Of Diehards and Bogleheads

June 6, 2008 RSS Feed Print
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It's official: The Bogleheads—proud disciples of Vanguard founder and index-fund pioneer Jack Bogle—have cut ties with the Vanguard Diehards message board, which has long been the most active discussion group on Morningstar.

In fact, the Bogleheads have dropped the "Diehards" moniker altogether, reports IndexUniverse. The group's new Web address is www.bogleheads.org. Apparently, the breakup was a long time coming: A group of volunteers originally built the new site to serve as a complement to Morningstar's forum, adding an archiving system and search engine superior to Morningstar's "paltry and glitch-riddled offering," according to this back story. Last year, the group added a new discussion site called the Bogleheads forum. "To make a long story short, the new forum has far surpassed the old one, raising the question of whether Morningstar's name is really much of a draw to indexers anymore," writes Murray Coleman of IndexUniverse.

It sounds like the new Bogleheads forum won't have any trouble drawing traffic: Coleman reported that, in a month-long period in January, the Morningstar forum registered 2,833 posts over 299 conversations, while the new forum logged 19,003 new posts in 1,885 conversations in the same time period (until this week, the sites had been running simultaneously on a split-screen format.)

Concludes Coleman: "The revamped Diehards.org is better organized, easier to navigate and much more intelligently moderated than the older version," he says. "It's becoming a true social networking site."

On the left side of its home page, the Bogleheads forum still links to Morningstar's Diehards message board, which remains active.

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I don't want to support Rob, but I have my own issues with the Bogleheads. As a long-time (multi-decade) Vanguard investor, I have a relatively high opinion of the firm and a belief in the superiority of passive investing for nearly all individual investors.

The now "Bogleheads" board, which is nominally a discussion board, falls into the trap of being a place where only a narrow set of views are accepted. Politics are banned, which is hilarious to me when you consider how much returns have been impacted by recent market frauds (yes, I am speaking of bankers shenanigans). And the discussions of new views are treated very harshly, which is telling, since that kind of attitude would have kept Vanguard and indexing out of the market way back when.

It is probably more accurate to view Bogleheads as a support group, not a discussion community. Like frighteningly idealistic political movements, they already claim to have all the important answers. That sin is in known in most religions as blasphemy and I don't think it is all shrill to call them out on that.

Mean Mister Mustard of MD 5:43AM December 07, 2010

woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof!

of 9:57PM June 10, 2008

"JWR" or whatever your name is:

As usual, you cannot stand to hear the truth or allow anyone to speak it. Like all liberals, you're basically subhuman animals.

JWR1945 of FL 9:57PM June 10, 2008

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