re: Investing Advice for a Noob

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The next question I have is this. How many of the index holders do you think sold out at the bottom and did not get back in at all or waited a long time? I would venture to guess a lot. Therefore, I would also say that index returns don't always equal investor returns for this reason.

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Well, I agree a lot of people did.

Of course, the first sacred rule of index philosophy is to never sell or time the market sooo you can't really use those people as an argument against it, as the argument is to stay in the index no matter what.

According to who?

"Random Walk" etc. The thousands and thousands of funds available. The small percentage that beat a given index any given year. The even smaller percentage of those funds that beat an index over 5 years, an even smaller percentage that beat over 10, and so on.

Again, no one says this will remain true for the next 100 years. This all occurred in a growing stock market over the 20th century.