Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal InvestmentThe bestselling author of Pioneering Portfolio Management, the definitive template for institutional fund management, returns with a book that shows individual investors how to manage their financial assets. 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. |
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Great content, writing style not so much. Still believe worth the effort to look past academic prose.
Though Swensen is a big proponent of index investing, he does outline situations where he thinks active management is a good alternative. Particularly where the managers are 1) Eating their own cooking 2) not restrained from buying any business they like 3) charge low fees 4) concentrate on their best ideas and don't track an index 5) Don't trade too much
We hear you! This is a blueprint for the setup of www.steadyhand.com.
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Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment David F. Swensen No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
500 Index Fund active management after-tax asset allocation asset-backed securities average benefit billion bondholders brokerage brokers bull market buyout cash company’s core asset classes corporate costs debt December 31 diversification emerging markets equity market expense fail fair value firm firm’s fixed-income foreign fund investors fund managers fund’s hedge fund holders holdings income increase individual investors inflation Investment Company Institute investment management investor interests investors face junk-bond levels load funds long-term Longleaf Partners Fund Magellan Fund management fees ment Merrill Lynch Morgan Stanley mutual mutual-fund assets mutual-fund companies mutual-fund industry mutual-fund investors mutual-fund managers passively managed percent of assets percent per annum performance portfolio managers produce profits prospectus rates real estate rebalancing REIT relative represents returns risk Russell sales charges shareholders shares soft dollars stock market stock prices strategies survivorship bias tax-exempt taxable TIAA-CREF tion trading turnover U.S. Treasury vestors Wall Street Journal
Popular passages
Page 1 - Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
Page 17 - From a strictly financial perspective, diversification improves portfolio characteristics by allowing investors to achieve higher returns for a given level of risk (or lower risk for a given level of returns). Generations of economics students who learned that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch...
Page 17 - Generations of economics students who learned that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" may be surprised to discover that Nobel laureate Harry Markowitz called diversification one of the economic world's rare "free lunches.
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment |
| Author | David F. Swensen |
| Publisher | Simon and Schuster, 2005 |
| ISBN | 074327461X, 9780743274616 |
| Length | 416 pages |
| Subjects | › › Business & Economics / General Business & Economics / Personal Finance / Investing Business & Economics / Personal Finance / Retirement Planning Business & Economics / Personal Finance / Taxation |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |