Funeral By Funeral, Theory Advances.

What Counts Is Results, And There Can Be No Doubt That The Soviet Planning System Has Been A Powerful Engine For Economic Growth...the Soviet Model Has Surely Demonstrated That A Command Economy Is Capable Of Mobilizing Resources For Rapid Growth.

Economics Never Was A Dismal Science. It Should Be A Realistic Science.

Even Fans Of Actively Managed Funds Often Concede That Most Other Investors Would Be Better Off In Index Funds. But Buoyed By Abundant Self-confidence, These Folks Aren't About To Give Up On Actively Managed Funds Themselves. A Tad Delusional? I Think So. Picking The Best-performing Funds Is 'like Trying To Predict The Dice Before You Roll Them Down The Craps Table,' Says An Investment Adviser In Boca Raton, Fl. 'i Can't Do It. The Public Can't Do It.'

The Sad Truth Is That It Is Precisely Those Who Disagree Most With The Hypothesis Of Efficient Market Pricing Of Stocks, Those Who Pooh-pooh Beta Analysis And All That, Who Are Least Able To Understand The Analysis Needed To Test That Hypothesis.

Still, I Figure We Shouldn't' Discourage Fans Of Actively Managed Funds. With All Their Buying And Selling, Active Investors Ensure The Market Is Reasonably Efficient. That Makes It Possible For The Rest Of Us To Do The Sensible Thing, Which Is To Index. Want To Join Me In This Parasitic Behavior? To Build A Well-diversified Portfolio, You Might Stash 70 Percent Of Your Stock Portfolio Into A Wilshire 5000-index Fund And The Remaining 30 Percent In An International-index Fund.