Ask yourself: Am I an investor, or am I a speculator? An investor is a person who owns business and holds it forever and enjoys the returns that U.S. businesses, and to some extent global businesses, have earned since the beginning of time. Speculation is betting on price. Speculation has no place in the portfolio or the kit of the typical investor.

Index funds eliminate the risks of individual stocks, market sectors, and manager selection. Only stock market risk remains.

I think it's fairly easy to provide a moral defense of capitalism. It has been - over the last 200 years - the underlying basis for enormous increases in productivity and human welfare and rising living standards, particularly in the United States, and in the industrialized nations but in fact, in most parts of the world.

It's amazing how difficult it is for a man to understand something if he's paid a small fortune not to understand it.

Yes, the investor is often his own worst enemy. Yes, the marketing colossus known as the mutual fund industry provides the weaponry which enables investors to indulge their suicidal instincts. No, the fund industry was hardly an innocent bystander in the market boom and the subsequent carnage. "We have met the enemy and he is us"... all of us.

The business has some problems, substantial problems. You go fix it, you young people. That's what you're there for. Don't believe what the old generation tells you. We don't know a damn thing, including Bogle.

If it is hard to imagine that 20% of losses on the stock market, you should never participate