Amazon Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review to be helpful:
A big wake up call, January 2, 2007
By OC Dan
The Big Investment Lie illuminates in interesting and entertaining ways the scary reality in America that tens of millions of individual investors, to their own enormous detriment, blindly and naively put huge sums of money into the hands of financial professionals who not only cannot consistently beat the market average, but also certainly rarely by enough margin to cover their fees.
Edesess, a mathematician who seems to have a knack for relating economic, financial, and business concepts through everyday stories and simple mathematical explanations, raises a red flag very high to warn readers that they should look more carefully at what fees they are paying for the returns they are getting. He shows how fees that may look small but are actually high can have a huge impact on capital appreciation and easily cost average investors tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, over a lifetime of saving and investing.
Although his thinking about such topics as low cost index fund investing seems to be much in the same vein as Vanguard founder John Bogle and other low fee gurus and is therefore not necessarily original, the fact that so many millions of individual investors are still duped into chasing, at considerable cost, the higher returns fantasy that is cleverly dangled in front of them by the Wall Street marketing machine means that the message clearly still has not gotten through! Edesess's points, conveyed both through anecdote and analysis, are highly relevant and important because if taken to heart, they could probably save the individual investor community in the US billions of dollars. Wall Street might not like people to read wake up calls like The Big Investment Lie or another one in 2006 called Wall Street Versus America, but individual investors would be extremely well served to do so.
13 of 13 people found the following review to be helpful:
Refreshing de-bunker from a quant analyst, January 7, 2007
By California reader
This book, written for the layman, is an attack on the pretentions of investment managers. The author, Michael Edesess, earned a PhD in mathematics from Northwestern and worked for years as a researcher and consultant in the investments industry. His book is in the same vein as Burton Malkiels' classic "A Random Walk Down Main Street". I found the chapters on hedge funds and quant models especially entertaining. Mr. Edesess is not impressed by quant hedge fund models and suggests avoiding them like the plague. My one reservation about his philosophy is that it is impossible to refute random-walk theorists, because they attribute any successful result which contradicts their studies to the law of large numbers. IE the stock market is so huge, even a mutual fund which beats the benchmark index for several years in a row is dismissed as a feat of luck. It does not seem emotionally possible for the random-walkers to admit evidence which contradicts their position. That being said, I think this is an extremely well-written guide for the layman investor.
13 of 15 people found the following review to be helpful:
FLEECE AVOIDANCE, March 14, 2007
By P. Weinstock
Humans have evolved through The Era Of Tooth And Fang, and the Era Of The Sword.
Now they are in the Era Of The Con. The purpose of the Con is to separate the gullible from their freedom, their money, their reason, and sometimes, their lives, for the benefit of the selfish and ambitious.
In the United States, the Con in promulgated by four major social institutions: Politics, Religion, The Media and Wall Street/Corporations.
The Big Investment Lie tells the gullible how and why they are being fleeced by Wall Street. It is probably a futile effort but it is an intelligent and courageous effort nonetheless.
Applying sophisticated mathematical principles and an insider's working knowledge of the "Street," Dr. Edesess dissects with surgical precision the ever-shifting deceptions, techniques and psychological ploys used by professional investment advisors to mask their exorbitant fees, exaggerate their mediocre performance and perfect their sales misdirections.
He also lays out with clarity "Ten New Commandments For Smart Investing" that will help the average investor harness the immutable power of mathematics to boost his portfolio over time without anxiety.
I wish Dr. Edesess had written this book and I had read it at the start of my earning career.
P. & M. Weinstock
9 of 10 people found the following review to be helpful:
finalcial services industry critical thinking 101, April 23, 2007
By Harry S. Pariser
The Publishers Weekly review above is completely off the mark. Mr. Edessess offers balanced portraits of Buffett and shows the true record of Fidelity Magellan. His debunking of hedge funds is both homorous and informative.I think his point that many people are wedded to their "will to believe" is quite accurate. As he points out, 80% (or threabouts) of funds charge large fees yet underperform their index. Recommended reading.
9 of 10 people found the following review to be helpful:
This Is Not The Ranting Of Someone Who Is Ignorant Of What Is Going On In The Invesment World., April 23, 2007
By Norman Goldman
Economist and mathematician Michael Edesess author of The Big Investment Lie: What your financial advisor doesn't want you to know lambastes investment advisors and money managers and says that they are profiting from a big lie-promising that they can beat the market and do better than you can in investing your hard earned money.
This is not the ranting of someone who is ignorant of what is going on in the investment world. Edesess is a highly educated and respected economist who currently chairs the board of directors at International Development Enterprises USA. Over the years he has worked as an independent consultant to institutional investors, and he was the founding partner and chief economist of the Lockwood Financial Group until it was sold for $200 million to The Bank of New York.
His areas of expertise cover the range of applications of mathematics to investments, including performance and risk measurement.
In other words, he is a serious thinker whose arguments merit attention, although they will probably result in many infuriating responses from the individuals and companies he criticizes.
Edesess main arguments can be summed up as follows: investment advisors and investment manages don't have a crystal ball and they cannot predict the future. Furthermore, they do not give you good value for your money as the benefits they provide are not worth their cost. On average they don't earn more money for you than you could probably earn on your own without their "expertise." And they certainly don't know how to beat the market no matter what technology and research they may have available at their finger tips.
Most of the hype that is proliferated is based on a Big Lie that only serves to fill the pockets of these individuals with their high fees. In fact, as Edesess points out, many investors don't even realize that they are using high-cost services that typically cost 2 to 3 percent of an investor's assets annually. The arguments used by these investment managers and advisors is that people want professional advice and they feel more assured when they receive it. However, as Edesess states: "But the business would be gradually reduced to a much small, much less lucrative business if it made a practice of telling the whole truth and advising clients accordingly." Consequently, it is obliged as an entire industry to engage in the Big Lie in order to keep its business lucrative-underplaying its fees and overstating benefits in any way that are legally permissible.
Edesess harsh critique is divided into three parts where he shows how much you pay, how little you derive and the way it is sold to you.
He asks the question-why do we continually give Golden Crumbs to rich people and then goes onto explain why for the most part the advice we are paying for does not increase your wealth. Concrete examples as well as personal anecdotes are provided to support Edesess's argument that professional investment managers should not be expected to beat the market.
In his indictment of the Big Lie, Edesess may come across as a cantankerous man; however, he is right on the mark when he exposes the investment gobbledygook that is incorporated into the effective pitches to sell the Big Lie. These include, as he points out, using facile figures, technical words that most people don't understand, look respectable, earnest, and sincere, exploit the client's will to believe, move on-quickly-past objections, project the savvy look, be well prepared to co-opt counterarguments, always have a new line or product ready, "speak in tongues"- or bleed the language of its meaning, and lastly don't forget to emphasize your sophisticated technology.
Every page of The Big Investment Lie: What your financial advisor doesn't want you to know illustrates Edesess's depth of knowledge and how widely and deeply he has thought about his subject matter. He succeeds in getting you to reconsider your investment habits and behavior. He also concludes in presenting his Ten New Commandments for smart investing-something we should all pay heed to.
Norm Goldman, Editor Bookpleasures
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