Market risk is like taking a plunge into a cool pool ... a lot of people are finding out right now what their risk tolerance is.

Bluntly put, there's no chance that your doctor, dentist, or attorney is a high-school dropout. Your stockbroker, however, just might be.

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

The key thing about any fund is to make sure its expenses are low. You know, if you look at the funds in your plan and you see that they're all charging 1.5 and 2 percent,you've gota bad plan.

You have to understand what market history looks like. What market history tells you is that the very, very best investments are made when things look the worst.

The key aspect of an index fund is that many of them, not all of them, but many of them are extremely cheap.

A decade ago, I really did believe that the average investor could do it himself. I was wrong. I've come to the sad conclusion that only a tiny minority, at most one percent, are capable of pulling it off. Heck, if Helen Young Hayes, Robert Sanborn, Julian Robertson, and the nation's largest pension funds can't get it right, what chance does John Q. Investor have?