Our capitalistic scheme in the latter years of the 20th century seems to have lost its way. We've had a "pathalogical change" from traditional owners capitalism where most of the rewards have gone to those who make the investments and assume the risks to a new and deeply flawed system of managers capitalism where the managers of our corporations our investment system, and our mutual funds are simply take too large a share of the returns generated by our corporations and mutual funds leaving the last line investors - pension beneficiaries and mutual fund owners at the bottom of the food chain.

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

We are facing incredible challenges in the economy of the U.S. and the economy of the globe, but the stock market, we never know whether it's over-discounted or under-discounted or got exactly right its anticipation.

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.

Hint: money flows into most funds after good performance, and goes out when bad performance follows.

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

The miracle of compounding returns has been overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs.