Index Funds Quotes:

Index funds eliminate the risks of individual stocks, market sectors, and manager selection. Only stock market risk remains.

- John C. Bogle

topic: Risk, Investing, Individual, Index Funds, Market Risk

By periodically investing in an index fund, the know-nothing investors can actually outperform most investment professionals.

- Warren Buffett

topic: Investing, Investment, Fund, Index Funds

A low-cost index fund is the most sensible equity investment for the great majority of investors. My mentor, Ben Graham, took this position many years ago, and everything I have seen since convinces me of its truth.

- Warren Buffett

source: "The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns". Book by John C. Bogle, March 05, 2007.

topic: Years, Mentor, Majority, Index Funds

The best way in my view is to just buy a low-cost index fund and keep buying it regularly over time, because you'll be buying into a wonderful industry, which in effect is all of American industry... People ought to sit back and relax and keep accumulating over time.

- Warren Buffett

source: "CNBC Exclusive: Liz Claman Interviews Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman & CEO, Live at the Company's Annual Shareholder's Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska on "Squawk on the Street"". "Squawk On The Street" with Liz Claman, www.cnbc.com. May 7, 2007.

topic: Views, People, Relax, Index Funds

If you invested in a very low cost index fund - where you don't put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years -you'll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time.

- Warren Buffett

topic: Average, Years, People, Index Funds

Our standard prescription for the know-nothing investor with a long-term time horizon is a no-load index fund. I think that works better than relying on your stock broker. The people who are telling you to do something else are all being paid by commissions or fees. The result is that while index fund investing is becoming more and more popular, by and large it's not the individual investors that are doing it. It's the institutions.

- Charlie Munger

topic: Thinking, Long, People, Index Funds, Stock Broker

Most of the mutual fund investments I have are index funds, approximately 75%.

- Charles R. Schwab

topic: Investing, Mutual Fund, Investment, Index Funds

Most investors would be better off in an index fund.

- Peter Lynch

topic: Would Be, Fund, Investors, Index Funds, Active Management

I am a huge, huge, huge fan of index funds. They are the investor’s best friend and Wall Street’s worst nightmare.

- Jonathan Clements

source: Jonathan Clements (2003). “You've Lost It, Now What?: How to Beat the Bear Market and Still Retire on Time”, Portfolio (Hardcover)

topic: Wall, Worst Nightmares, Fans, Index Funds

After a lifetime of picking stocks, I have to admit that Bogle's arguments in favor of the index fund have me thinking of joining him rather than trying to beat him. Bogle's wisdom and common sense are indispensable... for anyone trying to figure out how to invest in this crazy stock market.

- Jim Cramer

topic: Crazy, Thinking, Common Sense, Index Funds

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.

- Paul Samuelson

topic: Fans, Investing, Want, Index Funds, Buying And Selling

The S&P is up 343.8 percent for 10 years. That is a four-bagger. The general equity funds are up 283 percent. So it's getting worse, the deterioration by professionals is getting worse. The public would be better off in an index fund.

- Peter Lynch

topic: Years, Would Be, Deterioration, Index Funds, Bagger

Invest in low-turnover, passively managed index funds... and stay away from profit-driven investment management organizations... The mutual fund industry is a colossal failure... resulting from its systematic exploitation of individual investors... as funds extract enormous sums from investors in exchange for providing a shocking disservice... Excessive management fees take their toll, and manager profits dominate fiduciary responsibility.

- David F. Swensen

topic: Responsibility, Organization, Systematic, Index Funds, Investment Management

Experience conclusively shows that index-fund buyers are likely to obtain results exceeding those of the typical fund manager, whose large advisory fees and substantial portfolio turnover tend to reduce investment yields. Many people will find the guarantee of playing the stock-market game at par every round a very attractive one. The index fund is a sensible, serviceable method for obtaining the market's rate of return with absolutely no effort and minimal expense.

- Burton Malkiel

topic: Yield, Games, People, Index Funds, Advisory

Index funds are the only rational alternative for almost all mutual fund investors.

- Mark Hulbert

topic: Alternatives, Investing, Mutual Fund, Index Funds

Index funds do not trade from security to security and, thus, they tend to avoid capital gains taxes.

- Burton Malkiel

topic: Investing, Gains, Taxes, Index Funds, Capital Gains

Index funds are... tax friendly, allowing investors to defer the realization of capital gains or avoid them completely if the shares are later bequeathed. To the extent that the long-run uptrend in stock prices continues, switching from security to security involves realizing capital gains that are subject to tax. Taxes are a crucially important financial consideration because the earlier realization of capital gains will substantially reduce net returns.

- Burton Malkiel

topic: Running, Long, Friendly, Stock Price, Index Funds

Even fans of actively managed funds often concede that most other investors would be better off in index funds. But buoyed by abundant self-confidence, these folks aren't about to give up on actively managed funds themselves. A tad delusional? I think so. Picking the best-performing funds is 'like trying to predict the dice before you roll them down the craps table,' says an investment adviser in Boca Raton, FL. 'I can't do it. The public can't do it.'

- Paul Samuelson

topic: Giving Up, Self Confidence, Thinking, Index Funds, Adviser

We can extrapolate from the study that for the long term individual investor who maintains a consistent asset allocation and leans toward index funds, asset allocation determines about 100% of performance.

- Roger G. Ibbotson

topic: Long, Investing, Study, Index Funds, Asset Allocation

When you look at the results on an after-fee, after-tax basis over reasonably long periods of time, there's almost no chance that you end up beating the index fund.

- David F. Swensen

topic: Long, Looks, Investing, Index Funds

While it is probably a poor idea to own actively managed funds in general, it is truly a terrible idea to own them in taxable accounts... taxes are a drag on performance of up to 4 percentage points each year... many index funds allow your capital gains to grow largely undisturbed until you sell... For the taxable investor, indexing means never having to say you're sorry.

- William J. Bernstein

topic: Sorry, Mean, Years, Index Funds, Capital Gains

A minuscule 4 percent of funds produce market-beating after-tax results with a scant 0.6 percent (annual) margin of gain. The 96 percent of funds that fail to meet or beat the Vanguard 500 Index Fund lose by a wealth-destroying margin of 4.8 percent per annum.

- David F. Swensen

topic: Investing, Gains, Wealth, Index Funds

The commission of the investment sins listed above is not limited to 'the little guy.' Huge institutional investors, viewed as a group, have long underperformed the unsophisticated index-fund investor who simply sits tight for decades. A major reason has been fees: Many institutions pay substantial sums to consultants who, in turn, recommend high-fee managers. And that is a fool's game.

- Warren Buffett

source: "Here are the 6 things Warren Buffett considers when making an investment" by Jeremy Schwartz, www.businessinsider.com. March 14, 2015.

topic: Games, Long, Guy, Index Funds

It's bad enough that you have to take market risk. Only a fool takes on the additional risk of doing yet more damage by failing to diversify properly with his or her nest egg. Avoid the problem-buy a well-run index fund and own the whole market.

- William J. Bernstein

source: William J. Bernstein (2002). “The Four Pillars of Investing”, McGraw Hill Professional

topic: Running, Eggs, Risk, Index Funds, Market Risk

... skepticism about past returns is crucial. The truth is, much as you may wish you could know which funds will be hot, you can't - and neither can the legions of advisers and publications that claim they can. That's why building a portfolio around index funds isn't really settling for average. It's just refusing to believe in magic.

- Bethany McLean

topic: Believe, Past, Average, Index Funds, Legion

Assuming that the future is like the past, you can outperform 80 percent of your fellow investors over the next several decades by investing in an index fund-and doing nothing else. But acquire the discipline to do something even better: become a long-term index fund investor.

- Mark Hulbert

topic: Past, Discipline, Long, Index Funds

Index funds have regularly produced rates of return exceeding those of active managers by close to 2 percentage points. Active management as a whole cannot achieve gross returns exceeding the market as a while and therefore they must, on average, underperform the indexes by the amount of these expense and transaction costs disadvantages.

- Burton Malkiel

topic: Average, Cost, Investing, Index Funds, Transactions

Most investors, both institutional and individual, will find that the best way to own common stocks (shares') is through an index fund that charges minimal fees. Those following this path are sure to beat the net results (after fees and expenses) of the great majority of investment professionals.

- Warren Buffett

topic: Majority, Way, Path, Index Funds

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

- William J. Bernstein

source: "< A Young Person's Guide To Getting Rich Slowly". www.npr.org. June 16, 2014.

topic: Index Funds

I was involved with Wells Fargo Bank as a consultant in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I suggested to them that they develop a product that has become known as index funds.

- Myron Scholes

topic: Fargo, 1960s, Wells, Scholes, Index Funds

The simple index fund solution has been adopted as a cornerstone of investment strategy for many of the nation's pension plans operated by our giant corporations and state and local governments. Indexing is also the predominant strategy for the largest of them all, the retirement plan for federal government employees, the Federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). The plan has been a remarkable success, and now holds some $173 billion of assets for the benefit of our public servants and members of armed services.

- David F. Swensen

topic: Retirement, Simple, Government, Index Funds, Pension Plans

Nothing highlights better the continuing gap between rhetoric and substance in British financial services than the failure of providers here to emulate Jack Bogle's index fund success in the United States. Every professional in the City knows that index funds should be core building blocks in any long-term investor's portfolio. Since 1976, the Vanguard index funds has produced a compound annual return of 12 percent, better than three-quarters of its peer group.

- Jonathan Davis

topic: Index Funds, Peer Group, Financial Services, Vanguard, Building Blocks

... the best way to own common stocks is through an index fund.

- Warren Buffett

topic: Active Management, Way, Common, Index Funds

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.

- William J. Bernstein

source: Source: www.npr.org

topic: Index Funds