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Comment by imp | Hacker News Reader

Most good index funds have fees much less than 1%. Vanguard offers them for about a 0.15% fee.

That sounds small, but compound it [monthly/quarterly] over a decade.... and I think that this is the fee that they charge on top of your money, but that there are also fees embedded in the funds that cause the returns to slightly underperform the actual index by the amount of the fee (though its been awhile and the laws may have have changed.)

Even if that is the total fee, at the end of the day, you're getting a market return minus that fee. This is not success.

It is not difficult to beat the market, nor to do it over the long term. It just takes a little bit of knowledge and a little bit of discipline.

"It is not difficult to beat the market, nor to do it over the long term."

Yet most active fund managers, who I assume are not stupid, do not beat the market over the long term.

Their incentive is to earn fees for their company first, and then beat the market, second. And yet you advise people to pay them inordinate sums to underperform the market.

I love how I'm getting voted down for pointing out simple and obvious facts. I take down votes without counter arguments as proof that the people I'm debating are expressing a religious, rather than rational, perspective.

That's fine, believe what you like. Just don't try to persuade me with such assertions.

I never advised anything of the sort. You're putting words in my mouth.

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