Siegel Jeremy J. Stocks For the Long Run: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns and Long-Term Investment Strategies, 5th Edition

McGraw-Hill, 2014. — 448 p.The fourth edition of Stocks for the Long Run was written in 2007. During the last several years, as many of my colleagues my age had slowed the pace of their research, I was often asked why I was working so hard on yet another edition of this book. With a serious face I responded, “I believe that a few events of significance have occurred over the past six years.”A few events indeed! The years 2008 and 2009 witnessed the deepest economic recession and market collapse since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The disruptions were so extensive that I put off writing this edition until I gained better perspective on the causes and consequences of the financial crisis from which we still have not completely recovered.As a result, this edition is more thoroughly rewritten than any of the previous editions were. This is not because the conclusions of the earlier editions needed to be changed. Indeed the rise of U.S. equity markets to new all-time highs in 2013 only reinforces the central tenet of this book: that stocks are indeed the best long-term investment for those who learn to weather their short-term volatility. In fact, the long-term real return on a diversified portfolio of common stocks has remained virtually identical to the 6.7 percent reported in the first edition of Stocks for the Long Run, which examined returns through 1992.