Rating: 
Summary: The stock market cannot make everyone rich!
Review: An interesting and educational book about stocks, but it could be dangerous for some people who may come to believe the stock market will make them rich if only they have the patience. To warn these people, I quote Professor Siegel himself from an article: "In a severe inflationary period, real estate tends to do better than stocks, as the 1970's demonstrated. By contrast, severe inflation would devastate bonds, just as it would stocks."* Elsewhere in this article, the Professor makes it clear that over a 30-year period you can expect real estate (in his book I can't find a place where he considers real estate as a viable investment alternative) to outperform stocks and bonds. I know inflation has been under control now for quite awhile, but no one knows what inflation will be like in 10 years, let alone in 30 years. I recommend this book for the education about the stock market it provides the reader. *Jonathan Clements, "Investing Isn't Just Happily Ever After," The Wall Street Journal, March 2, 1999, p. C1.
Rating:
Summary: The stock market cannot make everyone rich!
Review: An interesting and educational book about stocks, but it could be dangerous for some people who may come to believe the stock market will make them rich if only they have the patience. To warn these people, I quote Professor Siegel himself from an article: "In a severe inflationary period, real estate tends to do better than stocks, as the 1970's demonstrated. By contrast, severe inflation would devastate bonds, just as it would stocks."* Elsewhere in this article, the Professor makes it clear that over a 30-year period you can expect real estate (in his book I can't find a place where he considers real estate as a viable investment alternative) to outperform stocks and bonds. I know inflation has been under control now for quite awhile, but no one knows what inflation will be like in 10 years, let alone in 30 years. I recommend this book for the education about the stock market it provides the reader. *Jonathan Clements, "Investing Isn't Just Happily Ever After," The Wall Street Journal, March 2, 1999, p. C1.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Two Best Books on Investing
Review: Buy what you know. Hold those investments long term. You can't beat the market. It's all so simple. This is important reading.
Rating:
Summary: The Definitive Guide to Investing in the Stock Market
Review: I cannot put into words how valuable this book is to investors and those wanting to learn about investing alike. Whether you've invested your entire life or are curious about it from the recent stock market boom, Dr. Siegel clearly expresses why one must be in the market over the long run and how to do it. With comprehensive graphs and easy to understand explanations, this book delivers an "all in one" knockout about equities. From international markets to the heated debate of growth versus value stocks, "Stocks for the Long Run" covers the entire spectrum of opportunities that exist for investors. Readers will also gain an understanding of how monetary policy works in the United States. Wanting to know why the stock market boom has been occurring, why there is widespread misunderstanding about stocks, or the advantages and disadvantages to small caps? All are carefully detailed in this book. Dr. Siegel draws upon a plethora of historical evidence dating back to the early 19th century to make a compelling case for stocks so that people can live their lives instead of worrying about their financial future. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to reap the huge benefits of the stock market. Dr. Siegel is one of few people who understands how the market works and has the ability as an excellent writer to convey that knowledge. I guarantee you that this will be the best 20 bucks you've ever spent.
Rating:
Summary: Long Run Indeed (pt 2)
Review: I must say that on re-reading this book I find the data pretty convincing. Stocks do hold up fairly well against other forms of investment, and that's Siegel's message.
Rating:
Summary: This book is an education, not a panacea.
Review: Many reviewers are disapointed that Siegel doesn't tell them how to get rich quick. He's a researcher, not a guru. His goal is to understand the truth about his subject and convey that understanding to his readers, not tell you what you want to hear. Anyone who wants to base their investments on the most scientifically grounded information available today should read this book. Anyone want an excuse to gamble in the name of investing should steer clear.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for Stocks, Bad for the Individual Investor
Review: Siegel's book is a good read, and he makes the case for equities a compelling one. However, if you're already aware that bonds, savings accounts, and gold are terrible long-term investments due to erosion from taxes and inflation (let alone lousy performance), then this book's strongest point is moot. Siegel's extensive research (some of which has been previously published) overwhelmingly supports the long-term investor; not the long-term investor as defined by today's market paradigm, i.e., long = 12-18 months, but rather looooong, like 20-30 years long...Two-day corrections or eighteen month bear markets can't hold a candle to Siegel's evidence proving that being 100% invested for long periods of time makes for sound financial acumen. Unfortunately, after all that great evidence, Siegel leaves individual investors at the altar, as he concludes that the only way for us to enjoy any investment success is to plunk most of our money in diversified mutual funds with low expense ratios (preferably index funds). This comes off like some kind of a thinly-veiled Vanguard endorsement and is extremely anti-climactic, considering all the great info in the previous chapters. I guess it's good to have on your bookshelf the next time the market drops 512 points and you become tempted to liquidate, because Seigel definitively proves you're better off sticking with stocks through thick and thin.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Introduction and Reference, Praise is Deserved
Review: Siegel's third edition is the best introduction to the traditional assets classes (i.e., stocks and bonds) that I have ever read, hands-down. This book has two strengths: One, it is a rigorous empirical study of historical market returns and their components. Two, it is broad and accessible introduction to various investment theories and styles, economic influences (e.g., inflation, business cycles, economic data) and newer product categories like exchange-traded funds. This is an ambitiously broad anthology chock-full of important topics, so it serves as a great starting point for new students of investment theory. For example, his Chapter on "Gold, the Federal Reserve and Inflation" is a brief, helpful introduction to the history of monetary policy. Another great Chapter is "Market Volatility," which illustrates that market volatility has been remarkably stable over the long run, with some violent exceptions. What I really love about Siegel is his intent: he wants to educate the average investor and he is not dogmatic. I understand that a handful of negative reviews arise from a credible concern that the stock market could be a lot more hazardous in the future than in the past, but Siegel is not blindly extrapolating into the future. It is pretty unfair to call this "naïve empiricism," by the way. His conclusion is more specific and relative: he believes stocks should outperform bonds, but they will downshift from the long-run historical pattern to outperform bonds by about 2%, give or take. He reaches this conclusion by showing how the stock market has historically averaged roughly 7% percent in real returns over any long-run stretch. He then presents various alternative valuation models and shares his carefully qualified conclusion: that economic factors justify an modest upward revision in the price-earnings ratio (P-E ratio) to the low 20s, and from that starting point, we might look forward to real equity returns of "4 to 5 percent." Granted, he then goes on to discuss some factors that could well propel returns even higher, and one big unfavorable factor that could send them lower (i.e., the demographic problem of fewer investors in the developed world). But you get to see how his model works, and he serves up each assumption logically and in balanced form so that you can consider the conclusion for yourself. In this vein and offered as a minor critique at the margin, I happen to question his assumption that higher equity valuations per se lead to increased earnings (via cheaper stock offerings and hence cheaper investment capital) because I do not think you can necessarily assume that more capital leads to better investments. Also, he does not address or incorporate the dilution effects of employee stock options. Similarly, his case for "buy and hold" is balanced. The data in the Chapter on "Stocks and the Business Cycle" could in fact be used to advocate market timing. Siegel shows that successful timing (or more specifically, buying near the bottom) produces impressive returns. He just thinks it is really hard to predict business cycles. This is the bible of traditional classes, and so I would note that there is no discussion of so-called alternative investments (e.g., hedge fund, private equity, real estates). Also, I missed the lack of an explicit discussion of asset allocation; can we maybe get that in the next edition?
Rating:
Summary: The best introduction to true and dedicated investment ever.
Review: This book is not meant to make you rich in your pocket, although it could if you carefully pay attention to its message "patience is the vertue". Great outline/charts to illustarte stocks advantage against any investment mechanism in the long run.
I got this book as a gift from my broker 5 years ago and have been wiser since.
Rating: 
Summary: one more thing
Review: This is just an addendum to a review I already wrote; some other reviewers point out that this is not a guide on how to pick stocks, and that is true. I would like to emphasize that the studies of past market behavior described in this book don't seem to point to any reliable method of picking individual stocks, or even evaluating fund managers in any statistically significant manner. This was not a problem for me; the main thrust of the book is that the stock market is the best (only) way to ensure that 'wealth' a) is not gobbled up by inflation and b) has a good chance of appreciating past inflation. With those simple goals in mind, investing in a whole-market index fund with a couple of more focused other index funds doesn't seem like such a bad idea. To really take advantage of the historical perspective offered in this book, it seems very important to keep dollar-cost averaging into these funds even (especially!) during market down times. If your time horizon is long enough, those relatively low-cost purchases will come back in a big way. If you just buy once, you can be sure that after 40 years that purchase will not have lost ground to inflation, but there is no guarantee on the state of the market at the time you need to cash out; to really take advantage of the performance of the market, you must keep buying into it through thick (more or less) but especially thin. In that regard, the secret to financial success is not so much picking x amount of 10-baggers as it is to keep putting money away through all financial conditions that you can manage. Spend less, save more, and put your savings where they have the best chance to grow.
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