The 12% Solution: Earn A 12% Average Annual Return On Your Money, Beating The S&P 500, Mad Money's Jim Cramer, And 99% Of All Mutual Fund Managers... By Making 2-4 Trades Per Month

Better than other popular books on rotational momentum.

A light weight read that is totally US centric and not for serious investors.

The author makes a fair case for his theory on investing ......But the 10 year time frame he references is from the Crash of 2008 to 2017 is NOT representative of the typical up and down cycles usually experienced in long term investing. His case revolves around one of the longest Bull Markets ever experienced. Had he "back-date-proved" his theory for a longer period (1998-2017) t he case would be far less compelling. As with most financial books, good returns will be made in Bull Markets but when you mix in the "down years" the returns would be closer to 9%. Altogether not a bad return BUT........to be fair, the author does offer the wistful caveat "to be mindful of early redemption charges for trades of less than 30 days" as well as fund or ETF fees. But his entire time frame for trades IS - THIRTY DAYS - therefore you will be sure to incur early redemption fees 90% of the time. Then there are the inevitable short term gain taxes. When all is said and done, with all these fees chipping away, before you know it your returns are whittled down to the 7-1/2 % range. At the beginning of the book the author tells of Warren Buffet's "bet" in the S & P 500 Index ETF, which is tax efficient and has produced a return of 7.1% annually without the need for costly and somewhat risky monthly trading .........No muss.......No fuss.........No bother........Buy and Hold........Steady the course.......As they say: "It's a No-Brainer". Still, on a grand scale the extra .4% might prove telling over 20 years. In sum, the book is a fast read, being a scant 71 concisely written pages that have end of chapter bullet summaries for clarity of thought. The book is definitely a cut above the myriad of other "Financial Guru-Gobbledygook" books loaded with incomprehensible charts and untenable theories that can best be divined only through a Wegee Board or several degrees from Harvard or Wharton Business Schools. The books a "BUY" but if only to prove the veracity of the Wizard of Omaha's simple theory on investing for 99% of the population.

The book is a wonderful piece on how to earn additional percentage points over a typical buy and hold investment strategy. The concepts have a lot to offer the average investor doesn't want to pay a financial planner to try to get higher returns. The strategy showcases how anyone can get higher returns without giving your money to someone else. There's nothing really revolutionary about it, but the author does a great job of explaining a simple strategy that anyone can implement. Not to mention doing all of the back testing for us.A quick aside on some other reviews. Some of criticize the book because of the possible tax implications. If you're worried about the tax implications, just run the strategy inside tax-deferred accounts. Not to mention the fact that buy and hold investing the S&P 500 had a 50% + draw down in 2009, and the NASDAQ had a 70% reduction in its value in the years around 2000 to 2002. The book gives you a strategy to avoid those losses. It seems to me like paying taxes on a positive result is a reasonably small problem as opposed to trying to recoup 50% to 70% of your investment on a simple buy-and-hold strategy. Let's be clear. No one ever went broke paying taxes! You have to have a positive P & L before you have to pay taxes. I would pay taxes all day long in order to avoid those debilitating losses suffered in 2000 and 2009!! I also saw some reviews that questioned the back testing validity. Pretty much every online broker has a platform that you could backtest the strategies. I think it's a little harsh to be calling the strategy "nonsense" considering anyone could easily run the same back tests and come to the same conclusion the author did.Anyway, the book is a pretty solid strategy for adding percentage points to your annual returns over a long period of time. It's not going to make you rich overnight. However, it will probably make you rich enough to retire early. That's all we can ask for.

The 12% Solution was delivered to me last night. I read it last night. I've just finished conducting my own back testing using ETFReplay. The back testing results show a CAGR of 14.3%, Volatility at 10.9 and a -11.8 Max draw down. When I test I always want to see what the strategy would have made or lost in 2008. The back test results show the strategy would have gained 10.9% versus a lost of -38% for the S&P. I wanted to see if I could improve the results. I substituted IWM and replaced it with EFA. This improved the CAGR to 15.2, reduced the Volatility to 10.7 and reduced the Max draw down to 11.4. I read the other reviews and there were some good points made. David Alan Carter should be commended for writing this book. I've read a lot of investing books in the past and most of them are too long and contain little or no substance of value. The 12% Solution is concise, to the point and worth owning if you want to make money trading ETFs without a lot of hassle.