Earlier quoted context omitted.
It takes a long time and after IPO before useful indexes pick you up.
A bureaucratic detail.
This comment may explain why we are governed by bureaucracies
Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds
221–230 of 234 posts
Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds
#222Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds
#223Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds
#224Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds
#225Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, because I find it odd to hear this from Bogle himself. Vanguard doesn't own or control the equities in their index funds. You do. Vanguard is structured so that you can own your piece of the index fund pie. And while there are large holders of index funds such as Vanguard's Total Stock Market fund, I don't think there are any majority holders. For 51% of equities to be channeled…
> Vanguard doesn't own or control the equities in their index funds. You do. Is this statement correct? Your argument hinges on it, so it's important to get a definitive answer.
No it is not. It is 100% false with respect to voting rights.
The most visible sign of Vanguard’s engaged ownership is our funds’ proxy voting at shareholder meetings. We have an experienced group of analysts on our Investment Stewardship team that evaluates proposals and casts our funds’ votes in accordance with our voting guidelines.
Fund holders do not vote on corporate issues of stocks held by vanguard.
And of course, the owner of stocks held by a mutual fund are the mutual fund. Is that not clear to most people?
Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can get a 50 BMG rifle for a few thousand dollars and put a hole right through an engine block. So, how does a single, or even a 2 driver truck prevent this TODAY? The only reason I can think is conspiracy felony murder of 1 or 2 people w/ clubs, guns, cell phones has a higher risk than conspiracy felony larceny? You've concocted a great hollywood heist scene; but if you're Fast and the Furious driving through…
> So, how does a single, or even a 2 driver truck prevent this TODAY See my last paragraph. Defending an unmanned vehicle is the walls vs guards argument: it's far harder to build an impassible, unguarded wall than it is to build a difficult, guarded one.
> Defending an unmanned vehicle is the walls vs guards argument: it's far harder to build an impassible, unguarded wall than it is to build a difficult, guarded one.
When it comes to shooting out an engine block, you're already past difficult. If you're blasting the doors, you're already past difficult.
But most of all, a truck driver is not a guard. Very few guards are guards of things that are insured. Driver, staff, and security guards (even banks) instructions typically include "protect yourself, but if something comes between your safety and the load safety, choose your safety".
To keep up with the Fast and the Furious movie relation; the first movie was about the FBI trying to prevent robberies BEFORE truck drivers took action after the FBI had instructed the truck drivers to not be heros.
Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So, how does a single, or even a 2 driver truck prevent this TODAY See my last paragraph. Defending an unmanned vehicle is the walls vs guards argument: it's far harder to build an impassible, unguarded wall than it is to build a difficult, guarded one.
> Defending an unmanned vehicle is the walls vs guards argument: it's far harder to build an impassible, unguarded wall than it is to build a difficult, guarded one. When it comes to shooting out an engine block, you're already past difficult. If you're blasting the doors, you're already past difficult. But most of all, a truck driver is not a guard. Very few guards are guards of things that are insured. Driver, staf…
>>> So, how does a single, or even a 2 driver truck prevent this TODAY
>> See my last paragraph.
> The risk to stealing is directly proportional to the chance of getting caught, which broadly correlates into something unexpected happening, which is drastically diminished by not having a human driver.
You're missing the forest for the trees. A human witness is a deterrent because our court system says they are.
"Sir / Madame, could you pick the person you believe robbed your vehicle out of this lineup?"
Shooting out the engine of a vehicle traveling at a constant 55-85 mph down a straight interstate is a turkey shoot if you have the proper caliber.
I thought this was HN? The technical and creative requirements for this theft barely rise to "a bored Tuesday at the dorms."
Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sensor packages and near-AI compute clusters constantly get cheaper as the technology improves. Today it doesn't make sense, but in 10-15 years when a full self-driving solution costs maybe $1k? It's a no brainer, especially for long haul trucking. I'd guess that putting a security guard on a truck will be an exceptional occurrence, probably only used when the truck is hauling an especially valuable cargo or going th…
> ...but in 10-15 years when a full self-driving solution costs maybe $1k? It's a no brainer, especially for long haul trucking. I once spoke with a highly-paid driver (used to be a programmer, using the gigs in truck driving to decompress because our industry generally has worse work-life balance than truck driving...chew on that for a bit) about the US logistics industry. The driver was in high demand because they…
Makes sense. Logstics is fundamentally a network problem optimizing for latency and throughput.
Jitter is toxic to both, and road had a huge amount.
Rail networks are at least in control of most of their own variables!
Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to vote for each of the thousands of stocks I own indirectly through my index fund. I want Vanguard to vote on my behalf such that it proportionately replicates the votes of the non-index shareholders. This strategy is just an extension of the idea behind index funds in the first place: mirror the existing market.
In other words: You want them to not vote at all. Which is a dumb idea, of course, as that just leaves the control over your capital to your adversaries. Passive investing works because goals are aligned: The only way to influence an index fund on the investing side of things into doing something stupid is by doing something stupid yourself. If you want to make an S&P500 index fund buy some penny stock, you have to b…
The other stockholders are almost never your adversaries. Their interests are in alignment with yours: to vote in such a way that it maximizes the value of the stock.
The only exception would be some kind of action that is specifically discriminatory towards your shares over theirs, which is typically not legal. If it were to occur, that is the only situation where I would want Vanguard to be voting on my behalf.
You're right though that not voting is equivalent and much easier than trying to replicate votes.
Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
In other words: You want them to not vote at all. Which is a dumb idea, of course, as that just leaves the control over your capital to your adversaries. Passive investing works because goals are aligned: The only way to influence an index fund on the investing side of things into doing something stupid is by doing something stupid yourself. If you want to make an S&P500 index fund buy some penny stock, you have to b…
The other stockholders are almost never your adversaries. Their interests are in alignment with yours: to vote in such a way that it maximizes the value of the stock. The only exception would be some kind of action that is specifically discriminatory towards your shares over theirs, which is typically not legal. If it were to occur, that is the only situation where I would want Vanguard to be voting on my behalf. You…
> The other stockholders are almost never your adversaries. Their interests are in alignment with yours: to vote in such a way that it maximizes the value of the stock.
Nope. Their interest is to vote in such a way that it maximizes the value of their portfolio. If that doesn't match your portfolio, then your interests are not aligned.
> The only exception would be some kind of action that is specifically discriminatory towards your shares over theirs, which is typically not legal.
There is nothing discriminatory about voting for selling a division of company A to company B, say, and it is certainly not illegal. But it might well still be in the interest of the owners of company B who also happen to hold the only voting 10% of company A, and to the detriment of the owners of the other 90% of company A.