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A Discussion With John Bogle
Written by IndexUniverse Staff  -  June 19, 2009 12:03 PM

 

You will see that while the investor lag on the exchange-traded funds and side on the left have remarkably large and significant lags, the actual mutual funds themselves lag here and there, but in general, come very close to the returns earned by the market standard that they are in. So we have evidence, strong evidence, that exchange traded funds―because of the timing that goes on―are not acting in the best interest of investors, or investors are not acting in their own best interest, might be a fairer way to put it. While mutual fund investors have similar problems, they are nowhere near so serious. They are not even in the same league.

So the question I raise is―I suppose a broad, philosophical question―how long can a great business model last if it doesn’t deliver good returns to the investors who rely on it? And that is a question we might chat about. But first, before that, I would like to open the meeting and try to answer any questions any of you might have who were kind enough to attend this morning.

Wiandt: Thank you, Mr. Bogle. We have a lot of good questions. Why don’t we start out with one which talks about your methodology? There are a few questions in this area about how these returns are calculated. I guess the focus of these questions is, is most of this turnover retail turnover? Is it institutional? Is it both? And how did you come up with these calculations in terms of looking at the flows and calculating these returns?

Bogle: Well, first it is very hard to separate out institutional turnover, the huge turnover where people are speculating on, for example, the SPDRs. Investment adviser turnover, how big is that? How much is individual turnover by those who intend to invest and that other component of individual behavior, which is those that intend to speculate. I don't know anybody that has unscrambled that egg. I am not privy to Vanguard data on this point.

I think even more important would be the data that someone like Barclays could provide. They are, of course, the largest firm, the most dominant firm in this business with the broadest base of business. So we are just going to have to ask them how they would divide this up. I did have a conversation with a representative of Barclays three or four years ago, and I was making the same point I am making this morning. He said, “Well, that just is not right. Seventy percent of our investors are long-term investors.” And I said, “How do you define long-term?” And he said, “Six months to a year and a half.” Well, that is not my idea of a long-term investor. That is just another example of the difficulty of getting through. It is a matter of definition.



More on this topic (What's this?)
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The Next Five Years In ETFs
Bogle Still Believes In Buy And Hold
Read more on Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), Bond Investing at Wikinvest
 

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