity, Jack White, and others.

WHAT ABOUT INDIVIDUAL STOCKS AND BONDS?

You don't need them. For the average person, mutual funds are a better alternative -- especially index mutual funds. Think of the problems with individual stocks and bonds:

* Most people can't afford to buy cost-efficient amounts of enough different stocks for adequate diversification. If you try to get ar ound this problem by buying a little of this and a little of that, the commissions can kill you.

* You have to make at least four hard decisions: Which securities to buy, which to sell, when to buy, and when to sell. It would be a mistake to minimize the difficulty of any of these decisions. There is a common notion that you're home free when you buy a stock that goes up. Not so. You don't pocket a gain until you sell the security. Knowing the best time to do that is something most people are not equipped to determine. Keep in mind, also, that you have to make all those decisions for every stock or bond you own. With index funds, you don't have to choose securities, and you don't have to time the markets.

* In making those four decisions, you compete with highly informed professionals who have access to data and software that mere mortals like you and I can't even imagine. In the vast majority of cases, by the time you and I actually buy or sell a security, the news we acted on is already reflected in the price.

* You pay high commissions to buy and sell individual stocks and bonds. At a big discount broker, the cost of buying or selling $10,000 worth of stock is $110. That's 1.1 percent when you buy, and 1.1 percent when you sell. A total of 2.2 percent. (The commission rate on small amounts may be even higher.) Compare that with investing in a no-load S&P 500 index fund, where the cost can be less than one-fifth of one percent a year, 25 percent of which is deducted from dividend income every quarter. In the fund, you start out with the entire $10,000 working for you. At the broker, you start out with $9,890.

* It's hard to manage individual stocks and bonds. It takes a lot of time, effort, and knowledge to stay on top of a portfolio, and at tax time, it can be a horror. Fund families, on the other hand, give you a single statement that reflects your total situation, including the percent of your money in stocks, bonds, and cash, plus the amount of your total return that is currently taxable.

* We live in a period of accelerating change. More and more, as time goes on, if you're going to buy or sell a stock, you have to do it fast. The average person -- even the average active investor -- is simply not equipped to respond to kaleidoscopic markets.

* Brokerage firms are glad to offer recommendations about which stocks and bonds to buy. In effect, you pay commissions to trade, but get the advice free. This is less wonderful than it may seem. Every recommendation is essentially a prediction of future events. The last time I checked, human beings were somewhat deficient in that area. Think about it. If broker recommendations were the road to riches, a lot more people would be rich. The same applies to the predictions by people who write for publications and newsletters.

* Studies have shown that up to 92 percent of the return on a diversified portfolio can come not from picking hot stocks, but from "asset allocation." This is a major concept we'll discuss later. For now, know that asset allocation refers primarily to the percentage of stocks, bonds, and cash in your portfolio. The term also refers to the types of securities you hold within the broad categories of stocks, bonds, and cash.

A FEW SAMPLES OF WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

As mentioned, this book is divided into two parts. The first part documents the fact that index funds are almost always a better w ay to invest than conventional mutual funds, especially on an after-tax basis. The second part, "The Five Giant Steps to Wealth," explains how you can use what you've learned to make more money. Here are some of the subjects we'll cover:

* Why index funds are likely to continue outperforming the average non-index fund

* How index funds simplify investing

* Why index funds provide more reliable investment results

* Why up to 92 percent of your investment return may come from a single investment decision

* The crucial importance of financial and investment planning

* How to combine different kinds of index funds to maximize return and minimize risk

* How to choose which funds to put in your portfolio

BEGINNERS OR EXPERTS

You can profit from this book even if you don't know much about investing and don't think of yourself as an investor. I will show you how index funds can give you higher returns than the average non-index fund, along with more peace of mind. On the other hand, if you're an active, informed investor, you'll learn how you could become more successful than ever before. In fact:

If you think of all the professional money managers as "Wall Street," the odds are that index funds will enable you to "beat the Street," which means you're likely to get better returns than most fund managers, even before adjusting for sales charges, risk, and taxes.

But what about the hypothetical Great Predictor we met at the start of this chapter? Surely you couldn't have done better than his scorching, five-year gain of 21 percent a year? Yes, you could. He runs what's called a "Small Cap Value Fund." His relevant index is the "Value" portion of the Russell 2,000 index, which grew by 23 percent during the same time period. If you were in a Russell 2,000 Value index fund, you would have beaten him. No problem.

WHY INDEX FUNDS ARE JUST CATCHING ON

Despite recent fast growth and good press, the money invested in index funds is still just a splash compared with the ocean of money in non-index funds. How can that be? If index funds are all that good, why aren't they a bigger part of the investment picture? Four answers come to mind:

1. Human nature

People want to believe in Santa Claus -- even smart, sophisticated people. They want to believe there are gifted gurus who can reliably outperform the markets.

2. Publicity about non-index fund performance

You can't help reading and hearing about funds that have beaten the markets by a wide margin. The noise level is deafening. You see headlines like, "SuperTech Fund gains a sizzling 43 percent in first half." You'd have to be less than human not to be affected by all the trumpets and drum beats.

3. Greed and fear

For mutual fund companies and brokerage firms, no-load index funds are a lot less profitable than non-index funds. Investors typically pay five to seven times more for a so-called actively managed fund than for an index fund. The sobering truth is, there's a big, powerful industry out there that depends on investors not fully appreciating the advantages of indexing. Indexing threatens a lot of mortgage payments in places like Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Orange County, California. The people who pay those mortgages are not likely to run around promoting investments that could drive them out of their castles.

4. Just plain ignorance

Mo st people don't know much about index funds. A common response when I tell people about this book is, "What's an index fund?" They've heard about them, but they're not familiar with them. They don't know the record of index funds versus conventional funds. They don't know you can buy index funds in a wide range of asset classes.

WHY BOTHER?

Skim through this book, and you'll see that it covers a lot of ground. Your response could be one or both of the following:

Look. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I just don't have the time. I'm putting in sixty hours a week on the job, and when I get home, investing is not exactly on the top of my list.

I know I should read this book, but I'm just not that interested in investing. To tell you the truth, it bores me. I know that's not smart, but that's how I feel.

Fair enough. But give me a minute, if you would. Acting on those sentiments, you're likely to do whatever's easiest. Maybe you just delegate the whole thing to a friend or relative who's in the business and forget about it. Why not do that? For a couple of reasons:

One is that we're talking about your life savings, whether they're currently thousands or millions. And it's not just the money. It's what kind of college your kids will go to. It's what kind of home you'll live in. It's how well you can retire.

Another reason is the issue of what your friend or relative will actually do. He or she will probably handle your money according to generally accepted practices, such as:

* Investing all your money in stocks and bonds or in non-index funds

* Selecting funds largely on the basis of their published track records

* Trying to time the markets by trading (buying and selling) the different funds you own

* Earning his or her income by charging a commission on the trades

* Trying to diversify by buying different funds or stocks and bonds in the same asset class

All these generally accepted practices have one thing in common: They are all wrong. They are against your best interests. Your Uncle Charley may do well by following these practices, especially during roaring bull markets. But however well he does, the odds are that you will do even better by using the approach this book recommends.

SUMMARY

* Stock index funds in a variety of asset classes have outperformed the average, diversified non-index fund over many different time periods. Bond index funds have a similar record.

* The only purpose of non-index funds is to beat a relevant index fund. Managers who fail to do that don't earn their compensation.

* Non-index fund performance may not be as good as it seems. For one thing, it has to be measured against a relevant index. In addition, you need to consider the effect of taxes, sales charges, expenses, and the amount of risk taken to achieve the return.

* Index funds are the new paradigm for individual and institutional investors.

* Index funds simplify investing. Instead of having to choose from among thousands of securities or thousands of mutual funds, you can choose from a small number of important asset classes.

* People don't need individual stocks or bonds, which generate avoidable costs and other problems. For the vast majority of people, index funds are a better alternative.

* When judging a non-index fund, it's vital to compare its record not only with similar funds, but also with a relevant index.

Welcome to the new world of investing. Things will never be the same.

Copyright © 1999 by Richard E. Evans and Burton G. Malkiel

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 15, 2001

    A must read for longterm investors

    After having maxed my annual investment limits through our tax deferred 401k and IRA's, I was motivated to seek other investment options for my family's savings. 'Earn More (Sleep Better) The Index Fund Solution' was truly eye opening. Many of the questions that I have asked for years were answered with facts that I found very alarming. For mutual fund investors, this book is a must. This book has prepared me to ask questions that have proven successful with five leading investment companies. I am yet to have a conversation with an investment broker without being asked the name of this book. This book is understandable, relatable to all investing, and filled with tips, questions to ask, and specific guidelines to follow to set up a personalized diversified portfolio according to your age, your tax backet,and your risk tolerance.

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