Financial Advisors

[wdcbooks]

A few things:

Barron, I am really surprised you haven't read "Random Walk". As someone who really seems passionate about investing and the theory behind it, you have skipped one of the seminal books out there. It isn't perfect, but it challenged orthodoxy and formed the basis for guys like Taleb.

I understand what you are saying about passive and active, and I agree that anything but holding the market for life can be considered 'active', but I am not so sure why you are hung up on this point. The great majority of people DCA by necessity (401k) and almost all passive advocates eschew market timing. If you want some boring investing conversations come read www.bogleheads.org, where the last thing left to talk about is the most nitpicky nuances of asset allocation.

I believe gull made an early post advising someone look into Altruist and Rick Ferri as potential advisors. One could hardly choose more ethical and respected advisers. Nice call.

I am not going to get into it with meditate, but anyone who states a variation of, "Anyone can beat the market with a little research and effort", has put a whole lot of thought into the idea. It is simply a provable logical fallacy, and you will find that even active investment believers, both academic and practicing, would never say it was easy.

People like me would put 'beating the market' as not only not easy, but incredibly difficult at best, a hair shy of impossible at the worst.