Indexing Quotes

• The indexing problem changes with each new book undertaken. To meet the needs of different classes of seekers and to suit various types of books, rules entirely satisfactory in one case must be varied in the next and perhaps ignored or even reversed for a third... Indexing is a highly complex intellectual process involving the use of language in a specific and somewhat artificial way, and that it is also to a considerable extent a matter of intuition, the workings of which cannot be reduced to fixed rules. It is 'knowing what but not knowing how'.

  Hans H Wellisch

  Book, Class, Knowing

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• The mind's cross indexing puts the best librarian to shame.

  Sharon Begley

  Acceptance, Mind, Shame

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• We know that we can do it, but cannot describe in so many words how we do it, nor can we reduce it to a set of rules. At most, the observable facts of the indexing operation can be described.

  Hans H Wellisch

  Facts, Operations, Knows

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• If the data do not prove that indexing wins, well, the data are wrong.

  John C. Bogle

  Winning, Data, Investing

  John C. Bogle (2010). “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns”, p.35, John Wiley & Sons

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• Indexing is a successful approach to investing not because it's simple, but because it has performed so much better than the average active manager (the opposite of indexing), and the simplicity is just an added bonus.

  Patrick Geddes

  Successful, Simple, Average

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• Detailed analytical indexing is generally the hallmark of good back-of-the-book indexes.

  Hans H Wellisch

  Book, Hallmark

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• One could imagine a period like Japan13 years ago, however, in which indexing over time wouldn't work.

  Charlie Munger

  Years, Imagine, Periods

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• [With] closet indexing....you're paying a manager a fortune and he has 85% of his assets invested parallel to the indexes. If you have such a system, you're being played for a sucker.

  Charlie Munger

  Being Played, Assets, Fortune

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• Nobody wants to be passive; indexing is not passive - much more goes into indexing than watching a stock become the next buggy whip.

  Charles R. Schwab

  Investing, Want, Next

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• While it is probably a poor idea to own actively managed funds in general, it is truly a terrible idea to own them in taxable accounts... taxes are a drag on performance of up to 4 percentage points each year... many index funds allow your capital gains to grow largely undisturbed until you sell... For the taxable investor, indexing means never having to say you're sorry.

  William J. Bernstein

  Sorry, Mean, Years

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• For the taxable investor, indexing means never having to say you're sorry.

  William J. Bernstein

  Love, Movie, Romantic

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• To value investors the concept of indexing is at best silly and at worst quite hazardous. Warren Buffett has observed that "in any sort of a contest - financial, mental or physical - it's an enormous advantage to have opponents who have been taught that it's useless to even try." I believe that over time value investors will outperform the market and that choosing to match it is both lazy and shortsighted.

  Seth Klarman

  Believe, Silly, Lazy

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• Socialist countries throughout the world love to lower retirement ages to make people prematurely dependent on the government. But we should move in the opposite direction. In the long run, indexing retirement to life expectancy will yield enormous revenues to the system, far more than a one-shot increase in the age in the current legislative cycle.

  Dick Morris

  Country, Running, Retirement

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• Market-cap based indexing will never be driven from its deserved perch as core and deserved king of the investment world. It is what we should all own in theory and it has delivered low-cost equity returns to a great mass of investors... the now and forever king-of-the-hill.

  Cliff Asness

  Kings, Forever, World

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• The simple index fund solution has been adopted as a cornerstone of investment strategy for many of the nation's pension plans operated by our giant corporations and state and local governments. Indexing is also the predominant strategy for the largest of them all, the retirement plan for federal government employees, the Federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). The plan has been a remarkable success, and now holds some $173 billion of assets for the benefit of our public servants and members of armed services.

  David F. Swensen

  Retirement, Simple, Government

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• The word passive does a disservice to investors considering their options. Indexing provides an effective means of owning the market and allows investors to participate in the returns of a basket of stocks. The basket of stocks changes over time as stocks are added or removed based on its rules.

  Charles R. Schwab

  Mean, Doe, Investing

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• Associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the Memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.

  Vannevar Bush

  Ideas, Two, Important

  Vannevar Bush (1946). “Endless horizons”

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• I'm thinking of a presidential bid; currently indexing and cross-referencing everyone I've tweeted my junk to. 8x10s available.

  Christopher Titus

  Thinking, Presidential, Junk

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