Shiller P/E, Buying at the Dip, Value Investing

[Dodge]

"Indexing beat half of all invested dollars in the past, I do not expect mathematical laws to change, so I expect it to beat half of all invested dollars in the future."

Apparently the laws of math did change over just the past few days:

Maybe you want to restate that?  By definition, the average will perform worse than half of all invested dollars and better than half of all invested dollars.

Incorrect.  You forgot to take into account the dollars also in the index :-P

To make this easier to visualize, imagine 98% of all invested dollars are in the index with me, with 1% beating it and 1% losing to it.  According to your definition I will have performed worse than half of all invested dollars, when in fact I would only have been worse than 1% of all invested dollars.

Oh well...

Yes, the correct statement should have been:

"Indexing beat or matched half of all invested dollars in the past, I do not expect mathematical laws to change, so I expect it to beat or match half of all invested dollars in the future."

Thanks for catching that!

[Dodge]

It is mathematically impossible for the average to perform worse than half of all invested dollars.

Maybe you want to restate that?  By definition, the average will perform worse than half of all invested dollars and better than half of all invested dollars.

Incorrect.  You forgot to take into account the dollars also in the index :-P

To make this easier to visualize, imagine 98% of all invested dollars are in the index with me, with 1% beating it and 1% losing to it.  According to your definition I will have performed worse than half of all invested dollars, when in fact I would only have been worse than 1% of all invested dollars.

Pretty sure you guys are confusing average and median, in any case.

The important takeaway from this, is that Value Investing can be worse than half of all invested dollars, if the losers adopt the published strategy, or change to a better strategy.

The index can never be worse than half of all invested dollars.