The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Books. Big Profits)

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The tenet of Index investing is that even if we cannot beat the market, we still do not lose our invested money (risk-free). Bogle shows you how to make index investing work for you and help you achieve your financial goals and finds support from some of the world's best financial minds: not only Warren Buffett but Benjamin Graham, Paul Samuelson, Burton Malkiel, Yale's David Swensen, Cliff Asness of AQR, and many others.

After hearing so many references to John Bogle and his followers, the Bogleheads, I decided I had to read this book. Trying to beat the market "is a loser's game," according to Bogle and "the more the managers and brokers take, the less investors make. I am going to pour through several other books but I suspect that there's going to be changes made in my investment philosophy. This would be a great book to start since this book was written for normal people, not financial specialists. It′s not very glamorous or exciting advice, but that′s also his point: Slow and steady wins the race.He is known for his 1999 book Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor, which became a bestseller and is considered a classic. I wish the book was a little longer, with some discussion of the disadvantages of these index funds and a clearer display of how level-headedness and the Dunning–Kruger effect contribute to people being so determined that they can beat the market. 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. Simple analysis showing why investing in low-cost index funds should be the main approach to follow as an investor. I would recommend the book for anyone who wants to start investing but doesn't want the headaches and the more technical stuff.

Over the course of his long career, Bogle—founder of the Vanguard Group and creator of the world's first index mutual fund—has relied primarily on index investing to help Vanguard's clients build substantial wealth. There does appear to be a certain element of this, as no mention is given of any potential disadvantages to index funds (other sources confirm that they do exist to some degree). The whole book can be summarized in one sentence: index ETFs are better than mutual funds because they track the whole (or a good chunk of the) market and have very low costs. This strategy is favored by Warren Buffett, who said this about Bogle: "For decades, Jack has urged investors to invest in ultra-low-cost index funds.

With the author John Bogle being one of the key players in the field of index funds (albeit now retired), one could easily anticipate a certain unfair bias in favour of these products.