We’ve learned a lot about investing over the past 60 years, a period that has seen many breakthroughs in the world of finance. What we know comes from studying public markets and is grounded in serious academic research. The lessons are clear: Investing in markets is an excellent plan for meeting long-term goals, like maximizing your retirement income. When you develop a deeper understanding of public markets, you can cultivate a sense of optimism about investing.

Two ideas are at the heart of embracing this approach:

First, markets provide a way for both sides to win. In order to trade, both buyer and seller have to agree on a price. If either side felt the price wasn’t meeting his or her needs, they wouldn’t trade. This is what we mean when we say market prices are fair.

Second, markets allow all of us to invest in human ingenuity—and get paid for it. We want to help as many people as possible access what markets offer in investment opportunities and wealth generation so they can live better lives.

Even though the investment principles we run on are simple, they aren’t always easy to understand and accept. Many people struggle with some of the basic concepts behind long-term, highly diversified investing—it’s a matter of human nature.

Here are some of the objections I’ve encountered. I think most of us can relate to at least one of them.

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