• Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment

  • By: David F. Swensen
  • Narrated by: Scott R. Pollak
  • Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (63 ratings)

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Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment  By  cover art

Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment

By: David F. Swensen
Narrated by: Scott R. Pollak
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Publisher's summary

The best-selling author of Pioneering Portfolio Management, the definitive template for institutional fund management, returns with an audiobook 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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2005 David F. Swensen (P)2019 Echo Point Books & Media, LLC

What listeners say about Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment

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Read This Book!

I wish I'd read this book years ago, but I'm glad a retired CFA friend so strongly recommended that I read it that he gave me a print copy! I will be giving copies to each of my now teenage children as soon as appropriate.

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The antidote to how people steal your money.

This book will save you a fortune. Pair it with a passive all seasons portfolio and you are good to go.

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Extremely knowledgeable and very dry

Extremely knowledgeable, helpful, in-depth, and very boring/dry. You’ll need to consciously take notes on this one.

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Good info, but very dry narration

I'm on chapter 9/24 and I'm struggling to make my way through this audio book. It is extreemly Dry. I don't doubt that David Swensen has a brilliant financial mind because he was interviewed by Tony Robbins in "Money Master The Game". That is one of my favorite financial books and it is why I decided to look up books authored by David Swensen. I don't know if the content is written in a dry manner or if it's just the execution of the narrorator, but it sounds so monotone. Similar to listening to a legal disclaimer at the end of an infomercial, but for 24 chapters straight!

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Insomnia?? Not anymore!

While the information is good, the reader of this audible book will put you to sleep. Definitely need a basic investment understanding before reading this book. It is for the advanced investor or money manager.

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Not a book for audio format

I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it.
Why you ask me to complete this????

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Not for starters, not for audiobook

I thought that after reading the intelligent investor this book would easy to follow. WRONG. This is full of highly technical terms and statistical charts. This is for a more skilled individual that has been dealing with investing for years. Furthermore, the narrator of the audiobook is pathetic, boring to death. I will try reading other books before coming back to a Kindle version of this one. DO NOT BUY THE AUDIOBOOK version.

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