In an efficient market at any point in time the actual price of a security will be a good estimate of its intrinsic value.

Active management is a zero-sum game before cost, and the winners have to win at the expense of the losers.

I don't think the Federal Reserve has any role in how high rates are right now. I don't understand why everyone is paying attention to this tapering. The Fed is using one kind of bond to buy another kind of bond. What's the big deal, and why is anyone taking the Fed seriously?

In an efficient market at any point in time the actual price of a security will be a good estimate of its intrinsic value.

After taking risk into account, do more managers than you’d see by chance outperform with persistence? Virtually every economist who studied this question answers with a resounding 'no.'

I’d compare stock pickers to astrologers but I don’t want to bad mouth astrologers.

Markets are efficient, but there are different dimensions of risk and those lead to different dimensions of expected returns. That's what people should be concerned with in their investment decisions and not with whether they can pick stocks, pick winners and losers among the various managers delivering basically the same product.