I believe Washington should be a more active participant focusing on the issue of why corporate shareholders and mutual fund shareholders are not given fair treatment by corporate management and mutual fund management. We need to develop a national standard of fiduciary duty to ensure that these agents, if you will, are adequately representing the principles - pension beneficiaries and mutual fund shareholders - whom they are duty bound to serve.

Reversion to the mean is the iron rule of the financial markets.

Surprise! The returns reported by mutual funds aren't actually earned by mutual fund investors.

Speculation leads you the wrong way. It allows you to put your emotions first, whereas investment gets emotions out of the picture.

Rely on the ordinary virtues that intelligent, balanced human beings have relied on for centuries: common sense, thrift, realistic expectations, patience, and perseverance.

I think we all ought to be careful about too much generalization on this issue, even as I confess to painting with a pretty broad brush myself!

So the misplaced assumption is that we have this whole new institutional element where these [financial] institutions are looking after their own financial interests before the financial interests of the principals, princi-pals whose interests they are really bound to observe first.