Enemies of Equity

“The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan. Stick to the good plan.”

― John C. Bogle

“Simplicity beats complexity”

― John C Bogle, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns

“The relen...

“Another huge toll has been taken by taxes. Passively managed index funds are tax-efficient, given the low turnover implicit in the structure of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (and, to an even greater extent, the all-market Wilshire 5000 Index).”

― John C. Bogle

“Buying funds based purely on their past performance is one of the stupidest things an investor can do.”

― John C. Bogle

“The grim irony of investing, then, is that we investors as a group not only don't get what we pay for, we get precisely what we don't pay for. So if we pay for nothing, we get everything.”

― John C. Bogle

“When there are multiple solutions to a problem, choose the simplest one.”

“Experience conclusively shows that index-fund buyers are likely to obtain results exceeding those of the typical fund manager, whose large advisory fees and substantial portfolio turnover tend to reduce investment yields. Many people will find the guarantee of playing the stock-market game at pa...

“The best way to implement this strategy is indeed simple: Buy a fund that holds this all-market portfolio, and hold it forever. Such a fund is called an index fund. The index fund is simply a basket (portfolio) that holds many, many eggs (stocks) designed to mimic the overall performance of the ...

In order to not being a victim of the finance industry an individual must have a strategy.

"The best way to implement this strategy is indeed simple. Buy a find that holds this all-market portfolio, and hold it forever. Such a fund is called an index fund. The index fund is simply a basket ...

“On balance, the financial system subtracts value from society”

― John C. Bogle

“The message is clear: in the long run, stock returns depend almost entirely on the reality of the investment returns earned by our corporations. The perception of investors, reflected by the speculative returns, counts for little. It is economics that controls long-term equity returns; emotions,...

“It will also tell you how easy it is to do just that: simply buy the entire stock market. Then, once you have bought your stocks, get out of the casino and stay out. Just hold the market portfolio forever. And that’s what the index fund does. This investment philosophy is not only simple and ele...

Passive funds seek to replicate the performance of their benchmarks instead of outperforming them. For instance, the manager of an index fund that tracks the performance of the S&P 500 typically buys a portfolio that includes all of the stocks in that index in the same proportions as they are rep...

Searching out the lowest cost index fund directly translates into more money for the investor. Therefore not all index funds are equal. Due diligence and research is necessary to maximize returns.

“We cannot expect management companies to operate in the public interest. We must recognize the reality that they are in the business of investing other people’s money in order to maximize their own profits, even though those profits come at the expense of their fund shareholders.”

― John C...

“In the short run, the stock market is a voting machine; in the long run it is a weighing machine. —Benjamin Graham, Security Analysis (1934)”

― John C. Bogle

“The Index Fund is designed to be held for a lifetime.”

― John C. Bogle

Where do actively managed fund fees come from? The answer is the consumer. The unfortunate truth is that active managers get paid no matter what results they provide (positive or negative). This has proven over time to not work in the consumers best interests.

In order for the active manage...

Because index funds don't need to retain active professional managers, and because their holdings aren't as frequently traded, they normally have lower operating costs than actively managed funds. However, the fees vary from index fund to index fund, which means the return on these funds varies a...

“When navigating the financial markets, the long-term investor must keep in mind the four basic dimensions of long-term return — reward, risk, cost and time — and must apply them to every asset class. Never forget that these four dimensions are remarkably interdependent.”

― John C. Bogle

“The winning formula for success in investing is owning the entire stock market through an index fund, and then doing nothing. Just stay the course.”

― John C. Bogle

"In the casino the house always wins. In horse racing, the track always wins. In the Powerball, the state always wins. In the game of investing, the financial croupiers always win, and investors as a group lose. After the deduction of the costs of investing, beating the stock market is a loser's ...

“On balance, the financial system subtracts value from society”

― John C. Bogle

“The two greatest enemies of the equity fund investor are expenses and emotions.”

― John C. Bogle

“Owning the stock market over the long term is a winner's game, but attempting to beat the mark...

Some index funds, which go by names such as enhanced index funds, are hybrids. Their managers pick and choose among the investments tracked by the benchmark index in order to provide a superior return. In bad years, this hybrid approach may produce positive returns, or returns that are slightly b...

There are significant downsides to the high costs in investing. An actively managed fund will probably result in significantly less profit/income for the investor as compared to a low cost index fund that passively mimics the performance of an index. Examples of indexes are S&P 500 index, the Rus...

An index fund is a type of mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) with a portfolio constructed to match or track the components of a financial market index, such as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (S&P 500). An index mutual fund is said to provide broad market exposure, low operating expenses,...

“Mutual fund investors, too, have inflated ideas of their own omniscience. They pick funds based on the recent performance superiority of fund managers, or even their long-term superiority, and hire advisers to help them do the same thing. But, the advisers do it with eve...

“Financial markets are far too complex to isolate any single variable with ease, as if conducting a scientific experiment. The record is utterly bereft of evidence that definitive predictions of short-term fluctuations in stock prices can be made with consistent accuracy. The prices of common sto...

“The simple fact is that selecting a mutual fund that will outpace the stock market over the long term is, using Cervantes’ wonderful observation, like ‘looking for a needle in the haystack.’ So I offer you Bogle’s corollary: ‘Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!”

“Gold is largely a rank speculation, for its price is based solely on market expectations. Gold provides no internal rate of return. Unlike stocks and bonds, gold provides none of the intrinsic value that is created for stocks by earnings growth and dividend yields, and for bonds by interest paym...

“It is fair to say that, by Graham’s demanding standards, the overwhelming majority of today’s mutual funds, largely because of their high costs and speculative behavior, have failed to live up to their promise. As a result, a new type of fund—the index fund—is now gradually moving toward ascenda...

“Some estimates suggest that the failure rate is around 20 percent, meaning that each year, one of every five hedge funds goes up in smoke.”

― John C. Bogle

“Your index fund should not be your manager’s cash cow. It should be your own cash cow.”

― John C Bogle

“It takes wisdom to know what we don’t know”

― John C. Bogle

“When you have identified your long-term objectives, defined your tolerance for risk, and carefully selected an index fund or a small number of actively managed funds that meet your goals, stay the course. Hold tight. Complicating the investment process merely clutters the mind, too often bringin...

"Fund investors are confident that they can easily select superior fund managers. They are wrong.”

― John C. Bogle

When a fund is actively managed, it employs a professional portfolio manager, or team of managers, to decide which underlying investments to choose for its portfolio. In fact, one reason you might choose a specific fund is to benefit from the expertise of its professional manager...

Ideally investing should be about long term results. Get rich schemes are more like gambling. The payoffs in gambling might be great but the more likely results are loses. Remember the casino always wins. Slow and steady wins the race.

“I’m speaking here about the classic index fund, one that is broadly diversified, holding all (or almost all) of its share of the $15 trillion capitalization of the U.S. stock market, operating with minimal expenses and without advisory fees, with tiny portfolio turnover, and with high tax effici...

“Hear David Swensen, widely respected chief investment officer of the Yale University Endowment Fund. “A minuscule 4 percent of funds produce market-beating after-tax results with a scant 0.6 percent (annual) margin of gain. The 96 percent of funds that fail to meet or beat the Vanguard 500 Index...