Unconventional Success

Unconventional Success is an essential guide that teaches investors to manage their financial assets. Equipped with incontrovertible evidence why the for-profit mutual-fund industry consistently fails the average investor, it also contains the common practice of selling losers and buying winners damages portfolio returns and increases tax liabilities, delivering a one-two punch to investor aspirations. This book presents a wide variety of topics - from excessive management fees to the relentless pursuit of profits by mutual-fund management companies, including "pay-to-play" product-placement fees, stale-price trading scams, soft-dollar kickbacks, and 12b-1 distribution charges. Unconventional Success also features a 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.