Stocks for the long run

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

Over the long term, stocks have higher returns than bonds. What makes you think that is true? We simply do not have enough data to judge. Books like Stocks for the Long Run use incredibly poor methodology, because they left companies that failed out of their indexes ( http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/07/stocks-for-not-so-lon... ). And when we have reliable data, for the past forty years for instance, stocks have not necessarily had better returns. If you include other countries in the analysis, such as Japan, then the long term superiority of stocks looks even more suspect. And of course, past data is not predictive of future performance because the nature of investing changes (changes in corporate governance, changes in shareholder accountability, too much "dumb money" entering the market due to 401k plans, etc). Dividend payout rates…

#1 for me would be The Intelligent Investor , by Benjamin Graham. Also read all of Warren Buffett's Letters from the Chairman - they're all up on the Berkshire Hathaway website. Peter Lynch's books are good too. I see a lot of people here recommending A Random Walk Down Wall Street , which is a good book, but you're going to finish it and say "This investing stuff is too complicated for me. I think I'll just put my money in index funds." Which is perfectly sensible investment advice, but if that's all you want, I can tell you "Go invest in index funds" right now and save you a couple hours of reading. ;-) Jeremy Siegel's Stocks for the Long Run is like Random Walk - it's decent, but the conclusion is basically "go invest in a stock index fund and don't worry about it". I'm not even sure that's great advice right now - he bases a lot of hi…

I actually don't read any of the above unless linked from another source - too much noise, not enough signal. I read Programming Reddit, News.YC, and occasionally Startupping and LambdaTheUltimate. I try to keep up with some blogs of startup-type people - Dharmesh Shah, Joe Kraus, Raganwald, Paul Buchheit, Mark Fletcher, and Marc Andreesen and Wil Schroter look interesting based on their recently-linked news.YC articles. Also, don't underestimate the importance of good old fashioned dead-tree books. I know it's fashionable to spend all day online now, but I still find I get lots more information out of published works than the Internet (the net is great for pointers to books, though). I read a lot of history, economics, corporate histories, some biographies, theoretical computer science, etc. Some selected titles off my reading history (m…