The Little Book of Common Sense Investing

By: John C. Bogle

Narrated by: Thom Pinto

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

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 clear cut and not as dry as other beginning i

Very clear cut and not as dry as other beginning investment books. Some repetition in content, mostly to drive home the importance of index investment. Would recommend to anyone starting out.

Solid message

Very convincing and on point w/ arguments. Only gets a bit too repetitive but is able to stress the counterintuitive simplicity of investing

Explains well indexing of stocks and bonds

Liked the book, yes it’s completely about indexing. But it’s not possible to replace the whole book with some summaries like “buy low cost index funds”, they don’t explain why. The book explains why and how indexing works, has a lot of references to other people (Graham and Buffet and many others). Has some practical advice about your portfolio (at the end). It’s recommended in a lot of places starting with reddit and ending with Buffet

Ps I took one star out of the performance section because it has some details which makes listening much harder, e.g. in some examples when they compare differences it would be much simpler to comprehend something like “approach A gives you less than 96 thousand when B more than 135” instead of “A gives you 95, 543 when B 135, 847”. But overall it’s much easier to listen to than “the intelligent Investor”

Great book for retirement investing

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Absolutely, the best book on investing ever written.

Who was your favorite character and why?

John Bogle, the patron saint of investing.

Any additional comments?

Great book on how to grow wealth cheaply and effectively via plain vanilla index fund.