The 3 Simple Rules of Investing: Why Everything You’ve Heard about Investing Is Wrong # and What to Do Instead

Michael Edesess is a founding partner and the chief investment officer of Fair Advisors LLC and author of The Big Investment Lie Kwok L. Tsui is chair professor at City University of Hong Kong and heads its Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management. Carol Fabbri is a managing partner at Fair Advisors LLC and coauthor of Personal Investing: The Missing Manual. A 27-year investment industry veteran, GEORGE PEACOCK is a principal at Compendium Financial Investment Advisory, the founder and manager of the Purchasing Power Portfolio, the author of the Yoga of Investing blog, and the managing editor, investments for the online financial site FrankInsight.com. He entered the financial advisory business as an associate at American Express Financial Services (now Ameriprise). He also worked at the Wallace Financial Group, a regional insurance, investment, retirement, and financial planning firm, and Mullin Consulting, advising Fortune 1000 companies on niche compensation benefits for their senior executives. He returned to advising high-net-worth individuals and families when he joined the D.C. office of US Trust, which was later purchased by Bank of America. Mr. Peacock left Bank of America when the firm, like the rest of the investment industry, began relying increasingly on mathematical models whose output depended on a myriad of unknowable assumptions. At Euclid, he immediately established the Purchasing Power Portfolio, a precursor to the Simplify Wall Street approach described in this book. Mr. Peacock is the president of the Georgetown University Alumni Association and is an ex-officio member of the University’s board of directors. He is also a member of the External Advisory Board of the Georgetown University Alumni and Student Federal Credit Union, the largest student-run credit union in the country, and The Georgetown Chimes, an all-male a capella singing group. A part-time stand-up comic, he lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his four children, Duncan, June, Hayley, and Mackenzie.

Over the past several decades, there's been an explosion of investment strategies, products, services, and advisors. Yet, as longtime investment industry insiders show in this powerful exposé, almost all the popular investment strategies and products are based on confusion and deception and don't work, and almost all investment services and advisors cost far more than they are worth.

Foreword Preface Introduction. The Simplify Wall Street Portfolio Prologue. Why the Financial Industry Will Do Everything in Its Power to Stop You from Doing This Part I. The 3 Simple Rules of Investing Rule #1. Simplify Your Options Rule #2. Look Only Forward Rule #3. Tune out Noise Part II. Wall Street’s 7 Deadly Temptations Deadly Temptation #1. Beat the Market Deadly Temptation #2. Trust It All to Our Expertise Deadly Temptation #3. Precisely Calibrate Your Portfolio Deadly Temptation #4. Sleep Well at Night with Your Risk under Control Deadly Temptation #5. Use the Strategies That Always Work Deadly Temptation #6. Do What Wealthy and Sophisticated Investors Do Deadly Temptation #7. Use Modern Scientific Financial Theory Epilogue. Systemic Risk, Concentration of Economic Power, and the Financial Industry Notes Index About the Authors