Rating: 
Summary: Eye opener for the mutual fund investor
Review: 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)
Rating:
Summary: Long overdue!
Review: This is the kind of book that validates conspiracy theorist. Here you have one most trusted of all american investment institutions...the mutual fund...finally being exposed for what it is...an inefficient and expensive way to invest in the long run. Mr. Baer and Mr. Gensler also expose the fallacy in the arguments of privatising Social Security. After you read this book it becomes more and more self evident that investors cannot rely on the typical buy and hold strategies. They will have to turn to alternative investing such as futures, options, and foreign exchange.
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