Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment

Additional Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment Information

In Unconventional Success, investment legend David F. Swensen offers incontrovertible evidence that the for-profit mutual-fund industry consistently fails the average investor. From excessive management fees to the frequent "churning" of portfolios, the relentless pursuit of profits by mutual-fund management companies harms individual clients. Perhaps most destructive of all are the hidden schemes that limit investor choice and reduce returns, including "pay-to-play" product-placement fees, stale-price trading scams, soft-dollar kickbacks, and 12b-1 distribution charges.

Even if investors manage to emerge unscathed from an encounter with the profit-seeking mutual-fund industry, individuals face the likelihood of self-inflicted pain. The common practice of selling losers and buying winners (and doing both too often) damages portfolio returns and increases tax liabilities, delivering a one-two punch to investor aspirations.

In short: Nearly insurmountable hurdles confront ordinary investors.

Swensen's solution? A contrarian investment alternative that promotes well-diversified, equity-oriented, "market-mimicking" portfolios that reward investors who exhibit the courage to stay the course. Swensen suggests implementing his nonconformist proposal with investor-friendly, not-for-profit investment companies such as Vanguard and TIAA-CREF. By avoiding actively managed funds and employing client-oriented mutual-fund managers, investors create the preconditions for investment success.

Bottom line? Unconventional Success provides the guidance and financial know-how for improving the personal investor's financial future.

What Customers Say About Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment:

etc. Provides guidance as to how to avoid high fees of mutual funds, financial advisors (). Good grounding in the fundamentals of the stock market, pitfalls, and a safer, less expensive way to invest. Well worth the effort to read thoroughly.

He has proved his mettle in a superlative way, and has capsulized his advice in a way that can work, but you must do your part, this is not magic or alleged to be.Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment However, the author is well worth listening to. This book is a real contribution to the problem of individual investing. Itrequires discipline and patience-- both of which will turn off manypotential users.

The remaining investment vehicles, US Government Securities, foreign and domestic index funds form the basis of his portfolio. What is missing is a concluding chapter that summarizes his approach and provides an overview of a plan for action. The author makes a compelling case for an alternative investment strategy that really does, as the title suggests,fly in the face of conventional investment wisdom. He also advocates for a nerves of steel ridged adherence to an asset allocation model where you sell winners on the way up and buy losers on the way down to maintain allocation targets. I was left with a feeling of "Where do I go from here." He does so by methodically working through the range of alternatives available to the personal investor, looking at risk, performance, fees and potential conflicts of interest that work to the detriment of the investor. Conventional wisdom mainstays like mutual funds, corporate bonds, REITS to name a few are tarred and feathered by the author.

And, if this is as indisputable as the author claims, it provides a recipe for investment that requires little effort and little cost overhead. However, it is hard to refute the logic and thinking behind the recommendations. This was a cookbook for investing in Exchange Traded Funds. The book is a bit repeatative but each chapter has a summery to spare you of some repeated details.

the book sheds a refreshing new look at all investment catagories.Should be required reading in all Business Schools. I spend 45 years in the Wall Street enviroment.