Wednesday, November 05, 2008

John Bogle comment on US markets on Nov 4th 2008



The hard-charging, 79-year-old founder of the nation's second-largest largest mutual fund company said he expected the earnings of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX to grow at a rate of about 7 percent annually over the next decade.
That should pave the way for returns on U.S. stocks of around 10 percent, according to his calculations that combine a projected earnings growth rate with a three percent dividend yield generated by stocks in the S&P-500 Index.
"The value of the U.S. stock market was $18 trillion a year ago. And now it's about $9.5 trillion or let's call it $10 trillion with today's rally. Anyone who believes that American business is worth $8 trillion less than it was a year ago I think is a fool," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"So there was some water in the system, some hot air in the system, and we blew it out, but I think we have overblown it," he said.

Bogle left the Vanguard helm after a 1996 heart transplant, and now often castigates the mutual fund industry as a marketing vehicle run not so much by investment professionals on behalf of investors as by short-term minded entrepreneurs.
"Institutional money managers, including the managers at mutual funds, have a lot to answer for," he said.
"If they were professional security analysts, where were they when they looked at the balance sheets of those banks?" he said in reference to banks that took huge write-downs for their exposure to losses in subprime mortgages that snowballed into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.
"They joined the speculative frenzy, turning over stocks 100 percent a year. It has nothing to do with investing. It's a great big marketing business,"
he said.


No comments: