The Sloth Investor

Was very curious to read the book as I started my investing journey a year ago and already had some knowledge about investing. I really loved Sloth Investment approach and can see myself starting to implement in my investing journey straight away.

I really liked the fact that a book had a section of examples for investment portfolios for investors all around the world. Because personally my biggest struggle with financial books that they are predominantly focused on US markets and targeted toward US residents. Was very nice to see diversity in that sense.

Great beginners book however heavily focuses on Vanguard so I would probably recommend to read a couple of their investment books to learn more about different investment managers/ advisers.

I hugely relate to less-is-more mentality and it’s definitely what this book is about, overall 10/10 recommendations for beginner investors who still has a stigma that investing is complicated and for the rich.

If you're coming at this book having heard nothing about investing or retirement planning, then you're all set. The problem, though, is that several other authors have trod this same path before, and R P Stevens offers little in the way of new information that couldn't have been found by reading The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, or The Millionaire Next Door.

With one exception -- he spends an inordinate amount of time talking about expatriates and their investing habits. I was not aware that was what I was about to get into when I picked up this book. As he is a English expat living in Canada, I suppose it's a relevant perspective for him, but it was completely useless for me.

For context, I hate to say it, I hope I don’t sound ridiculous, I don’t know who this man is. I mean, he could be walking down the street (or speaking on a podcast), and I wouldn’t know a thing. Sorry to this man.

Prior to reading this book, I was not aware of the author or their podcast they frequently promote. Based on the non-financial context, namely the anecdotes and examples, I’m clearly not the target demographic (white man who plays sports) but as the author argues, investing should be for all so here I am.

I can’t help myself, I need to get this off my chest. Respectfully, I cannot help but side-eye a man who cites Malcolm Gladwell as a reliable source of information (spoiler alert, he’s not and has a lot of weird racist undertones and beliefs; see the chapter on airplane crashes and growing rice with a significant amount of cherry-picked sources and disinformation from his book “Outliers”) and includes pseudoscience as fact like our “lizard brains” with his full chest. For all that is good and right in the world, authors verify your sources of information! (Side note: If Books Could Kill has a fantastic podcast episode on “Outliers” if that tickles your pickle).

This book provides a good overview of investing for most people, however, I’ve read so many other financial books that have resonated with me significantly more and go beyond the basics to discuss ESG or ethical investing and the settler-colonial and racist history of the West that has created disproportionate gaps in investing knowledge and wealth which are fundamental to a discussion about investing. This book’s biggest problem is that it doesn’t add anything new to the body of literature on investing. As an avid reader of finance books, I have yet to read a finance book that encourages day-trading and buying individual stocks over buying and holding indexes and ETFs, i.e., the sloth method. This book has so many quotes and references to other better books (personally, I’d just read “Millionaire Teacher” and call it a day) and investors that say the exact same thing as him. It’s bordering on an investing dude-bro echo chamber in which they yammer on about the same topic over and over again. There are so many newer books on ESG or ethical investing focused on climate and social issues that are framed in the real historical context as described previously that in comparison, this book just feels so lacklustre. Again, this book isn’t bad, it’s just meh and didn’t add anything that it’s predecessors didn’t already cover. It could be worth a read but many other books cover the same exact investing advice.

Thank you to NetGalley and Troubador for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

I really enjoyed this read. While I did feel like there was quite a bit of repetitiveness at times, I didn’t mind it that much because it helped drill the information into my head so I will remember it! The way everything is explained is done so well and I found it very easy to understand. I was never taught anything about investing growing up, so this was nice and clear-cut for me, which I appreciated. I feel like I have the understanding needed now to invest in a low-fee globally diversified portfolio, which is the way to go after reading this. I had never heard of the Sloth Investor podcast before reading this book but will be checking it out now!

Thank you @troubador_publishing for allowing me access to this ARC via @netgalley
All thoughts are entirely my own.