Straight Talk on Investing: What You Need to Know

With a Harvard Business School degree and 20 years' experience at the world's second-largest mutual fund company, one might expect chairman and CEO of The Vanguard Group Brennan to produce a sophisticated and detailed investment tome weighted on equities. Instead, he offers readers a plain-speaking primer on how to build a sensible long-term investment portfolio. While Brennan applauds the ""democratization of Wall Street"" that has allowed anyone to become an investor, he notes that the resultant explosion of investment advice includes much that's ""dangerous to your wealth."" This guide, he says, is the book he himself would have liked to have received when he began his personal investments. The emphasis is on long-term goals and balance rather than playing the market: throughout, Brennan cautions against micro-managing the profile or getting sucked into fads. Though his guidance comes well after the bursting of the stock market bubble, the principles stated within would have steadied the nervous investor through the phenomenon and its nasty aftermath. Filled with practical ""do your homework"" and ""trust diversification"" advice, this book is an easy-to-read first title on investing. For readers who closely follow Brennan's common-sense instructions, a second investment book will probably be unnecessary.