The message is clear and remains valid today.

Bear in mind that this was written early in the 2000's so discussions on market trends etc do not take into account the 2008 crash and the market volatility of the late 2010's, the rock bottom + negative interest rates and the Covid crash.
Thus the discussions over economic indicators are now substantially out of date. This is particularly important in the Bond & Fixed income chapters. The reader needs to update the views on Bonds. They are still important in diversification and in Mean-Variace portfolio allocation for risk smoothing but not to the same degree as back in 2005.
As regards Income, Bonds are no longer a steady income generating asset. Allocation strategy now needs to look at alternatives to bonds if the investor requires an income generating portfolio. The bottom line is that passive investors now need to accept an increase in risk or lower income expectations.
The reader needs to make suitable adjustments therefore in asset allocation. The blended funds and Retirement funds therefore represent an edge over single bond index fund matching for Fixed income allocation. Without a sturdy knowledge of the bond markets, economic trends, interest yield curves and the impact of inflation, trying to guess the right mix and allocation of bond index funds in your portfolio can lead to expensive mistakes. The blended funds leaves that to the provider's sophisticated quantitative algorithms at a lower fee than active Bond funds.

Nevertheless, the overall message remains valid.
Passive investing in low cost index funds or Blended diversified funds of index funds including Equity & Bonds remains the best long term investment strategy for the average retail investor.
Active funds which had a good performance run in the past still represent expensive speculation. Some will make gains in excess of the index funds (the market) but more will lose by a greater drawdown than the market. Therefore basic statistics shows that the odds are always against the investor trying to beat the market.
Long term consistent sucess in individual equity investments can only come from a thorough a detailed Value investment strategy. This requires a constant amount of detailed analysis of stocks and the market. An approach that requires a basic understanding of security analysis & valuations and risk assessment. The average retail investor has neither the time, expertise or appetite for such analysis and therefore their activity becomes nothing more than a speculative gamble.
The house always wins.

Sage advise therefore is to just invest in the market.
This still requires every investor to have long term confidence in the stock market and to accept some degree of volatility on the journey but historical evidence since the inception of stocks and financial Securties & sophisticated exchange markets back in the late 18thCentuary displays a continuous growth in the market in parallel with global economic growth.
For this trend to fail in the future one would have to assume that either capitalism is dead or the world is coming to an abrupt end.

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3 people found this helpful

Review

Very nice audiobook with great advices for all the investors.
Though some topics are only US focused

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Amazing read!!!! Knowledge is power✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿🎉✊

I'd soooooooooo much haha from this one single but powerful book. Its definitely a must read and have.📚

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Fundamentals

This was a good book for the fundamentals of index fund investing but there was quite a bit of padding in it. British listeners will not get value from the large sections devoted to tax efficiency in the US.

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