by Gregory Arthur Baer, Gary Gensler
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| List Price: | $26.00 |
| Average Rating: |  |
| Lowest New Price: | $28.58 |
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Product Description
Convinced that your star mutual fund manager will help you beat the market? Eager to hear the latest stock picking advice on CNBC? FORGET ABOUT IT! The Great Mutual Fund Trap shows that the average mutual fund consistently underperforms the market, and that strategies for picking above-average funds -- everything from past performance to expert rankings -- are useless. Picking individual stocks on the advice of brokers and analysts works no better. The only sure things are the fees and commissions you’ll pay.
Fortunately, the news is not all bad. Investors willing to ignore the constant drumbeat of “trade frequently,” “trust the experts,” and “beat the market” now have the opportunity to do better. Using new investing products investors can earn higher returns with lower risks.
Drawing on their years of Wall Street, Treasury and Federal Reserve experience, Gary Gensler and Gregory Baer offer a fresh and realistic look at how money is managed in America. From new indexing strategies to risk-managed stock selection, The Great Mutual Fund Trap offers investors an escape from high costs and immunity from seductive marketing messages.
Amazon.com Review
If you've been burned on Wall Street (and who hasn't?) but still need a practical place to park your savings (who doesn't?), Gregory Baer and Gary Gensler have your number. While somewhat mistitled because it decries "active investing" in individual stocks as well as in mutual funds, The Great Mutual Fund Trap is nonetheless a clearly and even entertainingly written argument in favor of the alternative: investing broadly in stocks that mirror the performance of the overall market. During their years in private investment and with the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve, Baer and Gensler have come to believe the high fees and high risks that go with always trying to beat the market make "active investing"--be it constantly fiddling with your own portfolio or relying on professionals to do so for you--a no-win proposition. Instead, they say, you can actually improve returns by shifting to "passive investments" that offer lower costs and greater tax efficiency. After explaining why they feel as they do, the authors thoroughly describe the appropriate vehicles--index mutual funds, exchange-traded index funds, and several other products--in a way that makes these staid options seem almost exciting and gives interested readers all the tools they need to utilize them. --Howard Rothman
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Average Customer Review:
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
 Not totally inaccurate, 2006-02-22
The Great Mutual Fund Trap is primarily a compilation of complaints about mutual funds and conveyed little new or useful information. To a great extent the information could have been consolitated in about a dozen pages, but then it could not have been sold as a book.
Someone with no financial investing experience could learn about the problems with mutual funds from the book. But I would not recommend it.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 Pulled Together the Missing Investment Pieces, 2006-01-19
I feel this book is a must read for any individual investor who wants long term success. For 10 years I have been trying to become a confident, knowledgable investor. I read the books and magazines, the Financial Times, I roam MSN Money, I listen to radio shows etc. I have experimented and learned a great deal, done some things well and made many mistakes always feeling that most of the time my results--both gains and loses--seem random. I also have an actively managed account that seems to get the same random results I get but for much more expense. Upon reading this book all my experiences came together in a clear understanding that the market is indeed random and how I can best participate in it. Baer and Gensler not only affirm what I had learned here and there from others but many new things as well. They do so with excellent substantiation in a readable, straightforward manner that gave me the confidence I was looking for to make dramatic changes in my financial holdings. They gave me simple, excellent recommendations to execute my plan and navigate past the the traps laid out by investment companies. I agree with one reviewer that I too was amazed at how much I did not know. Filling in those gaps so I can now make informed choices was certainly worth the small investment in buyng this book.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Social Security Reform Anyone?, 2005-07-19
In the spirit of Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street, The Great Mutual Fund Trap proposes that the most viable strategic alternative for investors is passive investing, also known as indexing.
The authors point out that a variety of hurdles to outperformance of the averages are strewn in the investor's path, including overconfidence in security selection and market timing skills, a blizzard of commercial mis-information and questionable third party investment resources, among various others.
Along the way to the book's conclusion attention is drawn to the ongoing social security debate and it is strongly suggested that passively managed mutual funds play an important role in addressing the problem.
Finally, the authors indicate that sometimes the best performers in a game are those that are able to successfully make the largest number of effective small decisions. A list of factors investors may want to consider in the implementation of their investment plans is introduced.
While the authors delivered some interesting points, quite a bit of the information was already available. [As indicated by at least one of the previous reviewers.] As such: 4/5 stars.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Good job revealing internals of mutual funds industry, 2004-04-12
It's a very well written book. The main purpose of this book is to show that mutual funds industry overall does not provide a good choices for regular individual investors and the book covers this topics exceptionally. It really reveals the real intentions of the industry and shows that this is the only way this indstry can work. The book advocates passive investment and especially index funds and exchange traded funds (ETF). While there were already quite a few good, if controversial, books about efficient market theory ('You can't beat the market'), such as famous 'Random walk On Wall Street', this book brings more details about today market environment and explains what choices passive investor has. My only complain is that sometimes I feel some kind of zealotry in authors considerations. Even for somebody that believes in efficient market theory some of the statements in this books could seem very questionable. Stock mutual funds takes majority of books space but the moment authors venture to the other territory (and they do try to cover practically all kinds of investments) their arguments often seem too absolute. Still, this is the book every investor in mutual funds must read (and it will probably convince you to make some changes in your investment strategy - it did this for me)
7 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
 Not bad but nothing special, 2003-09-08
There is really nothing new in this book that has not been beat to death elsewhere and the reader will probably find William Bernstein's books more rewarding. For those who buy this book however you will not go too far wrong.
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