What's changed in the last 10 years Bogleheads?

[Fixmen]

I used to read this forum pretty religiously but stopped after I'd gone in fully on a Boglehead investment strategy. I just don't fiddle my investment strategy much anymore so don't spend as much time reading about investing.

Anyway, my question is: What has changed in the boglehead philosophy (or implementation) in the last 5- 10 years since I stopped tracking this stuff as closely?

I know there's a bunch of stuff that's timeless in the Boglehead philosophy, but things do change over time (e.g Vanguard popularizing index funds, ETFs slowly replacing mutual funds, online brokers becoming near zero fee and basically identical). At one point, I thought Robo-advisors were going to become a huge part of the market but that doesn't seem to have panned out. Less on the implementation side, but I suspect that people are now a little less complacent about inflation than they were 3 years ago.

[tetractys]

The forum sure has changed an awful lot; but the Boglehead philosophy has not.

[Tamalak]

I started investing almost 10 years ago (Sept 2015), and my strategy was to keep 90%+ of my net worth invested in the world stock market at capitalization. 8 years of thinking and research later and I still don't have a better strategy.

[Michael Patrick]

Fewer hairs on my head, and the ones that remain have gone gray.

But I'm pretty much just trucking along with my investments. Philosophy hasn't changed, just the balance has gotten larger.

[mhalley]

Commodities used to be discussed more as I recall.

[2retire]

The things I have noticed the most is less pushing for small value and REITs as part of your portfolio.

[muffins14]

Value factor investing is illegal now, and I am 10 years older

[Wiggums]

We are retired and continue to follow the BH philosophy (three fund portfolio). We are 10 years older, but still have the presence of mind to shift the grandchildren’s 529 to the S&P 500 during a market crash.

[TipsQuestions]

Factor investing is out, TIPS ladders are in. SWRs are out, VPWs are in. Bell bottoms are out, parachute pants are in.

[runner3081]

Crypto came, was talked about.. and then was banned

[Boglenaut]

Anyway, my question is: What has changed in the boglehead philosophy (or implementation) in the last 5- 10 years since I stopped tracking this stuff as closely?

By it's nature, Boglehead philosophy implementation options change very slowly. In the last 5-10 years, items that impacted me are

1. Fidelity Zero Funds. I am a big fan. Recommended only for qualified accounts because they are not portable.
2. VXUS/VSS expense ratios are now down to 0.07% last I checked.
3. Various 401k, IRA, etc regulations and law updates.

[bloom2708]

International stocks are still terrible and interest rates went up quickly beating up medium and long bond funds.

So, not much has changed except rates went up instead of down and down.

Maybe rates will go down or continue up or hold flat. In 10 years we will find out what this 10 years holds.

[Vanguard User]

Why doesn’t this forum improve its GUI and add features? This looks like a forum from 1990s.

ER forum is more modernized.

[AlwaysLearningMore]

Larry Swedroe no longer posts.

We lost Mr. Bogle (R.I.P.)

Discussions regarding commodities seem fewer and farther between.

[Traveller]

I'm in a similar position as the OP in that I haven't been very active on the forum for several years but just chugging along. Recently started looking at the forums again and I'd add to what was already said that bonds have become far more questioned by many over the past few years as rates and yield have moved around. I now see more love for TIPS and treasuries as opposed to the prior love of Total Bond fund. Also, sentiment for vanguard customer service is way down.

Closer to home, over the past 10 years my "hairs on head" index is down maybe 10%, my "waist size" index is up maybe 5%, expenses are down maybe 20% (empty nesters), and my net worth is up around 1200%.


But that's about it.

[pizzy]

I got married and had a kid.

[random_boglehead]

Why doesn’t this forum improve its GUI and add features? This looks like a forum from 1990s.

ER forum is more modernized.

Money. The same reason people complain about Vanguard's web site.

[Parkinglotracer]

The recent rising interest rate environment has given us all a refresher as to how rolling bond funds and individual bonds are affected by rising interest rates. This seems to have sparked an interest by some in bond ladders vs bond funds.

[SmileyFace]

I changed my username and avatar.
I finally gave up trying to defend 529s from folks that think they are lousy for everyone - our country can use the extra tax revenue anyway.

[Fixmen]

3. Various 401k, IRA, etc regulations and law updates.

I don't know if this is really true, but it seems like the days of truly, truly atrocious 401k plans are behind us. The market seems way more educated such that employees demand better 401k providers. My guess is that the typical 401k plan is now pretty competitive and you might pay 25bps for a US equity fund rather than 150bps.

[Fixmen]

Another that comes to mind, I imagine that there's going to be a lot more creativity around buying a house in the next few years. A 30 yr 2.5% mortgage was so hard to compete with that it was barely worth discussing. Not sure what it's going to look like going, but I think we've just scratched the surface on this.

[Fixmen]

The recent rising interest rate environment has given us all a refresher as to how rolling bond funds and individual bonds are affected by rising interest rates. This seems to have sparked an interest by some in bond ladders vs bond funds.

I'm sort of interest in what people's takeaway from this is. Yes, bond funds fell, but so did individual bonds. It's just that individual bonds don't get priced daily. If you sold your bond fund, you'd have taken a loss, but same would be true if you sold individual bonds. Seems like the only difference is that bond funds look worse when you calculate your net worth, but it's not like you use a mark to market net worth metric anywhere other than your own accounting.

[Fixmen]

International stocks are still terrible and interest rates went up quickly beating up medium and long bond funds.

Regarding international stocks, while they've done poorly for a long time now, I'm not sure if the rationale to invest or skip them has changed. Maybe the recent "de-globalization" movement means they will be less correlated going forward, but I suspect that's probably on the margin.

I never really loved Mr Bogle's rationale avoiding international stocks but he sure was right over the last 10 years.

[TipsQuestions]

International stocks are still terrible and interest rates went up quickly beating up medium and long bond funds.

Regarding international stocks, while they've done poorly for a long time now, I'm not sure if the rationale to invest or skip them has changed. Maybe the recent "de-globalization" movement means they will be less correlated going forward, but I suspect that's probably on the margin.

I never really loved Mr Bogle's rationale avoiding international stocks but he sure was right over the last 10 years.

My rationale for holding them hasn't changed - insurance against the US doing relatively poorly over my time horizon. Happily it hasn't paid off, and so everything else in my life (human capital, RE, US stocks, etc) have done well. I have no plans to cancel my "policy".

[watchnerd]

Why doesn’t this forum improve its GUI and add features? This looks like a forum from 1990s.

ER forum is more modernized.

what is the ER forum?

[Parkinglotracer]

The recent rising interest rate environment has given us all a refresher as to how rolling bond funds and individual bonds are affected by rising interest rates. This seems to have sparked an interest by some in bond ladders vs bond funds.

I'm sort of interest in what people's takeaway from this is. Yes, bond funds fell, but so did individual bonds. It's just that individual bonds don't get priced daily. If you sold your bond fund, you'd have taken a loss, but same would be true if you sold individual bonds. Seems like the only difference is that bond funds look worse when you calculate your net worth, but it's not like you use a mark to market net worth metric anywhere other than your own accounting.

Lots of threads discussing this in the last year. I do a 1-5 year treasury ladder vs BND and my treasuries get repriced daily in my vanguard brokerage account.

I guess I’d start with our wiki. You prob know all that.

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Rolling ... bond_funds

As you have said a bond ladder of the same duration is affected the same way a rolling bond fund is affected w/ the same duration. Seeing a 5 year zero return or a .87% average annual 10 year return for an 6 or 7 year duration BND as of 31 Oct 2023 has raises some eye brows as to how that can be … owning a bond ladder at least to me provides some maturing rungs returned at face value and psychological advantages.

[Morgan22]

Why doesn’t this forum improve its GUI and add features? This looks like a forum from 1990s.

ER forum is more modernized.

what is the ER forum?

I believe Vanguard User is referring to https://www.early-retirement.org/?

[retiredjg]

1. 403b plans, in general, have improved...but there are still a good number of bad ones.

2. 401k plans, in general, have improved...and bad ones are now more of an exception rather than the rule.

3. Mega-backdoor Roth has become a thing with lots of people and the plans available (especially Fidelity) have improved. Ten years ago, it seems that most people didn't even know what the mega-backdoor Roth was.

4. A common suggestion in the past was half total bond and half tips fund. We hardly see that any more.

5. Small cap and value factors and "REIT diversification" have somewhat fallen by the wayside.

6. Biggest change for me personally....it is possible to have too much in tax-deferred accounts. Ten years ago, I would have thought this was not possible and that one should use all the tax-deferred space that could be found. I no longer think that.

7. Vanguard has moved from highly respected to merely tolerated by many. And many have left.

[watchnerd]

6. Biggest change for me personally....it is possible to have too much in tax-deferred accounts. Ten years ago, I would have thought this was not possible and that one should use all the tax-deferred space that could be found. I no longer think that.

Ditto.

After decades of maxing 401k contributions, I now contribute only enough to get the full employer match.

We contribute far more to taxable.

[cbs2002]

Well I’ve only been posting for a couple years but lurking for longer.

1) Bond hate threads seem common and predictable

2) FIRE became a thing many newer posters ask about

3) Our NW has roughly quadrupled mainly from being 100% SP500 during that time and standing pat, so…go Bogleheads!

4) there is excellent and intellectually sound free advice to be had all over this forum. The only limitation is your willingness to read and separate the wheat from the chaff. Since I wasn’t here 10 years ago I’ll guess that’s something that was true back then too!

[GaryA505]

International stocks are still terrible and interest rates went up quickly beating up medium and long bond funds.

Oh no, don't say the 'I' word!

[Silverado]

Why doesn’t this forum improve its GUI and add features? This looks like a forum from 1990s.

ER forum is more modernized.

I think it’s nice. It is crisp, mature, usable. No features needed. I read, I think, I post (not always in that order…) That seems like the very definition of a forum. Just like hanging out chatting and learning with mostly like minded people, most of whom are not only smarter and more experienced than me, but also crazily gracious with their time and knowledge.

The 90s were a great time also.

ETA: just noticed that I passed my 10 year mark four weeks ago. Crazy.

[H-Town]

I used to read this forum pretty religiously but stopped after I'd gone in fully on a Boglehead investment strategy. I just don't fiddle my investment strategy much anymore so don't spend as much time reading about investing.

Anyway, my question is: What has changed in the boglehead philosophy (or implementation) in the last 5- 10 years since I stopped tracking this stuff as closely?

I know there's a bunch of stuff that's timeless in the Boglehead philosophy, but things do change over time (e.g Vanguard popularizing index funds, ETFs slowly replacing mutual funds, online brokers becoming near zero fee and basically identical). At one point, I thought Robo-advisors were going to become a huge part of the market but that doesn't seem to have panned out. Less on the implementation side, but I suspect that people are now a little less complacent about inflation than they were 3 years ago.

If you take a 10,000 feet high view, it's nothing burger.

If you zoom in, you will see chaos. People running and screaming because the world is ending. Covid 19, 2020/2021 stock market booming, 2022 stock market crash, bond crash, I-Bond mania, bitcoin mania, bitcoin crash, government shutdown, inflation, etc. But as long as you zoom out, your portfolio continues to print money for you. You just let other people being paranoid.

[Svensk Anga]

The recent rising interest rate environment has given us all a refresher as to how rolling bond funds and individual bonds are affected by rising interest rates. This seems to have sparked an interest by some in bond ladders vs bond funds.

I'm sort of interest in what people's takeaway from this is. Yes, bond funds fell, but so did individual bonds. It's just that individual bonds don't get priced daily. If you sold your bond fund, you'd have taken a loss, but same would be true if you sold individual bonds. Seems like the only difference is that bond funds look worse when you calculate your net worth, but it's not like you use a mark to market net worth metric anywhere other than your own accounting.

In your accumulation phase, I think funds vs individual bonds does not matter much since your investing horizon is so long relative to an intermediate term bond fund duration. In retirement (or approaching retirement) the certainty of X dollars in bonds maturing on Y date is of some comfort. 10 years ago, one could do a TIPS ladder with nil real yield, so not very compelling. Lately, one can buy TIPS across the yield curve with yields of 2%+ real. Withdrawal rates from the ladder at such yield have been at time in excess of Bengen's 4% safe withdrawal rate (but limited to a 30 year term). This has lead many to question how much equity risk they wish to bear in retirement. The hit on bond fund NAV in 2022/23 revived interest in ladders. Recent bond fund pain and the inverted yield curve have also lead some to shorten duration, which likely won't work well long term.

Tax law changes have had an influence on strategy. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 temporarily cut rates and raised the estate tax exemption, but will expire without congressional action in 2026. Roth conversions now are relatively attractive as are estate planning moves. The Secure Act significantly altered the tax consequences of inheriting an IRA. I am responding to this by, instead of Roth conversions, gifting funds to my kid's so that they can fund Roth contributions. Their own Roth funds will be better long term than inherited Roth funds.

[Taylor Larimore]

Bogleheads:

In my opinion the Bogleheads Philosophy is as good today as when Mr. Bogle introduced it in 1994.

Best wishes.
Taylor

Jack Bogle's Words of Wisdom:"Yes, investing is simple. But it is not easy, for it requires discipline, patience, steadfastness, and that most uncommon of all gifts, common sense."

[finite_difference]

6. Biggest change for me personally....it is possible to have too much in tax-deferred accounts. Ten years ago, I would have thought this was not possible and that one should use all the tax-deferred space that could be found. I no longer think that.

Ditto.

After decades of maxing 401k contributions, I now contribute only enough to get the full employer match.

We contribute far more to taxable.

How do you decide when to switch?

[pizzy]

International stocks are still terrible and interest rates went up quickly beating up medium and long bond funds.

Oh no, don't say the 'I' word!

What’s wrong with saying “Interest”?

[retiredjg]

Why doesn’t this forum improve its GUI and add features? This looks like a forum from 1990s.

ER forum is more modernized.

This is a privately owned forum supported, in part, by donations from people like you and me. The owners can pay more for "upgrades" out of their own pockets...or they can allow advertising.

Nobody here wants advertising. They don't want to pay more. Pretty simple.

[Call_Me_Op]

Larry Swedroe no longer posts.

We lost Mr. Bogle (R.I.P.)

Discussions regarding commodities seem fewer and farther between.

And don't forget all of the posts about the Permanent Portfolio. Was very popular, and now rarely mentioned.

[N.Y.Cab]

Commission free trade has made it viable to include ETFs and individual Treasuries.

[dcabler]

Why doesn’t this forum improve its GUI and add features? This looks like a forum from 1990s.

ER forum is more modernized.

what is the ER forum?

early-retirement.org

Less moderation than here and some there believe that bogleheads is a cult.

[OatmealAddict]

6. Biggest change for me personally....it is possible to have too much in tax-deferred accounts. Ten years ago, I would have thought this was not possible and that one should use all the tax-deferred space that could be found. I no longer think that.

Ditto.

After decades of maxing 401k contributions, I now contribute only enough to get the full employer match.

We contribute far more to taxable.

How do you decide when to switch?

Not to derail the thread, but I'm wondering the same.

We've maxed out our 401k and 403b for years and planned to always do so until retirement. Is that a mistake?

[retiredjg]

6. Biggest change for me personally....it is possible to have too much in tax-deferred accounts. Ten years ago, I would have thought this was not possible and that one should use all the tax-deferred space that could be found. I no longer think that.

Ditto.

After decades of maxing 401k contributions, I now contribute only enough to get the full employer match.

We contribute far more to taxable.

How do you decide when to switch?

Not to derail the thread, but I'm wondering the same.

We've maxed out our 401k and 403b for years and planned to always do so until retirement. Is that a mistake?

This type of question requires people to look at your entire financial situation. No answer can be given on just the information posted.

Start a thread if you are interested in learning opinions.

[goodenyou]

More recently:

Money Market accounts paying 5%+.

Young Bogleheads' introduction to inflation and it's affects on bond values. Realizing bonds can go down a lot more than they thought.

[MrCheapo]

I used to read this forum pretty religiously but stopped after I'd gone in fully on a Boglehead investment strategy. I just don't fiddle my investment strategy much anymore so don't spend as much time reading about investing.

Anyway, my question is: What has changed in the boglehead philosophy (or implementation) in the last 5- 10 years since I stopped tracking this stuff as closely?

I know there's a bunch of stuff that's timeless in the Boglehead philosophy, but things do change over time (e.g Vanguard popularizing index funds, ETFs slowly replacing mutual funds, online brokers becoming near zero fee and basically identical). At one point, I thought Robo-advisors were going to become a huge part of the market but that doesn't seem to have panned out. Less on the implementation side, but I suspect that people are now a little less complacent about inflation than they were 3 years ago.

The Boglehead strategy has not changed in ten years. But the market has.

Over the last 25 years I followed the strategy (broad based index funds, dollar cost averaging etc). But the last 3 years I started to invest in individual stocks and even started market timing with ETFs. It's done remarkably well but I think the last 3 years have been unique and are unlikely to ever occur again in our life time. Just think \ we've had a pandemic, Russian invasion, oil futures going negative, WFH becoming normal etc. It's been crazy.

[vitaflo]

I seem to remember a good amount of CAPE discussions in the past. Not so much anymore.

[Dottie57]

Why doesn’t this forum improve its GUI and add features? This looks like a forum from 1990s.

ER forum is more modernized.

Forum is maintained by volunteers. The site is free. The software is pretty much straight out of the box which makes it easier to maintain.

Plain vanilla is good.

[ruralavalon]

I used to read this forum pretty religiously but stopped after I'd gone in fully on a Boglehead investment strategy. I just don't fiddle my investment strategy much anymore so don't spend as much time reading about investing.

Anyway, my question is: What has changed in the boglehead philosophy (or implementation) in the last 5- 10 years since I stopped tracking this stuff as closely?

I know there's a bunch of stuff that's timeless in the Boglehead philosophy, but things do change over time (e.g Vanguard popularizing index funds, ETFs slowly replacing mutual funds, online brokers becoming near zero fee and basically identical). At one point, I thought Robo-advisors were going to become a huge part of the market but that doesn't seem to have panned out. Less on the implementation side, but I suspect that people are now a little less complacent about inflation than they were 3 years ago.

There is not much discussion of small-cap value tilting anymore.

Lately there is a lot of agonizing over bond allocations, fruitless agonizing my opinion.

The Bogleheads® investment philosophy is the same as always.

[abuss368]

I used to read this forum pretty religiously but stopped after I'd gone in fully on a Boglehead investment strategy. I just don't fiddle my investment strategy much anymore so don't spend as much time reading about investing.

Anyway, my question is: What has changed in the boglehead philosophy (or implementation) in the last 5- 10 years since I stopped tracking this stuff as closely?

I know there's a bunch of stuff that's timeless in the Boglehead philosophy, but things do change over time (e.g Vanguard popularizing index funds, ETFs slowly replacing mutual funds, online brokers becoming near zero fee and basically identical). At one point, I thought Robo-advisors were going to become a huge part of the market but that doesn't seem to have panned out. Less on the implementation side, but I suspect that people are now a little less complacent about inflation than they were 3 years ago.

A lot!

* Quality of posts
* Crypto
* Real Estate Crowdfunding (i.e. Grant Cardone, Fundrise, Crowdstreet, etc.)
* Private Investment access
* Higher Interest Rates
* Dave’s Cayman Island Hedge Fund
* Lower Costs
* Vanguard Brokerage Accounts
* Housing Prices Higher
* Threads still debating US v International
* TIPS anyone?
* Inflation
* Jack Bogle passed on

Last but certainly not least:

* US has continued to pick up and bodyslam International the world over and is the Undipusted Heavyweight Champion of the World!

Jack Bogle and Warren Buffet were right again!

Best.
Tony

[nisiprius]

I haven't kept notes, someone probably should have. I'm afraid I think of the last ten years mostly in terms of fads washing over the edges of the forum, and personalities.

The Bogleheads' investment philosophy has not changed. Taylor Larimore's book, The Bogleheads' Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio came out in 2018 and might be considered part of it.

The forum owners decided to prohibit discussions of "Greater Fool Investing Strategies," including cryptocurrency. And a good thing, too.

A poster named HEDGEFUNDIE [sic, all-caps] got annoyed by something and left the forum in 2020, after a year and a half of presenting an investment strategy based on a 3X leveraged stock ETF, a 3X leveraged bond ETF, and a rebalancing discipline. The strategy continues to be discussed, along with "Why not 100% PSLDX." The simultaneous steep drop in both stocks and bonds in 2022 caused some bruising.

For a while at the periphery there was an influx of r/WallStreetBets sensibility. At least one poster used the r/WallStreetBets mascot as their avatar.

An amusing detail was the posting Why the disdain for managed funds like ARKK that destroy total market funds? The date of the posting, 2/13/2021, was within two weeks of the exact high for ARKK.

Source



The last ten years included the passing of John C. Bogle in 2019. His attendance at the annual Bogleheads' meeting anchored the location to Philadelphia for years. Since then, the formal leadership of the John C. Bogle Center for Financial Literacy, and the content and mission of the annual meetings, has evolved, though it's still being run by the stalwarts and panelist regulars.

I think there is a widespread feeling in this forum that at Vanguard, under Mortimer Buckley, things ain't what they used to be. There is unease about stumbles in IT and customer service. William J. Bernstein, in the just-out second edition of The Four Pillars of Investing, has written:

The quality gap between the Vanguard Group and the rest of the investing industry is largely gone. As an admirer of the late John Bogle, it pains me to admit that customer support at Vanguard has deteriorated, with not infrequent clerical errors and extended phone hold times, in contrast to the generally fast, knowledgeable, and accurate support at other firms.

There have always been discussions of the pros and cons of other brokerages, but of late I would say that there is a steady stream of posts about moving to other brokerages.