Bogleheads.org

Does anything look like a great investment right now? It feels a lot like 2007 when everything seemed richly valued. Maybe a good time to pay down debt! Or just spend it. Being in debt is cheap now too, and higher rates and/or inflation are probably coming. Plus there are the non-financial risks (p...

Taleb does not recommend putting opportunistic funds into individual companies. In the book he contrasts the high failure rate of entrepreneurs with the high success potential of Venture Capitalists (VC). In other words, someone investing in one or several promising companies is likely to lose; som...

Just the TV.

Oh yeah, and the phone.

Define "well." An asset class that exploits rising interest rates for an outsized gain. In other words, "well" == better than just keeping your fixed-income really short (or in cash). I asked this question a few years ago. The consensus was: nothing. There are some gimmicky fund...

I don't believe in the distinction between needs and wants, except in the most trivial sense (needs being air, water, temperature regulation, enough calories, etc.). Today's needs are yesterday's wants.

Have a crisis of faith. What are your most deeply held convictions? Formulate them as best you can, and then seek out books that explain their historical roots (someone created them for some purpose) and, more importantly, books that attack them. Don't settle for strawmen; find the strongest "e...

Just want to thank everyone who took time to comment in this thread, particularly the mathematicians. Although I can't respond individually to all 60+ posts, I have read them all at least twice and am considering all the advice.

Is maximizing happiness the point of life? I find that dubious. Even assuming it is, then (as Victoria points out, paraphrasing the hedonic psych/behavior econ gurus) which kind of happiness: experienced joy moment by moment, or retrospective appraisal? They are different and often at odds, given th...

Rodc wrote:Make sure you are a very proficient software professional as well.

Could you be more specific about this?

Forgot to add - As a kid I programmed a lot in structured BASIC for fun. I know some Python now and work with software engineers but have never programmed professionally. - In college I took two semesters of logic (listed under philosophy) -- predicate logic, Cantor, Frege, Godel's incompleteness t...

(I suppose I should also include physicists, economists, people working on the theoretical side of engineering/CS, et.al.) Me I'm 36 and have $400K in the bank, a cushy job, and no kids yet. Standardized tests indicate IQ around the 99th percentile (but not the 99.9th). I show very high ability in c...

nydad wrote:We can turn that question around:

Wouldn't a good Japanese American boglehead have been substantially investing in markets other than the Nikkei S&P 500?

(I keep my equities at 50% US/50% International, FWIW)

Why do you overweight the US?

"Random walks don't provide a reblancing bonus." It's off-topic, but your statement is absolutely false. Random walks are the classic source of a reblancing bonus. You're incorrect. Think about it. Mean-reversion ==> rebalancing bonus Random walk ==> no bonus Trend ==> rebalancing penalty

This is also in a sense a page out of Taleb's books. By collectivizing all the little bad risks (with an implied bailout), they created an existential risk to the whole system and widespread moral hazard. So fine, I concede that their ratings of individual munis or whatever are probably not bad.

The individual investor shouldn't be let off the hook. This IMO was a widespread failure of personal ethics. Worst of all perhaps were the individual borrowers who LIED on stated-income mortgage apps and then wanted to claim afterward that they were hoodwinked because the "lender" (Fannie/...

paulsiu wrote:One problem is without a dataplan, you can't get any MMS.

Right now I have a dumb phone but it does send and receive MMS. Does that mean that my plan (through work, I don't see the bills) is really a data plan and I just don't have a phone with the browser and other features??

They are in the business of selling. What do they do? - they sell opinions, they don't make proclaimations that they know the direction of the market. Those who know the future, would make their money and retire. No need to sell when you are financially set. Haha, so true. A typical meeting of cred...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/12/us-mcgraw-hill-results-idUSBRE91B0P220130212 The company does not believe the Department of Justice can prove that this failure - common to nearly everyone at the time - was the product of intentional misconduct by anyone at S&P. It doesn't matter whethe...

Thanks, folks.

Wizard: MMS (vs SMS) supports attachments and multiple recipients. The advantage for me is that that's how everybody I know communicates now, like it or not.

That's a good idea. What about making sure the interface is responsive? My current phone seriously takes 10-15 seconds to load up one MMS message; much longer if it has a picture attached. Forgot to add: I also hate texting on the dialpad, so the phone must have either a touch screen or (preferably)...

I have a work-paid voice-only AT&T plan with an old Samsung 'dumb' phone. All my friends now have iPhones and converse using multi-cast MMS, and this little phone holds only 30 MMS messages and hangs for up to 20 seconds just to open one. When it fills up (which takes just minutes in a fast conv...

I am a firm believer that a financial planner should "eat their own cooking". This means only recommending investments to clients that the planner uses in his personal portfolio. Suze recommends investing in stocks, yet she owns no stocks and only holds tax-free municipal bonds. Bad argum...

HomerJ wrote:15-25 year periods were the stock market goes "nowhere" are not uncommon. Happened from 1966-1982... We're 13 years into one now.

And in those periods, by how much did stocks underperform bonds? I bet in no case was it more than 1% CAGR.

S&P breaks 1500 and suddenly we're talking 100% stocks again. I've seen this show before!

Everyone break out your spreadsheets!

IMHO, gold has a negative expected real return but should save your bacon in hyperinflation. That's not an investment; it's insurance.

Craig, obviously you've never heard of TIPSs . The government has promised us a positive real return, so we have nothing to worry about. That's the U.S. government, the full faith and credit. Besides, I heard that exchange rates mean-revert over time. Ignore the noise, stay the course, etc. What we ...

The most important think retirees need to understand is that their real risk isn't another 50% decline on stocks, but a portfolio whose return is too low to allow them to generate a rising income stream over their lifetime that they don't outlive. This is the thesis of Nick Murray's book Simple Wea...

Toons wrote:Correct me if I am wrong, but hasn't the S&P, given enough time ALWAYS marched on to new highs?

No. Strictly speaking, that would be true only if it were currently at an all-time high.

She has no business sense, but lots of great ideas. I have no doubt our salon concept is going to be a lucrative business. This statement is strongly indicative of a cognitive bias to which we as humans are all prone. You're a unique person, but your business plan isn't unique. Without presuming to...

She's half-right. No, you can't get solvent via Your Latte Factor. For the David Bach plan to work, you have to make big cuts to the big, recurring bills. Which means that the proles of America need to quit borrowing to maintain the trappings of Middle Class(TM). You have to make "tough choices...

I have worked in and out of academia. I have known so many people who have dedicated their lives to reading and analyzing....Plato, Aristotle, Aquinus, Kant, Mill, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Marx, Sartre, Freud, yadayada. And others (probably the majority) who may have heard of the above and what they be...

Boycott TV altogether. I've been TV-free for almost 10 years now, and to say that I don't miss it is an understatement.

That's the problem with scheduled rebalancing. You miss the best opportunities. I'm not sure if I've missed something here but there's something that seems very un-bogleheadish about this whole discussion. How is this NOT trying to time the market? As I understand it, it's not timing, but it is ass...

I'm already at 100% stocks, so no, but I'd probably double up on VEU (buy on margin) in my brokerage account. I almost did that in Feb-Mar 2009 when VEU hit $26. (Bottom was $24.) How I wish I'd had the guts.

I'd also look around for things to sell in the classifieds.

VennData wrote:And instead of tossing in partisan blather, you might want to be balanced: Consider that each nation has a different collection of these laws, without having a complete analysis, you cannot comment on the subject. Period.

Rick didn't mention a particular political party. You protest too much.

wesleymouch wrote:Wade Pfau lists much lower withdrawal rates for a 40 year retirement under current market conditions. more like 1.6 to 1.8% per year

Link please.

EDIT: Found it: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... id=2201323

Back in 2002 I predicted that in the wake of Sarbanes-Oxley (and the requirement for CEOs to certify financials, with criminal liability) there would be widespread restatements and even more revelations major fraud like Enron and Worldcom. I bought into a "short the index" fund (BEARX) usi...

I feel the same way...But I am not comfortable going 100% equities, if not us treasuries and total bond, where should that part of my AA go? I am trying to be a good Boglehead and tune out the noise, but it seems to be getting much louder. Thoughts/Comments? Harry Browne Permanent Portfolio? (Edit:...

VictoriaF wrote:This violates the Efficient Market Hypothesis. A marriage should include an invisible hand.

The "invisible hand" depends on Rational Choice Theory, which is even more ludicrous in love than in economics!

Any words of wisdom? Don't marry unless she is richer than you. Realize that marriage today is a legal fiction; she can dissolve it unilaterally on a whim, and she'll get the kids and most of the money. Even if she commits adultery with an old boyfriend from Facebook who ends up living in your hous...

Age 36, net worth $377K. I'm shooting the moon. My ideal AA: 30% US SV 45% foreign developed SV 25% EM SV (very roughly GDP-weighted) 0% fixed-income 0% commodities My actual AA because of employer and tax constraints: 33% WisdomTree small-cap div (DES) in trad 26% Vanguard FTSE all-world ex-US (VEU...

- Built-in performance chasing. E.g., large growth and ridiculously overvalued tech stocks during the '90s. E.g., REITs (and on the bond side, % of TBM allocated to MBS) during the housing bubble. E.g., country-specific risk within a cap-weighted EM index. Etc. - Institutional investors "gaming...

I don't think that's necessary as the whole job will take ~2 weeks or less. (We've talked about escrowing the whole $20-25K for the basement work.) What I'm really is how to write this so the inspection, finances, etc. get done after the basement is finished. We don't want to go to closing with the ...

Negotiating for a newly-built house with an unfinished basement. Want the builder to finish the basement before we move in. Negotiated a price including the basement work, but I'm unsure how the transaction is supposed to go -- when and in what order things are supposed to happen. Builder offered th...

epilnk wrote:Edmund Hallowell's 'Driven to Distraction'

Ordered.

Q. How many ADD kids does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Let's go ride bikes!!

norookie wrote:If I was your wife I'd divorce you. Be prepared for it , thats what "they' taught me in boy scouts.

That reminds me, I was in Boy Scouts too -- I finished everything but the Eagle project, then quit.

I'm lazy. I've always been. I do the absolute minimum at work and have to be constantly hounded to do even that. I start projects and set goals and then abandon them. I procrastinate, and then procrastinate some more. I clean my house only when it has become absolutely disgusting and someone is comi...

I just quit a job; official termination date May 3. I have a 401k there with a loan against it. There's also a small pension, which has a lump-sum value that I can check on the company website. Q1. I assume I must repay the loan before I can do a rollover (trustee-to-trustee transfer) to a self-dire...

Andrew Lo wrote:deliver the same kind of expected return

Huh??