Index funds are simple. Rather than try to time the market or outguess other professional money managers about the prospects of individual stocks, index funds simply buy and hold all of the stocks in a broad market index such as the S&P 500. Index funds work by paring the costs of investing to the bare-bones minimum. They pay no fees to expensive money managers and have minimal trading costs, as they follow the ultimate buy-and-hold strategy. We can’t control what the markets will do, but we can control how much we pay for our investments.
