The Little Book of Common Sense Investing

by: John Bogle

May 02, 2025

finance

Investing has been one of my interests for several years. After several years of investing, reading many publications and videos, I find that I made a mistake. I should have started by reading this book.

There are no tricks or rules that fundamentally change the approach to investing. I will say more, this book is too long. It can be summarized with this statement: Buy and hold a low cost index fund. It would be best to call it an ETF. To expand on this short thought, I will add: it’s better to invest in ETFs than mutual funds because they track the whole (or a significant portion) market and have very low costs. There are many chapters here, but the essence of each of them comes down to the thesis I have cited. The author presents many statistics, charts and data to support his arguments.

After all, he is the founder of one of the largest investment funds - the Vanguard Group. Of course, it offers products that fit into John Bogle’s investment philosophy.

If you are just starting to get interested in investing, this book is a must-read. You will see that passive investing is for you. It will probably be the right approach to investing for most readers. The book is short, but it could be much shorter. The author is honest with you - the best way to achieve a satisfactory profit is to buy cheap instruments and have a lot of patience.