CloroxCowboy

Bogle: Investors 'Getting Killed' in ETFs

Your opinion only. Some people do quite well trading, you're just not one of them. Certainly the average joe "investor" has no business trading anything.


On Jun 18 06:33 PM ETF Grind wrote:

> We already know that trading is a statistically losing proposition,
> no matter what vehicle you use.

Barack Obama: Buy Stocks. Jim Cramer: Stop It Obama!

User370736,

How exactly is he "destroying wealth"? I hear that BS phrase thrown around way too much lately, so I'd like to know. What specific actions has he taken to destroy your wealth? Is he supposed to snap his fingers and make the market go up? And please tell me what actions you would take in his position to demonstrate your "skills"?

Barack Obama: Buy Stocks. Jim Cramer: Stop It Obama!

It's all our fault!! Erin, how could we have been so blind to ignore your empassioned pleas? Forgive the American people for their ignorance, I beg you. And Cramer, with your tested and proven financial sixth-sense, you had only the country's interest at heart all along. Ratings be damned!! These are real humanitarians, people...

In other words...
Consummate.
Bullsh*t.
Artists.

Fear Is Not a Strategy

Excellent article. I wonder if some of you are missing the point?

adventureneil, I'll simply ask "How can you, me, or anyone possibly know for certain that cheap will get any cheaper?" Same question for 'one more once'. Nothing wrong with patience, but eventually you have to take a swing at something or go back to the dugout.

cristian, if you're saying that being in cash or gold over the past year would have been a good idea, I agree. If you're advocating making that switch now, it's too late my friend. Ditto for Frank Miller's comment. It's far too late to correct any hesitation that might have occurred earlier this year. Better to begin buying in gradually now if you got out early, or hold on to your shares if you weren't lucky/smart enough to sell before now. And if you're the 50-60 year old who has just seen his 401k go up in smoke because he violated one of the most basic principles of asset allocation - being heavily invested in volatile securities so close to retirement - and now you're in panic mode, there's not much I can say...please don't blame anyone else for that colossal mistake.

The U.S. on the Precipice

Thank you for an article that is not afraid to be blunt and piss some people off!

An Oil-Driven Paradigm Shift?

Wake up people...electric or hybrid vehicles are NOT any sort of solution at this point. Anything that is dependent on electricity today is just as much of a drain on supplies of non-renewable resources as using regular unleaded. For example, one person charging their electric car requires a microscopic increase in the power supplied by the electric grid. If everyone in the country switched to electric vehicles, the additional demand for electricity would be huge. As of 2006, only 28.8% of electricity was produced using nuclear or renewable energy sources...the remainder comes from burning coal, oil, or natural gas. So where does the increased supply of electricity come from in my example above?

In the short-term we can't crank up the hydro, wind, solar, or nuclear production too much...we will be forced to buy and burn more fossil fuels. So as much as we would love to believe that going electric is the same as going green, it's just not the case yet. We MUST put at least as much effort (probably more) into cleaning up the production of electricity as we do weaning our cars off gas.

Are US Equities a Buy?

Paul Price nailed it. Do all the analysis you want, I know it has helped my timing occasionally. But buying in stages on the way down and selling in stages on the way up will beat analysis-based timing 9 times out of 10. Notice, I'm not saying buy and hold either. Take your money and run when the markets get silly with overconfidence, but do it BEFORE the top. I was 90% out of equities by mid-year 2007, and I don't say that to brag but just to illustrate my point. No crystal ball is required for this strategy, if you're buying and selling gradually it's hard to go terribly wrong. Switch to a sector or market which is on its way down but likely to recover in due time, and slowly build a position there. Right now I would build that position very slowly indeed, since I agree that things are not as cheap now as they will be by '09.

Even Buffett Isn't Perfect

What if the majority of boomers do not realize that they are unprepared for retirement until it's too late? Much more frightening outcome in my opinion...

It's a Rally and It Feels So Good

I am also 95% convinced that the current short-term rally will prove to be a normal correction in a larger downward trend. Despite the feeble increase in GDP - which I think is far too narrow an indicator to give a yes or no verdict on recessions, especially this one with negative sentiment coming from almost every corner of the economy - I'm not hearing the fundamental comments or numbers that would tell me the credit meltdown has been fully absorbed yet. What has changed recently (for the better) that is significant enough to justify a true reversal in the market?

This rally feels good if you're the kind of person who thinks stimulus checks and slashing interest rates are tricks that can be used over and over with no long-term side effects.

Blood on the Street Means Opportunity

Did anyone bother to read all the way to the end? The point of the article was not to suggest that buying now is a good idea or a bad idea. I wouldn't really classify it as bullish either. In fact he explicitly says the opposite, "...after five straight years of bull markets in just about everything, the cycle has turned...". Once again, read the whole thing first.

The purpose is to outline a strategy that will allow you to average into (and out of) positions over the long term. I find it interesting that many of the responses to articles on this site indicate a real lack of concentration (or comprehension) by readers.

America To The Rescue

I believe if you look at the entire debt to GDP graph you'll see that the huge spike in the ratio was caused by the waging of WWII, and quickly relieved in the years following its conclusion. The pattern is similar to the one seen during WWI and the Civil War before that.

Food certainly is one thing we make a lot of, but my point was that oil markets denominated in dollars may provide unstable support for our currency. If the world were to start trading oil in euros and I would expect to see an effect.

America To The Rescue

The United States IS losing relevance. We've had our hegemony since the favorable (economic and industrial) outcome of WWII, which created a HUGE trade surplus, pegged currencies to the dollar, and quite logically pushed our economy through the roof.

But that was over 60 years ago... What goods do we produce now? Where is the mighty industrial capacity that launched us on to the world stage in the first place? Americans today hold service jobs. We sell things to each other that are made elsewhere. We live on credit...not just credit from other Americans, but mostly from the (quickly) developing world. Oil markets around the world deal exclusively in dollars, think that could have anything to do with the survival of our currency in the face of so much debt?

And with all that we're supposed to think that global stocks showing a short term rebound means the storm has passed? Something inside tells me global stocks and the US in general are standing on something far removed from "solid footing". I believe I'll pass on buying today.

Blood on the Street Means Opportunity

Great summary of a totally sensible and reliable long-term strategy. If "long-term" is foremost in an investor's mind then I disagree with the comment above that the same investor will just sell out after the next 1% drop. As you've pointed out, the real key is to spread the risk of mis-timing by scaling into and out of positions slowly...and for God's sake, people, keep your asset classes in some kind of reasonable balance!

The Fear Is Palpable. Time To Buy.

Why does being "in it for the long term" or being an "investor" automatically mean accepting unnecessary losses? If I like a company's long term prospects but see a potentially painful decline coming, tell me why I shouldn't go to cash (money market) for the 10 month life of the average recession and then repurchase at a better price? As you say, good companies will ultimately reject market fears and move back to saner valuations. But is that any reason to completely ignore another of Graham's tenets, namely preservation of capital? Personally, when I see a train coming (even a small one), I step off the tracks until it's passed. Allowing yourself to be pushed backward by that train seems like a symptom of a different emotion: pride.