Tough decisions in investing | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

I don't know how anyone can "plan" on living 50 years. Even 20 is a stretch for many of us; and many who expect 20 may be surprised with less.

We need to remember that Mr Bradley's job is to manage, market, and sell mutual funds. If everyone sells, he's in big trouble.

This is not to say that he's a bad person or a bad manager or that his funds are a bad investment or even that what he is saying is necessarily wrong, but, really, what else would you expect him to say?

With respect, "truth" is a complicated commodity when it comes to investments.
As I said, I have nothing against him personally. The company he's currently with has a pretty good reputation as these things go, and PH&N likewise, at least before acquired by RBC.

But, when it comes to what people should do in regards to the future, "truth" is a function of hindsight. We can see what happened in the past, although even that is subject to interpretation and the complexities of statistical analysis and data collection. We don't know what's going to happen in the future. The margins of history are full of people who thought they did.

Everyone, no matter who they are or what their experience, has certain biases. Nobody is completely objective. We fool ourselves if we think otherwise. It's in our interests to be aware of our biases and try to adjust our views accordingly. It's not easy. If I ran a mutual fund company, I expect I would have the same opinions as Bradley. Perhaps he's right, perhaps he's wrong. But insofar as it suggests what people should do, it's an opinion, and needs to be understood in the context of his background, both pro and con, and his likely vulnerability to bias.

Planning 50 years out is not solely a function of our current age and health. I expect our world to change in unrecognizable ways over the next 50 years, just as it has done over the last 50 and the 50 before that. Fifty years ago there was no such thing as "digital" and a computer was a monstrous thing that occupied an entire building at the University of Waterloo; telephones had rotary dials and never left the building; David Suzuki was not yet a household name, nobody had ever hard of climate change as a problem for us, and "environment" was a kind of technical word that you learned in science courses and didn't use otherwise; the Viet Nam war was in full swing; the elder Trudeau was elected PM; university tuition was in the mid-3-figures; and personal debt was a small fraction of today's levels. I was young and hopeful.
I would find it very difficult to plan investments with a 50yr horizon right now, even if I weren't too old to see the results. And if I were 30, I'd be so weighed down with student loans and housing obligations, maybe even still looking for a decent fulltime job, that a 50yr plan would be a pipe dream.

Personally, I would leave "enlightenment" to the Buddhists and perhaps some 18thC philosophers. It's a complicated concept.

Bias does not have to do with leaning towards things that don't work, although that may be its unfortunate result. It has to do with a predisposition which can colour one's analysis and infect one's assumptions. This predisposition may be based on any number of factors, from experience to wishful thinking. It may exist in support of or in suspicion of a particular assertion.

I have been a formal student of both the social and pure sciences in my various pasts. From that perspective, to my mind, and from what I have read so far in my self-education, economics does not impress me as a value-free enterprise. Much has been written, in the social sciences at least, about whether value-free is possible. I vote with those who say it is not. Progress in research often rests on discovering the biases of previous researchers, and this is also true in the humanities.

I think we will just have to agree to disagree, Norman. It's difficult to argue rationally about "truth" and "enlightenment". These are ultimately matters of personal conviction.

BTW, I too have seen the kinds of statistics to which Bill referred, in a different source. I did not mention it earlier because I can't remember where I read this, but I believed it to be a reputable source. I know it was in book format. As the wags say, it's not timing the market, it's time in the market. Success depends on when you enter and exit, for any investment, and the results plotted on charts will depend on their beginning and ending dates, whether they represent GICs or the TSE. And that, surely, is the point in the end. None of us is in it forever. The exception would be perhaps the big pension plans which must exist in perpetuity and those who are planning for their future generations, where investments can be passed on indefinitely perhaps. I do not count myself among the latter.

Sorry to wear out your poor little noggin, Bill. but they say mental exercise is good for longevity...

I must say, I was wondering if anyone was actually following these arguments!

Bottom line for me is that we simply don't know to what extent Bradley's opinions are biased. We know he has a vested interest. We also know he has inside knowledge and experience. Personally, I could never take such commentary simply at face value.
Bias does not necessarily imply ill will or intentionality or even awareness of it. It is wise for anyone reading his words to look at them critically, to see them in context. Different people will draw different conclusions based on the lenses they use.
My own conclusion is "maybe yes, maybe no". While Bradley may be more trustworthy than some, based on his history, he could also be quite wrong because that very history makes sit hard to notice factors that don't conform to it.

Personally, this does not convince me of very much.
Individual managers may fail to achieve expected results for a variety of reasons. The issue is not whether they can see in retrospect how they went wrong but the ability to filter out bias in the first place.

So, I read the first post. Thought to myself:

“these are just boring truisms. Of course you need to be diversified. Of course you won’t get returns without risk. Why would you even put it in an article? Everyone knows that!”

And then I saw the discussion…

Old thread for sure but there is a lot of net respect for folks like Bradley, Justin Bender (and others at PWL Capital) who go out of their way to inform and educate with articles, papers and analysis/research. I have yet in all my years of investing to see misinformation and poor suggestions from any of them.

It is up to each individual to use information appropriate for where they are in their investing journey. What I don't believe in is bank branch financial advisors and full service brokerage advisors. The odds of getting a good one not compromised by their employer is well under 50%, perhaps not better than 10%.