Thirteen Years an Index Investor

There is an urban legend that a brokerage once found that its best-performing accounts belonged to clients who were dead so could not meddle. Financial planners often rely on the theoretical performance of different strategies because actual investors keep putting in money, changing strategies, and taking out money. Skeptics often warn that in practice there are various costs and delays which make the same strategy work differently in real life. Sometimes you take out money to fix your roof just before the market crashes, or put in your whole tax refund just before it booms, or the country with the big investment returns also has big taxes on foreign investors. It occurs to me that I have an account which has followed the same strategy with no new money or withdrawals since 2014. (This is another post outside the main topic of this blog! If you just want to read about books and swords, my article on ancient spears just appeared with Marine Corps University Press and is open-access!)…