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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;geekpryde, post: 1690376, member: 36248&quot;]Actually most investment professionals, large &quot;sophisticated&quot; investors, endowments, and hedge funds all do the same thing (buy high and sell low, buy what&#039;s trendy, and basically always do the opposite of what they should). Or at least that&#039;s what all the scholarly literature on the subject says. Regardless of size, people who have a long term horizon and strong stomach&#039;s can stick to their investment philosophy and laugh all the way to the bank when everyone else is panic selling or frenzy buying.</p><p><br /></p><p>Certainly after fees and any taxes, most active investors (no matter how large), do poorly compared to their passive counterparts after taking into consideration things like survivorship bias.</p><p><br /></p><p>Only &quot;strong hands&quot; have the money/wherewithal to stay in, and many large investors do not have &quot;strong hands&quot; when push comes to shove, and people on a committee start freaking out, or Hedge funds need to liquidate investments as investors start pulling money.</p><p><br /></p><p>A small investor who is only accountable to themselves (and their spouse), is ideally suited to ignore all the market noise, assuming they are mentally prepared for crashes, bubbles, and everything in between. Someone with a passive index based approach can maximize returns with little effort and with low stress. Certainly you are correct that most small investors hurt themselves by making emotionally driven bad investment decisions, but my point is that so does everyone else.</p><p><br /></p><p>If anyone cares for some additional reading on the history of financial speculation (including sections on Gold), I highly recommend:</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation&quot; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Devil-Take-Hindmost-Financial-Speculation/dp/0452281806" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.amazon.com/Devil-Take-Hindmost-Financial-Speculation/dp/0452281806" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Devil-Take-Hindmost-Financial-Speculation/dp/0452281806</a></p><p>&quot;The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Pillars-Investing-Portfolio/dp/0071747052" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Pillars-Investing-Portfolio/dp/0071747052" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Pillars-Investing-Portfolio/dp/0071747052</a></p><p><br /></p><p>If you don&#039;t want to buy a book, I read a lot of financial blogs and wanted to do a quick list of my favorites. Probably spent some time with about 50 financial blogs, and vast majority of them are crap, or they don’t produce their own content.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here are the best of the best in my opinion. I read these every day:</p><p><br /></p><p>Simpler (quick, easy to read, easy to understand, but VERY insightful)</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/2741-505123_162-1340.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.cbsnews.com/2741-505123_162-1340.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody" rel="nofollow">Alan Roth</a></p><p><a href="http://topics.wsj.com/person/Z/jason-zweig/1586" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://topics.wsj.com/person/Z/jason-zweig/1586" rel="nofollow">Jason Zweig</a></p><p><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/2741-505123_162-1339.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.cbsnews.com/2741-505123_162-1339.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody" rel="nofollow">Larry Swedroe</a></p><p><a href="http://blogs.forbes.com/rickferri/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://blogs.forbes.com/rickferri/" rel="nofollow">Rick Ferri</a></p><p><br /></p><p>More Complex (longer posts, harder to understand sometimes, need more thought, but some very detailed reporting)</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://alephblog.com/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://alephblog.com/" rel="nofollow">David Merkel</a> (site is awesome, read back through the archives)</p><p><a href="http://dealbreaker.com/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://dealbreaker.com/" rel="nofollow">Deal Breaker</a> (lots of Tongue-in-cheek commentary and sarcasm)</p><p><br /></p><p>Essay / Papers (advanced reading)</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.norstad.org/finance/total.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.norstad.org/finance/total.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.norstad.org/finance/total.html</a></p><p><a href="http://www.norstad.org/finance/risk-and-time.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.norstad.org/finance/risk-and-time.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.norstad.org/finance/risk-and-time.html</a></p><p><a href="http://www.norstad.org/finance/rtm-and-forecasting.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.norstad.org/finance/rtm-and-forecasting.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.norstad.org/finance/rtm-and-forecasting.html</a></p><p><a href="http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20020626.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20020626.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20020626.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p>I hope at least one person finds something I posted here beneficial,</p><p><br /></p><p>Matt[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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