The Four Pillars of Investing, Second Edition

Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio

By: William J. Bernstein

Narrated by: Tom Parks

Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

The classic guide to constructing a solid portfolio—without a financial advisor!

Retired neurologist and master investor William J. Bernstein has seen it all throughout his career. Buying investments with borrowed money. Chasing past performance. Overestimating one's own risk tolerance. Listening to cable news. These are just a few of the many mistakes he has witnessed smart, serious investors make, to the peril of their portfolios. Add to these behavioral errors such economic factors as deflation, sudden stock declines, and soaring inflation—and investing can seem like something to be avoided at all costs. But with the right discipline and knowledge, you can build and manage an impressive portfolio. It all comes down to understanding four key pillars:

- Theory: Risk and return go hand in hand—you can't make money without risk

- History: Understand past markets to understand today's markets

- Psychology: Avoid the most common behavioral mistakes that tank portfolios

- Business: The cost of investment services can be high—unreasonably high

After taking you on a deep dive into each of these topics, Bernstein walks you through the process of designing and maintaining a powerful portfolio.

©2023, 2003 McGraw Hill (P)2023 McGraw Hill-Ascent Audio

Missing graphs, equations galore

A fan of the first edition of 4 Pillars of Investing, I find the audio edition disappointing. Not deigning to provide a PDF for the purchase price, the audio version glibly tells the listener repeatedly to see the graphs in the book or ebook. Am I expected to buy that, too? Sheeesh.
Too, the audio editors have the reader drone on relating the contents of tables and numeric-heavy "Math box" sidebars. I was not able to follow the contents and suspect that few listeners could. If the publisher won't warn the listener away from this title owing to numeric overload, maybe the editors should have dropped the table reading and math boxes from the performance/
When I got to the qualitative parts of the audiobook that I WAS able to follow--about halfway through part II of IV--I found Bernstein's sarcasm unwelcome and jarring.
Bernstein bad-mouths Vanguard's service, but other than long hold times on the phone give zero examples. Also, sometimes I found him making points that were of less use to the general reader, but possibly were included to show how knowledgeable he is.
On the positive side, there is much useful wisdom in here, and I greatly appreciated his approach to risk, differentiating familiar market variability from deep risk. He suggests buying US treasuries in place of a total bond index fund, but does not describe how to manage that bond ladder.
Overalll, I'd suggest re-doing this audiobook with thought to what a listener can absorb; and suggesting to Dr. Bernstein to project more humility in his embellishments.

The most nonsense boring finance book

A retired most probably failed neurologist giving advice on investing. Ripoff, nonsense and boring. Do not make the mistakeand by the audiobook

It is impossible to understand the audio book without reading the physical book

It is impossible to understand the audio book without reading the physical book. The author didn’t make it a simple book at all. Normally I listen to audiobooks when I am driving and it doesn’t work with this book as it is too complicated