Following the 2008-2009 market crash, many voices were raised by both media-types and Wall Street participants questioning some of the investment principles which have been developed as logical applications of the efficient market hypothesis. In his presentation of June 2nd, 2010 Burton Malkiel  takes us back to basics, and reiterates what he considers are the continuing principles of sound investing. We encourage you to listen to it, but here is a point form summary of his thoughts expressed in the video .

Timeless principles according to Malkiel

1-buy and hold is very much alive- no one can consistently time the market, and if you try you will more likely be wrong then right- need to be right twice, when you sell and when you buy - also, remember the selection penalty, people typically buy the wrong types of assets or funds when they market time- also true for institutional investors-
2- it is advantageous to dollar-cost average invest, for example by regularly investing particularly in volatile markets, reduce risk.
3- rebalance yearly
4- continue to diversify broadly- avoid home-country bias
5- costs matter- the lower the costs by the purveyor of the investment service, the more there will be for you- the only reliable predictor of fund performance are the lower costs
6- use index funds for the core portion of your portfolio- cheaper- markets efficient- zero sum game, a matter of arithmetic- 2/3 of investors are beaten by index funds- over long periods, very few funds beat the market, even without taking into account survivorship bias
7- use the non-core part of your portfolio  for flyers, active management etc

We hope you will enjoy his presentation.