The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns

Don't look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!

The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.” Stick to the good plan. Traditional

When there are multiple solutions to a problem, choose the simplest one.

The grim irony of investing, then, is that we investors as a group not only don't get what we pay for, we get precisely what we don't pay for. So if we pay for nothing, we get everything.

The two greatest enemies of the equity fund investor are expenses and emotions.

Buying funds based purely on their past performance is one of the stupidest things an investor can do.

Owning the stock market over the long term is a winner's game, but attempting to beat the market is a loser's game.

The true investor . . . will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies.

The simple fact is that selecting a mutual fund that will outpace the stock market over the long term is, using Cervantes’ wonderful observation, like “looking for a needle in the haystack.” So I offer you Bogle’s corollary: “Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!

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 great British economist John Maynard Keynes, written 70 years ago: “It is dangerous . . . to apply to the future inductive arguments based on past experience, unless one can distinguish the broad reasons why past experience was what it was.

Gunning for average is your best shot at finishing above average.

The winning formula for success in investing is owning the entire stock market through an index fund, and then doing nothing. Just stay the course.

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. Learning is to the Studious, and Riches to the Careful. If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him.

It will also tell you how easy it is to do just that: simply buy the entire stock market. Then, once you have bought your stocks, get out of the casino and stay out. Just hold the market portfolio forever. And that’s what the index fund does. This investment philosophy is not only simple and elegant. The arithmetic on which it is based is irrefutable. But it is not easy to follow its discipline. So