The spirit of Buffet's advice is to go passive unless you know what you're doing. Most would not profess to knowing how to invest but many think they can hire someone who does know. This is a second order game -- you need to know how to hire a good professional money manager. Unfortunately even professional investment advisors don't know good managers from bad, but they could if they'd try harder. See http://www.ppca-inc.com/pdf/Minding-Ps-and-Qs.pdf . investors don't realize that their advisors are faking their manager selection expertise.