A poster named “Yabbadabbado” argues that Mel Lindauer (co-author of “The Bogleheads Guide to Investing”) is overly sensitive. The comment comes in response to a complaint by Mel about the Morningstar ratings boxes, which permit posters to give posts they like a thumbs up and posts they do not like a thumbs down. Mel has [...]

continue reading.....

You hear these guys all the time. They can be highly judgmental.
“Dickens was wrong. These people with their credit-card debt should be put in prison. Thank you, God, for making me so much better than them.” That sort of thing.
Then the subject of bull markets comes up. They’re doing a happy dance. They’re rolling the [...]

continue reading.....

The Greaney Goons have in recent weeks taken the Campaign of Terror that they have used to destroy numerous Retire Early/Indexing boards in recent years to the Blogosphere. Several blog authors have responded by shutting down the ability of constructive posters to offer their thoughts rather than by banning only the Goons from further participation [...]

continue reading.....

Intimidation undermines science.
Intimidation interferes with the reasoning process.
Intimidation causes confusion.
Intimidation turns friend against friend.
Intimidation biases research.
Intimidation can trump logic for a time.
Intimidation causes worry about the long term because intimidation cannot trump logic indefinitely.
The use of intimidation reveals the weakness of an argument.
Intimidation is bad manners.
The desire to make use of intimidation comes from [...]

continue reading.....

Schroeder posted a comment to yesterday’s blog entry that I believe merits a blog entry of its own in response. His comment came in response to my observation that the Bogleheads wiki statement on safe withdrawal rates (SWRs) contains a link to an Old School SWR calculator but not to the only New School SWR [...]

continue reading.....

Katy Marquardt has written about the split-off of the Bogleheads community from the Vanguard Diehards community at her U.S. News and World Report blog.
Juicy Excerpt: Concludes Coleman: “The revamped Diehards.org is better organized, easier to navigate and much more intelligently moderated than the older version,” he says. “It’s becoming a true social networking site.”
I put [...]

continue reading.....

Scott Burns puts forward tantalizing hints but doesn’t dare to tell the full story.
William Bernstein took a chance by stating it pretty darn clearly one time and is not inclined to take a bigger one by stating it pretty darn clearly a second time.
John Bogle says enough to permit those who want to know the [...]

continue reading.....

I drove my mother to Atlantic City on Saturday. I don’t gamble (except in poker games with friends) So I spent much of the day sitting on a bench on the boardwalk writing articles for the web site.
One of them is entitled “Investor Emotions.” The article attempts to correlate the emotion with the greatest influence [...]

continue reading.....