IN THE HISTORY of the investment industry, May 1, 1975, is a date to be celebrated. On that day, the industry took not one, but two, remarkable steps forward.
The first change was an action by the SEC to deregulate stockbrokers. For the first time in more than 100 years, brokers were given the freedom to set their own commission rates on stock trades. The result was a boon for individual investors. Today, instead of paying hundreds of dollars to trade a stock,

WITHOUT A DOUBT, John C. Bogle is the greatest man I’ve had the privilege of knowing. Tomorrow, the newspapers will run obituaries detailing his many accomplishments—how he launched Vanguard Group, started the first index mutual and was, right up until the end, a fierce advocate for the everyday investor.
I first met Jack in 1987, when I was a callow 24-year-old reporter at Forbes magazine. I last saw him in October, at the Bogleheads’

IN 2005, COMEDIAN Stephen Colbert popularized the word “truthiness.” This term, if you aren’t familiar with it, refers to something which seems like it should be true, but isn’t actually supported by evidence. Are stock market pundits guilty of truthiness? To answer the question, let’s look at a recent event.
First, some background: In the life of an investment analyst, there’s a rare but dreaded phenomenon known as a “profit warning.” This occurs when a company can tell,

ROBERT SOROS, son of billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros, has a surprising explanation for his father’s success: “You know the reason he changes his position on the market or whatever is because his back starts killing him.”
You read that right: The younger Soros attributes his father’s success to a sort of sixth sense—as if he can feel the market in his bones. He goes on: “My father will sit down and give you theories to explain why he does this or that.” But,

LIKE THE COBBLER whose children have no shoes, I get so busy with this website and other projects that I tend to neglect my own portfolio. I think of it as benign neglect: If you’re invested in a globally diversified portfolio of low-cost index funds, there isn’t much reason to look or much need to trade.
But for the past week or so, I’ve been doing plenty of looking—and a little trading.
By the market close on Dec.

HOW THINGS LOOK depend on where you stand. Trying to figure out how to respond to the market drop? After the initial slump, a brief rally and then another decline, the S&P 500 is down 10% from its September all-time closing high of 2930.75.
History suggests that, five years from now, share prices will be no lower than they are today, and 10 years from now they’ll be handsomely higher. But at times like this,

ALLAN ROTH LIKES to describe himself as argumentative—and, on that score, it’s hard to argue with him. But it’s also hard to argue with the points he makes, because he has this nasty habit of being right.
Roth is the author of How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street, a financial planner who charges by the hour, and a contributor of financial articles to AARP.org, Financial-Planning.com, NextAvenue.org and other sites. I caught up with him last month at the Bogleheads’ conference in Philadelphia.

RECENT MARKET turbulence, including today’s sharp stock market drop, has been a wakeup call for many investors. Feeling queasy? It isn’t too late to make portfolio changes: The S&P 500 may be down 9% from its all-time high, but it’s still up an eye-popping 293% since March 2009.
Here are three quick calculations that might spur you to action—or help ease your mind:
1. How much cash do you need from your portfolio over the next five years?

IN THE MID-1990s, Federal Express had a problem. Though the company’s safety record was exemplary, regulators had proposed new rules that would have posed an operational nightmare for the giant shipper.
The company flew Boeing 727 air freighters that each accommodated eight containers. Though they had never had a problem, the government’s concern was that if two heavier-than-average containers were loaded next to each other, it could cause the plane to become dangerously unbalanced.

I DON’T WANT BONDS in my portfolio—or, at least, not to the degree traditionally recommended in financial planning guidelines.
For years, I had accepted the premise that bonds should be included in a serious investor’s portfolio. Not that I necessarily followed that dictum. But I accepted the idea that young people should have a low percentage in bonds, and increasingly greater percentages through middle age and retirement.
I kept thinking that someday I’d come around to more bonds,

AS YOU NO DOUBT noticed, the stock market took investors on a wild ride last week. On Wednesday, the Dow industrials dropped more than 800 points. On Thursday, the Dow lost another 546 points. Friday was better, up 287 points, but there was still plenty of stomach-churning volatility.
At times like this, I’m reminded of Warren Buffett’s motto: “You want to be greedy when others are fearful, and you want to be fearful when others are greedy.” While that certainly sounds logical,

ON WEDNESDAY, Vanguard Group’s 89-year-old founder John C. Bogle was in hospital to receive treatment for his latest health scare—an irregular rhythm in his transplanted heart. On Thursday and again today, he was at the Bogleheads’ 17th conference in Philadelphia, as feisty as ever.
The Bogleheads are, of course, the online community who congregate at Bogleheads.org. They’re renowned as fans of frugality—especially frugally priced index funds. And Jack Bogle—even though it’s been more than two decades since he was Vanguard’s Chief Executive Officer—remains their guiding light.

MY GRANDFATHER WAS from Queens in New York City. He was a great guy and taught me a lot. He was also a native New Yorker, so he was street smart and tough.
One day, while we were walking together down 47th Street, near Times Square, I stopped to look at the jam-packed window of an electronics store. My grandfather waited patiently, but cautioned me, “Careful, they’ll take the eyes out of your head.”
It was a funny expression,

ALBERT EINSTEIN reportedly once said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,” or words to that effect.
When it comes to investing, I have always believed that the simplest approach is the best approach. But in recent years, a new type of investment has, I believe, crossed over into the “too simple” category.
This new type of investment: target-date mutual funds. If you aren’t familiar with them, target-date funds are mutual funds that typically buy other funds.

THE NOTED PHYSICIST Lord Kelvin reportedly declared in 1900, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now.” In the annals of inaccurate proclamations, this one stands out. Just a few years later, Einstein published his Theory of Relativity and, in the following years, proceeded to upend many of the scientific world’s longest standing and most deeply held beliefs.
The world of personal finance witnessed a similarly inaccurate prediction 76 years later. When the newly formed Vanguard Group launched its first index fund,