“Jackass Investing” Becomes #1 Best-Selling Mutual Fund Book on Amazon Kindle

Feb. 6, 2012 - PRLog -- www.JackassInvesting.com

Thornton, Pennsylvania – Jackass Investing: Don’t do it. Profit from it., has become the #1 best-seller in the mutual fund category on the Amazon Kindle. It has also received an average 5-star review (the highest rating) on Amazon.com, where reader reviews praise it for being “smart, witty and wise.”

The investment book, written by hedge fund manager Mike Dever of Brandywine Asset Management, preaches the virtues of investment portfolio diversification. But the approach to diversification presented by Mr. Dever is significantly different from what is preached as “conventional” portfolio diversification. For example, with regards to the conventional wisdom that an investment portfolio should be diversified among stocks and bonds, Mr. Dever states, “a person who is 60% long stocks and 40% long bonds is taking unnecessary risk (his definition of “Jackass Investing”). They are gambling.”

“I’m pleased that the book has been so well-received” said its author, “I wrote it to uncover many of the costly and misleading investing myths that are repeated, without rational evaluation, by the investment press and most financial professionals. The poor quality of investment advice they receive is clearly evidenced in people’s investment results.”

As indicated by its title, Jackass Investing is not your conventional investment book. In each chapter Mike Dever presents one common investment myth, then dispels that myth using research that comes from his 30 years of experience, together with relevant anecdotes. The research makes it real. The anecdotes make it entertaining. For example, in the chapter titled “Myth #3: You Can’t Time the Market,” Mr. Dever leads with the Seinfeld episode “The Opposite,” where George Costanza comes to the realization that “every decision I’ve ever made…has been wrong…Every instinct I have…It’s all been wrong.”

In the remainder of the chapter Mike Dever then shows how George Costanza’s lament also applies to investors. He shows how most people have bad instincts when it comes to investing and how their decisions are the opposite of what they should be. If this sounds like a description of your investment decisions, you must read Jackass Investing. Importantly, Mr. Dever doesn’t stop with simply entertaining readers and showing them what is wrong; he provides them with a specific path to improve their investment performance.

While it is Mike Dever’s writing that makes the book so readable, it is the “Action Section” on the http://jackassinvesting.com/home/ web site that makes it so useful. In the Action Section Mr. Dever presents an additional 80+ pages of investment information and specific actions investors can take to turn what he calls a “Poor-folio” into a truly diversified investment portfolio. A valuable book all by itself, the Action Section for Jackass Investing presents specific mutual funds and ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) that investors can invest in to help them achieve true portfolio diversification.

Mike Dever’s writing is direct and to the point and it becomes succinctly clear when reading Jackass Investing that most of what has been preached as conventional investment wisdom is wrong. But in Jackass Investing he also makes it clear that it is not necessary to gamble to earn favorable returns. There is a “Free Lunch” of both greater returns and less risk that can be obtained through “true” portfolio diversification. Helpfully, in the final chapter he shows readers specifically how true portfolio diversification can be achieved.

About Jackass Investing:
The book Jackass Investing: Don’t do it. Profit from it., was written by Mike Dever, founder of Brandywine Asset Management, and published by Ignite Publications. It is available in hardcover and paperback, as well as all major eBook formats (Kindle, Nook and iBook). The book has achieved its success through word-of-mouth promotion and highly-favorable reviews. This is the first press release issued for Jackass Investing.