Most investors spend their time worrying about selecting individual stocks and mutual funds: big mistake! Modern Portfolio Theory—developed in 1952 by economics Nobel Prize winner Harry Markowitz—shows that it’s more important to focus on how our securities interact as a whole. Astonishingly, most investors—including many professionals—still run their investment accounts the same way people did back when "How Much Is That Doggie In the Window" played on the Hit Parade. It’s time to apply what we’ve learned in financial economics over the past 50 years to bring your portfolio into the rock-’n-roll era.Armed with a computer, you, the investor, can use sophisticated tools to analyze your holdings—tools that would have been the envy of the biggest money managers only a decade ago. First among these is the Monte Carlo simulator: the better mousetrap that investors have been waiting for.With their trademark wit, Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth show you how your current portfolio is radically underdiversified, costing you money. They offer step-by-step instructions to supercharge it across a variety of investment situations to get you the best risk-adjusted returns.
On the heels of his very successful books, How to Ruin Your Life, How to Ruin Your Love Life, and How to Ruin Your Financial Life, Ben Stein, in collaboration with his pal Phil DeMuth, has tongue firmly in cheek once again as he comes up with surefire ways to ruin the greatest nation in the history of the human race. Try a few of these on for size: Trust the United Nations to protect us and our security. Make it unlawful to worship God or even to show images of the Ten Commandments. Convert our universities into fortresses of anti-Americanism, hatred of freedom, and centers of confusion and ignorance. Encourage contempt for the family and for the community. Allow Hollywood to brainwash us into believing that only suckers and criminals fight for their country. Treat the military, the police, firefighters, and teachers as losers and pay them starvation wages. Hey, does any of this sound familiar? Maybe that's because it's already happening! Ben and Phil give you all the information you'll ever need in order to successfully ruin the USA even further! Sardonic, humorous, but also angrily emphatic, this is a book every old-fashioned patriot really needs to read!
Praise For THE LITTLE BOOK OF ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS "Ben and Phil have done it again. Another lucid, insightful book, designed to enhance your wealth! In today's stock-addled cult of equities, there is a gaping hole in most investors' portfolios...the whole panoply of alternative investments that can simultaneously help us cut our risk, better hedge our inflation risk, and boost our return. This Little Book is filled with big ideas on how to make these markets and strategies a treasured part of our investing toolkit." —Robert Arnott, Chairman, Research Affiliates "I have been reading Ben Stein for thirty-five years and Phil DeMuth since he joined up with Ben ten years ago. They do solid work, and this latest is no exception." —Jim Rogers, author of A Gift to My Children "If anyone can make hedge funds sexy, Stein and DeMuth can, and they've done it with style in this engaging, instructive, and tasteful how-to guide for investing in alternatives. But you should read this Kama Sutra of investment manuals not just for the thrills, but also to learn how to avoid the hazards of promiscuous and unprotected investing." —Andrew Lo, Professor and Director, MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering
An emotion common to humankind is fear. Fear dogs our days, makes us lose sleep, ruins our relationships, and takes the joy out of living. The strongest, best defense against that emotion is to see through the eyes of faith. As such, Ben Stein brings you 500 ways to look at life in this way so that you can triumph over fear.Ben absorbed many of the positive thoughts within these pages at 12-Step meetings he has attended, he has applied them to his own life, and he's found that they work. They're simple, but extremely effective. For example: I do not know exactly why faith and surrender work. I just know that they do work. Say it to yourself and believe it: My life is a great place to be today. I would rather be me than anyone else, and that's saying something. Life is about waking up, breaking up, shaking up, making up . . . and meditation to keep the human spirit calm. There are two forms of worship: worship of God and worship of ourselves. Guess which kind works? Taken regularly, concepts such as these will make your life easier, calmer, and definitely more enjoyable.
Since the first edition of The Financial Times Guide to ETFs was published in 2009, the number of ETFs in issue has doubled and ETFs are now common both on investor platforms and increasingly amongst financial advisors. This massive increase in demand has highlighted an urgent debate – just how dangerous are ETFs and how much do investors and advisers understand about the structure of the index tracker? The second edition of this book attempts to answer this debate and is the indispensable bible on trackers for professional advisers and serious private investors. This new edition also features a chapter based around the theme of Due Diligence and a new chapter on How to use ETFs and Index Funds for theLong-term, as well as a new Jargon busting section and a-new appendix looking at new ideas beginning to emerge.
Life is not lived all at once—it’s lived in moments, days, months, years, and decades. This means that the financial plans and actions we all have to take to meet our responsibilities sensibly must be organized by years and decades. Ben Stein wrote the original guide to this subject almost a quarter century ago. Now, Ben, along with Phil DeMuth, the eminent financial planner and writer, have gotten together to update the book, incorporating the massive changes that have occurred in the economy in the past 25 years. This book tells you what and when to save, how much to save, what to save it in, when to spend, and when to say no to your present and yes to your future. Yes, You Can Get A Financial Life! is a time-traveling guidebook on how to organize the money side of your life for all of the decades of your life.
Economist, actor, author, and former quiz show host Ben Stein teamed up with investment psychologist Phil DeMuth to examine a century of stock market data and discovered a profound and original investment truth: Yes, you can time the market! In their instant investment classic Yes, You Can Time the Market!, Stein and DeMuth show investors simple, readily available measurements that tell them when it's time to invest in stocks, bonds, real estate, or cash. Written for the investor who wants to preserve capital and build wealth steadily, this book offers prudent, bedrock advice for anyone who can no longer afford to play games with their money.
Investing do's and don'ts from some of the most recognizable voices in personal finance It's been a tough year for investors. Many have seen their retirement accounts dwindle dramatically and are looking for a safe way to protect what they have and make back some of what they've lost. That's why the bestselling author team of Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth have created The Little Book of Bulletproof Investing: Do's and Don'ts to Protect Your Financial Life. When you invest, there are essential things you should do and many things you shouldn't. The Little Book of Bulletproof Investing: Do's and Don'ts to Protect Your Financial Life addresses this issue and shows you how to utilize the fundamentals of finance to achieve success in today's market. This practical guide contains proven advice on navigating today's treacherous financial landscape and will put you in a better position to make more informed investment decisions. Includes street-smart advice for the individual investor uncertain about their investment and retirement portfolios Written by a experienced team of bestselling authors whose investment advice is accessible to everyone Outlines the steps you must take to protect yourself from the financial calamities of modern life The Little Book of Bulletproof Investing: Do's and Don'ts to Protect Your Financial Life offers quick, easy-to-follow, and entertaining advice for anyone looking to get back on the right investment track.
Understanding how to invest wisely for your future can be daunting. Many people never get started for fear of making mistakes. Others make choices based on hearsay and hope, sold on hype or risk aversion. In "We're Talking Millions!" you will learn why and how to make a handful of smart choices that can turn modest regular savings into a secure future. You'll discover "12 Small Steps with Big Payoffs," each of which can add $1 million or more to your retirement nest egg if you start in your 20s or 30s. These steps are well known. Now for the first time, "We're Talking Millions!" combines them into a single action plan you can implement in less than one hour a year. That could be the most valuable time you'll ever spend. Get started now!Long-time financial educator/retired advisor Paul Merriman and co-author Richard Buck have boiled down decades of academic-based knowledge and experience to help Millennials and Gen Y'ers get started and stay on the right track of saving and investing for life using 401ks, IRAs and other simple investments like target date funds. "This is an exciting new fact based investment approach, coming from authors who have earned the trust and respect of a couple of generations of investors. I wish I had had this knowledge when I was in my 20s." - Larry Swedroe, Director of Research at Buckingham Family of Financial Services and author of "Your Complete Guide to a Successful and Secure Retirement" "There is beauty in simplicity and in this new book, We're Talking Millions! 12 Ways to Supercharge Your Retirement. Paul Merriman and Rich Buck have taken the complex world of investing and distilled it down to core principles that both novice and experienced investors alike will benefit from." - Tim Ranzetta, co-founder Next Gen Personal Finance (ngpf.org) "The combination of financial literacy and discipline is so rare these days that it should be considered a superpower. This book provides a shortcut to obtaining both!" - James M. Dahle, MD, Founder of The White Coat InvestorI have always said that investing is too easy to seem so complex. Paul Merriman and Rich Buck have managed to prove that point in this powerful and easily understood guide to building wealth. Their approach is so straightforward and simple that anyone can build a sensible, science-based portfolio almost immediately. Follow this advice and you could be "talking millions" in your pocket. -Don McDonald, co-host "Talking Real Money", author "Financial Fysics""Whether millennial or boomer, understanding these 12 concepts can have a big financial payoff... We're Talking Millions! Paul Merriman and Richard Buck team up again to educate and motivate." - David Baughier, curator of Fiology"Paul and Richard reduce the complexity of saving for retirement into strategies anyone can follow. Regardless if you are new to investing or have been investing for years, you'll find suggestions for boosting your wealth with minimal effort required." - Charles Rotblut, CFA, AAII Journal Editor and VP, American Association of Individual Investors"Merriman and Buck have done a great job of giving a playbook for financial success that anyone can read and understand!" - George Grombacher, Host of the Money Savage podcast"We're Talking Millions! could be a young person's Most Valuable Read (MVR) of their life, if they take action!" - Ed Fulbright, CPA, PFS, Host of Masteringyourmoney.com"Paul & Rich have done it again! For the last few decades they have shown investors how to create long-term portfolios for retirement, how to generate retirement income, and how to avoid costly mistakes. In their new book, We're Talking Millions! 12 Ways to Supercharge Your Retirement, they help people of all ages with huge money decisions. Written in plain English with critical charts, this book will help anyone who wants to create wealth in simple, low cost ways." - Tom Cock, co-host "Talking Real Money"
