Bogleheads® Conference 2013 - Jack Bogle Reception
00:00:00.000 | [no audio]
00:00:08.120 | ...welcoming our special guest of honor, Jack Vogel.
00:00:11.620 | [applause]
00:00:26.620 | Well, I don't usually talk too much. [laughter]
00:00:31.120 | I don't know. How are you?
00:00:33.620 | What's to be said?
00:00:37.620 | I guess the biggest treat of all, it's always wonderful to see all of you.
00:00:41.620 | But there's... honestly...
00:00:48.620 | I think it gives me quite a thrill.
00:00:50.620 | As much of a thrill as seeing my dear friend Taylor Leckermore.
00:00:53.620 | He represents the best that's in this country,
00:00:57.620 | the best that is investing, the highest charity.
00:01:01.620 | He represents... well, let's put it this way,
00:01:05.620 | everything I want to be when I grow up.
00:01:07.620 | [laughter and applause]
00:01:18.620 | I don't have too much time to get there.
00:01:21.620 | But it's great to see you all.
00:01:23.620 | And I'm gonna...
00:01:25.620 | Is pretty much everybody here tonight, so I don't have to repeat myself in the morning?
00:01:28.620 | [laughter]
00:01:31.620 | Okay. Well, I'm looking forward to being with you tomorrow.
00:01:34.620 | I think Bill Bernstein is not going to be here.
00:01:36.620 | He's in the hospital. He's being operated on.
00:01:38.620 | And Bill's going to probably show up in a wheelchair.
00:01:41.620 | Well, that reminds me of me.
00:01:44.620 | [laughter]
00:01:47.620 | There are these two questions everybody asks me.
00:01:50.620 | What happened? How did it happen?
00:01:52.620 | The answer is very easy.
00:01:54.620 | I fractured scapula and stupidity.
00:01:56.620 | [laughter]
00:01:58.620 | But three days after it happened, or four,
00:02:01.620 | I was asked to give the keynote speech
00:02:03.620 | to the 70th anniversary of the Financial Analysts of Philadelphia
00:02:06.620 | at the Constitution Center,
00:02:08.620 | which made it very difficult for me to resist.
00:02:11.620 | That's something I've been involved in all my adult years, I guess.
00:02:15.620 | And so my wife said, "You're not doing it, are you?"
00:02:20.620 | [laughter]
00:02:22.620 | And I said, "Well, I am."
00:02:24.620 | And she said, "Why?"
00:02:26.620 | And I said, "Because when I make a commitment, I'm used to keeping it."
00:02:30.620 | Not all is true. This is the apocryphal part.
00:02:34.620 | She said, "Well, what if you were dead?"
00:02:36.620 | [laughter]
00:02:38.620 | And I said, "Honestly, I think I'd do it anyway."
00:02:41.620 | [laughter]
00:02:44.620 | I think I would.
00:02:46.620 | I mean, they're not going to keep me from being with you tomorrow morning.
00:02:49.620 | It's going to be a little more heavy lifting than I would want to do
00:02:52.620 | without Bill Bernstein's absence.
00:02:54.620 | Unless he gets here, which we can't be sure of.
00:02:58.620 | So I'll be talking to you then.
00:03:01.620 | I'm having a good time, I think, trying to answer your questions.
00:03:05.620 | I always start by saying,
00:03:07.620 | let's have a lot fewer slides than last year.
00:03:10.620 | I think we have eight more.
00:03:12.620 | [laughter]
00:03:13.620 | So we'll just do the best we can.
00:03:15.620 | It's all very informal, as you know.
00:03:17.620 | I look forward to doing it.
00:03:18.620 | It gives me a chance to put some things down.
00:03:20.620 | Well, I don't put them quite down in black and white.
00:03:23.620 | But there'll be slides there.
00:03:26.620 | And I have a lot of ideas that I think I'd like to talk to you about.
00:03:29.620 | Things that are going on now, things that are going to happen this year,
00:03:32.620 | and things we ought to be thinking about in the future.
00:03:34.620 | So it's fun to do all that.
00:03:36.620 | And fun to share it with a group of people
00:03:38.620 | who care so deeply about helping one another
00:03:43.620 | and observing what's going on.
00:03:45.620 | My God, you're unbelievable.
00:03:47.620 | I was going over some of the background for tomorrow,
00:03:50.620 | and I happened to get to the thing about the front-line report on retired clients.
00:03:55.620 | And I look, and I'm thanking you for writing 262 posts.
00:04:01.620 | 262 posts.
00:04:03.620 | I didn't even dare look it all up before I came over here.
00:04:06.620 | But we do have a bunch of questions from you in advance,
00:04:09.620 | which Bill--thank you very much, Bill--has succeeded in getting together.
00:04:14.620 | And then I think we'll also try and do what we did last year,
00:04:17.620 | and that is it's fun to get these questions from afar.
00:04:21.620 | But we also have some--we'll take some questions from in the air.
00:04:25.620 | So we'll do live Q&A, too.
00:04:27.620 | And I will be--what's the phrase I want to use?
00:04:32.620 | Completely outspoken.
00:04:36.620 | A statement to which I aspire and, alas, don't always achieve.
00:04:41.620 | But there's a lot of interesting things going on in the world,
00:04:45.620 | in the government, to say the least, at Vanguard,
00:04:49.620 | and for investors in a kind of a time where the answers are not easy
00:04:54.620 | and the answers are not forthcoming, the answers are not written.
00:04:57.620 | But in a way, that kind of uncertainty has permeated investing forever.
00:05:01.620 | Just different levels and degrees.
00:05:03.620 | So we put up with it. We do the best we can.
00:05:06.620 | And it works.
00:05:08.620 | And I get letters from the likes of you all every single day
00:05:13.620 | from shareholders without--nothing is a complaint.
00:05:17.620 | Somebody purchased $500,000 for the Mendex 500 at the high in 2007,
00:05:24.620 | and thanked me for all we'd done for him since then.
00:05:27.620 | God knows where he was coming from.
00:05:31.620 | But he did stay with us, and now somebody can tell me the number.
00:05:36.620 | 20% cap income, 25% higher than he was then.
00:05:40.620 | All very counterintuitive.
00:05:42.620 | And I could tell a whole story about one of the great bureaus at Vanguard, Gus Sillard.
00:05:46.620 | Is it okay if I tell a story like that?
00:05:51.620 | Around February 10, 2009, the market had gone down 55%.
00:06:00.620 | And I don't see nearly as much of Gus as I used to.
00:06:03.620 | We happened to run into each other in the hall.
00:06:05.620 | And he was heading for somewhere, and I was headed for somewhere in our paths.
00:06:09.620 | And we got talking about the market, and the 55% declined.
00:06:13.620 | And he said to me, "You know, if I had to make a guess,
00:06:20.620 | I'd say this is going to be the best time to put your money to work in the stock market in our lifetimes."
00:06:26.620 | And I said, "Would you say that publicly?"
00:06:30.620 | And he said, "Are you kidding?"
00:06:39.620 | I only forget the ones where I look bad.
00:06:44.620 | But we live in that kind of a world where it doesn't seem to pay to go out on a limb.
00:06:50.620 | I guess in terms of anybody in the business, I go out as far as one would dare.
00:06:54.620 | But I'm always not looking at today or tomorrow or the next day or the next decade, even longer than that.
00:07:00.620 | So let me stop at that point.
00:07:03.620 | Thank you again for coming.
00:07:05.620 | It's great to be with you.
00:07:07.620 | And I'm looking forward to seeing you in the morning.
00:07:10.620 | I will be with you at 8.30 if you don't know.
00:07:12.620 | Thank you.
00:07:13.620 | I've got a story that you may really get a kick out of.
00:07:16.620 | You know, a recent story that Anna did in the Wall Street Journal.
00:07:21.620 | She also did a podcast where somebody interviewed her, somebody from the journal interviewed her,
00:07:25.620 | and they had it posted on the Internet.
00:07:28.620 | And a lot of the bogo heads went and saw the podcast.
00:07:33.620 | And at the end of the podcast, the interviewer asked Anna if there was any special requirement to join the bogo heads.
00:07:41.620 | And she said no.
00:07:43.620 | Anybody can join.
00:07:45.620 | They don't have a secret handshake.
00:07:47.620 | [Laughter]
00:07:49.620 | So somebody said, well, maybe we ought to get a secret handshake.
00:07:52.620 | [Laughter]
00:07:55.620 | Did you see it?
00:07:56.620 | That's it.
00:07:57.620 | Index finger.
00:07:58.620 | So anyway, I said, all right, let's have a contest to see who can come up with the best secret handshake.
00:08:02.620 | This is good.
00:08:03.620 | He's good.
00:08:04.620 | And we got one entry immediately after, and I closed the contest.
00:08:10.620 | [Laughter]
00:08:12.620 | I thought it was the most brilliant thought that I -- it is an index finger shake.
00:08:20.620 | [Laughter]
00:08:26.620 | Victoria, where's Victoria?
00:08:30.620 | Victoria, there she is.
00:08:32.620 | [Applause]
00:08:40.620 | You wouldn't pick mine, would you?
00:08:42.620 | [Laughter]
00:08:48.620 | So we now --
00:08:49.620 | Now everybody knows.
00:08:50.620 | No, here's the deal.
00:08:51.620 | I wrote down there that people are going to wonder how non-bogo heads will -- that will now know our secret handshake.
00:09:00.620 | And I said that anybody who's a true bogo head will remember, and anybody who is not a true bogo head will have instant memory loss.
00:09:09.620 | [Laughter]
00:09:10.620 | Our secret is our secret.
00:09:12.620 | All right.
00:09:13.620 | In honor of that, she is now Lady Victoria.
00:09:16.620 | [Laughter]
00:09:17.620 | [Applause]
00:09:25.620 | I had to explain it to Taylor.
00:09:27.620 | At least you got it.
00:09:28.620 | [Laughter]
00:09:30.620 | No, I was going to ask her, "What's a podcast?"
00:09:32.620 | [Laughter]
00:09:34.620 | It's just a video.
00:09:35.620 | It's all right.
00:09:36.620 | No, I got that far.
00:09:38.620 | [Laughter]
00:09:40.620 | I wasn't sure.
00:09:41.620 | Thank you.
00:09:42.620 | [Applause]
00:09:45.620 | you