Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.

That's what I would like to do until the end of time, to go on scribbling my articles on the third floor of the Sloan Building, in between playing tennis and drinking coffee at my other study in the Concord Avenue branch of Burger King.

Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles.

Man does not live by GNP alone.

Still, I figure we shouldn't' discourage fans of actively managed funds. With all their buying and selling, active investors ensure the market is reasonably efficient. That makes it possible for the rest of us to do the sensible thing, which is to index. Want to join me in this parasitic behavior? To build a well-diversified portfolio, you might stash 70 percent of your stock portfolio into a Wilshire 5000-index fund and the remaining 30 percent in an international-index fund.

Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.

You know what happiness is: 'Having a little more money than your colleagues.' And that's not so tough in academic life.