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

Rating:
Summary: A GREAT INVESTMENT GUIDE
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Investment Advice Book
Review: 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.