Bogleheads: Stock-Picking is Evil; Boring is Good

If John Bogle is the high priest of the Bogleheads, stock-picking fanatic Jim Cramer would have to be Lucifer.

Meet the Bogleheads, devotees of Vanguard Group founder John Bogle, long-time advocate of the passive, low-cost, index approach to investing where you try to "meet, not beat the market."

Bogleheads adhere to the "boring is good" investment philosophy of index investing, and they are against stock picking, against high fees and against what they say is the mostly self-serving investment industry.

In defense of the Bogleheads, consider the two charts above that compare the Fidelity Magellan Fund, one of the largest and most popular actively managed mutual funds in history, vs. the S&P500 Index. Over the last 25 years (top chart, click to enlarge), the S&P500 Index rose by almost +1200% vs. only about +400% for the Fidelity Magellan fund. In other words, if you have invested in Fidelity Magellan from 1982 to 2007, you would have been paying large fees to professional investment advisors like Peter Lynch to "help" you lose lots of money, compared to a passive investment in Bogle's low-cost Vanguard S&P500 Index fund.

Lots and lots of money. $100,000 invested in Fidelity Magellan in 1982 would have grown to $500,000 by 2007, compared to $1,200,000 if you had selected the Vanguard S&P500 Index fund.

The bottom chart compares the Fidelity Magellan Fund to the S&P500 during the last 9 years of the period when legendary investment strategist Peter Lynch was managing the fund. Even a brilliant investor like Peter Lynch couldn't beat the market during the period from 1982-1990.

And consider that a previous CD post reported that the return in 2006 for a portfolio of mostly Vanguard Index funds was +20.6%, compared to a -0.20% loss for a portfolio of "Select Jim Cramer Featured Stocks."

Call me crazy, but I think the evidence is clear. Consider me a Boglehead.

(HT: Joyce Howe)