J.L. Collins

If I were coming into this today, I would probably be buying the ETF version.

I'm, as I say to people, I'm in VTSAX because I'm an old guy and that's where I started.

And there's no compelling reason to change.

Yeah, so you covered a lot of ground and that's great stuff.

So I will start by saying, when you say 85, 90%, the index outperforms 85, 90%, that's like every year.

But if you go out five years, it becomes even worse for the active side.

In fact, if you go out 30 years, it's less than 1% outperform, which is statistically zero.

So I started investing in 1975.

That's when I bought my first shares of stock, which were Southern Company and Texaco, if anybody cares.

And that coincidentally was the same year Jack Bogle launched Vanguard and started the first broad-based, low-cost index fund that us retail people, which is just you and me and the average person, could participate in.

I didn't know that at the time.

And even if I had known it, I wouldn't have been wise enough to embrace it.

And the reason I know that is because in 1985, 10 years later, when I did first start hearing about index funds, I wasn't wise enough to embrace it.

It still took me another decade, decade and a half to get there.

and so the question becomes well why why does it take so long if it's such a good thing and i think you touched on it it's not like stock picking doesn't work you know if you do it well and and you and i talked offline before we began recording and i mentioned that you know i came across the modley fool in the 90s and very much enjoyed the content and i was still a stock picker in those days

If you do it well and with discipline, picking stocks or for that matter, picking active mutual funds that are run by stock pickers, it'll get you there.

It's not like it doesn't work.

It does work.

And by the way, and I'm sure you can relate to this, there are a few things in life more intoxicating than finding a company, looking at the stock, pulling the trigger, and then having it work.

I mean, that is a wonderful feeling that I still miss.