The Little Book: That Still Beats the Market

Foreword

THE BEST THING ABOUT THIS BOOK—from which I intend to steal liberally for the next edition of The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need—is that most people won't believe it. Or, believing it, won't have the patience to follow its advice. That's good, because the more people who know about a good thing, the more expensive that thing ordinarily becomes . . . bye-bye bargain.

Yet unlike most "systems" meant to exploit anomalies in the market, Joel Greenblatt's simple notion will likely retain at least a good deal of its validity even if it becomes widely followed.

I don't want to spoil the surprise—the book is short enough as it is. My role here is simply to introduce you to the author, so you have some sense of just how far you can trust him.

I've known Joel for decades. He is really smart, really modest, really well intentioned, and—here is the unusual part—really successful. (I mean: really successful.)

More to the point, his success has come from shrewd investing (not from selling books).

He is also funny. I read the first couple of chapters of this book to my 11-year-old nephew, Timmy, and we both enjoyed it. Timmy, with no investable funds that I know of, then fell asleep as I raced to the end, mentally rejiggering my retirement plan.

Let me tell you this much: In the beginning, there were mutual funds, and that was good. But their sales fees and expenses were way too high. Then came no-load funds, which were better. They eliminated the sales fee, but were still burdened ...