Vanguard Total Stock Market VIPERs (VTI)

All Comments on VTI

  • commenter
    Richard Shaw
    Jun 30 07:08 PM
    My Website
    Some Advice from Warren Buffet for Difficult Times [view article]
    Tom,

    You may be right, but it is important to differentiate between holding forever, regardless of the facts, and holding steady during a storm with companies that continue to earn your confidence in general. That is perhaps the more important message. The fear reaction is so strong that investors tend to dump at the worst time and then fail to reopen positions they like until much of the loss they took has been recouped by the market, but not by the investor.     Reply
  • commenter
    Tom B
    Jun 30 09:57 AM
    Some Advice from Warren Buffet for Difficult Times [view article]
    I agree with the first two posters. In my view, Buffett may have been more lucky than smart. I LIKE the idea of "buy and hold forever", but there are SO many former Wall Street darlings that have been unable to adapt to the 21st Century and are slowly going the way of the Dodo bird: Dell, Microsoft, GM, Sony, Ford, Verizon, Motorola. Maybe PFE-- I hope not; I hold some. In this century, nimble is the by-word. Serve no wine past its time; hold no stock past its prime. Reply
  • commenter
    Richard Shaw
    Jun 30 08:59 AM
    My Website
    Some Advice from Warren Buffet for Difficult Times [view article]
    Thank you Mike. Very nice of you to say that.

    Your request is a pretty tall order. I use so many sources that I actually have to keep a spreadsheet list of them so I don't forget them. I'd suggest you do the same, because it is sometimes difficult to find some sources a second time weeks, months or a year later when you need them.

    Some in the international category you mentioned that are most frequently useful are:

    MSCI BARRA,
    S&P CITIGROUP GLOBAL INDICES
    UNITED NATION,
    OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,)
    CIA FACTBOOK.

    There are others, but these are good "work horses".

    As for the three magazines you mentioned, I personally find Barron's and the Economist more interesting than the WSJ, but all three are important to read regularly -- put Bloomberg and the Financial Times (London) in that list too.

    I personally feel it is important to read the business news in other countries, such as the Kahleej Times (U.A.E.), Hindustan Times (India), China Daily (China), Nikkei Net (Japan).

    A good multi-country new service (but for a subscription of $40/mo) is EINnews

    Then when you find an article that intrigues you, Google the names of the people or the names of the institutions, companies or ideas and follow the trail around the web to fill out the news which comes from unpredictable places.

    This is not a comprehensive answer, but it should give you a good start on your information quest.

    All the best to you.

    Richard

     Reply
  • commenter
    User 202460
    Jun 29 06:47 PM
    Some Advice from Warren Buffet for Difficult Times [view article]
    Wanted to let you know how much I have appreciated your articles, particularly on foreign investment (break down of free float) and the article on emerging markets (stream into the pond). I also appreciate your eclecticism - an ancient chinese curse to open an article on Buffet (timely for me, since I think I've made some good bets, but they certainly aren't playing out right now). Anyway I wondered if you would share some of your sources for information, especially foreign economics and indices performance. So many of the EFTs are two recent to provide any long term performance, so I would love to find a place where I could map/compare the indices out about five or ten years. And if so inclined, any recommendations on the trade journals (WSJ, Barrons, Economist)
    thanks again

    Mike     Reply
  • commenter
    Richard Shaw
    Jun 28 10:45 PM
    My Website
    Some Advice from Warren Buffet for Difficult Times [view article]
    whenmusictps and cheesecake

    what is the relevance of your comments to the dialog? perhaps some expansion of your thoughts would help     Reply
  • commenter
    cheesecake
    Jun 28 05:39 PM
    My Website
    Some Advice from Warren Buffet for Difficult Times [view article]
    i've lost faith in capitalism, i want a socialist government now. Reply
  • commenter
    ej76az
    Jun 27 06:20 PM
    World Market Weighting Your Equity Allocation [view article]
    wow, now you can buy just one: VT!


    On Jun 23 12:48 PM ej76az wrote:

    > just use VEU instead of EFA, EWC, and VWO     Reply
  • commenter
    whenmusicsto
    ps
    Jun 27 12:35 PM
    Some Advice from Warren Buffet for Difficult Times [view article]
    An interesting intellectual named Marvin once said, "Let's Get it On....ooooo baaabby...Let's Get it On" Reply
  • commenter
    CloroxCowboy
    Jun 27 09:05 AM
    Some Advice from Warren Buffet for Difficult Times [view article]
    I agree with half of Buffet's mantra above - using fear and greed sentiments to help timing. As Jim points out though, holding forever is probably not the best strategy if you consider that the past 50 years could have simply been an inflationary period in the macro time-scale. I don't expect markets to reverse to 1950's prices, but I do expect them to flatten out considerably. The rest of the world has closed the gap on the US since WWII and we no longer have many of the market advantages that once existed.

    With that said, my personal strategy is to buy cautiously and incrementally on downturns such as these. But instead of holding forever, I get really crazy and actually take a profit when prices go up again. People love to say that they got in on a certain company before everyone else, but how many of those people get out at the right time to turn a paper profit into a real one?     Reply
  • commenter
    Jim
    Hawthorne
    Jun 27 08:12 AM
    Some Advice from Warren Buffet for Difficult Times [view article]
    We are all both products and prisoners of the era in which we live.
    Warren Buffet's era (the 1950's through 1990's) was a time when we, as the last man standing after WW II, enjoyed a period of unequaled prosperity.
    Buffet's DOW grew from a value of about 180 at the start of the 1950's to close out the last century above 10,000, or a climb of about 10,000 points in 50 years.

    Here's another paraphrased quote from Buffet: "If the market is going to equal it's performance of the last century, it had better get a move on!"

    On this at least, we can all agree! As for investing style, we are now in an era when only the nimble will survive!     Reply
  • commenter
    Cameco Jr.
    Jun 27 12:41 AM
    My Website
    Energy Use Per GDP Unit by Country [view article]
    Interesting analysis, and worthy of further investigation. Perhaps too simplistic to try and boil it down to ETF/CEF investing strategies. Reply
  • commenter
    shangstud
    Jun 26 11:10 PM
    Buffett's Advice to the Berkshire Faithful: Buy Index Funds [view article]
    quote from bearfund:

    "Do I want to own C? FNM? MBIA? Do I feel BNI is fairly valued right now? What about USB? GOOG? X? Am I comfortable with ADM's near-total reliance on a dubious subsidy regime? Do I believe in MOT's ability to turn things around? Does S have any future at all? "

    If it is so clear to you that C or MBIA are bad companies to own, why is it do you suppose that thousands of very intelligent, and equally smart people, are willing to put their entire CAREERS in all these "sinking" ships?! Just because some stocks are not doing well at the moment does not make it "clear" that they are bad stocks to own.

    I do not believe that you can pick a winner or a loser. I believe that you can pick *some* winners along with *some* losers and the average will be just like the average of an S&P 500 Index, minus the expenses and taxes that you shouldn't have to pay.     Reply
  • commenter
    rayvt
    Jun 25 06:37 PM
    Quant Approach to TAA: Equity-Like Returns with Bond-Like Volatility [view article]
    quaazy1,
    Yes the model had you in during November and took the 4% loss in November. BTW, I'm not Mebane--he doesn't seem to visit the comments very often. Hopefully he will be able to answer you.

    winyaz,
    The problem with all of life is that what's happening RIGHT NOW is what we experience, and we therefore focus too much on "now" and too little on "overall history". So we focus on today's 4% loss that it didn't get us out of, and ignore the 10% drop that it did avoid but that happened years ago.

    I think Mebane has said that different time periods (from 6 months to 12 months) all had slightly different "best" category of results. I think that the exact choice of period is not important--that any period in that broad range is as good as any other period. They are all essentially the same, just different details.

    The danger with adding filters & other signals is that you'll be data-mining or "over-tuning"... I've been down that road and learned my lesson. A simple filter that gives an increased risk-adjusted return is prefereable to a complex set of rules that gives a very high return -- but works only for one set of historical data.
    Reply
  • commenter
    winyaz
    Jun 25 03:22 PM
    Quant Approach to TAA: Equity-Like Returns with Bond-Like Volatility [view article]
    Hi,
    Your timing model is interesting and I appreciate your articles on it, the endowment strategies, etc. My only concern is that in a falling market 1 month seems like an eternity to bail out of a position. Checking the 40 week sma could get you out quicker and would do much better in trending markets ... but much worse in flat markets - PCRIX would have been whipsawed repeatedly from 2004 to 2007.

    Have you considered different approaches or timeframes? Perhaps weekly signals but with a filter to try to limit the whipsaws? I'm interested in thoughts on this subject.

    Don     Reply
  • commenter
    quaazy1
    Jun 25 02:06 PM
    Quant Approach to TAA: Equity-Like Returns with Bond-Like Volatility [view article]
    Sorry to be so basic, but... Does that mean that your model took the
    -4% hit through November??? I can't get the math to work out anywhere near what your paper suggests on a cumulative basis unless I trick the model to get out of the market BEFORE the Nov 2007 drop of -4%, for example (working back through history...)     Reply
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