Jail the Beardstown Ladies!

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The Motley Fool is a different case. The Gardners invest in a wildly popular public forum www.fool.com) and have always posted their results. Why not? They've been spectacular over the long term. But not lately. The Fools lagged the market in '97, and are below par again this year. They too, by the way, say it's no big deal to get average gains of 30% a year, indefinitely.

The great bull market has created a lot of experts like the Gardners, the Beardstown ladies and Seto. But the attraction of stocks--even if overhyped--has also transformed many just plain folks into sophisticated, independent investors. Thank the Beardstown ladies, for example, for the explosive growth in investment clubs, which have doubled in the past three years to 36,000, and are forming at the rate of 40 or so a day. Kenneth Janke, president of the National Association of Investors Corp., says the average club starts with 15 members, only one of whom has any investing experience. But after five years, all but one are investing outside the club. That's good.

Not so good, though, are the high expectations being promoted. If beating Wall Street really were that easy, the ladies would never have fallen. (Can they get up?) That's not to say individuals can't beat the market. You really do have the advantages of time and unique insight into businesses around you. You also have the Internet to enhance access to news and company filings. Use it. And even if you don't beat the market, odds are that any sensible collection of stocks will beat inflation and Treasury bonds over a long period. But don't bank on 25% or 30% a year when the long-term market average is only 11%. And buying Wal-Mart just because the parking lot is full has become a quaint cliche. It might have worked for Peter Lynch in the '80s. But the Beardstown batch tried it in the '90s and discovered yet another recipe--the one for crow.

TIME's Daniel Kadlec can be reached at kadlec@time.com