Gyroscopic Investing

Did you guys see the (now locked) thread at bogleheads about the Vanguard proxy vote?
If you're investing with Vanguard, you should read it, or at least Vanguard's explanation of their side.

dualstow wrote:Did you guys see the (now locked) thread at bogleheads about the Vanguard proxy vote?
If you're investing with Vanguard, you should read it, or at least Vanguard's explanation of their side.

Could I trouble you to give a layman's explanation? I got it but am not sure what it means.
Why, pray tell, did the Bogleheads lock the discussion?

The Bogleheads are more restrictive than here, which is good and bad. Like Singapore. You can't discuss politics. You can't even suggest that the price of milk is rising too fast for the minimum wage- It will be deleted. However, the threads are on topic and there is no real fighting. Sometimes threads are locked too early for my taste, but they tend not to drag on too long.

As for the vote, there is a shareholder suggestion (so not a Vanguard proposal) that index funds become more socially responsible by weeding out companies that support genocide. Sound good? But, what if Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar support genocide under someone's definition? (Just my example)

This is proposal 7, and Vanguard hopes that we will vote against it. Me, too. If someone wants to invest in a socially responsible (SR) fund, more power to them. But why mess with the S&P fund? It's one of 40+ funds that would be affected.

Thanks, Dualstow. That, it turns out, was something different than I received this last week.

I'm shocked that this would even come up, or that Vanguard would entertain the idea. And now I understand why the Bogleheads shut it down.

Thanks Maddy, for asking this question, and Dualstow for answering it. I saw an email about this but didn't think much of it. Now I'll vote.

Xan wrote:Thanks Maddy, for asking this question, and Dualstow for answering it. I saw an email about this but didn't think much of it. Now I'll vote.

Yeah, I got the email too and thought nothing of it since I see stuff like that all the time and ignore it.

I'm basically in favor of being "socially responsible" and not supporting genocide, but who the hell gets to decide what that means? It sounds to me like the typical thing you see of somebody asking for an inch but ready to take a mile. I've heard not being against "climate change" described as genocide.

Same here, as I get a lot of email to vote on individual securities. I just happened to see the thread after glossing over the email.

Just found the e-mail in my "Delete" box. It was entitled "Proxy Voting Starts Today." Unfortunately, you have to go to the Vanguard site, open up an external link, and start the voting process to even see what this is about. I went no further than the e-mail because it appeared to relate to an individual security.

Wouldn't you think that a proposal which, in effect, would cause index funds to no longer be index funds warrants something more than a cryptic e-mail notification entitled "Proxy Voting Starts Today?" It goes without saying that there's no shortage of opportunities to invest according to whatever idiosyncratic model suits you. But for some, that's not good enough. They're not happy unless they've forced everybody else to invest in the manner that suits them.

As for those stodgy Bogleheads who apparently can't handle even this amount of controversy, they probably deserve to find a turd in their soup.

I agree, Maddy. It warranted a better subject line. If it weren't for Bogleheads, I wouldn't have read it.

The ongoing ETF insanity, which as of the end of August saw Vanguard fund inflows of $1.6 billion every day (or $100 million every single hour) has now boldly crossed over into the political arena, with the upcoming launch of the "MAGA" ETF, which hopes to "make America great again" by investing exclusively in companies that support the Republican Party, and Trump of course.

To keep it simple, the Point Bridge GOP Stock Tracker ETF will - as one would expect - list under the ticker “MAGA,” in reference to Trump's campaign slogan. In addition to MAGA, Hal Lambert, founder of Point Bridge, is planning a set of what it calls Politically Responsible Investing products. MAGA is expected to begin trading on September 7.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-0 ... ican-party