High Returns from Low Risk - Van Vliet - a book review and recommendation

One of Europe’s most influential fund managers has just written a fabulous little book titled “High Returns from Low Risk - a remarkable stock market paradox”. I don’t recommend many books, but I think there are a lot of investors that could learn from this. It’s barely 140 pages long, and in spite of a dose of marketing towards the end, it’s a great addition to any stock market investor’s library.

The book is written by academic turned fund manager Pim Van Vliet and his colleague Jan de Koning. Both work at the Dutch fund management group Robeco, which has become well known for its factor investing funds. While Van Vliet will take the plaudits for the book, it’s clear that De Koning has had a huge hand in making his ideas accessible and should take a lot of credit. It’s no mean feat to make tricky financial concepts easily understandable, and I think they’ve nailed it.

I’ve been reading Van Vliet’s academic research on Low Risk investing for years. In fact, his work was one of the biggest influences on our design of the RiskRatings recently...