Investing with Exchange Traded Funds

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Getting to know Dan Bortolotti.

Dan began his career as a journalist, spending more than 20 years as a magazine writer and editor and publishing nine nonfiction books. He eventually specialized in writing about personal finance, with a focus on low-cost index investing.

Questions Asked:

1:38 What I like about your book is that you take a strong stance on things and you talk about mutual funds and ETFs. There is currently an irrational dislike of mutual funds. Tell me what you say about that.

7:13 Investment Fees are about understanding what you’re paying for and what you’re getting in return and deciding for yourself whether it is good value or not.

11:17 You have a statement that I find helpful. “Over the long-haul, those that simply earn index-like returns, are likely to do better than 80-90% of investors including professional money managers.” But we have to break that down in terms of defining the long haul and what can we expect?

13:03 People often have a mistaken idea of how to assess their returns.

19:37 Here is another quote from your book: “If you expect stocks to deliver slow and steady performance, change your expectation. Because that has never happened. Sharp declines and soaring recoveries have always been normal.”

21:25 You say that over your investing lifetime, you should be prepared to see your money cut in half at least once or twice.

24:27 You also talk about how hard it is to stick to your investing plan with all the noise out there.

27:30 Who are you aiming this book at and what gaps were you aiming to fill?

31:16 We always ask our guests about their best ideas for listeners or but we will assume that your best idea is don’t worry about mistakes, but worry about the biggest mistake of all which is not investing.

32:50 At what point in your portfolio should you start taking fees more seriously?

34:08 What’s your best advice about sticking to the plan considering the outside noise that exists?

35:49 Indexing has come a long way. Do you think that the market conditions lately (going up) will entice people into index investing?