Brian Livingston - Muscular Portfolios: The Investing Revolution for Superior Returns with Lower Risk

Livingston has used his computer savvy to crack Wall Street's money-making secrets and make them freely available to investors at every stage of life.

AL ZMYSLOWSKI, Board of Directors,
American Association of Individual InvestorsSilicon Valley Chapter

Overall the book looks great! I love the idea of empowering people to take control of their own investing.

DANIEL SOTIROFF, ETF Specialist columnist and analyst,
Morningstar Inc.

There's a wealth of information in this book that can help every do-it-yourself investor.

WES GRAY, PhD,
CEO of Alpha Architect

In his inimitable way, Livingston has taken a tough probleminvestingbroken it into component parts, analyzed the living daylights out of them with sophisticated computer runs, then extracted strategies that are both easy to understand and demonstrably superior.

WOODY LEONHARD,
best-selling author of Windows All-In-One For Dummies

The book does a great job of delivering important information to the individual investor in a very straightforward manner.

STEPHEN JONES,
Financial and Economic Analyst

As I was reading, I kept a list of questions, but by the time I reached the end, all my questions had been answered. Nice job.

BOB NEW, Engineer,
HP Inc.

This book and our other publications are protected by copyright law. The terms Muscular Portfolios, Papa Bear Portfolio, Mama Bear Portfolio, and Baby Bear Portfolio are registered trademarks of Publica Press. The term Publica Press and related designs are trademarks and service marks of Publica Press. Other parties copyrights, trademarks, and service marks are the property of their respective owners. You may print a copy of the information for your personal use only, but you may not reproduce or distribute the information to others without prior written permission from us.

This book and the information contained herein are impersonal and do not provide individualized advice or recommendations for any specific subscriber or portfolio. Investing involves substantial risk. Neither the publisher of this book, its authors, nor any of their respective affiliates make any guarantee or other promise as to any results that may be obtained from using the book. While past performance may be analyzed in the book, past performance should not be considered indicative of future performance. No reader should make any investment decision without first consulting his or her own personal financial adviser and conducting his or her own research and due diligence, including carefully reviewing the prospectus and other public filings of the issuer. To the maximum extent permitted by law, each author, the publisher, and their respective affiliates disclaim any and all liability in the event any information, commentary, analysis, opinions, advice and/or recommendations in the book prove to be inaccurate, incomplete, unreliable, or result in any investment or other losses. The books commentary, analysis, opinions, advice, and recommendations represent the personal and subjective views of the authors, and are subject to change at any time without notice. Some of the information provided in the book is obtained from sources which the authors believe to be reliable. However, the authors have not independently verified or otherwise investigated all such information. Neither the publisher, its authors, nor any of their respective affiliates guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any such information. Neither the publisher, its authors, nor any of their respective affiliates are responsible for any errors or omissions in this book.

Copyright 2018 by Brian Livingston
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

BenBella Books, Inc.
10440 N. Central Expressway, Suite 800
Dallas, TX 75231
www.benbellabooks.com
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Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
LCCN 2018019445 (print) | LCCN 2018028595 (ebook)

ISBN 9781946885388 (paper over board: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781946885630 (electronic)

Editing by Alexa Stevenson
Copyediting by Scott Calamar
Interior design by John D. Berry
Interior typesetting by Aaron Edmiston
Final layout by Karen Mason Creative
Ebook layout by MrLasers.com
Front cover design by Marc Whitaker/MTWdesign.net
Full cover design by Sarah Avinger
Indexing by WordCo Indexing Services

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1 Speed read (60 minutes)

First, read the illustrations and captions, and then go back and read the parts of the text that interest you.

2 Deep read (an easy weekend)

Go through the book, page by page. You only need to read it in sequence if you want to understand the information.

You can get value out of this book by reading it either way.

To keep this book simple, it refers only to United States laws and financial products. Other countries may have different regulations and product names.

Fortunately, Muscular Portfolios can be managed outside the US. Low-cost index funds that track global asset classes are available in many countries. Because non-US funds can use the same indexes as US funds, investors everywhere should enjoy roughly the same performance.

For two decades1990 through 2010I worked as an investigative journalist, revealing the secrets of the computer industry. I exposed products that didnt work, features advertised on the packaging that werent actually in the software yet, spammers, fraudstersyou name it.

Since then, Ive turned my gaze toward the investing businessand its 10 times worse. What we laughingly call the financial services industry is a cesspool filled with sharks intent on siphoning your money away and making it their own.

The good news is that it is absolutely possible to grow your savings with no fear of financial sharks or stock-market crashes. In the past few years, weve seen an explosion of low-cost index funds, along with serious mathematical breakthroughs in how to combine these funds into low-risk portfolios.