A timeless approach to investing wisely over an investment lifetime

With the current market maelstrom as a background, this timely guide describes just how to plan a lifetime of investing, in good times and bad, discussing stocks and bonds as well as the relationship between risk and return.

Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, "The Investor's Manifesto" will help you understand the nuts and bolts of executing a lifetime investment plan, including: how to survive dealing with the investment industry, the practical meaning of market efficiency, how much to save, how to maintain discipline in the face of panics and manias, and what vehicles to use to achieve financial security and freedom.Written by bestselling author William J. Bernstein, well known for his insights on how individual investors can manage their personal wealth and retirement funds wiselyExamines how the financial landscape has radically altered in the past two years, and what investors should do about itContains practical insights that the everyday investor can understandFocuses on the concept of Pascal's Wager-identifying and avoiding worst-case scenarios, and planning investment decisions on that basis

With "The Investor's Manifesto" as your guide, you'll quickly discover the timeless investment approaches that can put you in a better position to prosper over time.

From the award-winning author of A Splendid Exchange, a fascinating new history of financial and religious mass manias over the past five centuries "We are the apes who tell stories," writes William Bernstein. "And no matter how misleading the narrative, if it is compelling enough it will nearly always trump the facts." As Bernstein shows in his eloquent and persuasive new book, The Delusions of Crowds, throughout human history compelling stories have catalyzed the spread of contagious narratives through susceptible groups--with enormous, often disastrous, consequences. Inspired by Charles Mackay's 19th-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Bernstein engages with mass delusion with the same curiosity and passion, but armed with the latest scientific research that explains the biological, evolutionary, and psychosocial roots of human irrationality. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last 500 years--from the Anabaptist Madness that afflicted the Low Countries in the 1530s to the dangerous End-Times beliefs that animate ISIS and pervade today's polarized America; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles of recent years. Through Bernstein's supple prose, the participants are as colorful as their motivation, invariably "the desire to improve one's well-being in this life or the next." As revealing about human nature as they are historically significant, Bernstein's chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania: for example, belief in dispensationalist End-Times has over decades profoundly affected U.S. Middle East policy. Bernstein observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of mass delusion, we can recognize it more readily in our own time, and avoid its frequently dire impact.

A sweeping narrative history of world trade--from Sumer in 3000 BC to the firestorm over globalization today--that brilliantly explores trade's colorful and contentious past and provides fresh insights into social, political, cultural, and economic history, as well as a timely assessment of trade's future. Adam Smith wrote that man has an intrinsic "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another." But how did trade evolve to the point where we don't think twice about biting into an apple from the other side of the world? In A Splendid Exchange, William J. Bernstein tells the extraordinary story of global commerce from its prehistoric origins to the myriad controversies surrounding it today. He transports readers from ancient sailing ships that brought the silk trade from China to Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in the sixteenth; from the rush for sugar that brought the British to Jamaica in 1655 to the American trade battles of the early twentieth century; from key innovations such as steam, steel, and refrigeration to the modern era of televisions from Taiwan, lettuce from Mexico, and T-shirts from China. Along the way, Bernstein examines how our age-old dependency on trade has contributed to our planet's agricultural bounty, stimulated intellectual progress, and made us both prosperous and vulnerable. Although the impulse to trade often takes a backseat to xenophobia and war, Bernstein concludes that trade is ultimately a force for good among nations, and he argues that societies are far more successful and stable when they are involved in vigorous trade with their neighbors. Lively, authoritative, and astonishing in scope, A Splendid Exchange is a riveting narrative that views trade and globalization not in political terms, but rather as an evolutionary process as old as war and religion--a historical constant--that will continue to foster the growth of intellectual capital, shrink the world, and propel the trajectory of the human species.

Commonsense investing truths for everyone, from a popular and critically acclaimed journalist In a world gone mad with bizarre credit derivatives, interest-only mortgages, and collapsing markets, we still need to manage our money, put our kids through college, and save for retirement. To the rescue comes Jonathan Clements-- the hugely popular Wall Street Journal personal-finance columnist--with 21 easy-to-follow rules that could help readers secure their financial future. Clements has spent almost a quarter century demystifying Wall Street for those on Main Street. Now Director of Financial Guidance for myFi, a new Citigroup financial service geared toward individual investors, Clements has a deep understanding of what real people need. In The Little Book of Main Street Money, Clements brings readers back down to earth with commonsense guidance that will put them on the path to clear and intelligent money management. From the big picture (your home, retirement, and life) to the micro (taxes and inflation), Clements offers readers clear-cut guidelines for taking control of their financial life and details the strategies needed to thrive in today's volatile economy. The 21 truths outlined throughout this book are a guiding light for everyone, young and old, just starting or soon retiring. Each chapter reads like a Clements column--clear, pithy, and feisty. From the obvious to the counterintuitive, each truth will either bolster returns or cut costs. Collectively, the 21 truths are a compelling guide to today's treacherous financial terrain. Renowned for his spirited writing and shrewd investment guidance, Clements is the sane voice investors need to keep them grounded in the midst of so much financial insanity. Jonathan Clements (New York, NY) is Director of Financial Guidance for myFi (www.myfi.com), a new financial service from banking giant Citigroup. Before joining myFi, he spent 18 years at the Wall Street Journal, where he was the newspaper's award-winning personal-finance columnist.

Rational Expectations is a clean sheet of paper in the wonky world of quantitatively based asset allocation aimed at small investors. Continuing the theme of the Investing for Adults series, this full-length finance title is not for beginners, but rather assumes a fair degree of quantitative ability and finance knowledge. If you think you can time the market or pick stocks and mutual fund managers, or even if you think that you can formulate an optimally efficient mean-variance asset allocation with a black box, then learn some basic finance and come back in a few years. On the other hand, if you know your way around risk premiums and standard deviations and know who Irving Fisher and Benjamin Graham were, and if you want to sharpen your asset class skills, you've come to the right place.

Deep risk: How History informs Portfolio Design is the third installment in the investing for adults series. this series is not for novices. This booklet takes portfolio design beyond the familiar "black box" mean-variance framework. Most importantly, the short-term volatility of financial assets, commonly measured as standard deviation, is a highly imperfect measure of the actual long-horizon perils faced by real-world investors subject to the vagaries of financial and military history. These risks have names-inflation, deflation, confiscation, and devastation-and any useful discussion of portfolio design of necessity incorporates their probabilities, consequences, and costs of mitigation. You're an investment adult, so you know that the future efficient frontier lies well beyond our ken; presumably you already know all about the mechanics, long-term benefits, as well as the uncertainties, of wide diversification and factor tilt using low-cost, efficient vehicles and the risk/reward spectrum between all-fixed- income and all-equity portfolios. This booklet contains no magic formula for the "perfect portfolio," but rather, with luck, a framework within which to think more clearly about risk.

Skating Where the Puck Was: The Correlation Game in a Flat World is the second installment in the Investing for Adults series. This series is not for novices. This booklet explores the notion that, as a general rule, no magic policy rich in high-return/low-correlation alternative asset classes exists that will simultaneously preserve upside reward and protect against downside losses. And as long as I'm lowering your expectations, this booklet is most certainly not a blueprint for the "perfect portfolio." You're an adult, after all, so you know that the future efficient frontier lies well beyond our ken; presumably you already know all about the mechanics, long-term benefits, as well as the uncertainties, of wide diversification and factor tilt using low-cost, efficient vehicles and the risk/reward spectrum between all-fixed-income and all-equity portfolios. Rather, this booklet provides a way of navigating a global investment landscape that grows ever more linked by the month, and a way of thinking about diversification.

"The Ages of the Investor: A Critical Look at Life-cycle Investing" is intended to be the first installment in the "Investing for Adults" series. Just as grown-ups do not believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus, "Investing adults" know that there is no such creature as the Stock-picking Fairy or the Market-timing Fairy. Further, there is no Risk Fairy who will write you cheap options that will protect your stock holdings against loss. Investing adults are familiar with Gene Fama, Zvi Bodie, Jack Bogle, and Burton Malkiel, and understand that a mean variance optimizer does not blend vegetables. In other words, this series is not for beginners. Future topics will, with luck, include the limits of market efficiency and diversification in increasingly non-segmented global markets.