Personal Finance reading

[cendrillon]

I thought Investing Demystified by Lars Krojer was well worth reading. He is a strong advocate of indexing and lays out the case that laymen have no edge in investing compared to professional traders so should keep things as simple as possible.

He also has a youtube channel and writes for monevator.

Lars Kroijer
Monevator — Make more money, invest profitably, retire early

This is exactly how I feel. The market may not be efficient from the perspective of an expert but it certainly is efficient from my layman perspective, so indexing is the best thing I can do.

That said 95% of 'experts' (active managers) fail to match index returns as well

[kittykaitak]

Indexing provides non-experts with an edge on returns by offering low fees.

[Morrison]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent...party_clearing

[shri]

Read an interesting short "book" by a guy called Meb Faber (no relation to Dr Doom).

Should be free if you have either Prime or Kindle Unlimited.

This snippet from one of the reviews sums it up.

The bulk of the book consists in studies of various asset-allocation strategies (including 60% stock/ 40% bond, various endowment portfolios, and the permanent portfolio). Each asset allocation is presented in a similar format and graphed against each other. The key point is that the difference in 30-year returns among all allocations with an emphasis on real assets (i.e. excluding the bond-heavy Permanent Portfolio) is less than the typical stock mutual fund expense ratio. The book concludes with some useful advice on how to choose low-cost investments to build a portfolio.

https://www.amazon.com/Global-Asset-.../dp/B00TYY3F3C

[kittykaitak]

This is a useful site for getting an idea of portfolio construction:

https://portfoliocharts.com/portfolios/

[Windmill65]

If you'd like to be slightly more active but automated there is Systematic Trading by Robert Carver: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014J5LNSY...ng=UTF8&btkr=1

I wasn't sure whether I should mention this book. It seems to me more appropriate for a trader than for an investor. Having said that, I did like that book a lot.

[kittykaitak]

Not reading but an interesting discussion with Investing Demystified author Lars Krojer regarding risk and investing edge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x3j3Pse_e8

[shri]

- thats a book all by itself.

Got lost in the first 2 or 3 paras...

[TheBrit]

There isn't much substance. Lots of innuendo and complaints about not enough disclosure and complicated holding structures. Doesn't really throw much light on the matter to be honest.

[shri]

@TheBrit - partly why I gave up (something about Jack's basement..). but he does have a point, no bank analyst will dare go after Alibaba's real books.