Talks at Google
7 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2019–2025
57:45 · 2M views · Feb 20, 2018
Author JL Collins discusses his book The Simple Path to Wealth at Google, covering avoiding debt, simple index fund investing, and retirement accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs. It is an hour-long interview in plain language.
HN points people to it as the clearest single video on simple, long-term index fund investing.
7 comments from Hacker News
> buy real things that appreciate over time Companies are real things that appreciate over time. Stock is ownership of that. I wouldn't characterize it as a scam exactly. I do think people underestimate how clever markets are and would advise against trying to outsmart them. There is a different kind of bet you can make which is to buy a small part of the entire US economy on the assumption that it will continue to grow during your lifetime. Thats what an index fund is. It's a boring bet with modest returns. A lot has been written about index funds. This video is probably the most clear resource I can think of that has all the information in one place. this video
I'm not downvoting you, but I think you are probably getting downvoted because "Stock trading can be quite lucrative" is statistically just not true. Even professional financial advisors almost never beat the market [0]. Only hedge funds that pay for huge amounts of priveledged financial information do, and even then not always. Here's a good video that makes a case for this. Even if you don't agree, you might find some of the points he makes interesting. But tl;dr, he argues that index funds basically always outperform other methods, so one should primarily invest in things like that. [0] this video
JL Collins was I think my introduction to the financial independence concept though I'd "accidentally" been investing in index funds and for retirment before. That series of posts (the "Stock Series") is great and it's available in edited book form called "The Simple Path to Wealth." Or for a video intro, he gave this 1hr Talk@Google: this video
JL Collins [1] has a great talk at Google I discovered while perusing youtube[2]. He taps into Warren's advice of not watching the markets too closely (mentioned in your second link). [1] [LINK] [2] this video
Reddit FIRE is also worth reading: [LINK] Also JL Collins' book "The Simple Path to Wealth" is well worth a read, on the same topic. If you don't want to get it, this talk covers the basics: this video