The Big Investment Lie: What Your Financial Advisor Doesn't Want You to Know

Having learned deceptive sales practices as a teenager selling magazine subscriptions, Edesess sold overpriced credit life insurance before becoming an investment adviser after a boss told him that "the way to make money is to handle money." By 2004, he found himself in Florida, failing to entice investors into a trading scheme that lost 80% over six months, when the company promoting the idea collapsed without paying him. That experience, he says, "provoked me to write" this book. But his pose as a reformed sinner is unconvincing. The how-to chapter on deceptive sales is more animated than his cursory review of academic literature arguing for low-cost, diversified, buy-and-hold strategies. He likes self-promoting investment failures, like the ones created by Charles Ponzi and the Beardstown Ladies, but disparages successful investors like Warren Buffett, Ed Thorp, George Soros and Julian Robertson. Edesses's most useful ideas are covered better in John Bogle's books, among others. (Jan.)