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

The multiple failings of our flawed financial sector are jeopardizing, not only the retirement security of our nation's savers but the economy in which our entire society participates.

"Now you can trade the S&P 500 Index in real time" was the slogan in the newspapers for the first ETF. What kind of nut would do that?

But whatever the consensus on the EMH, I know of no serious academic, professional money manager, trained security analyst, or intelligent individual investor who would disagree with the thrust of EMH: The stock market itself is a demanding taskmaster. It sets a high hurdle that few investors can leap.

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.

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

It's 1450 out of 1500 ETF funds that I just wouldn't touch because they're not diversified enough. Or they have some huge speculative twist to them that if you can guess the markets right you will do very well for a day or two but who can do that? Nobody.