| Yet we can still own a piece of one - or a portfolio full of great ones - through the quintessence of capitalism: the stock market. With just a modest amount of money, any individual can accumulate a stake in many of the world's greatest companies. And it's easy. A click of the mouse and you're in. Another click, and you're out. (Compare that to your typical real estate closing.) And owning a piece of a company is a whole lot simpler than running one. You don't have to sign personal guarantees, hire or fire employees, grapple with an avalanche of mandates and regulations, pay lawyers and accountants, or even show up for work. How great is that? As Warren Buffett famously said, "The stock market is so easy. Why would I try anything else?" That's a great encapsulation of the "return on hassle" thesis. However, Buffett is not just a world-beater but a financial genius. Not many investors will enjoy the kind of returns he does. (Or did. The man is 95 years old and turning the reins at Berkshire Hathaway over to his successor, Greg Abel.) Of course, many investors opt for index funds. Buffett himself recommends them. In my investment book The Gone Fishin' Portfolio: Get Wise, Get Wealthy... and Get On with Your Life, I recommended that readers invest in 10 different index funds that represent 10 different asset classes. All that's needed afterwards is to rebalance the portfolio each year by selling back the asset classes that have appreciated the most and adding the proceeds to the ones that have lagged the most. The strategy has worked well, delivering outsized returns with an extraordinarily low level of risk. An investor who put $100,000 into the portfolio at its inception in 2002 has well over $600,000 today. Over the years, I've received two primary pieces of feedback on this strategy. The first is "I can't believe sophisticated investing can be made this easy." The other is "This is still way too complicated for me." Apparently, a substantial percentage of the public has a tough time calculating fractions. And that's required when you rebalance each year. In my new book, The American Dream: Why It's Still Alive... and How to Achieve It, I give that second group of readers - the mathematically challenged - concrete advice about how to make investing as uncomplicated as humanly possible. In fact, I call it "the world's simplest portfolio." It's completely liquid, broadly diversified, properly asset allocated, and tax-managed, with an expense ratio of .08%. That's a piddly eighty cents on every $1,000. This portfolio turns a single decision - buy and hold - into an effective, real-world investment strategy. The investment minimum is low: $1,000. And you can add to it in any amount, even as little as a dollar. Knowledgeable investors agree. No other investment technique offers a superior "return on hassle." I discuss "the world's simplest portfolio" in detail in my new book. And I'll discuss its merits further in my next column. Good investing, Alex | 
