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Bogleheads® wiki - Investing Advice Inspired by John Bogle Academics Asset classes Employer provided retirement plans ETFs and mutual funds Financial planning Indexing Investing Non-US domiciles Personal retirement plans Retirement planning Tax considerations Complete list... Academics Asset classes Employer provided retirement plans ETFs and mutual funds Financial planning Indexing Investing Non-US domiciles Personal retirement plans Retirement planning Tax considerations Complete list...

 

Welcome

Welcome to the Bogleheads^® wiki, a collaborative undertaking by members of the Bogleheads Community. This wiki is a reference resource for investors. Bogleheads emphasize starting early, living below one's means, regular saving, broad diversification, and sticking to one's investment plan.

If all this seems a bit overwhelming, relax and don't panic. A good place to begin is getting started. Returning visitors may be interested in our new pages.

 

Getting started

• Getting started - Start here.
• Bogleheads® investment philosophy - Our investment principles.
• Bogleheads® investing start-up kit - A top-down approach to start investing.
• Investment policy statement - Identify your investment objectives and how you plan to meet them.
• Bogleheads® personal finance planning start-up kit - Other than investing, such as financial planning, insurance, and saving for college.
• Preparing for retirement - Steps you should take before retiring.
• Prioritizing investments - Choosing where to save your investing money, such as an employer's retirement plan or a savings account.

 

Today's featured article

The Bogleheads^® follow a small number of simple investment principles that have been shown over time to produce risk-adjusted returns far greater than those achieved by the average investor. Many of these ideas are distilled from Nobel prize-winning financial economics research on topics like Modern Portfolio Theory and the Capital Asset Pricing Model. But they are very easy to understand and to implement, and they work.

In fact, the basis of all of these principles is the idea that successful investing is not a complicated process, and can be accomplished by anyone with a small amount of effort. (more...)

 

This week in financial history

April 16:

• 1991 - The Warsaw Stock Exchange held its first trading session with five listed companies, all of which were formerly State-owned companies that had been privatized. Source: Warsaw Stock Exchange - History

April 17:

• 1930 - The stock market hit its post-Crash high, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 294.07, a 48% increase in the five months since the Crash bottomed on November 13, 1929. Over the coming two years, however, the Dow will lose another 85.99% of its value, bottoming at 41.22 on July 8, 1932. Source: Barrie A. Wigmore, The Crash and Its Aftermath: A History of Securities Markets in the United States, 1929-1933 (Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, and London, 1985), p. 137.
• 1991 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 3000 points for the first time. Source: Closing milestones of the Dow Jones Industrial Average

April 18:

• 2000 - The NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) rose 254.41 points, the highest single day point gain to date, just 4 days after it's largest single day loss of 355.49 points (April 14, 2000). Source: NASDAQ Composite Index Increases, Decreases

April 19:

• 1776 - The US Congress appointed a Committee "to examine and ascertain the value of the several species of gold and silver coins and the proportions they ought to bear to the Spanish milled dollar." Source: Timeline of the United States Mint
• 1895 -
  
  The Railroad Gazette made the first public notice of the Herman Hollerith tabulating machine used for the 1890 census. Hollerith's great breakthrough was his use of electricity to read, count, and sort punched cards whose holes represented data gathered by the census-takers. His machines accomplished in one year what would have taken nearly ten years of hand tabulating. Hollerith's company later developed into the International Business Machines Corporation, known as IBM. Source: American Treasuries of the Library of Congress
• 1933 - The gold standard, which directly linked the American dollar to its worth in gold, was abandoned on this day during the Great Depression. Source: This Day in Economic history.

April 20:

• 2007 - The Wilshire 5000 Index closed above 15,000 for the first time in history. Source: Wilshire 5000

April 21:

• 1982 - The Chicago Mercantile Exchange began trading futures based on the S&P 500 index. Source: Key dates and milestones in the S&P 500's history

 

Can't find what you're looking for?

Use the wiki's Search box. Or, start from a top-level overview using Site navigation. A complete article list is also available.

You can search or register to ask a question on the Bogleheads forum, or browse recent forum posts from the Bogleheads' home page. We're also on Facebook.

Our Canadian sister site, Financial Wisdom Forum, and its finiki, the Canadian financial wiki has a similar focus, many like-minded members, and may be of interest as well.

 

Contributing to the wiki

Anyone can read the wiki. If you would like to edit it, you must first join the Bogleheads forum. Once you've joined, send a private message requesting access, and you can then become an editor. Information on editing the wiki is available on the left sidebar of every wiki page. Suggestions are welcome by posting in Suggestions for the Wiki.

If you see content in need of improvement, or a new page on a topic not yet covered, consider becoming an editor so that you can contribute to the site. If you find yourself writing a reply to a forum question that's been discussed a number of times before, consider creating a wiki page with the answer. Then you and others can reply to subsequent questions on that topic with a link and a quote of your text. That way, the Bogleheads Community both preserves our knowledge base and makes it more accessible, particularly to those using search engines.