Book Review: The New Coffeehouse Investor

By Harry Sit

I wrote a review for one of my favorite books The Coffeehouse Investor in February. A new edition came out this month. The title changed to The New Coffeehouse Investor. I read it with eagerness to see what’s new.

Everything in the original book is still there. This new book uses the same conversational style, like the author is telling you something over a cup of coffee. There are very few charts and tables. It’s still a small book, under 200 pages,  although with four new chapters, the page size had to be made larger than the previous edition. The four new chapters are:

Travels of a Coffeehouse Investor – How to deal with the sales pressure and the temptation for wanting to do better than the market, now that the market didn’t do well in the last ten years.

Spending It – How to manage a portfolio after you retire. Tracking the "burn rate" is much more important than fretting over allocating 45%, 50% or 55% to anything.

Index Funds and Beyond – Beware of sector and fundamental index funds and ETFs. Keep it simple.

The Journey Continues – Tune into yourself, your friends, and your community. Step out of the pursuit of free lunches because there is none.

I liked the previous edition because it is easy to understand and because it emphasizes on what really matters: take care of three big items — asset allocation, index funds, and saving — then get on with one’s life. With the addition of four new chapters, I like it even more. Investing should not be stressful. If you feel it’s stressful, you are trying too hard.

Rating: ***** (Excellent). Replacing the previous edition on my recommended reading list.

Reviews by other bloggers:

2.2% Rewards Card $444 Bonus

Earn 2.2% toward travel on all purchases with Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard. No caps and no foreign transaction fees. 40,000 bonus points if you make $1,000 or more in purchases in the first 90 days. $89 annual fee waived in the first year (40,000 bonus miles pay for 5 more years after that). Learn More

Software picked, likely related posts:

Posted on April 24, 2009 under Reviews.

Leave a comment

Comments

3 Comments on Book Review: The New Coffeehouse Investor

  1. chip aflack on April 12, 2010
     

    Fake review, we know you were paid for this. That book is pathetic.

  2. TFB on April 12, 2010
     

    chip – You are entitled to your opinion about the book but this review is not paid. I never write fake, paid reviews.

  3. Mike Showalter on March 13, 2011
     

    This book is terrific even for an investor like me who has been active in the market since June 1982. I welcome the case studies and have charted the investment vehicles on pages 184-185 to simplify my “Core”.

    About the same time I got TNCI, I found an audio book of Daniel Solin’s “The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read”. This book too offers plenty of advice and platforms to “..take control of your finances and end up in the top 5% of all professionally managed money…” The two books offer similar ideas and it has been a joy taking the best from each.

    One typo on page 184: DFA Intn’l Value is : DFIVX not EFIVX

    Thanks for a great treatise that was fun to read.

Tell me what you're thinking, but please don't spam. See comments moderation policy.