The Investor's Dilemma: How Mutual Funds Are Betraying Your Trust And What To Do About It

First of all... financial planner and mutual fund advisor are not going to recommend this book to any of their potential customers... Well, since I am not going to be their potential target, of course I have this book on my shelf, LOL.

Wow... what a book! It reveals tons of "betraying" stuff and the author successfully wrote a superbly researched and well organized book. The chronology and evolvement of fund management are well researched and readers will enjoy reading every single facts of it. Honestly, those "betrayal" stuff may sounds familiar to financial guys like me. But, a refresh always serves as a good reminder and I truly appreciate the hard work by the author.

In fact, something ponders my mind after finished the whole book. This book not only reveals some of the significant betrayal stuff. It also reveals how tough it is to survive in the cruel world of investment. So, the next question is: Are they betraying investors purposely or they simply could not find a way to beat the market consistently? At the end, when a player cannot win consistently, playing with marketing gimmicks (with the aim at short term financial goals) seems to be the better and easier method to survive... So, this is why we have the situations where mutual funds tend to focus more on the management fee rather than the fund performances. More evidence were pointed out by the author when most of the time, the key men of the fund never invested their own money alongside the public. Sounds weird, but true...

Another good (cruel in fact) point presented by the author is on the facts that the fund wanted to use the assets in the fund themselves. In short, they simply wanted to take a portion of investment to pay for ads in Money magazine and the like. Further evidence was found when the author describes Fidelity as a marketing firm rather than an investment company. I personally enjoy the examples given by the author by comparing the fund management against the soap maker of Unilever. Amazingly, they are actually so close to each other in terms of picking up profit, LOL.

Overall, this is a splendid book to explore... I personally rate it at 10/10. It is a book for all who are keen to invest in mutual funds...