John C. Bogle Quotes

The scary truth is 96 percent of mutual funds fail to match the market, and the 4 percent that do, they're always changing.

Hedge fund managers charge so much more than mutual fund managers; alpha is even harder to come by. They end up selling a variety of things beyond mere outperformance.

Mutual fund managers are trapped in this rather deadly vicious circle: the more successful they are, the more money flows into their mutual fund. Then, it is more difficult for them to beat the market averages or even to match their own past performance.

Successful hedge funds will be entrepreneurial; it is the essence of the craft.

Investors tend to discover 'hot' mutual fund managers just after a successful run and just before the inescapable force of mean reversion is about to kick in.

If you invested in a very low cost index fund - where you don't put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years -you'll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time.

Plenty of funds have fine long-term returns despite being tax-inefficient and generally costly. But a dirty secret is this: Average, no-load fund investors do much worse than the funds - or the market.

The mutual fund industry and small investors are very relentless and very unforgiving if people don't perform.

Most firms are hierarchical in nature, with everyone getting different slices of the economic pie. The problem is those slices are negotiated every time a firm raises a new fund, so in between funds, which is most of the time, the partners are trying to outgun one another to make a stronger case for themselves.

Any Wall Street advertising that does not go into the boring details of methodology is most likely to be pushing past performance.

I thought if we could put our hard-working culture as traders into the asset management, it will be a great combination, and we did do that.

The role of private equity as fiduciaries is certainly to make money.

Mutual fund managers want your money in their funds. They get paid based on assets under management.

Whether a tops-down or bottoms-up investor in bonds, stocks, or private equity, the standard analysis tends to judge an investor or his firm on the basis of how the bullish or bearish aspects of the cycle were managed.

With a regular venture fund, you raise, let's say, a billion dollars, and then over the next three or four years, you've got to invest that money; otherwise, the people who invested with you will say, 'What are you doing? You're just collecting fees on our money.'

There are a lot of idiot fund managers out there who add no value to the process at all.

There's accountability in the mutual fund industry. And they've been tremendous engines of wealth for people and they're going to continue to be so.

Often, investors will discover a manager after he's had a terrific run, usually when he lands on a magazine cover somewhere. Invariably, funds swell up with new investor money just before they revert to their long-term averages.

Our deals and performance speak for themselves. And whoever doesn't feel comfortable investing with us will not.

There are a lot worse things you can do with all your bucks than giving them to even a mediocre mutual fund - such as, for example, giving them to a mediocre hedge fund. If supporting the lifestyle of a mediocre fund manager is your favorite charity, who am I to stop you?

There is enourmous pressure in the investment business to deliver good news. Good news sells better ….To go out there in a bubble and talk about overpriced markets is an invitation to get fired.

The investors who generate big returns over five years, the guys they write books about, are supposed to keep winning, right? Well, they don't.

Venture-capital firms invest in trends by projecting returns. But most projections are pretty much bogus, and research shows that experts are no better at predicting the future than dart-throwing monkeys.

I think that survivorship bias, the survivorship bias is something I'm very acutely familiar with because of investing.

Many financial advisors recommend that you diversify for your own protection. What they fail to tell you is that it is also for their protection. Since most financial advisors cannot tell you exactly which stock or mutual fund is a great investment, they tell you to buy a bunch of them.