📖John Bogle
Lifelong Learning
Knowledge compounds like interest for investors.
The best investors never stop learning. Read voraciously, study history, learn from mistakes, and stay curious about the world. Knowledge compounds like interest.
🏠 Everyday Analogy
📖 Core Interpretation
John Bogle advocates a repeatable process: define criteria, execute consistently, and review decisions against evidence. Process quality drives outcome consistency.
💎 Key Insight：Continuous learning is a lifelong competitive advantage.
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❓ Why It Matters
Without process, there is no reliable feedback loop. Structured execution and review improve decision quality over time.
🎯 How to Practice
Run a decision loop of research, thesis, execution, and post-mortem; document assumptions and update playbooks with evidence, not hindsight bias.
⚠️ Common Pitfalls
Having opinions without execution criteria
Reviewing outcomes but not decisions
Abandoning rules during volatility spikes
📚 Case Studies
1
1973–74 Bear Market and Balanced Funds (1973)
During the brutal 1973–74 bear market, U.S. stocks fell roughly 45%, while high‑quality bonds were roughly flat to slightly positive. Investors holding 60/40 balanced funds, such as Wellington Fund (founded 1929 and later run by Bogle’s firm), saw far smaller declines than all‑equity investors, enabling many to stay invested instead of capitulating at the bottom.
✨ Outcome：The episode showed that asset allocation—mixing stocks and bonds—can dramatically reduce drawdowns, influencing Bogle’s advocacy of balanced portfolios tailored to risk tolerance.
2
Target-Date Funds in the 2008 Financial Crisis (2008)
In 2008, the S&P 500 fell about 37%, but investors in target-date funds with higher bond allocations (near-retirees in 2010 funds) typically lost far less than younger investors in stock‑heavy 2050 funds. The glide paths, inspired by asset‑allocation research Bogle championed, automatically shifted investors toward bonds and cash as retirement neared.
✨ Outcome：The crisis underscored that predetermined asset allocation, not security selection, largely drove differences in losses and recovery paths, validating Bogle’s focus on allocation over picking winners.
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