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This thread is about factor investing, and there is a tangent of market capitalization. Just as I thought the discussion was getting interesting.

Maybe we should open a new thread for the market capitalization discussion and leave this thread for factor investing.

I believe there was a famous academic refutation of Efficient Markets... Well, try to find and cite that famous academic refutation, please, so we'll know where we're at. Market Volatility by Robert Shiller https://books.google.hn/books?id=Rv-DULmRx2YC&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false Thanks, working on looking at it. The book is surprisingly hard to find other than buying a used copy. The paper appears to be available here . But I don't understand how excess variability, or the phenomenon "that prices change for no good reason" refutes the efficient market hypothesis, as long as the price changes follow a random walk around a rational center. Just because there is a penumbra of irrational noise in market moveme...

That is to be expected as a potential. But some much rather hold the likely junk of that nature (which may be the value company discussed) than the likely junk where there is little proof of any major business (which that competitor might very well be that company). Valuey junk versus Growthy junk; neither is better or worse. Either way, it is very speculative. Knowing some more robust value companies, they might buy out the competitor to solve the problem. :P I wouldn't say value automatically equals junk but I see your point. I view it this way: when we choose value, we've already done the hard work, we've found a company who's earnings are selling at a good price. It is up to the future to prove us wrong. When we choose growth, we are t...

If a competitor has just developed and announced a product that is twice as effective and costs half as much as your company’s product, it’s a good bet that your company is going to make a lot less money in the future , even if they are making money now. The price for your company will quickly drop, even if the earnings don’t immediately drop. That’s a classic value company. Again, why are we making bets and predictions about the future? If you want to take this bet, go ahead, but I'm explicitly saying that I am not making a prediction about the future. I want productive and profitable companies in my portfolio and I want to spend less money compared to more money, so I buy the stocks that the market currently has on offer that meet these ...

You are making a gamble that those companies will continue to be profitable and productive in the future, while missing out on the companies that may not be profitable today but could be the frontrunners of tomorrow. I call that stock picking, and it doesn't really fit with the Boglehead approach and is more of the WallStreetBets type of approach. But to each his own. No, you keep reframing my decision in terms of a future outcome but I keep saying I did not look to the future to make my decision. I want a portfolio of profitable and productive companies today. I buy profitable and productive companies today. In the future I will also probably want a portfolio of profitable and productive companies. I will probably buy profitable and produ...

A value company would be something like SVB in January. It looks profitable now, but if analysts can look at the details, they see future problems and lower the current price. Hence you get a seemingly cheap stock - low P/E. If you invest in value, you are hoping stocks like SVB can turn things around and then you make money. If too many go bankrupt, you lose money. If a company is profitable and looks to be profitable in the future , it’s not going to have a low price. Notice how both these points refer to some future unknowable event. I want to build a portfolio of productive and profitable companies. The only way I know how to do that is to buy companies that are profitable and productive today. Anything else is just speculation If a co...

It baffles me that here on Bogleheads how many people try to justify market speculation and gambling with a goal of beating the market when the base principle of index investing is that you likely are not going to beat the market. There is no speculation with factor investing. When we buy value, we're making no prediction about the future, we're buying it because the price today is cheap. Same with profitability, we aren't predicting whether the company will be profitable in the future, we are observing if it's profitable today. I want to build a portfolio of profitable, productive companies. I know for certain that companies with cheap earnings and high profits fit this bill. Will expensive and unprofitable companies become cheap and prof...

You are making a gamble that those companies will continue to be profitable and productive in the future, while missing out on the companies that may not be profitable today but could be the frontrunners of tomorrow. I call that stock picking, and it doesn't really fit with the Boglehead approach and is more of the WallStreetBets type of approach. But to each his own. No, you keep reframing my decision in terms of a future outcome but I keep saying I did not look to the future to make my decision. I want a portfolio of profitable and productive companies today. I buy profitable and productive companies today. In the future I will also probably want a portfolio of profitable and productive companies. I will probably buy profitable and produ...

That is the very definition of stock picking and is the opposite of index investing. Yes, with index investing you are buying some companies that are expensive and unprofitable. You are speculating that they will become profitable and more expensive in the future. It's the index investor who is making a gamble, I know the companies I am buying are profitable and productive today You are making a gamble that those companies will continue to be profitable and productive in the future, while missing out on the companies that may not be profitable today but could be the frontrunners of tomorrow. I call that stock picking, and it doesn't really fit with the Boglehead approach and is more of the WallStreetBets type of approach. But to each his o...

I am actually very aggressive with my CDs (which are often direct rather than brokered). Most of the loss on raised rates is already priced in for brokered CDs, so it is pointless to sell; direct CDs, on the other hand, normally have an ability (with penalty) to end the investment, which can allow for reinvestment at a far better rate than delaying. There is a difference between trading them and attempting to squeeze out returns by utilizing every option embedded in the CDs. Can you say more about buying direct? I've read that banks hold their best rate CD rates only for brokers. I guess they don't want to hassle with individuals? Whenever I look online at direct CDs they always seem a lot lower. Where do you search for them? Generally, wh...

I was sad to see that one couple are donating $400/month to their church. Meanwhile, in the winter, they confine themselves to two rooms in their home and set the thermostat to 60F. While I'm not judging their choice, it seems like they cannot afford to do this. I hope folks from there church see this article and advise them to cut back, but I doubt that will happen. I set my home's thermostat to 60 simply because I find it more comfortable for sleeping. Saving money is a bonus. Once acclimated(and wearing a sweater and sweatpants) I don't even notice. Being a bit cool can also encourage one to move more which is important for health. I applaud the couple in question. My joints seize up and hurt a lot if they get too cold; it is easier to ...

This is not valid logic: For there to be risk, there must be a means to underperform/outperform. All we have concluded is that value has outperformed. If we consider the other statistical moments besides the first two (return and volatility), higher negative skew will produce a higher probability of observing outperformance given equal return and volatility. If we consider the volatility of volatility, then how does that stack into the framework? There are multiple risk-free interest rates across the entire yield curve. In arbitrage, we would use the bond that matches the investment timeframe exactly rather than hoping the shortest-term risk-free rate to remain constant. However, then which one is the true risk-free rate? Which one has a p...

But how do we really determine whether value is indeed riskier than growth? I would think that value is slightly "safer" than growth in the short-term; this is because even if the future earnings were known, the earnings seen as zero-coupon bonds would place more volatility with growth because of the effective duration being higher. Of course, the actual volatility from the market risk is large enough to make either fairly risky for the short-term. But as I have said, there is not enough discussion of this kind. If we believe modern portfolio theory which tells us that risk and return are fundamentally linked, we just need to look at the long term outperformance of value over growth, then from modern portfolio theory we can say i...

CDs aren't very liquid compared to treasuries. I haven't heard of anyone that trades CDs. Secondary Market https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/online-trading/primary-secondary-market That does not mean they are that liquid (let alone free from commission). In different places (not this forum) I get a lot of blowback on my views of CDs. When I buy one, I want to keep it. That’s the whole point. If I buy it today for 5% return and tomorrow there’s a 6% return, some say that's a loss. I don't feel like I lost anything or am missing out. I’ll just buy more if I like the new rate. In my mind I have not lost any money, because I only buy them at the rate I’m happy with at the time. I'm not trying to sell it. They also deba...

But how do we really determine whether value is indeed riskier than growth? I would think that value is slightly "safer" than growth in the short-term; this is because even if the future earnings were known, the earnings seen as zero-coupon bonds would place more volatility with growth because of the effective duration being higher. Of course, the actual volatility from the market risk is large enough to make either fairly risky for the short-term. But as I have said, there is not enough discussion of this kind. If we believe modern portfolio theory which tells us that risk and return are fundamentally linked, we just need to look at the long term outperformance of value over growth, then from modern portfolio theory we can say i...

But how do we really determine whether value is indeed riskier than growth? I would think that value is slightly "safer" than growth in the short-term; this is because even if the future earnings were known, the earnings seen as zero-coupon bonds would place more volatility with growth because of the effective duration being higher. Of course, the actual volatility from the market risk is large enough to make either fairly risky for the short-term. But as I have said, there is not enough discussion of this kind. If we believe modern portfolio theory which tells us that risk and return are fundamentally linked, we just need to look at the long term outperformance of value over growth, then from modern portfolio theory we can say i...

Tilting isn't a core component of the Boglehead philosophy. That doesn't mean you can't do it, but as this is the Boglehead forum, most threads likely will focus on buying the whole market. I check the Rational Reminder forum every couple of months. There's a large-ish group there that talks about factors and factor investing strategies. The hosts of the Rational Reminder podcast also back the idea of factor investing. So that forum / podcast might have what you are looking for. If interested, you can see their (the host's) model portfolio in the link below. They are Canadian, so they emphasize products available in Canada. But the portfolio would be easy to replicate in the USA (if that's where you are). You might also want to listen to a...

Since I treat my money seriously and I refuse to equate investing as gambling, it is a meaningless statement as-is. In rough terms, the statement means to reduce risks once sufficient profits and accumulation has occurred. If one considers all their risks, some stock is nearly always recommended; therefore, how is it even playing?

Given how many reasonable opinions exist concerning bonds (TIPS or not, corporate bonds or not, high-yield bonds or not, long-term bonds or not) and there is some acceptance of those opinions, it is surprising that stocks do not get the same treatment. Not only there seems to be a great deficiency of threads of when it is appropriate to tilt towards growth or large cap, there is a lack of analyzing the reasons to tilt other than to support a yes or no answer. I am pretty sure you can have two investors with one tilting towards value and one towards growth, and both are designing their portfolio best suited for their needs. When one realizes that "winning against the market" should not be anyone's objective, tilts are much more in...

Given how many reasonable opinions exist concerning bonds (TIPS or not, corporate bonds or not, high-yield bonds or not, long-term bonds or not) and there is some acceptance of those opinions, it is surprising that stocks do not get the same treatment. Not only there seems to be a great deficiency of threads of when it is appropriate to tilt towards growth or large cap, there is a lack of analyzing the reasons to tilt other than to support a yes or no answer. I am pretty sure you can have two investors with one tilting towards value and one towards growth, and both are designing their portfolio best suited for their needs. When one realizes that "winning against the market" should not be anyone's objective, tilts are much more int...

I strongly prefer to use a credit card over a debit card. I do not like keeping cash in checking earning close to nothing; it is easier to lump-sum the present balance once or twice a month from my paycheck (or my portfolio if my paycheck were to "default", meaning I got laid off).

It is a lot easier to say 90% stocks if one’s portfolio is 50x of their annual expenses rather than 5x. I wish that this point were amplified more. Take a frugal person with modest expenses, say $25K/year. Suppose that this person has a $10M portfolio. What should be his stock allocation percentage? The ratio of net worth to annual expenses, I'd argue, is a larger factor, than age, or retirement-status, or even aversion to risk (provided that one does not panic). The usual business about "safe withdrawal ratio" doesn't apply. Neither do exhortations to save more, to buy on the dip, or really anything else about consumer behavior. With very large ratios, we have to think differently, from the standard tropes of consumer finance li...

More present earnings for present spending does seem to be a good hypothesis; it is possible that it could reduce the sequence of returns risk. However, it is very hard to support this claim securely merely looking at US stock data.

As far as I can tell, value stocks as a whole generally carry more negative skew than the total market does. This would probably improve the percentage of success of a richer spending at the expense of holding more tail risk (that is, one might fail harder).

Simple, I didn't forsee the issues that I have encountered. In discussions and even planning some of this over the years there were no indications that these issues would pop up. But the lowest level answer to your question is because they are things I think I would really enjoy. I am not sure what you are having trouble grasping about this circumstance. If you can afford the buddy trip, take the buddy trip. I think there is more concern that there is decision paralysis based on what others might be thinking than reality of what they will actually do. That is, the isolation could be self-inflicted partly (which is unfortunately easy for introverts). I never really get stuck on what people might think when I say and do things; however, they...

But a key component of the Buddies Trip is the Buddies, similarly a key component of the Family Trip is the Family, it is a shared experience thing. You are specifically identifying barriers to your goals. If you cannot figure out a reasonable method to circumvent any of the issue(s) why did you place them on the list to begin with? Simple, I didn't forsee the issues that I have encountered. In discussions and even planning some of this over the years there were no indications that these issues would pop up. But the lowest level answer to your question is because they are things I think I would really enjoy. I am not sure what you are having trouble grasping about this circumstance. If you can afford the buddy trip, take the buddy trip. I ...

A large part of it, and finances are virtually the sole reason these trips don't pan out. This is my point about how differences in finances can be isolating. Although sometimes it is willingness to spend more than ability to spend. Unfortunately I am not wealthy enough where my paying for it isn't hurtful to people's pride. Seems to me it is much easier to take a free trip from someone with private jet money than someone you still want to consider your peer. I am stunned more BH haven't experienced this, it is just basic human nature. There will always be reasons not to do something - and there are always ways to do anything you want to do. But a key component of the Buddies Trip is the Buddies, similarly a key component of the Family Tri...

Be honest: Is there ever a point when you would stop investing in equities? Are you committed pretty much no matter what? Some people can’t stomach the market, that’s why they aren’t in it, and that’s a pretty reasonable and understandable position. Some don’t need to take the risk. But unless you are a business owner, or have other means of income, the alternatives to equities don’t look that great either (cash, bonds, PMs). Diversification becomes key, but what do you diversify to? There is little reason why a person would be recommended to have no equities if there is a considerable investment timeframe. If the goal is to reduce long-term risks, then some amount of equities is required. Not to mention, owning a business is equity; runni...

I believe there was a famous academic refutation of Efficient Markets, that showed the level of volatility in markets seemed much larger than would be predicted based on the amount and impact of information being priced in.. I think the Covid mini-crash was an example – as was the flash crash, of course – when you have lots of Stops being hit, and forced de-risking from strategies like risk parity, fundamentals can go out the window for a bit. There's also broad market selling, esp. in international stocks, where quality/defensive businesses sell-off sharply, when they probably shouldn't.. In the UK, with a lot of illiquid Investment Trusts in the indexes, we had things going to 80-90% discounts during the covid panic.. It's obviously hard...

rockstar wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 2:59 pm Takes some time to figure out what makes you happy versus what marketing tells you will make you happy. That’s been my experience.

Right. Marketing is lost on me; they would do themselves a favor by having all the details and the price upfront. I have a better gauge of my own happiness then they do.

For 1) I think the answer should be to learn techniques for being less anxious, rather than to buy bonds that are suboptimal for your horizon I agree! In fact I have a rant that I've never posted, about how to do this: know your history and how your investment strategy performed e.g. during the great depression, 1970s stagflation, etc. Maybe I'll post it some day if people are interested. However, the current mindset is to assess your ability, willingness and need to take risk. There's nothing about *increasing* your risk tolerance. I think this comes from the world of financial advisors. Clients of financial advisors, by definition, consider investing to be something they're not going to learn, but instead pay someone else to do for them....

danbdzs wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 10:05 am October 24th (1 trading day after the initiation of this thread), marked the bottom of TLT - Long term US Treasuries (so far).

What a beautiful thing.

Best regards to McQ, trully apreciate your contributions to this board.

The question is whether anyone put money into long-term bonds around this time. I was on leave of this forum during this time, so I never saw this thread; but, I did buy quite a bit of long-term bonds around this time given how far it dropped.

Before I indexed, I was one of the bottom fishers; not timing the market low, but finding hopefully the diamonds in the rough. I got reasonable returns actually, but it took too much time.

If this is the case then meaningful financial success might be harmful. I know a lot of people here disagree but I think for multiple reasons increased financial success slowly becomes isolating for many. It is a lot easier to live freely when the fear of losing a job is not overriding spending time with others. I find that I am less stressed the more I have accumulated. The past year was rough but financially/relationally it was not the case. When there are no figurative Joneses to keep up with, the only things that money will do is buy peace of mind and allow for a generous heart. Some of that depends on why you were investing. For a lot of people it was to have "nicer" things which can sometimes be a barrier with others. Or to...

Introverted people don't need the same amount of social interaction that extroverted need. It depends on personality type. Right. I feel a stronger pull to introspection and adding my thoughts to society's grand book. I'm an introvert, but I think it's a mistake to assume that introverts are unable to build strong, meaningful relationships. It's easier for introverts to keep to themselves and not socialize, I'll admit. But with the benefit of hindsight, I now realize that it was a mistake to not put more effort into building a meaningful social network. Just as important as the time I've spent figuring out how to accumulate more money. I can feel others emotions, but I have to recharge considerably to handle the next social event. It is a ...

delamer wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:54 pm

secondopinion wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:38 pm

gotoparks wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:30 pm Introverted people don't need the same amount of social interaction that extroverted need. It depends on personality type.

Right. I feel a stronger pull to introspection and adding my thoughts to society's grand book.

But note that the study quote is about “people who are more isolated than they want to be.”

Good eyes. So I guess we are arguing against a straw man (we are did not understand it entirely).

sc9182 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:20 pm Tied buying pound of Bananas with Gold !? Or, a traded a pound for TIPs !? Safekeeping!? FDIC/otherwise insured?

Taxes when you sell appreciated metal ?

Recent Gold transport/transfer episode - https://news.abplive.com/states/man-arr ... 588118/amp

Well, I would not try storing a pound of bananas as a long-term investment/speculation; even gold skeptics would agree with this.

gotoparks wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:30 pm Introverted people don't need the same amount of social interaction that extroverted need. It depends on personality type.

Right. I feel a stronger pull to introspection and adding my thoughts to society's grand book.

TheTimeLord wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:23 pm If this is the case then meaningful financial success might be harmful. I know a lot of people here disagree but I think for multiple reasons increased financial success slowly becomes isolating for many.

It is a lot easier to live freely when the fear of losing a job is not overriding spending time with others. I find that I am less stressed the more I have accumulated. The past year was rough but financially/relationally it was not the case. When there are no figurative Joneses to keep up with, the only things that money will do is buy peace of mind and allow for a generous heart.

Relationships are important, but understand not everyone is social. I have rather slow developed relationships and rather few, but the quality is what matters. Social situations are stressful, even if that is with people I know. My most likely regret is what I did with my life, not who I got to know.

jebmke wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:40 pm

secondopinion wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:32 pm I stand corrected that emergencies cannot be major and all at once. But in this case, that is a complete exhaustion of funds. More or less, this is not something an emergency fund would have helped regardless. In fact, it helped probably that stock growth has occurred over all of those years.

There is always a risk of getting hit with a massive bill, but the question is whether it is riskier not to invest even if it does hit.

That's exactly why we ditched our EF in our early 40s

Do you have any short-term fixed income (1-5 years) whether directly or indirectly? That is what I do instead as it is a compromise, since my short-term risks are relatively high still. If things improve, I will consider abandoning the notion altogether.

See part I bolded above. It seems you made a risk assessment and determined job loss was not a risk for you, or at least not a risk you felt the need to insure against. I'm glad this worked out for you, but just because it worked for you doesn't mean it will for someone else. More to the point, in my case, I'd never even heard of it. I claim no process and no success. I never heard anybody use the phrase "emergency fund" until Dave Ramsey, and if I had been thinking I was planning for an emergency, it would never have occurred to me that the emergency in question is a period of unemployment (duration of which obviously I have to predict). I suppose, and I have for a long time, that everybody has to choose his own emergency. I don...

If there were no expected premium to earn from small cap value, would you still hold it above the market weight? If the true answer for your case is yes, then tilt; if not, then do not tilt.

See part I bolded above. It seems you made a risk assessment and determined job loss was not a risk for you, or at least not a risk you felt the need to insure against. I'm glad this worked out for you, but just because it worked for you doesn't mean it will for someone else. More to the point, in my case, I'd never even heard of it. I claim no process and no success. I never heard anybody use the phrase "emergency fund" until Dave Ramsey, and if I had been thinking I was planning for an emergency, it would never have occurred to me that the emergency in question is a period of unemployment (duration of which obviously I have to predict). I suppose, and I have for a long time, that everybody has to choose his own emergency. I don...

Clarky wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 4:52 pm From Bankrate.com: “Since 1960, reinvested dividends accounted for 84% of the total return of the S&P 500 index.” How does this relate to the current debate? As a relative neophyte, I assume I’m missing something…

It essentially is stating the reinvestment of earnings (paid out as dividends or retained) is the vast majority of the returns. That should be the case, since it is by the future stream of earnings that a stock is priced usually. We certainly would hope that the earnings compound after 60+ years.

I think wrong is a bit harsh, but far from the best choice. Wait until you see how much money Americans let sit in bank accounts earning low to no interest. There is nothing rational about these investors, they just put money where their 401K or advisor tells them to, or where someone on MSNBS says to. They are being led into dividend stocks against their own best interest. And maybe the fund is just good enough not to be a problem for them. $300B isn't a huge amount either, the biggest, and I would argue the best, have over $1 Trillion. VG has what, about $7T under management. Not sure what the equity-fixed income fund split is but if it about 50-50, then this $311B figure I quoted for dividend focused funds, which is probably under-count...

OP, 1) It does lose it's nominal value. Aka, you know exactly the dollar value. 2) Accessibility, you can get at it when you want it. It is not subject to someone's else decision. Aka, HELOC does not qualify since it can be cancelled. 3) It does not cost you to use the money. For example, you have to pay interest in order to use it. 4) Cash or cash equivalent. KlangFool 1. Knowing the exact dollar amount on withdrawal is not the same as not not losing nominal value. A direct CD often has it where the nominal value is known but would be a loss with early withdrawal. 2. Sadly, almost everything counts as being subject to "someone else's decision" to some extent. 3. Some choices, it is at the point of use that the cost is had; other...

If one is getting close to loan terms of what the overnight rate is, then I think it is irrespective as to what the actual rate is. Are your short term risks well enough managed? Because my short-term risks are considerable against my distant risks, I cannot carry a margin balance. Maybe you can take those risks and hence it is less likely to bankrupt your portfolio.

But something tells me the risk tolerance is not there.

I was curious so did a max time period chart for VBR for small value and VTI for the rest of us. VTI healthily beat VBR. I learned about small cap value being a bad place from a Jack Bogle interview some time ago. He used it as an example of a sector where people find something that's outperformed for some particular time period and it becomes a rush to get in and continues being a rush for a while. Well, what happens when you get all this investment? It becomes overpriced and from what Jack said, that's where small cap value is now. So if you want to beat small cap value, use the entire US market. VTI or VTSAX work great for this. The root question is whether one should overweight stocks that have more present earnings or book value now p...

Swensen on Private Equity.. And I've said it too, but one can access some very fine PE firms (HG Capital, Harbourvest) via UK investment trusts, sometimes on 50% discounts: https://www.cfr.org/event/conversation-david-swensen SWENSEN: So that is what I love most in my portfolio. I think the private equity that you’re talking about, where you buy the company, you make the company better— RUBIN: Yeah. SWENSEN: —and then you sell the company is a superior form of capitalism. I’m really concerned about what’s going on in our public markets. I think short-termism is incredibly damaging. There’s this focus on quarter-to-quarter earnings. There’s this focus on whether you’re a penny short or a penny above the estimate. And there’s this activist m...

Swensen on Private Equity.. And I've said it too, but one can access some very fine PE firms (HG Capital, Harbourvest) via UK investment trusts, sometimes on 50% discounts: https://www.cfr.org/event/conversation-david-swensen SWENSEN: So that is what I love most in my portfolio. I think the private equity that you’re talking about, where you buy the company, you make the company better— RUBIN: Yeah. SWENSEN: —and then you sell the company is a superior form of capitalism. I’m really concerned about what’s going on in our public markets. I think short-termism is incredibly damaging. There’s this focus on quarter-to-quarter earnings. There’s this focus on whether you’re a penny short or a penny above the estimate. And there’s this activist m...

Depending on the brokerage, it might not be showing the price change of today (let alone at that given moment). That is, the data might be stale.