I had the exact same reaction when I was selling life insurance. My (extremely brief) insurance career was filled with “waaaaait a second...” and today I thank god I didn’t actually manage to sell anything 😂.
During my early investing years, I favored actively managed mutual funds over index funds expecting better returns. Well the research you mention above tells you how that story turned out. Once I transitioned to low-fee, index funds, I have not looked back. I have a few tax free accounts where mutual funds are the only investment options and I now only use index funds in those accounts. I check in on those accounts quarterly, especially the international index fund to understand if there was any major shift in regional and country holdings/allocation. Additionally, I use my quarterly, macro-economic mapping to decide how much to allocate to each sector and when.
Awesome! That's the story for many, especially in the U.S. Here in Canada our big 5 banks have a strangle hold on retirement accounts and they push their own active (high fee) mutual funds like there's no tomorrow. We have a long way to go up here getting people off the high fee investments.
Great read. The main reason I never used to invest in index funds was because I had no idea they were a thing until I was about 30. Then I was scared to invest for a few more years because I knew it would go down as well as up.
Literally no one I know IRL invests in index funds for those very reasons. It's why your work is so important - you've got huge swathes of the population who don't even know what the hell an index fund even is!
Thanks Charlie! That's encouraging to keep going... Sometimes I feel like "everybody knows this, I've said this before..." Then I talk to someone in real life and it's like "nope, lots of work left to do here."
Currently reading your book “Rational Investor”. Nice easy read, makes total sense. Footnotes are a bonus.
Thanks Cathy! Glad you're liking it. Once your finished, a review on Amazon is always a helpful for a self-published author :)
I had the exact same reaction when I was selling life insurance. My (extremely brief) insurance career was filled with “waaaaait a second...” and today I thank god I didn’t actually manage to sell anything 😂.
Haha yeah. It was like the career version of a horror movie where slowly bure surely a feeling of dread begins to take over.
During my early investing years, I favored actively managed mutual funds over index funds expecting better returns. Well the research you mention above tells you how that story turned out. Once I transitioned to low-fee, index funds, I have not looked back. I have a few tax free accounts where mutual funds are the only investment options and I now only use index funds in those accounts. I check in on those accounts quarterly, especially the international index fund to understand if there was any major shift in regional and country holdings/allocation. Additionally, I use my quarterly, macro-economic mapping to decide how much to allocate to each sector and when.
Cheers, Ben!
Awesome! That's the story for many, especially in the U.S. Here in Canada our big 5 banks have a strangle hold on retirement accounts and they push their own active (high fee) mutual funds like there's no tomorrow. We have a long way to go up here getting people off the high fee investments.
Great read. The main reason I never used to invest in index funds was because I had no idea they were a thing until I was about 30. Then I was scared to invest for a few more years because I knew it would go down as well as up.
Literally no one I know IRL invests in index funds for those very reasons. It's why your work is so important - you've got huge swathes of the population who don't even know what the hell an index fund even is!
Thanks Charlie! That's encouraging to keep going... Sometimes I feel like "everybody knows this, I've said this before..." Then I talk to someone in real life and it's like "nope, lots of work left to do here."
Love index funds!