For the taxable investor, indexing means never having to say you're sorry.

There are two kinds of investors, be they large or small: those who don't know where the market is headed and those who don't know what they don't know. Then again, there is a third type of investor: the investment professional, who indeed knows he doesn't know, but whose livelihood depends upon appearing to know.

The definition of investment is the deferring ofpresent consumption for future consumption. So, you dohave to be willing to defer. And there are a couple of tricks that you can use to save money. One of them is simply to pay yourself first.

If your broker or investment advisor is not familiar with the concept of standard deviation of returns, get a new one.

The reason that 'guru' is such a popular word is because 'charlatan' is so hard to spell.

An index fund is a fund that simply invests in all of the stocks in a market. So, for example, an index fund might invest in every single stock or almost every single stock in the U.S. market, it might invest in every single stock abroad, or it might invest in all of the bonds that are out there. And you can make a perfectly fine investing portfolio that mixes equal parts of all three of those.

It's human nature to find patterns where there are none and to find skill where luck is a more likely explanation (particularly if you're the lucky manager).