As part of this month's series exploring the state of long-term buy and hold, we reached out to business mogul and NBA team owner Mark Cuban, who sold his Broadcast.com to Yahoo!
We enjoyed the banter and hope you do as well. Let us know what you think by commenting below -- especially if you're Mark Cuban with a rebuttal for Mr. Bogle!
Mark Cuban: Buy and hold is long dead. It has always been a sucker's bet.
Proponents point to charts of index performance over the long term; unfortunately, things like house repairs, kids, and college tuition don't follow the same chart.
Buy and hold is a great marketing slogan for funds that want to take your money. Nothing more or less.
John Bogle: Cuban embargo ... is what we need after those silly statements.
Of course buy and hold is a sucker's bet where individual stocks are concerned (just ask the guys that bought and held Mark's own company!)
And while buy and hold for all of American business (a stock index fund) may produce long years of plenty interrupted by years of famine, putting equity capital to work in that way will be great so long as America is great.
And as a group, all investors, by definition, are buy and hold investors! Not complicated! And mathematically, those who themselves are buy and holders (without costs) will -- not might -- outperform those who trade back and forth with one another, who capture the same market return but let all those croupier costs destroy their returns.
Finally, if buy and hold refers not to stocks or the stock portfolio but to one's aggregate investment portfolio, reducing the stock commitment as age takes its toll, it is the most certain way to wealth that exists in our uncertain world.
He's right about the marketing slogan -- except when it is applied to the strategy described in the immediately preceding paragraph.
For more on the buy-and-hold debate:
