I would always advise young people to follow their star - not my star. They have to live their own life. If they decide they want to go into the investment business, do it, but make it a better business than it is today.
John C. BogleRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Investing in index funds is a simple and effective strategy for those lacking financial expertise.
John C. Bogle, the founder of Vanguard Group, emphasizes that for the average retirement-plan investor, who may not have a deep understanding of financial markets, investing in index funds is likely the most prudent choice. Index funds provide broad market exposure, lower costs, and relatively consistent returns, making them accessible and beneficial for everyday investors.
Themes
InvestmentIndex FundsRetirementFinanceSimplicity
In practice
Example use cases
During a financial literacy workshop, this quote can illustrate the importance of simple investment strategies.
More from John C. Bogle
All quotes →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.
John C. BogleRead
Entrepreneurs or international conglomerateurs, or large financial institutions buy or create mutual fund management companies to create a return on their own capital. It's capitalism at work, where the rewards tend to go to the managers rather than the investors.
John C. BogleRead
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.
John C. BogleRead
Investing is a virtuous habit best started as early as possible.
John C. BogleRead
Wise investors won't try to outsmart the market.
John C. BogleRead
Similar quotes
Observation over many years has taught us that the chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of good business conditions. The purchasers view the good current earnings as equivalent to 'earning power' and assume that prosperity is equivalent to safety.
Benjamin GrahamRead
Everyone has the idea of owning good companies. The problem is that they have high prices in relations to assets and earnings, and that takes all of the fun out of the game.
Charlie MungerRead
Investors should remember that their scorecard is not computed using Olympic-diving methods: Degree-of-difficulty doesn't count. If you are right about a business whose value is largely dependent on a single key factor that is both easy to understand and enduring, the payoff is the same as if you had correctly analyzed an investment alternative characterized by many constantly shifting and complex variables.
Warren BuffettRead
As time goes on, I get more and more convinced that the right method of investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises which one thinks one knows something about and in the management of which one thoroughly believes.
John Maynard KeynesRead
The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it.
Warren BuffettRead
The (stock) market is there only as a reference point to see if anybody is offering to do anything foolish. When we invest in stocks, we invest in businesses.
Warren BuffettRead