The fund management industry won’t tell you this, but all the evidence points to the humble index fund being the most appropriate investment vehicle for the vast majority of people. And there are few advocates of indexing as staunch as Warren Buffett - the most famous active stockpicker of all.
Indexing: How to Win the Loser's Game
Indexing: How to Win the Loser's Game - Transcript and References
Last time on How to Win the Loser’s Game…
So, how can ordinary investors apply the academic evidence - the lessons learned from more than a hundred years of rigorous research? How can they apply that to achieving their financial goals?
Well, this might sound dramatic, but the work of Louis Bachelier, and of Nobel Prize-winners like Samuelson, Sharpe and Fama, should make us question almost everything we thought we knew about investing; and almost everything the financial industry and the media tell us we should be doing.
Most of all, the evidence should make us extremely wary of anyone who claims that they have the knowledge to beat the market. Because markets are fundamentally efficient, consistent outperformance is almost impossible.
.......................
More at Sensibleinvesting