back to indexBogleheads® 2022 Conference – Panel Discussion on Investing with Bogleheads Experts, Karen Damato
00:00:08.760 |
I'd like to introduce our ACE moderator here, Karen D'Amato. 00:00:13.900 |
You'll be seeing her on several sessions throughout the conference. 00:00:20.460 |
She has been a great addition to our Bogleheads team over the years, 00:00:29.860 |
And it's probably not surprising because she has had a long, fabulous career asking questions 00:00:37.040 |
and answering questions and reporting on financial matters. 00:00:41.100 |
She was an assistant managing editor at Time Money Brand, and before that, 00:00:45.720 |
spent more than 30 years as a writer and editor at the Wall Street Journal. 00:00:49.960 |
She's now the content manager of a major New York law firm and has graciously donated her time 00:00:57.260 |
to be here and to moderate a number of sessions for us. 00:01:10.340 |
Very wonderful to see so many people here, to see so many first-time Bogleheads attendees. 00:01:17.820 |
Thank you to Bill and Jason for kicking us off with an amazing session. 00:01:24.680 |
Two incredibly smart, thoughtful people who made us laugh a lot as well, 00:01:36.820 |
I don't think I've ever had that experience before. 00:01:39.500 |
So, for our panel on investing, we welcome back Bill and Jason. 00:01:48.680 |
>> And you know our other panelists as well, but let me take a moment to introduce them as well. 00:01:57.060 |
Rick has worked in the investment industry for about 35 years. 00:02:02.580 |
He is the founder and CEO of Ferry Investment Solutions, which serves individuals 00:02:11.880 |
He's written several books and is the current president 00:02:15.440 |
of the John C. Bogle Center for Financial Literacy. 00:02:19.400 |
And Jim Dolley is our second outstanding representative from the medical community. 00:02:25.740 |
Jim is an emergency room doctor, a writer, a speaker. 00:02:30.640 |
He started the White Coat Investor website in 2011 to provide investing 00:02:36.320 |
and personal finance advice to the medical community. 00:02:40.840 |
And yesterday, many of you heard Jim as the host and a panelist at Bogleheads University. 00:02:47.200 |
He was very busy for a good chunk of the day. 00:02:49.640 |
This is a little intimidating, starting a panel on investing after the setup we got from Bill 00:02:56.700 |
and Jason talking about how many errors people make in looking at the markets 00:03:04.560 |
and in our own emotions and trying to make sense of what's going on outside 00:03:11.940 |
and then bringing it back to our personal portfolios. 00:03:16.600 |
I think it's fascinating that we're having this conversation. 00:03:19.520 |
We did a panel, oh, about 15 months ago, maybe a little more, a year and a half ago, 00:03:24.640 |
when the major questions we got from people, attendees ahead of time were 00:03:30.920 |
about stock prices are so high, I can't find any bargains, 00:03:35.460 |
bond yields are so low, what am I going to do? 00:03:38.160 |
So obviously, we have a very different environment now to talk about. 00:03:45.500 |
Whether we really truly feel gleeful is another story. 00:03:48.460 |
So just looking at the environment we find ourselves in, a year of steep losses across stocks 00:03:56.740 |
and bonds around the globe, high inflation, possible recession, just big picture, 00:04:04.320 |
how should I be thinking about the environment we find ourselves in? 00:04:09.640 |
And Bill, why don't you kick us off because you went halfway there in the previous session? 00:04:14.640 |
>> Well, let me get the other half of the way there and say that I'm as optimistic now 00:04:23.960 |
Why? Because if you're an accumulator, you can buy stocks cheaply now, okay, for the most part, 00:04:30.780 |
not all of them, but a lot of sectors are very inexpensive. 00:04:34.460 |
And if you're a geezer, and you don't have any human capital left, you can now, 00:04:39.940 |
as I said earlier, de-fees your future liabilities, your future living, 00:04:44.240 |
real living expenses with very plump tips yields. 00:04:48.520 |
Now, you know, I think things may actually be worse on the short term than we think they are. 00:04:53.900 |
I mean, I think there's a good chance we're looking at a new global financial crisis. 00:05:02.300 |
During a real financial crisis, markets go down 50%. 00:05:06.760 |
Well, what the 25% fall in the market is telling you is 00:05:10.280 |
that the market thinks there's a 50% probability of that. 00:05:13.240 |
And if it doesn't occur, market's going to rebound. 00:05:15.560 |
And if it does occur, it's going to go down, but not an awful lot more. 00:05:19.620 |
>> I have two announcements that I was told during the break. 00:05:31.020 |
That's the CPI, or the inflation increase next year. 00:05:33.800 |
I bonds, the number we've all been waiting for, will be 6.48, 00:05:42.960 |
basically the inflation rate with no interest. 00:05:45.980 |
But still, getting back to Bill's point, I like to look at things. 00:05:53.000 |
I wish that the market never went up a lot in 2021. 00:05:59.080 |
And I wish that real estate didn't go up a lot. 00:06:01.860 |
And I wish that NFTs and cryptocurrencies and all of these things, 00:06:06.060 |
this speculation that occurred in there didn't happen. 00:06:09.580 |
And that stock prices didn't go up 20-some odd percent in 2021. 00:06:14.720 |
Because if they didn't, then where would we be today based 00:06:21.840 |
And we'd all be looking, saying, ah, things aren't really too bad. 00:06:26.080 |
Interest rates are maybe up a little bit, but not too bad. 00:06:28.860 |
But what happened was not what's happening this year. 00:06:32.460 |
What's happening this year is everybody's focusing 00:06:39.100 |
Stocks went down, bond interest rates went up, bond prices went down. 00:06:43.820 |
Of course, crypto and everything else, everything speculative went down. 00:06:46.660 |
But if you started this whole evolution two years ago, and you said, well, 00:06:50.380 |
where are we from two years ago, you'd have a whole different opinion. 00:06:53.520 |
So if you were able to do the Rip Van Winkle thing, invested two years ago and just look 00:06:58.480 |
at where we are today, it would be kind of a non-event. 00:07:01.720 |
This conversation, this question wouldn't even come up. 00:07:05.840 |
Let's talk a little bit more about the U.S. stock market. 00:07:10.700 |
So when you look at the market, are there areas of the market that are still overvalued? 00:07:17.680 |
And where do you see the greatest opportunities, areas that seem most undervalued? 00:07:26.220 |
Overvalued and undervalued is in the eye of the beholder. 00:07:29.740 |
And the truth is that the market is probably smarter than any of us individually. 00:07:34.500 |
And so theoretically, it's never overvalued or undervalued. 00:07:38.960 |
And it's a tough question you're asking because you're saying in the U.S. market, 00:07:45.280 |
what do you see as being undervalued or overvalued? 00:07:48.440 |
And when I start looking for value, the U.S. market is not where I look these days. 00:08:00.900 |
on a relative basis are a lot more attractive than the U.S. 00:08:05.360 |
>> And I think there are a lot of people in the audience who would be happy to hear that. 00:08:10.240 |
You know, we got a number, we got questions from people 00:08:13.680 |
about a perennial Fogelhead's question of investing in, can you just invest in U.S. stocks 00:08:20.520 |
or should you also have international stock exposure? 00:08:26.160 |
will international equities ever outperform U.S. equities or even equal perform? 00:08:38.260 |
You'll all remember, well, maybe you won't all remember, but you should remember 00:08:43.340 |
if you've been a student of market history, as Bill has recommended you be, 00:08:46.440 |
a decade we called the lost decade was not that long ago 00:08:57.300 |
U.S. stocks haven't returned anything in a decade. 00:09:01.660 |
And now I'm hearing the exact same thing about international. 00:09:08.120 |
You know, Jack Bogle was always saying the pendulum swings back and forth. 00:09:16.060 |
You don't know exactly when, but over time, every asset class has its day in the sun. 00:09:21.100 |
And you want to be in it when it has its day in the sun. 00:09:23.960 |
And the only way to really do that is to own it in the long term. 00:09:26.720 |
>> And in the stock market in particular, staying in the stock market, 00:09:31.860 |
do you recommend investing with a total stock market dollar weighted type approach 00:09:38.040 |
or do you tilt your portfolios, large, small, growth value? 00:09:42.660 |
>> Well, just to, you know, put a point on it, 00:09:48.840 |
obsessing over precisely what your asset allocation is. 00:09:54.960 |
That pales in importance to the question, how disciplined are you? 00:10:00.820 |
In other words, sticking with your asset allocation is far more important 00:10:05.640 |
than picking the right one, and so the wrong thing to do right now would be 00:10:11.400 |
if you did have a total, if you did have a significant foreign allocation, 00:10:15.400 |
would be to abandon it right now at a 55, 45 probability. 00:10:23.200 |
>> So I'd write it up or make the analogy between a cake, 00:10:27.600 |
the icing on the cake, and the decorations on the cake. 00:10:31.780 |
Okay, we tend to focus on the decorations, right? 00:10:35.160 |
What's going up now, what's not going up now? 00:10:37.040 |
The icing on the cake is should you have small value, should you have more international, 00:10:42.260 |
should you have international, what the real thing that you eat 00:10:45.940 |
and that you bring it home with you, what really matters is your asset allocation 00:10:51.440 |
between risky and non-risky assets, the thing that Bill was talking about earlier. 00:10:55.520 |
This drives 90% of your return, 90% of the variability of your portfolio. 00:11:02.760 |
How much you have in safe assets, how much you have in risky assets. 00:11:06.080 |
Everything else after that, these are icing on the cake, such as how much in international, 00:11:10.860 |
how much in U.S., what factors you have, if you decide to have factors, 00:11:15.940 |
and then there's the sprinkles, which seems to be the thing that occupy a lot of time. 00:11:20.980 |
This is the cryptocurrencies and all of these other things that really don't matter. 00:11:25.660 |
They're sort of shooting stars, but we spend an awful lot of time looking 00:11:28.980 |
at shooting stars rather than the ingredients that go in the cake. 00:11:36.080 |
We had a number of questions from the audience about bonds. 00:11:39.180 |
One was a request for your views on the choice of duration and quality and your rationale. 00:11:45.340 |
So short treasuries versus intermediate treasuries versus total bond. 00:11:49.400 |
And similar, a question is, is total bond funds still considered good enough 00:11:55.020 |
for the bond portion of a 60/40 portfolio for a retiree? 00:12:03.720 |
>> I'm a big fan of staying pretty safe with bonds. 00:12:11.300 |
I tend to take my risk on the equity side, and I take a lot of risk there. 00:12:16.280 |
And so I tend to be pretty safe on the bond side. 00:12:18.980 |
I've divided my bonds into nominal and inflation indexed bonds, 50/50. 00:12:26.060 |
And the nominal ones, if I could, would all be in the safest bond investment I know of, 00:12:34.240 |
My entire TSP from my time in the federal service is in the G fund, which is basically, 00:12:42.560 |
you know, bond yields with money market risk. 00:12:44.440 |
Hasn't been the right investment for the last 16 years until this year, 00:12:54.700 |
And then on the inflation index side, it's primarily TIPS and, you know, IBONs, 00:13:02.000 |
basically insured by the federal government, backed by the federal government. 00:13:10.600 |
You know, if I'm going to take risk, I take real risk, you know. 00:13:15.880 |
I take it into my stock holdings, but I don't do it on the bond side. 00:13:20.080 |
So the only risky thing I've got over there in the nominal side is some muni bonds. 00:13:24.200 |
I'm forced at this point to hold some of my bonds in a taxable account. 00:13:27.840 |
And so I have a Vanguard Municipal Bond Index Fund there. 00:13:32.920 |
It's a bond fund from Vanguard, which is very index-like. 00:13:36.160 |
And it hasn't had a great year this year, like every other bond fund. 00:13:43.480 |
>> Yeah, I mean, half of investing is math, and the other half is Shakespeare. 00:13:50.860 |
And you gear the fixed income part of your portfolio to deal with the Shakespeare, 00:13:57.680 |
being able to sleep in the worst states of the world. 00:14:05.920 |
derive from how you behave in the worst 2% of the time, all right? 00:14:10.500 |
And it may be the T-bills that you have that used to yield close to zero, 00:14:15.500 |
were the best performing, highest performing assets in your portfolio. 00:14:19.140 |
Because they enable you to stay the course with the rest of it. 00:14:24.940 |
But I think at any one moment, about 20% of Berkshire is in T-bills. 00:14:30.540 |
There's a reason why Warren Buffett likes T-bills. 00:14:34.220 |
>> Yeah, I mean, I would just add one very quick note, 00:14:39.380 |
which is to a group like the Bogleheads, I mean, Treasury Direct is like candy. 00:14:47.100 |
I mean, a lot of people find the government website kind of 00:14:55.140 |
I think for Bogleheads, that probably isn't an issue. 00:15:06.420 |
real treasuries in the form of tips is really easy on Treasury Direct. 00:15:13.740 |
And I mean, you're getting like a 4% yield on short-term treasuries, 00:15:24.660 |
And you're getting a real return on tips of, as we've talked about, 00:15:29.380 |
like in the 2% range, that's, I mean, to me, that's like a free lunch. 00:15:35.460 |
>> So let's talk a little bit more about tips. 00:15:39.780 |
This morning's CPI report, inflation in September was running 8.2%, 00:15:56.420 |
And yet, when people have looked at their portfolios, and 00:16:00.180 |
you see the Vanguard Tips Fund so far this year is down 13%, 00:16:10.580 |
So, Jim, do you want to talk to us about why? 00:16:15.580 |
Let's just start with understanding what has happened this year with the tips. 00:16:20.140 |
>> This is one of my biggest frustrations of the year. 00:16:22.820 |
And I was discussing this with Bill at dinner last night. 00:16:25.460 |
I hold these tips for years and years and years and 00:16:29.140 |
years for this moment of unexpected high inflation. 00:16:33.940 |
And I just know that's going to be their day in their sun and 00:16:38.660 |
And while everything else is plummeting, at least I'm going to have those tips. 00:16:42.780 |
And then this year, you look at intermediate treasuries and 00:16:45.740 |
they're down 11%, 12%, and you look at the Vanguard Tips Fund, 00:16:52.420 |
So it's a little bit riskier in that respect, down 13%. 00:16:58.420 |
And that even with that inflation factor into it, they're still bonds, 00:17:07.660 |
And rates have gone up a lot this year, both nominal rates and real rates. 00:17:16.580 |
is a bigger factor than the inflation adjustment is. 00:17:20.500 |
And I'm going to let Bill give you the answer he gave me last night when we were 00:17:24.940 |
>> Yeah, looked at from 50,000 feet, it's pretty simple, 00:17:29.060 |
which is that nominal short treasuries are riskless in the short term. 00:17:35.340 |
But they're very risky in the long term, because you've got to reinvest them and 00:17:37.940 |
you never know what you're going to reinvest at. 00:17:39.820 |
And you could wind up reinvesting at a terrible rate, 00:17:41.900 |
which is what's happened over the past ten years. 00:17:44.380 |
On the other hand, tips are riskless as long as you hold them to maturity, okay? 00:17:51.700 |
So I just bought some 20-year tips the other week, and 00:17:56.260 |
they're going to be absolutely riskless the year I turn 94, all right? 00:18:04.140 |
because I don't want to be eating cat food when I'm 94. 00:18:09.700 |
And simply because you believe a certain precept in finance 00:18:15.300 |
doesn't relieve you of the duty, the absolute duty of estimating expected returns. 00:18:21.860 |
And so if you were buying tips a year and a half ago, 00:18:24.900 |
you were buying them at the short end, in five years, at a negative 1.5% return. 00:18:32.820 |
Which means that basically to get, if you put a dollar into the now, 00:18:39.020 |
in five years, you're going to be getting $0.92 worth of consumption value. 00:18:43.460 |
Maybe you could justify that on theoretical grounds, but I couldn't. 00:18:53.620 |
And that's particularly true of stocks, and it's also true of tips. 00:19:02.300 |
If you buy new issue tips, then you'll get the positive rate of return. 00:19:08.860 |
You'll get your money back, because the government guarantees if you put $100,000 00:19:13.260 |
into a new issue tip, that at maturity, you get $100,000 back. 00:19:26.620 |
So if you bought a tip that was issued ten years ago, okay, at a certain level, 00:19:32.300 |
you could lose money on that tip if you didn't buy it at the new issue price. 00:19:37.020 |
So new issue tips are guaranteed to get the money back. 00:19:40.860 |
But buying a used tip, if you will, something that's been out there for 00:19:44.140 |
a while, secondary market tip, that may not be the case. 00:19:47.380 |
If it was issued at a price that was lower than what you bought at that, 00:19:56.340 |
So if the new issue tip was issued at a price that was lower than what you bought 00:19:59.500 |
it at, it could actually lose value between now and the time that it matured. 00:20:03.980 |
>> There's one exception to that, and now we're really getting to the weeds. 00:20:09.140 |
that is there is a tips that matures in February or January, I forget, of 2043. 00:20:16.060 |
Which, if you multiply the inflation factor times its market price, 00:20:18.900 |
it's still less than par, and it's got a one-eighth of a point coupon. 00:20:23.780 |
So you're basically buying a zero, so there's one exception to that rule. 00:20:32.580 |
I just wanted to clarify, what Jim was saying. 00:20:41.420 |
a tips index fund isn't very high, and which we've seen, negative 13%, right? 00:20:47.780 |
But the correlation between short-term tips and inflation is much higher. 00:20:52.700 |
So if you're buying tips for the inflation hedge, 00:20:56.220 |
you would really wanna focus on short-term, like the Vanguard short-term tips fund. 00:21:00.420 |
>> And I guess a related question that we often come up against in bond investing 00:21:06.740 |
is buying individual bonds versus buying funds. 00:21:10.180 |
So if I want tips exposure as an inflation hedge, 00:21:15.380 |
do I have to buy the individual bonds, or do I buy the fund and 00:21:19.060 |
I just avert my eyes when the price fluctuates? 00:21:22.180 |
>> Personally, I think that it's either, if you wanted to do a bond ladder, 00:21:27.860 |
If you wanted to just do a fund, the duration is going to be the same. 00:21:31.260 |
So I don't see much difference, and I used to manage a lot of money in bonds, and 00:21:48.420 |
And now that I'm having to buy some in my taxable account, 00:22:00.460 |
minuses matter a lot to you, then choose one over the other. 00:22:04.660 |
it's probably not a big question when it comes to your portfolio construction. 00:22:08.980 |
>> I guess I would just add one distinction, which is if your choice, 00:22:14.740 |
for whatever reason, is between buying one single issue of tips and buying a fund, 00:22:30.420 |
then I don't really think there's much difference. 00:22:36.740 |
So REIT funds are among the many asset classes that are off sharply this year. 00:22:49.180 |
are REITs still considered a separate asset class? 00:22:54.300 |
You can take those as two separate but related questions. 00:23:02.180 |
>> [LAUGH] >> I treat them as a separate asset class. 00:23:05.460 |
My portfolio is 60% stocks, 20% real estate, and 20% bonds. 00:23:09.900 |
Of that real estate allocation, 5% is simply in the Vanguard, 00:23:19.220 |
I technically own them also in my total stock market fund. 00:23:24.740 |
And the reason I overweight it is because there's an awful lot of real estate in 00:23:28.700 |
this country and in this world that is not publicly traded. 00:23:35.180 |
And so I think you can justify overweighting real estate from that argument. 00:23:41.820 |
I also have about 15% of my portfolio that is not in publicly traded real estate. 00:23:49.220 |
And the reason there is because I find some aspects of those investments 00:24:00.100 |
And I find that I have enough money that I can actually diversify in that space, 00:24:04.500 |
which is a tough thing for a lot of investors to do. 00:24:13.860 |
The real downside of publicly traded REITs is that their correlation with 00:24:18.180 |
the overall stock market is moderate to high. 00:24:22.260 |
And that's disappointing when you're looking for something that has high 00:24:25.380 |
returns, but low correlation with your stocks. 00:24:28.860 |
Publicly traded REITs do that somewhat, but not awesome. 00:24:32.860 |
>> Okay, there is periods of time when REITs have been negatively 00:24:41.260 |
So I know we haven't had one of those times, but there are times when it occurred. 00:24:47.660 |
And lately, yes, it has had high correlation. 00:24:53.340 |
And by the way, the return of REITs versus the private market has actually been 00:24:58.020 |
I did a podcast with Antti Ilmenen from AQR recently, 00:25:06.220 |
And we were talking about private real estate versus REITs. 00:25:08.500 |
And it turns out that, in his research, REITs have done better. 00:25:12.660 |
Now, REITs are a little leveraged, perhaps, and 00:25:19.620 |
And I thought his view on REITs were good, though. 00:25:21.860 |
He was basically saying that the dividend yield that the REITs are providing. 00:25:28.620 |
So if you have a REIT index fund, which right now is probably close to a 3% 00:25:33.980 |
dividend yield, is probably the real return over inflation 00:25:44.500 |
is going to eventually increase with the inflation rate. 00:25:48.220 |
So if inflation goes up by 3%, the price of the REITs eventually will reflect that, 00:25:55.060 |
and they'll go up by 3%, and the dividend yield on top of that that you're getting, 00:26:04.940 |
He also said that real estate was probably expected to return a little bit 00:26:09.300 |
less than equity, so somewhere between equities and fixed income. 00:26:13.020 |
And I do think that having real estate in your portfolio 00:26:18.260 |
Because as Jim said, there's so much of it out there, and so 00:26:21.220 |
much of the real estate is privately owned, that if you want your portfolio to 00:26:25.660 |
more reflect what the economy is, or what GDP is, rather than what 00:26:30.780 |
the stock market is, then you would own a little more real estate. 00:26:33.940 |
>> Wanted to hit on another question about dividends. 00:26:44.900 |
That is, on a fundamental level, why should a corporation pay a dividend and 00:26:49.940 |
create unwanted income for taxable investors? 00:26:55.060 |
There's something called the Miller-Mavigliani theory that says it 00:26:59.220 |
doesn't matter whether a company gives the dividend out to you or reinvests it. 00:27:11.340 |
They should just be buying back their own stock, 00:27:17.060 |
But the history of finance suggests that companies do not 00:27:21.380 |
make good use of eternally generated capital, all right? 00:27:30.420 |
And in general, my philosophy is that it's better that companies 00:27:37.580 |
Now it also, companies that, a high dividend rate is also a marker for 00:27:43.060 |
a value company as well, for the value factor, 00:27:47.620 |
which also suggests a slightly higher return as well. 00:27:51.220 |
So I'm a big fan of dividends, because you can use that capital 00:27:55.420 |
a lot better than some megalomaniacal CEO can. 00:28:03.700 |
Many years ago, back in the 80s, I think it was, 00:28:08.820 |
Hugh Leetke, who then was the CEO of Pennzoil, 00:28:13.660 |
said that he had come to believe in what he called the bladder theory of dividends. 00:28:20.500 |
Which was, it was good for companies to pay them so 00:28:33.020 |
So if your dividend-paying stock is in your taxable account, 00:28:38.060 |
If it's a US total market fund, usually it's long-term capital gain, about 90%. 00:28:42.780 |
If it's an international fund, only 70% would be long-term capital gain, 00:28:49.260 |
So if you're looking for dividends in your taxable account to live off of, 00:28:55.300 |
you could say, well, I could have some internationally, I could have some US. 00:28:59.140 |
Or I could do something Alan Roth, who's sitting over here, suggested one time, 00:29:03.460 |
is that buy a US total market fund in your taxable account, which pays low dividend. 00:29:08.660 |
And if you need to sell some stock, at least when you sell it, 00:29:12.140 |
it'll be at a long-term capital gain, so you're gonna pay that rate. 00:29:15.380 |
But if you don't need to sell it because you don't need the money, 00:29:18.260 |
So from a tax standpoint, you really gotta think about 00:29:23.100 |
dividends in your taxable accounts, just wanted to bring that up. 00:29:29.020 |
So obviously, with the market down a lot, there are people who will have 00:29:34.420 |
losses from when they purchase some of their investments, 00:29:40.900 |
I'd be interested in your thoughts on how helpful tax loss harvesting is, 00:29:48.940 |
ways you think people should be thinking about that this year. 00:29:51.860 |
>> So my view on a taxable portfolio, again, because we're talking tax loss 00:29:56.580 |
harvesting, is you want forever funds in your taxable account, 00:30:00.300 |
total stock market, total international, things you're gonna hold forever. 00:30:04.100 |
That's what you want in your taxable account. 00:30:06.700 |
But if you have the opportunity to do a tax loss harvest using tax lots, 00:30:11.620 |
because you bought in over time, because you have different tax lots, 00:30:14.420 |
some that might be down, you wanna go ahead and 00:30:16.420 |
sell the Vanguard total stock market, and you buy the iShare total stock market. 00:30:20.100 |
You wanna sell the Vanguard total international, 00:30:21.860 |
you wanna buy the iShare total international, ETF. 00:30:24.180 |
You wanna take the tax loss, then you can take that tax loss, 00:30:26.980 |
you can write off $3,000 worth of ordinary income, and you can use it to write off 00:30:31.140 |
long term capital gains that you may have later on down the road as well. 00:30:34.340 |
And if you die, your kids get a stepped up basis, or 00:30:36.700 |
your ears get a stepped up basis, so they never have to make it up. 00:30:43.620 |
I mean, aren't the iShares and say the Vanguard Fund substantially similar? 00:30:54.540 |
It may not be important, so you don't worry about it, all right. 00:30:59.020 |
If it's got a different Q-SIP number, does anybody know anybody who's ever been 00:31:05.580 |
I've asked this question to a lot of audiences, and 00:31:17.740 |
So when I was getting my master's, I did a paper on tax loss harvesting. 00:31:24.500 |
And you have to go back years to find cases of tax law that says, 00:31:29.060 |
there was this case that was brought up in front of a tax court where they sold 00:31:32.420 |
a five-year treasury bond, and they bought another five-year treasury bond. 00:31:35.300 |
But the coupon was a half a percent different. 00:31:38.180 |
Sell one five-year treasury, buy another five-year treasury, 00:31:40.540 |
half a percent difference in the coupon rate. 00:31:43.220 |
The judge threw out the case, not substantially identical. 00:31:47.220 |
So certainly, if you have a fund that's issued by Vanguard, and you sell it, and 00:31:50.780 |
you buy a fund issued by iShares, it can't be substantially identical. 00:31:59.140 |
>> [LAUGH] >> The value of tax loss is beyond 00:32:04.060 |
the $3,000 a year, really depends on how you're going to use them. 00:32:08.820 |
If those are shares you're gonna sell later anyway, 00:32:13.700 |
Maybe you can defer them to a time when you're in a lower capital gains bracket, 00:32:17.780 |
and you get a little bit of an arbitrage there. 00:32:19.700 |
But it really depends on how you're going to use those, and 00:32:24.100 |
And possible uses down the road for collecting hundreds of thousands of 00:32:27.780 |
dollars of tax losses might be if you're gonna sell a really valuable house, 00:32:33.060 |
Remember, only your first $250,000 or first $500,000, 00:32:37.180 |
if you're married, of your house gains are tax-free. 00:32:43.900 |
If you're gonna sell a small business, for example, 00:32:47.620 |
that would be something you could use all of those tax losses for. 00:32:51.540 |
So even though I've got enough tax losses to subtract $3,000 a year from my taxes 00:32:57.220 |
every year from now until the time I'm 150, I'm still grabbing those 00:33:02.460 |
tax losses for other purposes, for other capital gains I could have down the road. 00:33:16.460 |
If you just check every couple of months in a bear market, that's enough tax loss 00:33:20.460 |
harvesting for most of us to have enough losses to do at least the $3,000 a year 00:33:27.980 |
>> Let's talk a little bit about rebalancing. 00:33:30.140 |
Just going across the panel, I'd be interested in how often you rebalance 00:33:35.380 |
your portfolio, how often you think people should look at their portfolio and 00:33:41.260 |
>> Well, I guess one quick note I would mention is that Jack Bogle didn't really 00:33:48.060 |
believe in rebalancing, but everybody else does. 00:34:04.340 |
Christine will be happy to know I shovel as much money into that thing as I can. 00:34:14.900 |
I don't know why, but it makes me feel good somehow. 00:34:21.380 |
And elsewhere in my portfolio, I rebalance very, very seldom. 00:34:30.860 |
And typically what I do is I rebalance by harvesting some losses, and that's the 00:34:41.780 |
>> I think the data is pretty clear that the ideal interval to rebalance is greater 00:34:47.420 |
It's between one and three years I think is what most of the data has shown on that. 00:34:53.460 |
Well, I'm still enough of an accumulator that I'm pouring enough money into the 00:34:56.180 |
portfolio every year that I can just rebalance with new contributions. 00:35:01.700 |
I take all the income from all sources that I have in the previous month, add it up, 00:35:05.660 |
determine how much of it is going to be invested, and then I tend to look at my 00:35:13.340 |
But I can tell you over the last 16 years or so that I've been investing, 18 years, 00:35:18.500 |
I've come to worry much less about having my portfolio exactly in balance. 00:35:25.580 |
This is horseshoes and hand grenades terrain. 00:35:27.660 |
Yes, if you've gone from an 80% portfolio to a 50% portfolio, you need to rebalance. 00:35:33.340 |
But if we're talking about 80% and 77%, those portfolios perform almost identically 00:35:39.180 |
I certainly wouldn't accumulate any tax cost or transaction cost to do a rebalancing like 00:35:47.700 |
I mean, the pluses and minuses of rebalancing aren't all that big. 00:35:55.620 |
One thing we haven't talked about is are you in a taxable or a sheltered environment? 00:35:58.780 |
If you're in a taxable environment, the cost of rebalancing is substantial. 00:36:02.380 |
Whereas, if you're in a tax-free or sheltered environment, it's not. 00:36:06.900 |
I think that you rebalance for two other reasons that have nothing to do with return. 00:36:12.060 |
Number one, you're doing it to limit risk, all right? 00:36:15.020 |
You don't want to wake up one morning with an 85-15 portfolio and then be devastated 00:36:20.300 |
when you get hit with a huge stock market fall if that prevents you from sleeping. 00:36:27.240 |
If it doesn't prevent you from sleeping, then God bless. 00:36:30.540 |
But the other reason why you rebalance is for emotional conditioning. 00:36:34.460 |
It customs you to buying low and selling high. 00:36:40.340 |
And both of those are not easy emotional things to do. 00:36:44.020 |
And it sort of keeps you in financial shape, which is the reason why I do it, is just to 00:36:55.180 |
A lot of times, if you're going to run into taxes because all your equity is in your taxable 00:37:00.460 |
account and I believe your Roth accounts and your HSA should all have equity in it, 00:37:07.580 |
because why not take advantage of that tax-free status of those accounts? 00:37:12.100 |
So that means that you need to have equity in your tax-deferred accounts to do rebalancing 00:37:20.980 |
You know, go to your 401(k), 403(b), IRA, and if you can do some rebalancing there, 00:37:27.780 |
But eventually what might happen is you might end up with all fixed income in your tax-deferred 00:37:31.700 |
account, all equity in your tax-free accounts, and then your taxable accounts are the only 00:37:38.660 |
And you really can't do much there, except if you're doing tax-less harvesting or you're 00:37:42.860 |
adding more money, then you would just use the cash to do it as best you can. 00:37:50.660 |
I want to thank the three of you for making me feel like a sick old geezer for still having 00:37:59.060 |
And on that note, I think we'll see if there are people in the audience who have questions. 00:38:22.260 |
I'm investing, as I posted in the forum, for my mom who's near end of life, tax-less harvesting. 00:38:29.900 |
When a person passes and you have existing losses, that loss gets washed out. 00:38:34.720 |
So the capital, I forget which way it goes, but be careful if you're in that situation 00:38:39.540 |
because those capital losses get washed out when they get passed on. 00:38:54.700 |
My question is around ESG investing and trying to make sense of that, get some returns. 00:39:02.140 |
I've heard different opinions that it's not needed, it's not efficient, but at the same 00:39:07.220 |
time I know I like to sleep at night knowing that my money is not coming from tobacco companies 00:39:12.860 |
So I would like to hear your thoughts on the matter. 00:39:16.180 |
I have strong feelings about ESG investing, but I'm going to let somebody else go first. 00:39:24.540 |
If you think about it from the point of view of equilibrium finance, just because you've 00:39:27.460 |
sold the stock doesn't mean that someone else isn't going to open it, own it. 00:39:30.920 |
So if half the people in the world don't want to own tobacco stocks, the other half of those 00:39:35.660 |
people who do own the stocks, who the stocks get sold to, are going to be getting it at 00:39:39.580 |
a bargain price and are going to be having a higher return. 00:39:42.800 |
Those stocks will still be owned even if you don't, all right? 00:39:48.020 |
And so a better way to do it is to own the market, own the sinful stocks, then calculate 00:39:52.260 |
how much excess returns you've made from the sinful stocks and put that money into advocacy. 00:39:58.220 |
That's another reason why ESG is kind of a scam, which is that, don't get me started, 00:40:06.900 |
all right, which is that if a company gets cheap enough, it gets taken private, okay? 00:40:13.820 |
So would you rather be dealing with green energy policy with ExxonMobil or with Koch 00:40:24.020 |
And then third reason is just from the investment point of view, the investment industry point 00:40:29.100 |
There are all these different scales for using them. 00:40:32.940 |
It's a Wall Street, it's a Wall Street hop, skip, and jump. 00:40:37.740 |
So if you think about, so Larry Suedro wrote a book about this, and I also interviewed 00:40:44.660 |
a couple of other people on a podcast, and I thought about this as well. 00:40:49.180 |
If you do not own the stock, you have no say in what the company does. 00:40:54.600 |
So by doing ESG and saying, "I don't want to own ExxonMobil," you have no say and no 00:41:04.220 |
I think there are just far better ways to change the world. 00:41:08.300 |
If you really care to try to stop a company that you think is bad, lead a boycott of their 00:41:15.100 |
Strike in front of Exxon gas stations, or start a letter writing campaign, or pressure 00:41:23.540 |
their sponsors, or there's just all kinds of things that are more effective than picking 00:41:29.140 |
an ESG fund and patting yourself on the back and feeling good about what you're doing for 00:41:34.260 |
I just don't think it's very effective in actually changing the world. 00:41:37.940 |
Yeah, and paying actively managed fees for it. 00:41:41.580 |
It's just, you're far better off, just invest in all of them and donate to the charities 00:41:50.300 |
Yeah, I mean, I would just add a quick thought, I think ESG has become popular for two reasons. 00:41:58.220 |
One, actively managed firms on Wall Street view it as their salvation, because from a 00:42:06.460 |
marketing point of view, their message is indexing doesn't really work with ESG. 00:42:13.460 |
You need an active manager to probe these companies to see whether they really are E 00:42:20.120 |
and S and G. And of course, that's B, S. But it's good marketing, and it's very effective 00:42:32.860 |
Pension funds are very lightly indexed in ESG. 00:42:37.980 |
They've decided, they and their consultants have decided that you need active management 00:42:43.860 |
So, I mean, that's the first thing you should realize. 00:42:46.300 |
I mean, if you're a boglehead, because you're skeptical about active management, you should 00:42:51.260 |
be really skeptical about active ESG management. 00:42:55.860 |
The second thing, which to me is more personal, is I worry that ESG investing is a way of 00:43:05.620 |
shifting the responsibility for making the world a better place from each of us to somebody 00:43:14.540 |
I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've been in a grocery store parking lot and seen 00:43:21.540 |
somebody get out of their Land Rover SUV, no offense to the Land Rover owners in the 00:43:28.940 |
room, they get out of their Land Rover SUV and they leave the motor running while they 00:43:33.980 |
go into the grocery store, and like a half hour later, they come out with their grocery 00:43:42.140 |
I mean, if that's you and you want to buy an ESG fund, then I have a big problem with 00:43:59.380 |
So we're all bogleheads, and we're not supposed to market time. 00:44:02.620 |
But I think generally we all love tips right now, it seems like. 00:44:12.100 |
What are we not seeing about tips that we should be worried about? 00:44:15.460 |
I mean, I've owned tips for 16 years as 10% of my portfolio. 00:44:19.940 |
I owned 10% last year, I own 10% this year, I'll own 10% next year. 00:44:23.860 |
So this year has not been good to me in that particular asset class, but I don't see any 00:44:30.980 |
I don't change my portfolio based on the fact that tips yield 1.7% this year. 00:44:37.880 |
But it sounds like Bill might, so let's give this question to him. 00:44:42.540 |
Yeah, I mean, I'll repeat what I said before, which is just because you believe in the efficient 00:44:46.780 |
market hypothesis doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking at expected returns, all right? 00:44:51.980 |
And if an asset class has gotten particularly cheap, well, okay, I'm guilty, I'm a market 00:45:01.340 |
Those short-term bonds for the last 15 years, I knew it. 00:45:07.140 |
Okay, tips are the only investment grade bond that is not included in the total bond market 00:45:15.500 |
Okay, so if you wanted to have a total, total bond market US fund, then you would have to 00:45:20.540 |
include, say, 10% of your portfolio in tips anyway, just to have the market. 00:45:26.220 |
Of course, you're leaving out the international bonds, if that's all you're doing. 00:45:37.020 |
Hi, my question has to do with buying on the dip and rebalancing. 00:45:46.860 |
Is there anything wrong with rebalancing now while your equities are down twice as much 00:45:52.860 |
as your bonds and putting your bonds more in the equities to buy on the dip to rebalance? 00:46:00.660 |
Are you talking about the dip in bonds or the dip in stocks? 00:46:04.780 |
They're actually both, but the equities are down twice as much as the bonds. 00:46:17.700 |
I mean, there's a lot of market timing going on in every little daily decision we make, 00:46:23.420 |
Are you going to invest your monthly WAD that you have to invest today, or are you going 00:46:28.700 |
Every month, you got this question, and am I going to rebalance this month, or am I going 00:46:37.020 |
You'll drive yourself crazy if you're thinking about this every time you have to make a little 00:46:41.420 |
investing decision, so try to automate as much as possible. 00:46:45.020 |
Try to just do it blindly as much as possible, and I think that's better behaviorally. 00:46:51.380 |
Even if there are times when it is not as good mathematically, I think your behavior 00:46:55.500 |
in the long run trumps the math in that respect. 00:47:15.700 |
I receive a pension from my career that I left some years ago. 00:47:24.420 |
I work now, still part-time when I want on my own terms. 00:47:31.040 |
I've postponed taking Social Security for a few more years, like at 70. 00:47:47.420 |
I'm just trying to figure out which breakout session I should be going into. 00:47:57.180 |
I think we'll take that as a great reminder that it's time to wrap up this session. 00:48:04.180 |
I think you raise a good point, though, that applies to everything we talk about in personal 00:48:08.980 |
finance, that we are all multifaceted individuals. 00:48:14.660 |
We can't put ourselves into a bucket and say, "Well, you're this or that." 00:48:22.020 |
I would encourage you to look at all the sessions and figure out the particular topics or speakers 00:48:27.620 |
that most seem relevant to you, and don't worry which label. 00:48:32.460 |
I like the idea of coming up with new labels, and certainly an issue for people as retirement 00:48:38.860 |
becomes a very different thing than it was decades ago, and people are trying to redefine 00:48:46.900 |
Maybe you will come up with the right label for us. 00:48:50.180 |
I think on that note, we're going to wrap up this session. 00:49:03.860 |
Your questions in this session and the previous session were amazing, thoughtful, and really 00:49:11.260 |
got our panelists to say some very interesting things.