John C. Bogle Quotes

Always keep your portfolio and your risk at your own individual comfortable sleeping point.

Diversification has been, and balance, like Wellington, has been so drummed into me, it's part of my personality.

There's a tendency to look at investments in isolation. Investors focus on the risk of individual securities.

I'm not a money manager, but I can tell you what the conventional wisdom is. The younger you are, the more risk you can take on.

It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.

The last thing you want to do, unless it's a very unusual situation, is to invest money.

Investing is a business where you can look very silly for a long period of time before you are proven right.

If the investor doesn't have enough time and skill to investigate individual stocks or enough money to diversify a portfolio, the right thing to do is to invest in exchange-traded funds that give you exposure to asset classes. It does make sense for the individual investor to think in terms of holding individual asset classes.

The best argument for mutual funds is that they offer safety and diversification. But they don't necessarily offer safety and diversification.

I haven't changed any of my investments since I've been in the Senate and haven't purchased any stocks since I've been in the Senate.

Well, there's always risk in long-term investment.

I think it is crucial to diversify one's portfolio.

Well, the most important thing in investing is to know what you're investing in, and if you're confident in the outcome, it's important to stay true to your position.

Long-term investing has gotten so popular, it's easier to admit you're a crack addict than to admit you're a short-term investor.

You could lose hundreds or thousands one day on paper and gain it all back the next, and it has literally no effect on your immediate future, provided the money you have in the market is money you're investing for the long haul (meaning at least three to five years).

The average investor's return is significantly lower than market indices due primarily to market timing.

We don't manage money for anyone else. We bear responsibility only for our own risks.

Mutual funds give people the sense that they're investing with the big boys and that they're really not at a disadvantage entering the stock market.

The thing to do with mutual funds is to buy a couple of decent ones, set up an investment plan and then never, ever think about them again, except maybe once a quarter or so when you take a peek at your statements to make sure that you have not accidentally been buying the Fidelity Peace-in-the-Middle-East fund.

What I'm trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there's inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.

Owning a variety of asset classes means that some part of your portfolio will be doing well when the cyclical turmoil arises. A broadly diversified portfolio includes large capitalization stocks, small cap, emerging markets, fixed income, real estate and commodities.

My advice to the average investor in 1988 is to be patient and think long-term. It will take 18 months for confidence to get better and, in the meantime, this is absolutely no place for short-term money.

I think those who invest in mutual funds want someone else to do the thinking for them. But the fact that they can move the money around the family of mutual funds just through a phone call lets them feel that they can play tycoons.

The beauty of diversification is it's about as close as you can get to a free lunch in investing.

I would never be 100 percent in stocks or 100 percent in bonds or cash.