“The probable is what usually happens.”

— Aristotle

In This Edition

›The Real Thing: Our AAII Journal Articles

›Truth Teller Articles Worth Your Time

›This Week’s Podcast: The #1 Reason to Invest in Index Funds

›Testimonials

From Paul

The Real Thing

I’ve had a number of conversations lately with people who told me, in one way or another, that they want the very best we have to offer. Not the introduction. The real thing. So let me point you toward a body of work that many of you have never seen, even if you’ve been with us for years.

Since 1978 the American Association of Individual Investors has been a nonprofit friend to people who manage their own money. No ads in the Journal. Nothing for sale. More than 100,000 subscribers who read it because they want evidence, not a pitch. When I think about who our work is really for, I think about readers like those.

Chris Pedersen and I write two or three feature articles a year for the AAII Journal, and I want to tell you why those articles matter more than their number suggests.

A typical column gives a writer about 1,000 words. That’s enough to make a point. It is rarely enough to prove one. AAII allows us up to 3,000. With that much room we can put the tables in front of you, walk through eighty or ninety years of market history, show you what happened in the bad decades as well as the good ones, and explain the reasoning behind a recommendation instead of simply making it and hoping you’ll take our word for it.

That’s the difference between being told something and being shown it. Over the years these articles have become some of the most complete work we’ve done — on small-cap value, on diversification, on target-date funds, on how much you can safely withdraw in retirement, and on building an equity portfolio you can actually live with for life.

I’ve gathered all of them, Chris’s and mine, on a single page — and every one is free to read.

See All AAII Articles

Articles by Chris Pedersen

Director of Research · Creator of 2 Funds for Life

Investing for Life on the Smoother Path

November 2025 • Read PDF

It’s Hard to Be Great at Everything, Including Investing

November 2024 • Read PDF

How Safe Retirement Withdrawal Rates Work in Practice

November 2023 • Read PDF

Double Your Lifetime Purchasing Power in 20 Minutes

October 2022 • Read PDF

Meaningful Diversification Can Lead to Higher Returns

October 2021 • Read PDF

The Price We Pay for Being Different

October 2020 • Read PDF

Making the Most of Target-Date Funds Before and During Retirement

April 2020 • Read PDF

Choosing Best-in-Class ETFs

2019 • Read PDF

Articles by Paul Merriman

Founder, Merriman Financial Education Foundation

Choosing an Equity Portfolio You Can Live With — for Life

May 2026 • Read PDF

A Magic Allocation Recipe: Mixing Factor Investing Into a 60/40 Portfolio

October 2025 • Read PDF

Supercharge Your Portfolio With a Nontraditional Index Fund

July 2025 • Read PDF

12 Hidden Lessons From Investment History

October 2024 • Read PDF

Winning the Battle Against Investment Fees and Biases

May 2024 • Read PDF

Small-Cap Value Is the Best Choice for Equity Diversification

October 2023 • Read PDF

Investing for a Child’s or Grandchild’s Lifetime

April 2023 • Read PDF

Pains and Gains From Small-Cap Value Stocks

September 2022 • Read PDF

The Pains and Gains of Investing

April 2022 • Read PDF

How To Score a Retirement Home Run

September 2021 • Read PDF

Solving the Problem of Retirement

September 2021 • Read PDF

There’s More to Portfolio Returns Than Just the Numbers

April 2021 • Read PDF

The Four Asset Classes With Great Long-Term Performance

September 2020 • Read PDF

Making Sense of Investment Risk

March 2020 • Read PDF

Digging Deeper Into Diversification

September 2019 • Read PDF

Power Your Portfolio With Value

June 2017 • Read PDF

Truth Teller Articles

Worth Your Time This Week

A few recent pieces from our Truth Tellers that I think are well worth your time.

Predicting a Financial Crisis

Ben Carlson

The Power of Setting Defaults for Optimism

Ben Carlson

5% Bond Yields

Ben Carlson

Why Are Valuations Falling in a Bull Market?

Ben Carlson

Don’t Roth All of Your 401(k) Money

Jim Dahle

This Week’s Podcast

The #1 Reason to Invest in Index Funds

This is the second of five presentations I recorded for Next Generation Personal Finance (NGPF.org), whose free curriculum reaches some 150,000 teachers. The sessions weren’t open to the public, but NGPF has allowed me to share each one with Sound Investing listeners.

The subject is index funds, and I start where the story starts: John Bogle, 1976, and a fund launch that nearly got cancelled before it opened.

From there I look at what the evidence actually says about active management over 20 years, why most investors never hear about the costs that quietly come out of their returns, and what happens to a fund that doesn’t perform. I also introduce the non-traditional index funds from Dimensional and Avantis that I believe give young investors their best opportunity, and close with stories from the 90 minutes I spent in Jack Bogle’s office.

▶ Listen Now

▶ Watch on YouTube

Testimonials

“Hearing from an expert like Paul helps me to build confidence in what I speak and teach about… The evidence he brings to the table is what we need to get the message across.”

— Teacher response from “The #1 Reason to Invest in Index Funds”

▶ Watch the Session

Thanks for listening, for sharing this information with others, and for your generous donations. And please keep getting the free We’re Talking Millions link into the hands of people who might be helped.

All the best to you and your family,
Paul Merriman

From Paul Merriman

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