56 Quotes by William J. Bernstein

Bluntly put, there’s no chance that your doctor, dentist, or attorney is a high-school dropout. Your stockbroker, however, just might be.

The key aspect of an index fund is that many of them, not all of them, but many of them are extremely cheap.

If your broker or investment advisor is not familiar with the concept of standard deviation of returns, get a new one.

Only an income-producing possession, such as a stock, bond, or working piece of real estate is a true investment.

When it comes to fund managers and market strategists, this year’s hero usually turns into next year’s zero.

The reason that ‘guru’ is such a popular word is because ‘charlatan’ is so hard to spell.

Do the math. Expect catastrophes. Whatever happens, stay the course.

The essence of effective portfolio construction is the use of a large number of poorly correlated assets.

The highly decentralized nature of the medieval world of Indian Ocean trade produced a bubbling stew of Darwinian economic competition, in which those states whose political “mutations” were best suited to trade and commerce thrived, and those whose institutions were not withered.