Customer Reviews

The Great Mutual Fund Trap: An Investment Recovery Plan

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was really concerned about the huge losses I have seen in my kids' college funds and my retirement funds. I have everything in stock -- I figured I am young enough to wait things out. I also think I know a good stock when I see one. Boy, did I learn alot from this book, and I am SO glad I bought it. It is easy to read and understand, and is quite funny too. I knew I needed to spread my eggs into more baskets, but this book showed me where I should move my money, that picking individual stocks is very risky, and how to avoid huge investment fees. The examples (such as why fund managers are like bookies) really help you visualize how much money you are throwing away, and are quite amusing!

I am a single mother of three who is watching my children's college funds plummet.
I was in shock when I read this book and realized how much money I have lost because the fund manager has churned my stocks and cost me alot of money (especially in my situation) in taxes and fees. I am an artist who has little understanding of where to invest, but this book is written in a way that I understand. I realize one of my biggest mistakes was putting too much money into the stock market. With this book I think I can salvage what I have left and invest my money better for my kids' college educations.

Even if you disagree with the premise, there are three chapters that are worth the cost of the book:

2. Lead Us Not Into Temptation "The message of "trust the experts / trade frequently / beat the market" saturates the airwaves and fills the newsstands."

6. The Ankle Weights on Running an Actively Managed Fund "...all these costs stand between you and the market-beating performance you crave."

13. Why We Draw to Inside Straights and Invest Poorly. "Human psychology plays a big part in explaining why."

I not sure about ETFs. And the book is wordy in sections. But those three chapters are worth the book.

"Finance, n. The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager." -Ambrose Bierce

As an experienced investor and already a true believer in indexing and low cost investing, and having read books by Bernstein, Boogle, and others, I expected to learn little from this book. Wrong! This book by two of Rubin's boys (Clinton Treasury UnderSecretaries) is the best treatment I have ever seen about how the financal industry bleeds the average investor. Pithy and witty with lots of new insights and information, this is an excellent book.
The book is worth buying just for the chapter on the huge costs that would be incurred by a privatized Social Security.

The Great Mutual Fund Trap explains how you avoid wasting remarkable amounts of time and money in a futile search for the mutual fund or money manger that is going to beat the market. It does the job in clear English but without oversimplifying. The chapters explaining efficient markets and capital asset pricing models are especially good at showing the relevance of these arcane theories to the average investor.

This book should also be recommended reading for anyone who serves on the board of a non-profit institution with an endowment.

Even the Managing Director of Morningstar thinks this is a must read book. The "Trap" illuminated how much of my returns have been lost in fees and taxes AND how this really adds up over time. It also explains why it is pointless to try to beat the market through churning a portfolio. Further it shows that the lists of the best performing mutual funds are grossly distorted and a poor way to go about picking the best funds. I learned a great deal about investing from this book and highly recommend it!

I was getting [robbed] and didn't know it. The book exposes all of the traps laid out by investment companies. It completely changed my view of investing and how I invest. No longer am I letting brokers [talk] me out of my hard-earned cash. As I read this book, I was amazed at how much I didn't know. BUT, what I didn't know wasn't complicated, its just that NOBODY TELLS YOU THIS STUFF. I agree with the above reviewer that the social security chapter is heavy-handed, but the rest is awesome. I can't wait to tell my Edward Jones broker to eat a fat one.

The first two-thirds of the book is an extended, strident, rant on all the vile evils of all forms of investment other than index funds. While the information on the drawbacks and imperfections is mostly accurate (and mostly well known), the authors are unwilling to just present it clearly - they insist on beating you over the head with it.

The authors are pure deciples of the strongest version of Modern Portfolio Theory. Untroubled by the reality of frequent, serious mispricings in the market, they insist that is is impossible to make money buying individual stocks.

They also ignore what I feel is the major drawback of index investing: it effectively forces you to take large positions in very large cap companies in whose future you may have serious doubts. Think about what's happened to the prices of GE, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and the money-center banks.

There are many better, far less strident books that provide the same information.

I read the articles on investing in the major news and business magazines. I watched the financial shows on TV. I read the past performance of stocks and mutual funds before I invested. I read the prospectuses before I bought. I believed in my inteligent ability to follow advice and make money.

I failed to even retain the value of my initial investments.

All the TV and magazine blabbermouths are back at it. 'Buy this, buy that, buy the other.' But until I read this book, I didn't know what to do. Baer and Gensler explain what happened to my money. They use studies and statistics to back their advice on passive investing. They explain why mutual funds won't make me more money than the index funds. They even explain how to move my funds into passive investments while being careful of tax losses.

I recommend reading this book and following it's advice.

This book is truly required reading for anyone who owns or is considering owning mutual funds. Baer & Gensler show the reader why investing in traditional mutual funds is a losing proposition. The professional money managers who run these funds are NOT able to beat the returns available from index funds. Not only that, but they charge management fees for their inability to perform better than index funds. Couple that with the huge amount of trading fees generated by the fund managers, and one wonders how they can stay in business. The obvious answer is that too few pay attention to these details.

This book warns you about wasting your money by investing in these funds. The recommended alternative is not to attempt to beat the market. Instead, save money, reduce your expenses, and manage your money yourself. Buy index funds - or even better yet, buy broad based exchange traded funds (ETFs). Doing so achieves an investment return very close to that of the overall market - and you are much better off by the amount of those exorbitant fees you save.

I would go these authors one better by suggsting that buying ETFs can be combined with a covered call writing strategy that provides protection against loss and an increased opportunity for profit. (See: THE SHORT BOOK ON OPTIONS)