The overriding motivation for writing The Unbeatable Market is what probably causes many other books to be written—you feel there's something important that needs to be said and no one else has quite been able to get it across. Most of what's said in any book isn't completely original. That's certainly true with The Unbeatable Market. I say in the acknowledgements section of the book that I am much more of a conduit than originator of ideas. If the book makes a significant contribution, it's in terms of "connecting the dots." My objective has been to make the important conclusions of academic research intelligible and useable for real world investors. I also wanted to make it clear how and why the financial services industry has misled and abused the investing public for the last several decades. Awareness is the first step to action, and as the psychologist Phil McGraw reminds us, "you can't change what you don't acknowledge." Perhaps the main reason I felt I had something worthwhile to say stems from my unusual combination of experience and training. Academics don't say what I do in the book because they don't have direct experience with investors. There are fundamental reasons why Wall Street's strategies don't work. Those reasons are difficult to make sense of without grounding the explanation on economic analysis. To most people, economic analysis is off-putting and unappealing. Readers have told me they've been surprised at how readable The Unbeatable Market is. After having taught economics for ten years and written over 500 columns on financial advice, I've developed ways for making rather dry topics digestible and interesting. Although other books that advocate index funds have been written, none of them go into depth about the logic behind the recommendations. My belief is that it's difficult to believe something unless you have at least a basic understanding of the issues involved. In The Unbeatable Market I systematically start with the fundamentals. Another major motivating factor for the book was outrage. After observing the behavior of Wall Street over the past 23 years, I've gotten fed up with the abuse the industry has inflicted on the investing public. Other books, of course, have been critical of Wall Street and the financial services industry. It seemed to me, however, that the books currently available pull their punches when they discuss the current state of the investment industry. They have been too circumspect in describing the kinds of abuses inflicted on investors and the degree of damage that's been done.
