Index Funds: The 12-Step Recovery Program for Active Investors - Hardcover

Hebner, Mark T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0976802317 ISBN 13: 9780976802310

Publisher: IFA Publishing, Inc., 2012

Synopsis

UPDATED for 2015 - This book reveals the potential land mines and pitfalls of active investing and educates readers on the benefits of passive investing with index funds. Hebner's book details the possible perils associated with stock picking, mutual fund manager picking, market timing, and other wealth depleting behaviors. This 12-Step Program teaches the differences between active and passive investing, explains the emotional triggers that impact investment decisions, and offers an enlightening education on science-based investing that may forever change the way an investor perceives the stock market. Hebner sets forth a sound strategy that involves risk-appropriate investing that may empower investors to lead a more profitable and relaxed life.

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About this title

About the Author

Mark T. Hebner is the founder and president of Index Fund Advisors, Inc., author of ifa.com, and the book Index Funds: The 12-Step Program for Active Investors. That original book received praise from the financial industry and academic legends, including John Bogle, David Booth, Harry Markowitz, Burton Malkiel, and Paul Samuelson. This is a condensed and updated version of that book. Mark is considered a leading author, speaker, and Internet provider of investing education. He is especially knowledgeable about the superiority of index mutual funds, as well as the research indexes designed by financial economists. He earned an MBA at the University of California, Irvine.

Review

"Hebner gives us good advice presented in a very appealing manner. Index Funds remains one of the most valuable investment guides available."
- Burton G. Malkiel, Ph.D., Professor of Economics, Princeton University and author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street; 

"It is really beautiful and really well done. I plan to use it as a reference guide."
- David G. Booth, Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Inc., Benefactor of Chicago Booth School of Business;

 "... .as this book documents so well, a foolish attempt to beat the market and get rich quickly will make one s broker rich and oneself much less so."
-- Harry Markowitz, Ph.D., Nobel Laureate in Economics;

"This Book is Wonderful!" 
--Theodore R. Aronson, Founder of Aronson Johnson Ortiz, Institutional Money Manager

 

James Burt, Foreword Reviews

Smart, precise, and funny, Index Funds makes understanding the market sensible and even desirable.

Today it’s hard to know where to turn for investment advice. Fortunately, Mark T. Hebner’s Index Funds: The 12-Step Recovery Program for Active Investors offers educated insight—with lots of research and a touch of humor—into today’s investor arena.

Hebner’s 12-Step Program is meant as a way to assist people with problems. In this case it’s active investors or speculators that have tried to predict market activity to make killer returns and have lost out financially. By contrast, via his self-constructed program, Hebner shows how investing in index funds is a safer, more secure way to invest money to see realistic long-term returns.

The author does not act like a guru. His information is clearly researched, right from his definition of index funds and passive investing: a strategy of investing carefully in a diversified portfolio of longstanding stocks and bonds. It makes reference and pays respect to the great money market theorists, from Friedrich von Hayek and Benjamin Graham up to Warren Buffett, Merton Miller, and Eugene Fama. He compiles studies from these famous experts, noting that active stock picking is really a finding-a-needle-in-a-haystack venture. Investors need to subject their managers to the industry T-score to see if they are good at making investment choices.

Hebner also returns to a central thesis throughout the book: that no one, no matter how great his or her track record is, can truly predict market activity to pick stocks. His examination of “time picking” in step 4 shows that those that claim to pick stocks at the right time are usually riding on luck, and that truly great investing depends on, as step 9 says, analyzing “historical data over eighty years ... to provide a more reliable estimate of risks and returns.”

While some books on business advice and understanding marketplaces are often dry and laden with industry jargon, Hebner infuses Index Funds with easy-to-understand explanations of how to invest with index funds. The prose breaks down all the terms of investing—“riskese,” “time picking,” etc.—with short descriptions complete with helpful charts and infographics.

Thanks to artist Lala Ragimov, whose renditions of Flemish Baroque and Venetian Renaissance style paintings include investor caricatures, Index Funds also has outright humor that, again, helps explain each concept chapter by chapter.

Smart, precise, and funny, Index Funds makes understanding the market sensible and even desirable.

Edition details

• Publisher: IFA Publishing, Inc.
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0976802317
• ISBN 13: 9780976802310
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 318