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This is an interesting book in a nice series of books on investing. The overall aim of the book is to prove that if you plan to invest then you need to think long term and forget about the noise. Even on the time-scale of a few years you can be lured into "playing the market". As Bogle sees it, the key is to find something low cost, transparent and simple. While other schemes may make a lot of money in one year, it may perform disastrously in another year. In the short term, you or any other fund manager may be able to beat the market but in the long term it is almost impossible. The evidence is provided in this book.

The book is written in simple language and should be understood by the layman. There are graphs/ charts to explain key points and plenty use of numbers but that shouldn't put anyone off. People whom are interest in finance and investing may be disappointed that this book doesn't provide any secret tip for beating the market. Instead the whole point of this book is to simply buy the market. While this is an index-tracking fund, the author's preference is towards mutual funds rather than ETFs. There is a crucial difference as ETFs have counter-party risk. Bogle isn't simply advocating using an index fund but rather the mutual fund structure in particular.

One thing that may not be so obvious from this book is that while price can go down you shouldn't necessarily worry as companies will still pay dividends, even in a 'flat' market companies will still pay dividends which adds up significantly over time. To be clearer, the author highlights the importance of dividends but (from memory) he didn't expound the previous point that dividends count for a lot when the market is flat. When you become fixated on price you will only look at capital appreciation (price change) instead of the most important figure which is total return. Bogle points out that the reinvestment of dividends is where the long-term 'magic' lies.

Bogle notes that some fund managers can, and do, beat the market over a short time scale. We can all point to managers (retrospectively!) that have had a 40% or 50% return in a given year but often they under-perform on the scale of decades. Which comes back to the notion that investing is for the long-term, such as building up a big pension pot while you are in work. Most people don't have the time to do all the necessary research, create the models, and then test the model before attempting to beat the market. Don't try to beat the market as very few people can do it, and even those that do are unlikely to do it in the long term. The problem with the industry as a whole is that a simple, low-cost fund is boring and doesn't sell; how can a salesman expect a huge commission on a product that doesn't promise any sex or violence?