Review of The Gone Fishin' Portfolio: Get Wise, Get Wealthy...and Get on With Your Life (Agora Series) (Hardcover)

I just finished reading this book and thought it was pretty good overall.However, as an experienced investor, I know that there are no magic bullets in investing.The book shows performance of the portfolio over the past seven or so years.In those years, the S&P 500 (domestic stocks) performed rather poorly while gold, other commodities, real estate and foreign investments did exceedingly well.This portfolio stays invested at all times in all of these asset classes.

I took the liberty of backtesting the same portfolio for the ten years preceeding the 2000's, and the S&P 500 way outperformed this portfolio.This did not surprise me given the fact that we were in a full blown bull market.Those other asset classes underperformed, some badly.

I think that the Gone Fishin Portfolio will perform relatively well in more uncertain markets.However, I am not convinced that will happen when the domestic markets rally strongly.

My point here is that the oversimplification will lure rookie investors into a false sense of security.

I am sorry, but even if you are using a broadly diversified portfolio of mutual funds or ETF's, you must pay attention and understand the weakness of such a simplified approach. You will have to spend more time on your portfolio than 20 minutes a year.



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Review of Safe Strategies for Financial Freedom (Hardcover)

I gave it an extra star because at least Van Tharp tries to offer some real investment alternatives; unlike every other fluff-ball financial planning book.

Unfortunately, most of the investments he offers are filled with landmines that have ruined many experienced & educated investors.When he discusses investments, he doesn't talk much about downside risk, except by ending chapters with "do your due diligence".

The passive investment Tharp recommends most often is real estate (with some incredible return claims).And he points to his seminar buddy John Burley as the trainer you should use. I just received a flyer today hyping John's latest Boot Camp, and it costs $6,000. Maybe he's a great teacher, but his brochure has all the traits of a sleazy scammer.

Tharp spends a lot of time telling you how to predict the inflation rate, or whether the U.S. dollar is going up or down. If Tharp, or any of his students could do this - they would easily be trillionaires, but he can't point to any.Throughout the book, I kept wanting to see "Where is the proof?" Just claiming that you have a backtested model is NOT proof, and only a fool would invest based on this (every beginning trader knows this and Tharp claims he's an expert?). Tharp's evidence comes from the other authors. But they are newsletter writers that make a living selling newsletters - not from their trading profits!

Rather than go into many more examples of his vague "successfully redeploying assets", I'll just say that: since Tharp describes himself as The Leader in investment psychology (and coaches the best investors) - I expected real substance. If you buy this book, you are only paying for Van Tharp's Financial Freedom.

I also spent $100 for Tharp's accompaning software thinking that maybe all the 'huge return examples' alluded to in the book was in his "upsell" product. Wrong. You input your financial information and it adds it up and displays a graphic showing your income & expenses each month. But I already knew these numbers - I was the one that input them!! If you click on the discussions it basically repeats vague stuff from the book.



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