The Only Proven Road to Investment Success: Everyone's Simple Guide to a Safe Trip [Kindle Edition]

Chandan Sengupta (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This compact book really does provide The Only Proven Road to Investment Success. And `the road' is a wonderful metaphor: Don't drive a gas-guzzler (keep costs low). Avoid toll roads (reduce Uncle Sam's take). Beware of potholes (active management, market timing, acting on impulse, joining the herd). It drives home the central message that will make you a long-term winner: the secret of investing is simplicity." - John C. Bogle, Founder, The Vanguard Group

"Personal investment has become both an opportunity and a hazard for all but experts. As stocks have soared and the collapsed in recent years, there is a crying need for first-rate, disinterested advice on how to invest. Sengupta's book gives us precisely that. Written with authority and accessibility, it is a marvelous guide that no investor can do without. Read, implement, and prosper." - Jagdish Bhagwati, University Professor, Columbia University, External Advisor to the Director General, WTO

Product Description

The frightening fact about saving and investing for the future is that most of us receive no formal training in this area. We trust our financial future to fund managers and brokers who charge exorbitant fees for average and sometimes below-average returns. In The Only Proven Road to Investment Success, Chandan Sengupta reveals the truth about investing and shows you how to free yourself from the grasps of the professional investment community to become a successful, self-reliant investor-regardless of your age, income, or investment knowledge.

Designed for investors at any level, this complete guide-which includes a companion CD-ROM investment program known as Guru-lays out a powerful, yet simple investment plan that will allow you to achieve long-terminvestment success by maintaining theright asset mix for your portfolio. As you follow the tested investment method found in The Only Proven Road to Investment Success, you will learn how to:

* Invest in stocks and safe assets such as inflation-protected bonds.
* Choose the right asset mix and invest for future needs with the help of the personal investment advisor found on the companion CD-ROM.
* Take the amount of risk that is right for you and earn the highest rate of return for that level of risk.
* Personally manage your investments with peace of mind.
* Reduce or defer your tax bill.
The Only Proven Road to Investment Success provides a simple approach to a tested investment method that is backed by over three decades of extensive scientific research. The eleven rules that make up this method cover both conceptual and practical aspects of investing. As you master each rule, you'll begin to invest with success and avoid the mistakes other investors commonly make. The book includes a summary chapter that is actually a comprehensive mini-investment book that allows you to review the basics quickly and serves as a concise reference source for the future.

Whether you're saving for a specific need, such as a child's college education, or looking for the right investment plan to guide you through life and into retirement, The Only Proven Road to Investment Success, along with Guru-the portfolio management program contained on the companion CD-ROM-is your one-stop reference for easy-to-use investment advice that will last a lifetime.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 5737 KB
• Print Length: 336 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Up to 4 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
• Publisher: Wiley (January 4, 2002)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000UG6I7S
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #690,833 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Investment Advice Book, March 25, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Only Proven Road to Investment Success: Everyone's Simple Guide to a Safe Trip (Hardcover)

Most investment advice books are not well written. They are often clumsily organized and filled cover to cover with clunky, pedestrian prose. Nevertheless, you can acquire useful information from some of them, provided that they are half-way intelligible. I know that I have. A tiny few are written in a style that is almost as good as such writing gets. Chandan Sengupta's new book is as good as such writing gets. If you took all the investment advice books aimed at the general investor that have been published during the last twenty-five years and piled them on top of one another, with the worthless,the worse than worthless, and the least distinguished of them at the bottom and the better ones towards the top, Sengupta's would occupy the pinnacle. As an advice book written for an intelligent layman, "The Only Proven Road to Investment Success" is a masterpiece.

Well before Sengupta wrote his book, the results were in from the debate between active management (relying on tips, stockbrokers' advice, mutual fund managers who buy and sell on hunches and buzz and try to time the market and who charge you excessive fees for their dubious efforts) and passive investing (buying and holding very low-cost index funds which insure that you will earn a return on your investments virtually equivalent to that of the overall market). In every credible study the indexers have clearly won the day.

While some of the books on indexing are quite good, none can hold a candle to "The Only Road...." It is carefully organized, comprehensive, lucid, and very, very well written. While no book can be the be-all and the end-all, Sengupta includes nearly everything of importance in his cogent and elegant presentation. The book is not overburdened with graphs and tables, and these tools, when he does employ them, are always illuminating. (In fact, if you are not acquainted with the insidious dangers of active management, a couple of his tables surely will startle you.) Sengupta gives you precise, unambiguous instructions on how to realign your portfolio, after you have achieved an understanding of the superiority of passive investing. He even recommends specific mutual funds, rather than leave anything to chance.

No one has ever made a more persuasive case for indexing and against active management. If you are a confused investor, as I was just a couple of years ago, and are floundering around the market buying and selling without rhyme or reason, lacking a systematic approach to what you are doing, and dissatisfied with your portfolio's performance, Sengupta can set you straight. If there were only one book you could read for financial guidance, it would be impossible to find one any better than his.

Although I was already an indexer before I read Sengupta, I have never encountered a more accessible introduction to the only correct method of investing. What Sengupta has to say about retirement planning, however, is what especially impressed me . In Chapter 7, which could almost be considered a book within a book, he offers a stunningly original approach to dealing with retirement. This is exactly the type of analysis that I'd been seeking for a long time. All of the issues concerning retirement planning that I've been grappling with for so long find their resolution right here. He provides a framework within which you can rationally plan for a secure retirement. There is nothing remotely like this in any of the literature I've read. He does not shy away from problems that all the books and articles I've read leave unaddressed. For example, he even tells you which portion of your annual income in retirement should be taken out of the stock side of your portfolio and which portion out of bonds. I can't begin to describe all the brilliant insights contained in this chapter. It simply bowled me over.

Accompanying the book is a CD-ROM called "Guru," which is an extremely user-friendly program that enables you to do calculations on how much you need to save for retirement or for other specific purposes. It provides you with a wealth of pertinent information that I lack space to describe here. It's worth more than the price of the book.

If you read "The Only Road," absorb its rich contents, and act on the author's advice, you will achieve investment success. Of that, I have no doubt. If you have any fears or uncertainties concerning your retirement, you can't afford not to read his magnificent Chapter 7, where he breaks important new ground in the realm of retirement planning. I've never before published a book review. So impressed was I by Sengupta's book, I feel I owe a debt to the author. Moreover, I'm happy to alert those investors who are groping in the dark to the invaluable advice Sengupta has to offer you. Once you've read "The Only Road" and used Guru, you will abandon all the fake gurus you've been relying on and embrace the real thing.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A GREAT INVESTMENT GUIDE, February 11, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Only Proven Road to Investment Success: Everyone's Simple Guide to a Safe Trip (Hardcover)

I've tried it all ; dividend investing, momentum trading, market timing, scale trading, you name it!!! I only wish I'd started on this system long years ago...
But no matter. Fortunately, I still have time. This book will give you a proven, safe way to plan for retirement or other financial goals. It's full of common sense, and I highly recommend it if, like me, you're ready to stop losing money and get serious about your financial future.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Zen of Investing, August 17, 2005

By 

John Wright - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Only Proven Road to Investment Success: Everyone's Simple Guide to a Safe Trip (Hardcover)

Chandan Sengupta is a genius. The way he guides one through the investment jungle is unparalleled. With precise and carefully supported arguments on almost all aspects of investing, Sengupta does a magnificient job. I keep coming back again and again to this book whenever I am attracted/confused by the latest/new(and may I add dangerous?) investment fads which the investment community(and media) propagates. The words in this book at once dispel any doubts in my mind and put me back on "The Only Proven Road to Investment Success".

PS. I REALLY REALLY wish and REQUEST the author to PLEASE keep updating new revisions of this CLASSIC continuously with updates(warnings?) on new investment products - even within the index family e.g. emerging market indexes, Dimensional Fund Advisor-type enhanced index funds etc.