9 Financial Rules You Should Never Forget

The Motley Fool's mission is to help the world invest, better. To do my part, here are nine things I think investors should never forget.

1. Nine out of 10 people in finance don't have your best interest at heart.
Wall Street is a magnet for some of the nation's smartest students hailing from the best universities. And let me tell you: Few of them go into finance because they want to help the world allocate capital efficiently. They do it because they want to get rich.

And the fastest and most reliable way to get rich on Wall Street isn't to become the next Warren Buffett. It's to find people gullible enough to pay outrageous fees and commissions on products that rarely beat a basic index fund.

IBM estimates that global money managers overcharge investors by $300 billion a year for failing to deliver returns above a benchmark index. If you think the regret and shame these managers feel is stronger than the joy they get from driving their Lexus to their beachfront home, I have a bridge -- and a CDO -- to sell you.

2. Don't try to predict the future.
A little more than a decade ago:

• Greece was strong.
• Russia was bankrupt.
• Oil cost $13 a barrel.
• AOL dominated the Internet.
• Smart economists thought the government would pay off the national debt by 2009.
• Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL  ) was a joke.
• General Motors (NYSE: GM  ) was at an all-time high.
• Mark Zuckerberg was in middle school.
• Y2K was a major worry.
• Fortune named Enron one of America's "most admired corporations."

The coming decade will be filled with just as many shifts. Learning to deal with them is more important than being able to predict them. Because no one -- no one -- will be able to predict them all.  (more)