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

Preface to the Original Edition

In writing this book, my objective is to accomplish two goals: first, to help readers become more successful investors, and second, to chart a course for change in the mutual fund industry. My first objective is familiar terrain. In Bogle on Mutual Funds, published in 1993, I set forth a commonsense approach to developing a sound investment program through mutual funds. Similarly, this book focuses exclusively on mutual funds, for I believe that a widely diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds is essential to long-term investing. For nearly all investors, the most sensible and efficient way to diversify is through mutual funds. Common Sense on Mutual Funds, however, even as it covers some of the same ideas as my previous book, addresses the significant changes in the investment landscape that have since taken place.

My second objective marks new literary, if not professional, terrain for me. In the past decade, as strong financial markets have made mutual funds the investment of choice for millions of shareholders, the industry has embraced practices that threaten to diminish seriously their chances of successful long-term investing. Amid the mutual fund industry's disorienting promotional din, Common Sense on Mutual Funds identifies these practices and presents simple principles for implementing a sound investment program. These investment principles also form the basis for my call for industry change. If mutual funds are to remain the investment ...