The Intelligent Portfolio : Practical Wisdom on Personal Investing from Financial Engines

The key to good investment decisions is making informed choices. And while you cannot predict the future, it is possible to create investment strategies that can maximize your chances of success. In The Intelligent Portfolio, author Christopher Jones shows you how this can be accomplished. Written with the thoughtful investor in mind, The Intelligent Portfolio draws upon the extensive insights of Jones and Financial Engines—a leading provider of investment advisory and management services founded by Nobel Prize winning economist William F. Sharpe—to reveal the time tested institutional investing techniques that individuals can use to help improve their investment performance. Throughout these pages, Financial Engines Chief Investment Officer, Christopher Jones, uses state of the art simulation and optimization methods to demonstrate the often surprising results of applying modern financial economics to personal investment decisions. By illustrating the realistic range of possible investment outcomes, Jones skillfully reveals how the decisions you make today can impact your financial future. Challenging conventional wisdom that often leads both novice and experienced investors astray, The Intelligent Portfolio builds from basic intuition on how financial markets function to practical tips on evaluating investment trade offs and real world advice on selecting investments to better reach your goals. Along the way, you ll be introduced to the proven principles—a mix of common sense and counterintuitive concepts—that will put you in a better position to succeed, including: Recognizing the link between risk and reward Leveraging the wisdom of the market Minimizing losses due to investment fees Avoiding the risks of stock picking Selecting funds using relevant forward looking criteria Understanding how to realistically fund financial goals Investing tax efficiently And much more . . . In addition to the information outlined throughout this book, you ll also receive a fee waiver for a one year investment advisory account at FinancialEngines.com, so that you may apply what you ve learned here to your own investment endeavors. Through simple explanations of powerful investment ideas and real world examples that bring them to life, The Intelligent Portfolio reveals what you need to know when making personal investment decisions. With this book as your guide, you ll quickly discover how you can effectively implement the strategies that institutional investors have known for decades—helping you achieve a brighter financial future.