The Little Book of Common Sense Investing

By: John C. Bogle

Narrated by: Thom Pinto

Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's Summary

John C. Bogle's The Little Book of Index Investing is a power-packed explanation of why outperforming the market is an investor illusion. Instead, the founder of The Vanguard Group—the man who's been called "the conscience of the investment industry"*—recommends a simple, time-tested investment strategy that can deliver the greatest return to the greatest number of investors: indexing. Why? Investing is a zero-sum game where transaction costs, taxes, poor investment diversification, and poor market-timing (an affliction for most investors) hurts your portfolio more than it helps. Indexing eliminates that hurt. Bottom-line, if you can't be an index, why not invest in one? And you'll be all the happier and richer for it.
*Time Magazine

©2007 John C. Bogle (P)2006 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC

Critic Reviews

“John C. Bogle...has the mind of an economist and the personality of a preacher.” —The Washington Post

“Bogle is rattling the status quo among the mutual fund titans.” —Fortune

Invest in Index Fund.If you get that, don't waste$

Invest in index funds is the only message from the book. The authors mentions this over and over again in this book and quotes many successful investors backing that. If someone is not sold on index fund then I would recommend this book. Otherwise save the cost of buying this book and instead add it to your index fund.

Repeats endlessly

While this book offers sound advice on index investing. It is endlessly repetitive. The crux of the material could be covered in 15-30 minutes.

Get something by Jim Cramer instead

Let me make this short and sweet for you. Buy index funds, Bogle is an investing genius. Those two statements sum up the entire book. When Bogle isn't telling you how great index funds are he is reading rave reviews about himself. Despite what a lot of successful investors say (Cramer, Buffet, Heebner) Bogle says the only thing you can do is batch the market and beating it is laughable. As far as investing books go pass on this one, there are much better around.

If you can't beat them, join them!

I've been investing for years, and my personal experiences is a testament to what this book details. For the long term investor, nothing beats the indexes!

Repetitive but Very Good

Some of the other reviewers are right; the book could be summarized in 30 minutes. That said, I've listened to it three times and during these crazy economic times it is sort of reassuring. Yes, you can beat the market but, no, it isn't likely that you will. This book helps you understand why and it might also make you less hungry for outsized returns. A good listen.

Great information for new investors

This book is very insightful and, I loved every minute of this audio book. I would definitely recommended this audio book

Important and eye-opening, if a tad repetitive

Any additional comments?

TL;DR This book is excellent and one of the most important books on investing you'll ever listen to. However, I often found myself completely swayed by an argument only to have Bogle continue to argue his case WAY beyond the point he had already convinced me. Still, this book is a treasure.

John C. Bogle, a name I had never heard of until recently, has become a personal hero of mine. What he has brought to investing for us (Vanguard and the index fund) is something to be celebrated and something we should all raise a glass to Mr. Bogle for. (Thank you!)

And in this book, Bogle explains how index fund investing works and why its the only sort of investing you need to worry about. Not only is it superior to actively managed investing in almost every conceivable scenario, it's EASIER and CHEAPER, too. It's a win-win-win. And the book basically spends its entire duration explaining this and arguing the case for it.

My only complaint is that the case is argued maybe a little too thoroughly. I was usually convinced long before Bogle was done telling me why I should be. Don't get me wrong, this is not necessarily a bad thing (hence the reason this complaint has no effect on the 5-star rating I'm giving this book). It's great to see the actual data Bogle uses to prove his case. I just think he goes just a little too far sometimes. "OK, I got it. I'm with you. OK you can stop now. All right, got it. Thanks!"

But really, that's kind of a nice problem to have: the book proves its case too thoroughly. How often can you say that about a book?

Bottom line: this book ought to be mandatory reading for anybody getting into or interested in investing and anybody saving for retirement (which should basically be everybody, if that's not you, you might want to listen to this book anyway; you might change your mind).

great listen

being new to investing I found this book to be very informative. definitely worth listening to

I am officially a Boglehead... :)

If you could sum up The Little Book of Common Sense Investing in three words, what would they be?

Indexing is the way to go when investing is not your primary source of income

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Little Book of Common Sense Investing?

Learning who John Bogle is...

Which scene was your favorite?

This is a great book alltogether

What did you learn from The Little Book of Common Sense Investing that you would use in your daily life?

Don't try to beat the market, join the market, as suggetsed by the "simple rules of humble arithmetic"

Very informative from the historical perspective

What did you love best about The Little Book of Common Sense Investing?

understandable to a begginer

What did you like best about this story?

comprehensive on the entire subject

Did Thom Pinto do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

yes

What’s an idea from the book that you will remember?

That the long term ,unemotional , diversified portfolio is the most effective way to be successful

Any additional comments?

Worth the time invested to get the information from the book

A strong argument, dragged out for too long.

The TLDR of this book is: "Buy index funds, because active management can't outperform the market, and charge large fees that mean they deliver below market-average returns to their investors".

This argument is supported by plenty of strong data, is hard to argue with, and is worth hearing for anyone looking to invest their savings. Unfortunately the one sentence premise is stretched out to over 5 hours, and the message simply doesn't need to be delivered over that much time. This is an article drawn out into a book.

Narrator is fine.

Good concept, but far too much repition.

Would advise watching a summary video on youtube for 5 minutes. His point is made in the first 15minutes and he really doesnt introduce any significant points or thinking to justify listening to through for another 5 hours.

Extremely happy with it

Novice investor here. I found the book very concise and informative at any point. Well explained and easy to understand.