OWN
THE
ECONOMY

and earn the returns

GET THE
RIGHT
MIX

and ride risk/return

KEEP
YOUR 
MONEY

and it will grow

DON'T
BET YOUR 
FUTURE

and ensure it

BE IN IT
FOR THE
LONG HAUL

and don't speculate

The Rules of Investing

Investing doesn't have to be complicated. By a low cost index stock fund. Buy a low cost index bond. Own your age in bonds and the remainder in stocks. And sock away as much as you can.

Rule 1. Own the Economy

Buying and selling individual stocks is risky. Instead, if you buy and hold index funds, you can essentially own the economy, reduce your risk associated to any single company, and avoid paying costly fees to fund managers who actually lose your money more than half of the time.
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Rule 2. Get the Right Mix

Picking individual stocks is risky. You never want to put all your eggs in one basket (or even a few baskets) because if that one basket breaks, so do all your eggs. So you get many baskets.
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Rule 3. Keep Your Money

There's not much that we can control to effect our investments' performance - except for expenses. Pay as little as possible because they can eat up most of your gains. Money that should rightfully end up in our pockets ends up lining fund manager's pockets.
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Rule 4. Don't Bet Your Future

Do you gamble your life savings in Vegas? Well, maybe you should because your odds of winning are likely higher than trying to pick winning funds (which you're probably unknowingly doing now with actively managed funds). How do 4% odds of winning sound? Very bad.
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Rule 5. Be In It For The Long Haul

Day to day, month to month, and even year to year fluctuations in the stock market may be steep. Zooming out to see the big picture of your true long term investing horizon should keep you from doing something stupid in a panic.
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What the smart guys have to say

"A very low-cost index is going to beat a majority of the amateur-managed money or professionally-managed money."
Warren Buffet Who's this guy?
World's Most Successful Investor

Swensen has done some research on this point. He and others have found the odds are 100 to 1 that you're better off in an index fund. Swensen says that over 30 years or so, even people with average incomes would end up with hundreds of thousands of more dollars when they retire if they avoided the fees that many actively managed mutual funds and investment advisers charge.
David Swenson Who's this guy?
Manager of Yale's Endowment

It turns out that you who put up 100% of the capital, you took 100% of the market risk, are getting about 25% of the market's return. And the croupiers, who of course put up 0% of the capital and took 0% of the risk are getting 75% of those compounded, long-term returns.
John Bogle Who's this guy?
Father of the index fund. Founder of Vanguard.

Investing is not entertainment

Jim Cramer is the ranting, raving maniac host of CNBC's investing show Mad Money. He basically feeds off the investors' fears and emotions, encouraging the market churn that devastates our investment balances. He also makes really bad calls. Like buy Bear Stearns (they collapsed) and then later, sell everything. Cramer was dumb enough to go on John Stewart's show, The Daily Show, where Stewart proceeded to methodically tear him apart and really expose a large segment of the media for their part in hyping speculation that dangerously drives the common investor into a frenzied panic.