Acknowledgements

Since this is my first time writing about investments in a semi-technical way I have needed more help than the professors or personal finance professionals who often write about this topic. I am thrilled and honoured that such an accomplished and insightful group of people spent their time helping me. To start, I want to thank my wife, Puk Kroijer, for continuously supporting this project from the stage when it was still rumbling in my head. Soon after the rumblings were verbalised the publisher of my first book, Chris Cudmore, encouraged me to write a book and he and the team at Financial Times Publishing were again excellent at seeing the project through to conclusion.

A number of friends were also instrumental in the book’s completion by giving comments on early drafts as I stumbled towards a coherent argument: Steven Felsher with his extremely thorough system of numbering each paragraph (there were 8001 in one draft), former office mate Edwin Datson, Mark Hunter, Stuart Hamilton, Chris Rossbach with his sharp pencil, Paul Amery from Index Universe, Coenraad Vrolijk from Blackrock, Morten Bech from the Bank of International Settlements, Stéphane Guibaud from London School of Economics, and my former professors Andrei Shleifer from Harvard University and Jay Light from Harvard Business School.

Finally, I would like to thank all those in and around the finance industry who consistently encouraged me to write about this subject and helped in various ways. While the book in general suggests investing in ways that lead to lower fees to the financial industry, the people I talked to had their customers’ interests as their first objective. This kind of honest objective bodes well for the future of finance even while it is generally vilified in the popular press and is perhaps in for a rough ride in the years ahead.

Finally, this book is dedicated to Puk, Anna, Sofia and Sydney the dog; my four girls.

Lars Kroijer