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.

The transfer of Wall Street from private ownership to public ownership has been a big step backward.

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.

The fund scandals shined the spotlight on the fact that mutual fund managers were putting their interests ahead of the fund shareholders who trusted them, which had much more substantial consequences in the form of excessive fees and the promotion - as the market moved into the stratosphere - of technology funds and new economy funds which were soon to collapse.

Your success in investing will depend in part on your character and guts, and in part on your ability to realize at the height of ebullience and the depth of despair alike that this too shall pass.

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

In the long run, investing is not about markets at all. Investing is about enjoying the returns earned by businesses.