The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
John C. Bogle · 2007
Vanguard founder John Bogle makes the relentless arithmetic case that trying to beat the market is a loser's game, and that owning the entire market through a low-cost index fund is the only way to guarantee your fair share of its returns. It's the quiet, boring strategy that quietly beats almost everyone.
Index-fund founder's concise case for owning the whole market cheaply.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of The Little Book of Common Sense Investing pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- Own the whole haystack, not the needle: buy a single low-cost total stock market (or S&P 500) index fund and you instantly hold every public company, eliminating the risk of picking the wrong stock, the wrong manager, or the wrong style.
- Costs are the silent wealth-killer. Bogle's 'Cost Matters Hypothesis' shows that gross market return minus costs equals your return, period; a 2% yearly fee can quietly consume well over half your potential nest egg across a lifetime of compounding.
The other 5 — and the full 9-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 8 chapters
The whole summary runs about 9 minutes, read or listened to.
- The Gotrocks Parable: A Winner's Game Turned Loser's
- Where Returns Really Come From
- The Cost Matters Hypothesis
- The Grand Illusion: Why Active Funds Disappoint
- Reversion to the Mean: Yesterday's Stars Fade
- Taxes and Inflation: The Other Hidden Drags
- Know What You Own: Simplicity and Asset Allocation
- Bogle's Rules and the Grand Strategy of Common Sense
Finish The Little Book of Common Sense Investing tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 9 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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