Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
So John Bogle was in on the mass conspiracy against Rob Bennett.
Bogle was in on the mass conspiracy against anyone who believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research. His own words show this. Bogle advanced a post to the Bogleheads Forum saying that he could see how Valuation-Informed Indexing could work. He didn’t endorse it. But he said that he could see how it would make sense for an investor to increase his stock allocation three times in the course of an investing lifetime when prices got insanely low and it lower his stock allocation three times in the course of an investing lifetime when prices got insanely high. That’s Valuation-Informed Indexing! That’s what works!
Given that Bogle believed that Valuation-Informed Indexing makes sense, he should have asked Mel Lindauer to knock off the funny business, especially the criminal stuff. He didn’t do that because he was afraid of what Lindauer and his Goon Squad would do to him if he posted with complete honesty. That’s sad. Bogle created a monster when he suggested (as he did on many occasions) that there might be some mystical alternative universe in which it is not 100 percent required to practice market timing (price discipline!) when buying stocks.
The “idea” that it might not be 100 percent required for all investors to practice market timing/price discipline when buying stocks is the marketing gimmick that ate the U.S. economic system. We need to move on to something real, to something truly research-based.
Rob
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