No, index funds are boring, there's very little to tinker with, and I'd have so much money it doesn't matter whether the market is down for years at a time.

It’s true but it’s still depressing if the market has a bad week and you know that you are down by 6 figures. It bounces back in the end but it’s a source of background stress.

Just listen to a couple hours or Warren buffet and Charlie Munger, it'll cure that and then you can focus on your golf game.

Wouldn't those guys inspire some people to spend huge amounts of time researching, stock-picking companies companies you can understand with moats and good management teams, trying to buy when blood in the water, oddly favor junk food, etc.?

Jack Bogle would have you park it in a balance of broad index funds, and generally don't touch it, nor even think about it:

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads%C2%AE_investment_...

Yes, once. And then they would tell you to leave it alone, and not think about it, at all, for 30 years.

Considering Buffett challenged hedge funds that they couldn’t beat S&P500 index funds over a decade, I‘d say they‘re both on the same page:

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/030916/buffe...

Yep, and IIRC Buffet suggested S&P for wife's investments. His research-heavy investment, and ideas around stock-picking, seems to be how he wants to spend his time.

So, if trying to steer people away from obsessing about growing/hoarding more money than they'll ever need... maybe just steer away from Buffet altogether, and towards Bogle.

(Bogleheads can also become a time-consuming activity, but more likely to instill the message of just stuffing it in total-market index funds, keep it boring, and don't think about it.)

Some people don't think about this, and aren't bothered by it. I'm one of them. If I had a million dollars in index funds, I would check on things maybe once a year.

On the other hand, it's exactly this attitude that's resulted in my spouse handling all of our finances. Maybe she wakes up at 4am fretting about the stock market; if so, she doesn't tell me about it.

Taleb talks about this specifically, his advice is to only check stocks occasionally that way you don't get the negative feedback from the down cycles.

His argument is that since stock generally goes up, if you're not constantly checking, when you DO check it will be higher than it was before and you'll feel positive about it.