Say good-bye to expensive brokers! Forget gambling on their latest "hot stock," or their junk-bond or high-cost mutual funds recommendations. The results can be disastrous. Instead, veteran Wall Street Journal editor and CNBC commentator Douglas R. Sease shows you how to take back control of your money with a simple, safe, yet powerful investment program that can be tailored to your individual needs.
Writing with the solid backing of The Wall Street Journal, Doug Sease reminds us that many financial services providers try to make investing appear mysterious and difficult in order to justify their fees. They can sometimes draw you into feverish attempts to beat the market with the promise of huge profits, but that approach to investing can be an almost certain guarantee of failure.
The truth is that you can use a combination of inexpensive, easy-to-purchase investment vehicles -- stock-index mutual funds and inflation-indexed Treasury bonds -- to build a portfolio that will maximize your returns and minimize your risk. The low-cost market-matching performance of stock funds becomes the growth engine of your portfolio, while the bonds' steady, assured returns temper the stock market's volatility. In fact, combining a disciplined savings program with an equally disciplined investment program is a virtual guarantee of success. It puts more money into your investments instead of into Wall Street's pockets, and it gives you more of that most precious commodity: your time.
As one of the book's many special features, it provides interactive tools for readers to use to plan their finanical futures at winning.wsj.com. Best of all, Sease offers several chapters filled with portfolio recommendations that you can adapt for your own use, depending on your income, age, financial goals, and risk tolerance. He also includes specific information about portfolio-building throughout the book to show you how to make the most of your money and your time at each stage of your working life. Winning with the Market is the only book to offer this indispensable aid -- and the only book you need for a lifetime of successful, broker-free investing.

Douglas R. Sease, a veteran of twenty-four years with The Wall Street Journal, has been involved in market coverage for over a decade and has written extensively about markets and investing. He is the author of several other business books and appears regularly on CNBC as a daily commentator. He lives in Vero Beach, Florida, with his wife, Jane.

How This Book Will Make You a Better Investor

PART ONE: LESSONS FOR LONG-TERM INVESTORS

CHAPTER 1: Supercharging Your Portfolio with Savings

Tactical Saving

Strategic Savings: Opportunity Costs and Mental Money

Understanding Debt: The Good and the Bad

Making Your Savings Work for You

The Process of Saving

Tory's Portfolios: Stoking Investment Performance with Saving

CHAPTER 2: Stocks: The Foundation of a Strong Portfolio

Reality Check!

How to Think About Stocks and the Stock Market

The Odds Against You: The Efficient Market Hypothesis

Finding Value in Stocks 63

Growth Stocks: How High, How Fast?

Narrowing the Field: Market Capitalization

The Myth of IPOs

Foreign Stocks

The Paradox

CHAPTER 3: Bonds: The Safety Net

How to Think About Bonds

Bond Yields and Bond Prices

Bond Pricing: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

Calculating Bond Returns

The Bond Menagerie

Building a Bond Ladder

A Word on Treasury Direct

CHAPTER 4: Money Managers and Mutual Funds

Brokers

Money Managers

Financial Planners

Mutual Funds

Closed-End and Open-End Funds

Money Market Funds

Bond Funds

Stock Funds: Past Performance Is No Indicator of Future Performance

The Simple Solution: Index Funds

Index Fund Alternatives: Exchange-Traded Funds

PART TWO: PORTFOLIOS FOR LONG-TERM INVESTORS

CHAPTER 5: Understanding Risk and Return

Working Assumptions

Profit and Pain: Worst-Case Scenarios

Rebalancing

CHAPTER 6: Getting an Early Start: Portfolios for Long Time Horizons (and Little Money)

The Simple Portfolio

The Flexible Portfolio

Pooled Resources

Dedicated DINKs (Dual-Income, No Kids)

CHAPTER 7: Getting Serious: Portfolios for Your Thirties

Singles and DINKs in Their Thirties

Escaping the Rat Race

Couples with Kids: The Tuition Target

CHAPTER 8: Time Is of the Essence: Portfolios for Your Forties

DINKs at Middle Age

You've Got Those Tuition Bill Blues

CHAPTER 9: Making the Most of Limited Time: Portfolios for Your Fifties

Unlocking Home Equity Values

CHAPTER 10: Unleashing Your Assets: Portfolios for Retirement

More Strategies for Unlocking Home Equity

Portfolio Summary: Ages 25 Through 65

Epilogue: The Value of Time and Money

An Investor's Tool Kit

The World's Best Index Funds

Setting Up a Treasury Direct Account

How Much Can You Save? The Power of Compounding

How Much Can You Spend? Withdrawing Money in Retirement

Index