John C. Bogle
In investing, you get what you don't pay for. Costs matter. So intelligent investors will use low-cost index funds to build a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds, and they will stay the course. And they won't be foolish enough to think that they can consistently outsmart the market.
Regardless of what happens in the markets, stick to your investment program. Changing your strategy at the wrong time can be the single most devastating mistake you can make as an investor.
Enjoy the magic of compounding returns. Even modest investments made in one's early 20s are likely to grow to staggering amounts over the course of an investment lifetime.
Never underrate the importance of asset allocation.
I love the English language. Words have power.
There's no such thing as wealth without risk.
Nothing is simpler than owning the stock market and holding it forever, and that's essentially the idea behind the index fund.
A fiduciary standard means, basically, put the interests of the client first. No excuses. Period.
I spend about half of my time wondering why I have so much in stocks and about half wondering why I have so little.
What indexing does is neutralize a large part of the stock market. There's no trading in those stocks, or almost none.
The reality of life is, if you have a bagel shop and everybody is pouring into the doughnut shop across the street, if you want to stay in business, you start selling doughnuts.
Have rational expectations for future returns and avoid changing those expectations in response to the ephemeral noise coming from Wall Street.
I like Burton Malkiel's 'A Random Walk Down Wall Street.' He comes to the same conclusion that I do - that indexing is the way. My 'Little Book of Common Sense Investing' says pretty much the same thing.
When a door closes, if you look long enough and hard enough, if you're strong enough, you'll find a window that opens.
I do think that impact investing is not that effective. Shares go from investor A to investor B, and the company doesn't even know it. It's inevitably an ineffective way to communicate to the company your feelings.
I built a career out of knowing what I don't know.
The basic idea of retirement income is, to me, to get a check, two checks every month, one from your fixed income and one from equity account. And you want them to grow over time.
The market is often stupid, but you can't focus on that. Focus on the underlying value of dividends and earnings.
Eliminate emotion from your investment program.
Investing is not nearly as difficult as it looks. Successful investing involves doing a few things right and avoiding serious mistakes.
If you put nothing away for retirement, I can tell you, to the last penny, how much you will have when you retire: nothing.
As I have said before, the daily machinations of the stock market are like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Diversification has been, and balance, like Wellington, has been so drummed into me, it's part of my personality.
Our financial system is driven by a giant marketing machine in which the interests of sellers directly conflict with the interests of buyers.
Successful investing is all about common sense.
It seems to me - particularly for these retirement-plan investors, the vast majority of whom are not particularly financially sophisticated - by far the best way is to invest in index funds.
I think average investors should not trade a lot. The evidence is overpowering. The more you trade, the less you earn.
If the fluctuations in your investment portfolio are reduced, the impact of emotions and behavior on your account is also reduced.
Net return is simply the gross return of your investment portfolio less the costs you incur. Keep your investment expenses low, for the tyranny of compounding costs can devastate the miracle of compounding returns.
I've usually used the phrase 'stay the course' as one of the great rules of investment success.
When our financial system - essentially our money managers, marketers of investment products and stockbrokers - put up zero percent of the capital and assume zero percent of the risk yet receive fully 80% of the return, something has gone terribly wrong in our financial system.
The culture of the mutual fund industry, when I came into it in 1951, was pretty much a culture of fiduciary duty and investment, with funds run by investment professionals. The firm I worked with, Wellington Management Co., they had one fund. That was very typical in the industry... investment professionals focused on long-term investing.
I had done some work on index funds in my senior thesis at Princeton in 1951.
The grim irony of investing 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.
Central to the effective functioning of early capitalism was the fundamental principle of trusting and being trusted.
Wise investors won't try to outsmart the market.
Mutual funds with superior performance records often falter.
The rewards of my life have been great. I built a company; I left things better than I found them. I have a good reputation. I put the Vanguard shareholders and crew first. That's a huge thing.
I've been studying mutual funds since 1949, when I began researching my senior thesis at Princeton University.
We make too much out of past performance, and it's very misleading to investors. It causes them to move money around. They buy a fund that's hot and then it turns cold as all hot funds eventually do. And then they get out. Well, buying at the high and selling at the low isn't going to leave you a satisfied shareholder, right?
There's no perfection in family life, and certainly we aren't perfect, but we're probably about as close as we can be.
Investing is a virtuous habit best started as early as possible.
Invest as efficiently as you can, using low-cost funds that can be bought and held for a lifetime.
There no longer can be any doubt that the creation of the first index mutual fund was the most successful innovation - especially for investors - in modern financial history.
There is almost no limit to the ability of investors to ignore the lessons of the past.
Well, I like regulation as little as anybody else. It can be intrusive. It can be detailed. It can be bureaucratic. It can be unevenly administered. It can be unfair. But most regulations that we have for mutual funds and for banks are regulations that we earned. We did something wrong and we're paying a price for it.
I'm not sure I really am an entrepreneur. I'm not much of a businessman. I know I'm not a marketing guy. I do have an entrepreneurial lineage, though.
What we need is congressional action to establish a federal principle of fiduciary duty - encapsulated by the phrase 'no man can serve two masters.'
In an ideal world, Adam Smith-like, individuals would recognize what they need to do in their own self-interest, and they will make changes happen and look after themselves.