Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Granite: Sequoia, Index Investing, Socially Conscious Mutual Funds

Here's the index investing and Bogle blog entry I made on Dec 6, 2008 about socially-conscious INDEX investing -
scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2008/12/american-dipper-nontheist-friends.html.

{The government of Norway also uses social criteria in its investment decisions - see Wikipedia entry on 'socially-responsible investing' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socially-responsible_investing, as do the Society of Friends (Quakers)}.

And here's Vanguard Mutual Funds' (which launched its first S&P 500-like index fund in 1976) founder Jack Bogle's blog - johncbogle.com/wordpress, as well as a video interview of him from Jan. 9, 2009: forbes.com/2009/01/09/intelligentinvestingbogle.html about index investing and the economy. Jack Bogle continues to sing a remarkably consistent song in praise of index investing, for which there is ample data in support (index investing is statistically most likely to make you the most money in the financial markets over the long run, say, 10 years plus, partly due to low costs), and his index investing position is and has been a very maverick one. I think he's right, and am waiting to hear compelling, reasoned arguments to the contrary. Do you know of any? (Please post them below). Bogle is very lucid at age 80-ish, and suggests in the above video why international index investing, in contrast to domestic index investing, isn't very sensible.

The argument for socially conscious index funds is compelling, but the socially conscious INDEX investing world, in general, hasn't successfully offered low cost index funds yet, comparable with Vanguard's array of mutual funds. In spite of their higher costs, index mutual funds are still compelling due to indexing.


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World University and School ~ worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University ~ will take a kind of indexing approach to education, teaching and learning, by inclusively welcoming all contributors who want to teach or learn, in all languages and subjects - in a kind of group knowledge production approach - but cultivate a high academic standard vis-a-vis MIT Open Course Ware and other great universities.

Add a course / class / something-you-want-to-teach {with your webcam}, or take a courses (on the web via video, or interactively, in Second Life, for example}. World University and School is like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware, and here you can add what you'd like to teach, or find on the web.


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Both socially conscious investing and World University and School are expressions of caring.

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