[djmcmath]

I've been doing a huge amount of investment research recently. I'd say the best two books were Benjamin Graham's "Intelligent Investor" and Seth Klarman's "Margin of Safety."

Benjamin Graham, who taught Warren Buffet, spends the first half of the book talking about how you need to set realistic investment goals, in terms of the percentage gains that you actually plan on seeing. 20% is right out. 10% might be unrealistic, unless you have a lot of time and the market is good, and you're lucky. Most professional fund managers don't do that well. So PoP's math showing that you'll need ~$3M in order to do nothing but invest is probably pretty good.

Both Klarman and Graham (as well as Michael Lewis, if you have time for even more reading) have some excellent analysis as to why actively managed funds don't beat the market. They also both close their books with a couple of major points:
1 - Unless you're full-time, you are unlikely to be fortunate enough to find the good values that you need to consistently beat the market. And if you're not consistently beating the market, your best bet is an annual rebalancing strategy of 50% index fund, 50% bonds.
2 - If you must invest in a fund, research them carefully. They both discuss a number of important things to look for in a fund, but neither of them seriously recommends it.

There's a few other threads on the topic here -- oddly, this group seems to be very interested in investing -- and I've read a number of the others for good advice on the topic.

Good luck,
Dan