Mutual Funds for the Utterly Confused

I realize that using the “Ask the Experts” sidebar throughout the book finds you reading about a number of long-since-dead philosophers and scientists. i do this largely out of irony - if we had listened and remembered these great tidbits of information we might not be in need of reminding so often of what is mostly common sense and because they seem to be seers of sorts, offering thoughts about where we are, how we got here and what we need to do to change the course of our financial lives.

As I approach the topic of Exchange Traded Funds in Chapter 15, I am skeptical of this type of investment. I go out on a proverbial limb to suggest that only 75% of the investors who have access to this type of investment tool, avoid it.

To that, I bring Henri- Frederic Amiel into the discussion. Mr. Amiel was great thinker, a Swiss philosopher who found himself in Switzerland at his birth, the son of Huguenot parents who relocated there in the early nineteenth century. he had the unique opportunity to cavort with some of the greatest intellectual minds in Europe. What he wasn’t was a prolific writer.

His isolation, due to his studies of moral philosophy left him outside of the aristocratic circles that many sought to dwell within. But after his death, his private journal was published revealing some interesting quips and observations that make him an expert in the very axiom I seek as a writer to maintain.Namely: a common sense approach to whatever I endeavor to do.

I use the quote in the book to suggest your approach to ETFs: “Common sense is calculation applied to life” but there are many more I could have used.

He is credited with:
“The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.”

and
“Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence”

and of course the question that every thinking person asks themselves at one time or another
“Is all my scribbling collected together- my correspondence, these thousands of pages, my lectures, my articles, my verses, my various memodanda- anything but a collection of dry leaves? To whom and for what have I been of use? And will my name live for even a day after me, and will it have any meaning to anyone? An insignificant, empty life! Vie Nulle!” As an instructor of financial information, these words ring the truest: “The highest function of the teacher consists not so much in imparting knowledge as in stimulating the pupil in its love and pursuit. To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.”