Trying to beat the market "is a loser's game," according to Bogle and "the more the managers and brokers take, the less investors make.

The new edition features updated charts & data up until the year 2016, and a new introductory chapter.

This is the sixth book by Bogle, and he writes that "the simplest and most efficient investment strategy is to buy and hold all of the nation’s publicly held businesses at very low cost."

The book elaborates on the same practice of index investing that Bogle built the Vanguard Group around to turn a profit for clients.

The series includes The Little Book That Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt (Wiley, 2005), ISBN 978-0-471-73306-5 and The Little Book of Value Investing by Christopher H. Browne (Wiley, 2006), ISBN 978-0-470-05589-2 The series focus is to present finance strategies in general and understandable terms.