Go deeper, carefully
A short shelf beats a long feed. The books below have survived multiple market cycles; the data sources are primary; the glossary covers the terms this site uses.
"In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time — none, zero."
Books worth a decade
On the case for long-term ownership
- The Little Book of Common Sense Investing — John C. Bogle. The index-fund argument from its inventor, in an evening's read.
- Stocks for the Long Run — Jeremy Siegel. The standard reference on multi-decade asset returns and what drives them.
- Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits — Philip Fisher. For the satellite portion: what "quality worth holding forever" actually means.
On behavior — the harder half
- The Psychology of Money — Morgan Housel. Why reasonable beats optimal, and staying wealthy differs from getting wealthy.
- Your Money and Your Brain — Jason Zweig. What your own neurology does to you in bubbles and crashes.
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street — Burton Malkiel. The classic inoculation against systems, patterns, and hot tips.
Data and official references
| Source | What it's for |
|---|---|
| SPIVA scorecards (S&P Dow Jones Indices) | The long-running evidence on active funds versus their benchmarks, by country and period. |
| Morningstar "Mind the Gap" | Measured investor-return shortfalls versus fund returns — the behavior gap, quantified. |
| Robert Shiller's online data | Long-run US stock prices, earnings, dividends, and CAPE back to 1871. |
| IRS (irs.gov) | Current US contribution limits and capital-gains brackets. |
| 金融庁 NISA pages / 国税庁 | Official NISA rules and quotas; Japanese tax on investments. |
| 국세청 / 금융위원회 | Korean tax rules on overseas stock gains, dividend income, 연금저축·IRP·ISA specifics. |
| JPX (jpx.co.jp) and KRX (krx.co.kr) | Exchange-level index definitions and market statistics for Japan and Korea. |
This site deliberately links to categories rather than fund products. Any specific fund mentioned anywhere alongside these pages is an example, not a recommendation.
The terms this site leans on
Total return
Price change plus reinvested dividends. Long-run market statistics quoted on this site are total returns unless stated otherwise — over 30 years, reinvested dividends are a huge share of the outcome.
Nominal vs. real return
Nominal is the headline number; real is after inflation. The S&P 500's ~10% nominal long-run average is roughly 7% real. For decades-long planning, real is the number that buys groceries.
Index fund / ETF
A fund that mechanically holds every constituent of an index (like the S&P 500) at market weight, at very low cost. An ETF is simply an index (or other) fund that trades on an exchange like a stock.
Dollar-cost averaging (DCA)
Investing a fixed amount on a fixed schedule regardless of price. Guarantees you buy more shares when prices are low and fewer when high, and removes timing decisions entirely. See Strategy.
Drawdown / bear market
A drawdown is the fall from a peak to a trough; a bear market conventionally means a 20%+ decline. A 30-year plan should expect several. The recovery, not the decline, is where patient investors get paid.
CAPE (Shiller P/E)
Price divided by ten-year average inflation-adjusted earnings. Useful as a rough gauge of how expensive a market is versus its own history — and of why expected returns from very high starting valuations tend to be lower. Useless as a timing tool.
Sequence-of-returns risk
The risk that the order of returns hurts you even if the average is fine — a crash just before or after you start spending from the portfolio does far more damage than the same crash mid-accumulation. The reason allocations glide toward bonds as the goal nears.
NISA / iDeCo (Japan)
Japan's tax-free investment account (reformed in 2024: ¥3.6M annual, ¥18M lifetime capacity, indefinitely tax-free) and its locked-until-60 personal pension with income-deductible contributions. See Accounts & Tax.
연금저축 / IRP / ISA (Korea)
Korea's pension savings fund and individual retirement pension (tax credits plus tax-deferred growth, for Korean-listed funds), and the individual savings account with partly tax-free gains. See Accounts & Tax.
W-8BEN
The US tax form a non-US investor files with their broker to claim treaty withholding rates on US dividends (10% for Japan, 15% for Korea, instead of the 30% default).
Korea discount / Value-up
The persistent valuation gap between Korean companies and global peers, attributed to governance and payout practices — and the 2024 government program (modeled on Japan's reforms) aimed at closing it. See Markets.