Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
I’ve never seen anyone use so many words to say so little.
“Bogle COULD be wrong too.”
Bogle says you can’t time the market. And, no, he couldn’t be wrong. It’s impossible that he is wrong. If he was wrong, some market timer would have leveraged his can’t-miss scheme a hundred times over. He would be the richest guy in the world.
Your “long-term timing” canard is just laughable. Any time you actually pull the trigger on an investment change – Bingo – you just did it – that’s short-term! Which explains you being out of the market for 22 years. Your own Catch-22.
I like your statement about how all ACTIONS taken as part of the implementation of an investment strategy take place in the short term. That’s so. And I think this is what makes Valuation-Informed Indexing counter-intuitive to a lot of people.
The distinction between short-term timing and long-term timing is the entire deal. The mistake that the Buy-and-Holders made was to fail to see the importance of that distinction. When we all agree on the importance of that distinction, we will all be in a much better place.
Or so Rob Bennett, some fellow whose only claim to expertise in this field is that he figured out how to get his posts to appear on the internet, sincerely believes, you know?
This Rob Bennett individual might be WRONG. That’s the curve-ball. Yikes!
Hang in there, man.
Fallible Rob
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