1Most stocks fall behind;
yet markets rise.

Stock returns are skewed. Most stocks underperform cash; the best 4% create all the net wealth.

2Few swans bring the wealth;
own the flock.

Diversification isn’t just about lowering risk. It also raises your typical return. The winners win big, and owning the whole market means you benefit from holding them.

In 1974 Paul Samuelson, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics, publicly called for someone to start an index fund.

Two years later John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, launched one for ordinary investors. Wall Street called it Bogle’s Folly.

Samuelson later ranked indexing alongside the invention of the wheel, the alphabet and Gutenberg’s printing press. Fifty years on, it’s how most people invest.