Last night I watched this interview between Steve Forbes and John Bogle. As always with Bogle, I found myself writing down several quotes and observations.
A handful of my favorites:
John Bogle on predicting the market: “The mistake we make as investors is when the market’s going up, we think it’s going to go up forever. And when the market’s going down, we think it’s going to go down forever. And neither of those two things happens.”
John Bogle on speculation as opposed to investing: “An investor is a person who owns a business and holds it forever and enjoys the returns…Speculation is betting on price: ‘I think i can buy this for 10 and sell it for twelve.’ …Speculation has no place in the portfolio of the typical investor.”
John Bogle on investment costs: “With investing, you get precisely what you don’t pay for. If you pay nothing, you get everything.”
Steve Forbes on investment costs: “People are very careful with their money when they buy a car. They go online, look at prices. They have coupons when they go to the supermarket. And yet, when it comes to money management, by golly, a thousand here, two thousand there, a percentage here, two percent there…”
Steve Forbes on the marketing of investments: “The problem with new financial products or systems is that it always works in the past. We don’t know if it will work in the future.”
So keep your costs low and forget about timing the market? Sounds good to me. 🙂
Hi. I'm Mike Piper, the author of this blog. I'm a CPA and the author of several personal finance books. The point of this blog is to show that investing doesn't have to be complicated. 
That’s a great list of quotes to help put things into perspective. Great site btw!