Good Questions Outrank Easy Answers.

Still, I Figure We Shouldn't' Discourage Fans Of Actively Managed Funds. With All Their Buying And Selling, Active Investors Ensure The Market Is Reasonably Efficient. That Makes It Possible For The Rest Of Us To Do The Sensible Thing, Which Is To Index. Want To Join Me In This Parasitic Behavior? To Build A Well-diversified Portfolio, You Might Stash 70 Percent Of Your Stock Portfolio Into A Wilshire 5000-index Fund And The Remaining 30 Percent In An International-index Fund.

We Are Like Highly Trained Athletes, Who Never Run A Race.

Economists Are Said To Disagree Too Much But In Ways That Are Too Much Alike: If Eight Sleep In The Same Bed, You Can Be Sure That, Like Eskimos, When They Turn Over, They'll All Turn Over Together.

The Debate Can Be Put In The Form Of The Question: Resolved, That The Best Of Money Managers Cannot Be Demonstrated To Be Able To Deliver The Goods Of Superior Portfolio-selection Performance. Any Jury That Reviews The Evidence, And There Is A Great Deal Of Relevant Evidence, Must At Least Come Out With The Scottish Verdict: Superior Investment Performance Is Unproved.

What Counts Is Results, And There Can Be No Doubt That The Soviet Planning System Has Been A Powerful Engine For Economic Growth...the Soviet Model Has Surely Demonstrated That A Command Economy Is Capable Of Mobilizing Resources For Rapid Growth.