Getting Lazy in Discussing Winning in the Stock Market

Neil Irwin had an interesting piece reporting on returns to investors who just held stock index funds over long periods of time. The point of the piece is that people who just held an index, rather than trying to speculate on individual stocks, have seen very healthy returns over the last three decades.

While the basic point is well-taken (most people will lose money by trading, both because they tend not to make the right calls on average and because of the fees associated with trading), there ...