XPost: rec.arts.comics.strips   
   From: mjackson@alumni.caltech.edu   
      
   On 1/6/2026 6:22 PM, William Hyde wrote:   
      
   >> On Tue, 6 Jan 2026 12:32:37 +1300, Your Name    
   >> wrote:   
      
   >>> If I'd known he was going to be "playing the stock market", I could   
   >>> have predicted that he'd lose money. The stock market is an idiot's   
   >>> game for greedy fools who can afford to lose money.   
   >   
   > Buy a broad index, and wait.  This strategy has worked now for about a   
   > century and a half.  Mind you, it was not easy to do before cheap index   
   > funds were introduced in the early 1970s on the recommendation of a   
   > scholar of the markets.   
   In October of 2010 I was on salary continuance after my position at   
   Xerox was eliminated. It would run out at yearend, when I would have met   
   the years-of-service and age to take my full defined benefit pension as   
   a lump sum.  Since the local labor market was saturated with xerographic   
   physicists and engineers, and I also had a significant 401(k), I was   
   thinking about looking for an investment advisor.  A chance conversation   
   at an out-of-state wedding pointed me to /Unconventional Success: A   
   Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment/ by David F. Swensen, which   
   recommended a diverse collection of index funds and a "trade only to   
   rebalance" strategy.   
      
   So I dumped the idea of paying an advisor and looked for low-cost index   
   funds.  /The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon,   
   and Everything in Between/ by William J. Bernstein provided detailed and   
   reasonably current (at the time) sample portfolios for several different   
   situations; I picked one (50/50 bonds/stocks), tweaked it a bit, and   
   have made only one significant change to my holdings since.  Return over   
   15 years, corrected for withdrawals - I *am* retired after all - has   
   been 140%; Vanguard overhead is almost negligible.  Best advice I ever got.   
      
   --   
   Mark Jackson - https://mark-jackson.online/   
      I'd rather find boring things interesting   
      than find interesting things boring. - Frazz (Jef Mallett)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)