Yesterday The New York Times reminded readers of a key point that I spend a lot of my time preaching to people: "bankers on Wall Street describe themselves as being in the moving and not the storage business. They make money by trading stocks and bonds, not by owning them." See: Bankers' Lesson from mortgage mess: sell, don't hold.
Investment firms are in the business of selling us their products. They are constantly recommending that the rest of us buy their products because they make their billions by selling us their products. They do not make billions by investing and holding their own products. The sooner investors get that basic premise through their head the better off they will be.