Reddit reviews Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment

I just stumbled onto this subreddit for the first time now, so apologies if I'm not replying to the request as desired.

Investing isn't really something that you can learn, in the sense that it's not like riding a bike where you practice and then after a little bit you know how to ride a bike and that's it. Think of learning to invest more as a constant journey, where you're always growing and gaining understanding but you can't really ever know enough. Most successful investors, including Warren Buffett and Charles Munger, are voracious readers simply because there is so much out there to absorb.

Here's the start of a reading list to take a look at, listed in order of how I would tackle them in your place (though obviously skip some or jump ahead if one description catches your eye specifically):

• Millionaire Next Door--not an investing book, but you mentioned saving for the future and so I think this is a good place to start. This book, which covers the results of a study of many first generation millionaires, will teach you how you should be thinking about money, saving, and consumption. Dry, but not a difficult read.
  
  
  Indexing:
  
  
• Random Walk Down Wall Street
  
  
• Four Pillars of Investing
  
  
• Unconventional Success--These three I would consider as one big package, because they all address kind of the same philosophy and investing strategy (though in slightly different ways). There's no preferred order for this group, so I've listed them in what I think is from most accessible to least accessible (they all get into some technical details that may be difficult for someone not familiar with the topics, but they are all written for the layman so while it may take some work, you should be able to get through all three).
  
  
• Bogle on Mutual Funds--This is the only book I'm recommending here that I haven't actually read. I'm including it only because I realize that you asked for a crash course so to speak, and none of the three books above are 100% easily accessible (though they do cover everything). I've read other books by John Bogle and I know enough about him and his investment philosophy to be able to recommend this confidently enough and to have a good idea what he talks about here. I suggest trying as much of the above three as possible, but if you do find them too difficult try this one out first as it'll undoubtedly be an easier read all the while covering most of the basic points outlined in the above.
  
  
  Value Investing:
  
  
• The Little Book That Beats the Market--Very short, very accessible (all technical details are hidden away in the appendix. I don't recommend following his strategy outlined in the book verbatim, but as an intro to value investing concepts it's not a bad start.
  
  
• The Intelligent Investor--This is basically a summation of Warren Buffett's investing philosophy. It is quite old, and definitely difficult at times, but well worth reading.
  
  
  Those are what I would start with. I recommend reading the books on indexing first not because I think the efficient market hypothesis (one of the topics covered in all three books) is 100% correct (it isn't), but because you need to have a filter in place that makes you skeptical and able to dismiss all the garbage investing advice that's out there (technical strategies promising 10%+ yearly returns guaranteed, etc). The value investing books I include because it is the only chance you have of beating the market over the long run, though I would only recommend the active management route if you have the time and energy to dedicate to it.
  
  Most of what's in these books does boil down to a few basic tenets that could probably be summarized in a few pages, but I would discourage you from looking for quick investing summary information because it won't be of any use to you. It's not enough to understand/know the concepts. You have to believe in them, and live them every day. If you aren't absolutely convinced of the investing strategy you're using you'll wind up capitulating at the worst possible time and losing a lot of money, or at the very least being one of the many people who 'chase winners' only to suffer from consistently mediocre performance. That's why you need to be reading regularly--to keep your conviction and refresh yourself on the fundamentals.
  
  Best of luck.

This kind of trading is anything but "high finance". I strongly recommend you get the book "Trading & Exchanges" by Larry Harris. Sadly it is rather expensive. However it is very well written and very comprehensive. It covers your question comprehensively too.

One important factor in markets is liquidity - people having the ability to trade when they want to. Think about the case where you want to sell in the morning and someone else wants to buy the same shares in the afternoon. Liquidity is provided by dealers who will buy your shares, hold them till the afternoon and then sell them again. The people on the floor are specialists and are required to provide liquidity amongst other things. (The spread is the price they charge to do so.) As a consequence they get to see all the flow and help facilitate trading. There is also a lot more to it than that.

That book will teach you what all the trading is about, who trades and why, who makes money and who loses.
I'd then recommend Burton Makiel's Random Walk down Wall Street which will show that you won't beat the market and that efforts to do so are almost impossible. (For example to beat the market by active management you also have to recover the management fees and the transactions costs.) It is possible to beat the market for short periods through sheer luck - this is why there are those occasional stories of apes throwing darts to make stock selections. The industry is very good at dealing with this - they shut down or merge the lowest performing funds so all you see are their funds that appear to have performed well. It is all a con game. Even taking this survivorship bias into account, 90% of investment funds in the US under-perform the S&P 500. In other words you could use an S&P 500 tracker fund and be in the 90th percentile.

Now that you know you have no chance of beating the market (short of insider information) and are going to use mutual funds to get a good return, you need to find out what a bunch of scumbags they are too. Read David Swenson's Unconventional Success which will show you the various ways you are fleeced - all quite legally. In short don't bother with anyone except TIAA-CREF or Vanguard. He also goes into detail about things like inflation and rebalancing. The latter is interesting - for example if you have decided that your portfolio should be 30% bonds and 70% stocks (or something similar with international vs local) and due to price changes the balance changes, how important is it to get the proportions back again?

I'm not sure I follow.

Mutual (and index) funds trade their NAV at the end of the day.

ETFs trade like stocks throughout the day.

I looked of SPY's expense ratio on Yahoo Finance, and looked up the expense ratio of the UBS fund in the prospectus using Google.

Transaction costs are a thing - many brokerages offer some no transaction fee funds, but if you buy outside that stable, they charge commissions, and i'm not sure why, but mutual fund commissions are usually a lot more than stock commissions. And now, there are lots of ways to get access to free stock and ETF trades.

The last bit about options was a little more in depth, but still (I thought) barely scratching the surface.

All I'm saying is the information is out there for everyone to find.

As for what I read, I don't even know anymore. A TON at one point. I also passed the Series 65 at one point, but never did much with it. But that was more to validate my knowledge than to create knowledge. And even though it sounds fancy ("Investment Advisor"), the test was 90% about legal and fiduciary duties, not about investments themselves - studying for the 65 won't net you much knowledge about options, trade commissions (except sternly telling you NOT to churn client accounts for your own benefit), and so forth.

Looking way back in my Amazon order history, here's a few interesting books:

Options as a strategic investment
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735201978/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Unconventional Success
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743228383/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Pioneering Portfolio Management
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416544690/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Bond Markets, Analysis, and Strategies (Cram101 Textbook Outlines (link doesn't work anymore)

There were a ton of other books, too, but I must have gotten them from places other than Amazon. But I think those three are great starting points.

The big thing is, Pioneering Portfolio Management was written for institutional investors, not us. It's still a good read. Unconventional Success is the same author applying it to regular people. I read both, but I'm not sure how well Unconventional Success stands on its own (maybe people who have read only that can chime in). And options are a great tool to learn more about; I know some people go crazy just trading calls in hopes of outsized gains, but I wouldn't recommend that. Mostly I like them because, at their simplest, they provide strategies for mitigating risk (either buying puts, or selling calls), but like i said, that risk mitigation can act as a headwind.

Hopee that's somewhat helpful?

Unconventional Success by David Swenson is a very comprehensive and low risk approach. He is very reputable, and it is not a gimmicky-get-rich-quick scheme, simply a stable method for long term investing.

David Swensen manages the Yale endowment which has had excellent returns.

Real estate is one of Swensen's core asset classes. A so-called Yale portfolio tilts towards real estate (I've typically seen between 10% and 20% allocated to real estate):

https://www.bogleheads.org/blog/2014/09/07/david-swensens-portfolio-from-unconventional-success/

I'm a big fan of Swensen's book "Unconventional Success" and would recommend reading it:

https://www.amazon.com/Unconventional-Success-Fundamental-Approach-Investment/dp/0743228383

 

On the other hand Charlie Ellis (another one of my favorite investors):
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1gj523tmfl2tt/David-Swensen-Is-Great-for-Yale-Is-He-Horrible-for-Investing

said that the Yale portfolio did really well mainly because of Swensen's genius and cautioned investors and to avoid blindly copying his portfolio.

In the long-term it seems like rebalancing leads to higher returns.
I can't find the precise info I mentioned in the book through Amazon reader, so it may have been a different book. Have a look here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743228383/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_sims_2#reader_0743228383

The single best book I've read is, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street." I'm with the OP, fuck Suze Orman.

"Random Walk" is a fairly interesting/easy read for a personal finance book. Malkiel should convince you by the time it's through why index funds are the way to go.

If you want something more challenging after that, try David Swenson's "Unconventional Success" It was a much tougher read for me, I really had to slog through it. But Swenson's record is pretty amazing, and he makes a convincing argument about why it's important to set up a simple approach to diversification. And it really is simple - 6 different categories, rebalance annually, that's it.

No. Read David Swensen's book for non-institutional investors. He is the Yale endowment manager and has great data on the perils of active investing. Essentially, he is a Bogle Head, espousing index funds and asset allocation as the way to go.

You are all wrong... :-)

The best book by far is "unconventional success" by David Swensen.

https://www.amazon.com/Unconventional-Success-Fundamental-Approach-Investment/dp/0743228383