I expect that I will be including “The Four Pillars of Investing” on the Recommended Reading page when I publish Investing for Humans. But I also expect that I am going to include a parenthetical saying “Chapter Two only please!”

In all seriousness, Bill’s writings have been a big help to me and to lots of other community members.

Rob

Thanks for asking, Interested Observer.

My aim is to have it out in early 2010.

I have a poor track record on these predictions of when my books will be published. I keep hoping that one of these times I will be proven to have been too pessimistic rather than too optimistic. That hasn’t happened yet, however.

I am confident that there will lots of quickie books published after the Big Price Drop that will be of the gloom-and-doom variety. I find that sort of thing a turn-off. I see gloom-and-doom as being just the other side of the hyper-emotional coin that contains Passive Investing on the side now showing. Gloom-and-doom is an emotional reaction to learning that all that you came to believe about stocks during an out-of-control bull market is wrong. I don’t want to be associated with either side of that coin. I am looking to press a new coin (the Rational Investing coin).

That means that the story that I tell needs to be a story that makes sense in BOTH bear and bull markets, not one or the other. That means that I need to tell a more complete story and a more balanced story and a more integrated story. That means learning about a lot of stuff that is rarely discussed in the literature today. I cannot write the book properly until I have a clear picture in my head of most of what is going on.

I have a clearer picture today than I had six years ago. That’s for sure. But I don’t feel that all of the pieces of the puzzle have entirely snapped into place. The sign that that is so is that I know so much more today than I did six months ago. So long as I am learning a lot of new stuff, I don’t feel that I know enough to write an enduring book. So, somewhat paradoxically, I am looking to get to a point where I am no longer learning as much as I have been in recent years.

I’m close to that. I am close enough to be able to make out what the final picture looks like in a fuzzy way. But I don’t think I am quite 100 percent there. There are still some questions that I find myself puzzling over a lot.

When I am at a place where I feel I can write something that will stand the test of time, I will put the words down on paper (I have already done drafts of large sections of the book). The words come easy and quick when your thinking is clear. The words come out jumbled when you’re not sure. That’s the test.

Wish me luck!

Rob