Common Sense on Mutual Funds: Fully Updated 10th Anniversary Edition

Foreword for the Original Edition

Why This Book Is Unique

Jack Bogle has written a book on investing unlike any investment book that I have ever encountered, because he discusses sensitive matters that other authors ignore. I hesitate to speculate on why these topics receive such short shrift elsewhere, but I suspect that other experts have horizons that are more limited than Bogle's, or they have less concern for their readers' best interests.

People often forget that Bogle is much more than an investment professional who is deadly serious about how individual investors should manage their hard-earned wealth. He is first and foremost a fabulously successful businessman who has built one of the great mutual fund empires with skill and determination, always driving it in the direction of the vision that inspired him when he launched forth on this adventure many years ago. Readers of this book are therefore treated to a unique and unvarnished exposure of the nature of the mutual fund world and how it affects their pocketbooks.

Despite all the high-minded talk we hear from the corporate spin-masters, conflict of interest between seller and buyer is inherent in our economic system. Jack Bogle's goal was to build a business whose primary objective was to make money for his customers by minimizing the elements of that conflict of interest, but at the same time to be so successful that it would be able to continue to grow and sustain itself. That has been no easy task. The complexity of the ...