John Bogle Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

Hint: money flows into most funds after good performance, and goes out when bad performance follows.

John Bogle
Surprise! The returns reported by mutual funds aren't actually earned by mutual fund investors.

John Bogle
The historical data support one conclusion with unusual force: To invest with success, you must be a long-term investor.

John Bogle
The stock market is a giant distraction to the business of investing.

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

John Bogle
Your success in investing will depend in part on your character and guts, and in part on your ability to realize at the height of ebullience and the depth of despair alike that this too shall pass.

John Bogle
Fund investors are confident that they can easily select superior fund managers. They are wrong.

John Bogle
Investing is not nearly as difficult as it looks. Successful investing involves doing a few things right and avoiding serious mistakes.

John Bogle
The multiple failings of our flawed financial sector are jeopardizing, not only the retirement security of our nation's savers but the economy in which our entire society participates.

John Bogle
If your fund doesn't last for the long term, how can you invest for the long term?

John Bogle
But whatever the consensus on the EMH, I know of no serious academic, professional money manager, trained security analyst, or intelligent individual investor who would disagree with the thrust of EMH: The stock market itself is a demanding taskmaster. It sets a high hurdle that few investors can leap.

John Bogle
If the data do not prove that indexing wins, well, the data are wrong.

John Bogle
Rely on the ordinary virtues that intelligent, balanced human beings have relied on for centuries: common sense, thrift, realistic expectations, patience, and perseverance.

John Bogle
The courage to press on regardless—regardless of whether we face calm seas or rough seas, and especially when the market storms howl around us—is the quintessential attribute of the successful investor.

John Bogle
The principal role of the mutual fund is to serve its investors.

John Bogle
The miracle of compounding returns is overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs.

John Bogle
We need a mutual fund industry with both vision and values; a vision of fiduciary duty and shareholder service, and values rooted in the proven principles of long-term investing and of trusteeship that demands integrity in serving our clients.

John Bogle
Yes, the investor is often his own worst enemy. Yes, the marketing colossus known as the mutual fund industry provides the weaponry which enables investors' to indulge their suicidal instincts. No, the fund industry was hardly an innocent bystander in the market boom and the subsequent carnage. "We have met the enemy and he is us"… all of us.

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

John Bogle
Beating the market is a zero-sum game for investors. Money managers, as a group, must provide the market return... But that return comes only before their exorbitant fees, operating expenses, and portfolio turnover costs are deducted. The zero-sum game before costs becomes a loser's game after costs.

John Bogle
It's amazing how difficult it is for a man to understand something if he's paid a small fortune not to understand it.

John Bogle
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.

John Bogle