“The best strategy is to hold a sound balance of stocks and bonds, a balance that fits your own situation, the better to “stay the course” no matter what transpires in our ever uncertain and unpredictable financial markets.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“Simply by cutting excessive equity fund costs to the bare-bones level, index fund investors (a) virtually assure themselves that the fund they select will endure, surviving vagaries of times that have carried so many funds to an early grave; (b) substantially eliminate the huge risk of selecting a losing fund; (c) relinquish only tiny opportunity of selecting a winning fund; and (d) assure themselves of nearly 100% of the market’s annual return.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“Stop trying to find the needle. Invest in the haystack: Own the entire U.S. stock market. Today that is as easily said as done.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“Nonetheless, even the fund manager who beats the market by 3% per year before costs—no mean achievement—would end up, after costs, with only average returns.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“It will be exciting and enticing, but, after all is said and done, you’ll find no surefire solutions for investment success—wealth without risk, if you will. It’s just not a realistic expectation.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“No investor should forget, however, that odds should never be mistaken for certainties.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“Time magnifies the impact of cost. Almost without your noticing, the costs of investing nibble at your returns, gradually eroding them almost right before your unsuspecting eyes.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“So far, I’ve given you two strategies for dealing with risk in today’s heady markets: (1) Getting your asset allocation right, maintaining a long-term horizon, and staying the course; (2) diversifying some risk away by introducing equities with reliably different correlation with the U.S. market.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“Every investment carries a cost, and that cost is a certain ‘drag’ on your investment return.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“What was the problem? Simply this: In their frenetic search for sweet, fattening returns, the mutual fund doughnuts levied heavy sales charges and excessive fees, spent too much on marketing, and failed to share the economies of scale with the investors they were responsible for serving.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“What has caused those consistent and ghastly shortfalls of fund returns relative to the market? Fund costs.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“Low cost, marginal in its annual impact, becomes overpowering as the years roll on.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“We can control the other three primary determinants of investing: Risk, time, and cost…With our own free will, we have the power to choose whether we will be long-term investors or short-term speculators.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“All claim, at least implicitly, to provide market-beating returns with their complex multilayered approaches,
but precious few delivered on that promise.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“Your best chance is with an index fund. It is the embodiment of simplicity, investing in the entire stock market.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“By focusing on the long term—always the long term—indexing holds the master key to your investment success.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“The one great secret of investment success is that there is no secret.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“Complex investment strategies are, finally, doomed to failure.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“Investment success, it turns out, lies in simplicity as basic as the virtues of thrift, independence of thought, financial discipline, realistic expectations, and common sense.” – John “Jack” Bogle
“The most effective means of building wealth is simply to emulate the annual returns provided by the financial markets, and reap the benefits of long-term compounding.” – John “Jack” Bogle