Books about Fund and from Amazon.com

Investing is all about common sense. Owning a diversified portfolio of stocks and holding it for the long term is a winner’s game. Trying to beat the stock market is theoretically a zero-sum game (for every winner, there must be a loser), but after the substantial costs of investing are deducted, it becomes a loser’s game. Common sense tells us—and history confirms—that the simplest and most efficient investment strategy is to buy and hold all of the nation’s publicly held businesses at very low cost. The classic index fund that owns this market portfolio is the only investment that guarantees you with your fair share of stock market returns.

To learn how to make index investing work for you, there’s no better mentor than legendary mutual fund industry veteran John C. Bogle. Over the course of his long career, Bogle—founder of the Vanguard Group and creator of the world’s first index mutual fund—has relied primarily on index investing to help Vanguard’s clients build substantial wealth. Now, with The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, he wants to help you do the same.

Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing will show you how to incorporate this proven investment strategy into your portfolio. It will also change the very way you think about investing. Successful investing is not easy. (It requires discipline and patience.) But it is simple. For it’s all about common sense.

With The Little Book of Common Sense Investing as your guide, you’ll discover how to make investing a winner’s game:

• Why business reality—dividend yields and earnings growth—is more important than market expectations
• How to overcome the powerful impact of investment costs, taxes, and inflation
• How the magic of compounding returns is overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs
• What expert investors and brilliant academics—from Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham to Paul Samuelson and Burton Malkiel—have to say about index investing
• And much more

You’ll also find warnings about investment fads and fashions, including the recent stampede into exchange traded funds and the rise of indexing gimmickry. The real formula for investment success is to own the entire market, while significantly minimizing the costs of financial intermediation. That’s what index investing is all about. And that’s what this book is all about.

JOHN C. BOGLE is founder of the Vanguard Group, Inc., and President of its Bogle Financial Markets Research Center. He created Vanguard in 1974 and served as chairman and chief executive officer until 1996 and senior chairman until 2000. In 1999, Fortune magazine named Mr. Bogle as one of the four "Investment Giants" of the twentieth century; in 2004, Time named him one of the world’s 100 most powerful and influential people, and Institutional Investor presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award..
Price: $10.85 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In the late 1960s, Eliot Wigginton and his students created the magazine Foxfire in an effort to record and preserve the traditional folk culture of the Southern Appalachians. This is the original book compilation of Foxfire material which introduces Aunt Arie and her contemporaries and includes log cabin building, hog dressing, snake lore, mountain crafts and food, and "other affairs of plain living.".
Price: $10.02 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Become a savvy investor with this updated Wall Street Journal bestseller

Want to take charge of your financial future? This national bestselling guide has been thoroughly updated to provide you with the latest insights into smart investing, from weighing your investment options (such as stocks, real estate, and small business) to understanding risks and returns, managing your portfolio, and much more.

• Get time-tested investment advice -- expert author Eric Tyson shares his extensive knowledge and reveals how to invest in challenging markets
• Discover all the fundamentals of investing -- explore your investment choices, weigh risks and returns, choose the right investment mix, and protect your assets
• Navigate Wall Street -- understand the financial markets and the Federal Reserve, avoid problematic buying practices, and evaluate investment research
• Build wealth with stocks, bonds, and mutual funds -- use indexes, understand prices, minimize costs, and diversify your investments
• Get rich with real estate -- find the right property, evaluate the market, finance your investments, work with agents, and close the deal
• Start, buy, or invest in a business -- write a business plan, finance your business, and improve profitability
• Manage college and retirement savings accounts -- establish your goals, evaluate your investment options, and tame your taxes

Open the book and find:

• Recommendations on the best stock, bond, and money market funds
• The best times to buy and sell stocks and bonds
• The scoop on exchange-traded and hedge funds
• Tips for reading and analyzing financial reports
• The best online brokers
• How to make safe and profitable real estate investments
• A wealth of information on the best investment tools and resources

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Price: $11.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The bestselling author of Pioneering Portfolio Management, the definitive template for institutional fund management, returns with a book that shows individual investors how to manage their financial assets.

In Unconventional Success, investment legend David F. Swensen offers incontrovertible evidence that the for-profit mutual-fund industry consistently fails the average investor. From excessive management fees to the frequent "churning" of portfolios, the relentless pursuit of profits by mutual-fund management companies harms individual clients. Perhaps most destructive of all are the hidden schemes that limit investor choice and reduce returns, including "pay-to-play" product-placement fees, stale-price trading scams, soft-dollar kickbacks, and 12b-1 distribution charges.

Even if investors manage to emerge unscathed from an encounter with the profit-seeking mutual-fund industry, individuals face the likelihood of self-inflicted pain. The common practice of selling losers and buying winners (and doing both too often) damages portfolio returns and increases tax liabilities, delivering a one-two punch to investor aspirations.

In short: Nearly insurmountable hurdles confront ordinary investors.

Swensen's solution? A contrarian investment alternative that promotes well-diversified, equity-oriented, "market-mimicking" portfolios that reward investors who exhibit the courage to stay the course. Swensen suggests implementing his nonconformist proposal with investor-friendly, not-for-profit investment companies such as Vanguard and TIAA-CREF. By avoiding actively managed funds and employing client-oriented mutual-fund managers, investors create the preconditions for investment success.

Bottom line? Unconventional Success provides the guidance and financial know-how for improving the personal investor's financial future..
Price: $7.67 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Yours For the Asking is a how-to guide for anyone with an instinct to raise funds who has fears, qualms, or hesitancies to do so. It explains in easy to understand language how to reach wealthy people face to face, in writing, in large groups, at special events, and over the Internet. And—once their attention has been gained—how to bring home the bacon. It solves the mystery of fundraising from foundations, those notoriously elusive entities that seem to house experts in closing doors, ignoring solicitations, and, when pressed for an answer, saying no. It also demonstrates how many ways there are to tap the resources of donors—large and small—for the institution that commands your respect, affect, and attention.

As President of Lincoln Center, Reynold Levy has led the effort to raise over one billion dollars in five years—among many other notable fundraising distinctions—and he is uniquely qualified to write this book..
Price: $16.72 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a basket of stocks that trades on an exchange with the same simplicity and liquidity of an individual stock. In this book, money manager Deron Wagner introduces the major types and families of ETFs and then provides step-by-step guidance to picking and trading funds. Unlike other books on ETFs, Wagner's strategies are based on technical analysis, a method of timing the market that greatly improves an investor's chances of predicting short and intermediate term ETF trends. Wagner's comprehensive catalog of the ETFs now available, his insights into successful trading techniques, and his solid research and informative examples, will be an invaluable resource for everyone trying to come up to speed on this new investment opportunity..
Price: $33.31 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1990 hedge funds managed some $39 billion of assets. By late 2006 that figure had grown to $1.3 trillion That is a staggering increase. Equally staggering is the amount of money successful hedge fund managers earn. In 2006 the top 25 hedge fund managers were paid $14 billion between them, with the top three earning over $1 billion each. Most people have heard the term 'hedge fund' but few are clear about what exactly a hedge fund is or what it does. This guide aims to put them in the picture with the clarity and lively prose that 'The Economist' is famous for.

It provides a succinct survey of the industry for all those who think they should know about hedge funds, but do not. It is aimed at all those who might want or have to deal with a hedge fund: private investors, trustees of a pension fund, directors of a listed company, and lawyers and accountants who may be interested in working in the industry. It is also aimed at those who happily criticize hedge funds without really knowing what they do..
Price: $13.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Everyone on Wall Street knows Jim Cramer, and Cramer knows Wall Street better than anyone. In the most candid and outrageous look at Wall Street since Liar's Poker, Cramer, co-founder of TheStreet.com, radio and television commentator, and for years a premier money manager, takes readers on the wild ride that is Wall Street -- revealing how the game is played, who breaks the rules, and who gets hurt.

Confessions of a Street Addict takes us from Cramer's roots in the middle-class Philadelphia suburbs to Harvard, where he began managing money, and then to Goldman Sachs, where he went into business with his wife -- Karen, the "Trading Goddess" -- as his partner. He brilliantly describes the life of a money manager: the frenetic pace, the constant pressure to outperform the market and other fund managers, and the sharklike attacks fund managers make as they circle a fund perceived to be in trouble.

Throughout the book Cramer is characteristically outspoken, offering his hard-won insights about the market and everyone in it, himself included. There has never been a more eloquent market insider than Cramer, nor a more high-octane book about Wall Street..
Price: $6.63 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Interviews and essays describe the way of life and crafts of pioneer America still surviving in the Appalachian region..
Price: $10.02 [Notify me when price goes down.]