Review: How to Own the World

Buy all-world stock ETFs, of course


This book blew me away. Not so much because of its advice (it recommends global diversification and a variation of the permanent portfolio) but because it made me change my mind about a couple of things.

How to Own the World starts off with two alarming claims:

  1. government pension schemes (with the exception of Norway and Australia) are all broke
  2. inflation is much higher than official government figures show

It then explains how individuals can deal with this through saving and investing.

The author recommends ‘owning the world’ by buying global indexes and ‘owning inflation’ by buying commodities, specifically gold and silver.

The book is full of careful explanations that back up each claim made by Craig. I found it very persuasive and it challenged my thinking on precious metals, technical analysis, and spread betting.

It has very nice sections on how to think about valuation of shares, bonds, property, and commodities. 

There is a definitely UK bias to the book, but I would say 90% or so of the book is universal, and you can use the other 10% by substituting NISA for ISA and J401k for employer pension 🙂

How to Own the World is the first personal finance book I have read in a while that brought something new to the table, and I really recommend it for that reason. I’ll be adding it to the Resources page and recommend it strongly.

Andrew Craig, the author, also has a website that seems to feature a lot of content from the book. I wasn’t as impressed with the website as I was with How to Own the World.

Anyone else read this book? What’s your view on precious metals?
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9 Responses

  1. Thanks for the book recommendation, just bough it
    I was reading some where the other evening that the Gold to Silver ratio is very high now and the recommendation is to buy silver..
    Anyway I have some gold and will stick to that

      1. Well finished it and thught it was a great book
        He definitely makes the case for previous metals, which makes sense
        On owning the world, I am a bit hestitant to change my developed countries port folio to include developing countries, while they may rise faster they will also fall I think

  2. In the U.S., Social Security payments are a common enough topic. Sometimes politicians tell us how Social Security will run out of money in a decade or two so … panic now. But that all seems like FUD. With an aging population leading to increased payouts, what would it take to keep Social Security afloat? A small change in how federal income tax is divided within the federal government. That is a likely outcome.
    I haven’t read the book, so I can’t tell you how they handle matters in it, but with regards to the U.S. specifically, this is an old issue, and nobody knows what will happen in two decades. If there’s enough political pressure, Social Security will be fine. If not, it won’t. But actually, obviously, that’s true for *all* government programs. :-/

    1. Thanks Douglas!
      Very true. Especially with the ‘silver vote’. US social security is about $16,000 a year now and will probably be reduced in the future but not disappear.
      I’ll be doing a post about the Japanese pension soon -it’s not pretty!

  3. Looks interesting… I wonder what the best way to invest in gold in Japan is? Which ETFs have low fees for example….

  4. Looks like Rakuten has a dedicated page for gold silver platinum. The buy/sell spreads seem to be about 6%.

  5. Can one buy Vanguard or iShares ETF’s as a Brit resident in Japan (easily) – and if so how?
    Cheers all

  6. Hi YG
    You can buy US-listed shares through the main online brokers (Rakuten, SBI, etc.)
    You can buy European listed shares through Mizuho.
    Brits don’t really have any restrictions in Japan.