Jerome Scanlan says:

This is much improved from the first and second editions. (I didn’t read the third edition and may not have read all of the second.) The book contains a lot of useful information, presented, for the most part, clearly, and Siegel’s commentary on the factual material he has compiled incorporates up to date research. The book can be read as a (slightly to moderately advanced) investment guide rather than just a compendium of reasons to chose stocks over other investments (or at least over fixed income investments). To his credit, Siegel has learned a lot about investing since the first edition.

Although this point is not made in the book, market indexes definitely can be beaten through the careful selection of actively managed mutual funds — requiring only (first) reading a broad selection of books on investing, subscribing to and reading Morningstar, and reading fund prospectuses and reports. (This may seem like a lot of work, but most of the time is spent upfront and at your own pace; and considering how long your money will be invested, the lifetime effort is minimal. A corollary to this approach is that a nonprofessional investor should never buy individual stocks. This not only will take more time than most people can afford, but for almost everyone will result in at best (assuming infrequent trading) the market return with a lot more risk.) Those, including many prominent economists, who believe it is impossible to identify funds that will outperform the market in the future are just wrong. Past performance can predict future success in investing as in most other endeavors. Admittedly, there is a theoretical basis — the efficient markets hypothesis — for contending that stock market investing is qualitatively different from, say, chess playing, but ascribing the results of the many long-term successful investors to luck or excess (and lucky) risk taking seems to me more an act of faith than reason. Finally, the beauty of investing through open-ended mutual funds is that unlike stocks, which generally are priced efficiently, a fund’s price is not affected by its demand. Thus, you can buy the best at the same price as the worst — i.e., the current market value of the stocks the fund owns. (It is true that as the better performing funds accumulate more assets their ability to execute their strategies can be affected, but responsible funds attempt to mitigate this situation by closing, sometimes even to current investors.)
Rating: 5 / 5

A. Raffo says:

If you have no training in finance, this book is a good starting point. Don’t expect to trade like a pro after reading this, though. It provides a perspective, an interesting big picture. The historical accounts are worth exploring. The tables are the information you want to take with you. Too many institutional details for my tastes, but it is probably fine for an introductory book.
Rating: 4 / 5

H. Li says:

It’s well written. Tells you how to manage your portfolio in the long run. Good for those people who live long enough to benefit from the statistics summarized for the performance of US stock market in over 200 years.

Personally, I would more prefer books on stock market bubbles, which tell you how to get your ass off the market before it crashes.

Overall, it’s a good book, worth 4 stars.
Rating: 4 / 5