Unconventional Investing

Trust neither your portfolio manager nor yourself, advise Hajek, a certified public accountant, and Higgins, a chartered financial consultant, in this informative if occasionally overreaching financial manual, which suggests that Wall Street’s hoary, time-worn strategies are ill-suited to today’s market. As the authors observe, “buy and hold” is a loser’s strategy in a world with overvalued securities, anemic real growth, and imminent inflation. At the same time, a 401(k) held in professionally managed mutual funds will, at best, mirror market returns—something just as easily achieved by index or exchange traded funds, and without the management fees. In short, Higgins and Hajek want readers to reevaluate everything they’ve ever been told about the stock market. Some of their advice, however, is more conventional than one would expect, such as cautions against buying in bull markets and selling during bear markets (buying high and selling low). And some of the actions they advise are risky, such as having inexperienced investors look to alternative investments, engage in shorting stocks, and create their own real estate investment trusts. This book is most worthwhile when it critiques the lackluster options offered by most mass-market investment plans. And for a highly motivated individual investor, it provides some interesting alternatives to running with the herd. ([em]BookLife) [/em]