20 Best John C. Bogle Quotes on Investing
Investopaper
John C Bogle is a founder of Vangaurd Group, one of the largest mutual funds with more than $7 trillion assets under management [As of 2021]. He is considered as the most influential mutual fund manager and the creator of index funds. Index funds are those mutual funds that represent the composition and performance of the market index. These funds have low expenses and fees.
Bogle brought the revolution in the mutual funds industry by introducing the index funds after his realization that most of the fund managers were unable to generate higher or similar return than the market average return. So, he developed a lost-cost indexing strategy whose return would match the market averages.
He managed Vanguard Group until 1996 since its inception in 1974.
Below, we present to you some of the best ideas presented by John C. Bogle regarding the subject of investment.
Best John C. Bogle Quotes on Investing
1. “The stock market is a giant distraction to the business of investing.”
2. “Owning the stock market over the long term is a winner’s game, but attempting to beat the market is a loser’s game.”
3. “Ask yourself: Am I an investor, or am I a speculator? An investor is a person who owns business and holds it forever and enjoys the returns that businesses have earned since the beginning of time. Speculation is betting on price. Speculation has no place in the portfolio or the kit of the typical investor.”
4. “In the long run, investing is not about markets at all. Investing is about enjoying the returns earned by businesses.”
5. “Buying funds based purely on their past performance is one of the stupidest things an investor can do.”
6. “Speculation leads you the wrong way. It allows you to put your emotions first, whereas investment gets emotions out of the picture.”
7. “Investing is not nearly as difficult as it looks. Successful investing involves doing a few things right and avoiding serious mistakes.”
8. “When there are multiple solutions to a problem, choose the simplest one.”
9. “The mistakes we make as investors is when the market’s going up, we think it’s going to go up forever. When the market goes down, we think it’s going to go down forever. Neither of those things actually happen. Doesn’t do anything forever. It’s by the moment.”
10. “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.”
11. “In the long run, stock returns depend almost entirely on the reality of the investment returns earned by our corporations. The perception of investors, reflected by the speculative returns, counts for little. It is economics that controls long-term equity returns; emotions, so dominant in the short-term, dissolve.”
12. “The courage to press on 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.”
13. “It’s very difficult for any particular segment of the stock market to sustain superior performance. The watch word for our financial markets is, “reversion to the mean” i.e. what goes up must come down, and it’s true more often than you can imagine.”
14. “The point is that market returns are determined by both investment factors—the fundamentals of the initial dividend yield on stocks plus the rate at which their earnings grow—and by speculative factors— the change in the price that investors will pay for each $1 of corporate earnings.”
15. “If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.”
16. “The winning formula for success in investing is owning the entire stock market through an index fund, and then doing nothing. Just stay the course.”
17. “Time is your friend, Impulse is your enemy.”
18. “Investors need to understand not only the magic of compounding long-term returns, but the tyranny of compounding costs; costs that ultimately overwhelm that magic.”
19. “Reversion to the mean is the iron rule of the financial markets.”
20. “Investing is an act of faith, a willingness to postpone present consumption and save for the future.”
