Active: No Thanks, Passive: Yes Please

The active vs. passive investment war has been raging for years. It's over now, and there's a clear winner for the average investor.

Simon Brady, CFP®, British and American citizen, Toastmaster and New York-based CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner argues that the passive side has convincingly won. Citing many studies and using numerous examples, he explains in an easily understandable format how:

- active investment management out-performance is simply a false illusion created by firms hungry to charge high fees
- paying those high fees for mediocre performance and excessive risk can devastate a portfolio far beyond what most people imagine
- active management fails even before fees are taken into account
- the number of active managers who are able to match their benchmark over time is negligible and, more importantly, impossible to know in advance
- the myth that active portfolio managers excel in bear markets is exactly that, a myth
- your active manager can saddle you with a tax bill you were not expecting
- you should know the list of fees, including some invisible ones, associated with certain mutual funds
- the choice of investment vehicles has evolved since the nineteenth century, from the futility of individual stock trading to brutal load funds to today's wide range of exchange traded fund (ETF) offerings
- ETFs should be the investment of choice, including the newer "smart beta" versions
- America's investors leave millions of dollars on the table by trading in and out of mutual funds
- the importance of portfolio rebalancing cannot be over-emphasized
- dollar cost averaging is quite simply the best investing technique ever devised
- what really matters is asset allocation, not individual stock selection
- there are three concepts to embrace to maximize your investment performance

This book should be an eye-opener for anyone who still believes that they can rely on the the gut instincts of human attempts to outperform the financial markets.