Free stock software downloads and resources

Not only is it foolish to go ahead and trust some mass-market stock market program that you can buy off the shelf, but Warren Buffet has bet that even if you use the best hedge funds in the world to do your investing, you're not going to do better than a cheap S&P 500 index (sold by
Vanguard ).

Warren Buffet, one of the richest and arguably greatest investors in the
world certainly knows what he's talking about. His style of investing is
very sensible as opposed to all the snake oil methods involving reading
stock charts.

The arguments given by those purporting to be able to beat the market
have big holes in them and a largely self serving. When you get the
services of a hedge fund, they charge large management fees which they
claim are worth it because of their great returns. If they're so great,
why is Warren Buffet betting that they're not?

But of course there are Hedge Funds that have done incredibly well over
the period of quite a few years. How do you explain that?

Well if you pick stocks are random, or let your dog pick them by sniffing
and newspaper, some of them will do incredibly well also. Does that make
the dog as smart as Alan Greenspan? The point is that if you make risky
investments, some will do great and some will drop like a bomb.

So when the hedge fund manager does really well, he chalks it up to his
clever team of highly payed professionals doing the job well. When they
fail miserably, what happens? Typically investors pull out fast and get
conned by the next slick-talking hedge fund charlatan. The hedge fund
goes bust and the employees get jobs elsewhere.

The way to get big returns in the market is to gamble. You'll make
money half the time, the other half of the time you lose. If you're
a hedge fund, you're betting with other people's money, and getting
paid a big management fee, so there's not much downside to doing that.

Traders gone wrong

What happens when a stock trader makes terrible trades? Well the most
spectacular example of this is the story of Nick Leeson whose rogue trading of many billions behind his bosses' backs caused the collapse of the oldest merchant bank in London, Barings Bank.

After spending years in a Singapore jail, he's back in business and the CEO of Galway United FC. He's also the subject of a motion picture starring Ewan McGregor: Rogue Trader.

The upshot is that you should trust Warren Buffet's bet on this one.