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Can't say I've obeyed each one on the list. The only passive/index fund we hold is in wife's 403b. But I'm quite happy with the portfolio. The final item is a thing I appreciate highly.
These rules may be dumb and hard for financial literates like the ones on this board, but provide very good, simple directions for 70% of us who are not financially literate by at least one measure (Google three question quiz). Those who do not save at all, those who don't know that minimum payment on credit cards should be ignored, those who do not contribute to retirement accounts, etc.
As hard rules, they're inconsistent. Most people aren't going to max out their work retirement plans and IRAs with "just" 20% savings.
To max out $18K (401k) + $5500 (IRA) while saving 20% would require an income of at least $117,500. Even more if you're over 50, or have a 457(b) plan that lets you save another $18K on top of your 403(b).
On the other hand, if you are earning that much, there are tax advantages to investing (in limited amounts) in your company stock (an individual security). I've done that through ESPP and ESOP plans.
As davidrmoran wrote, flexibility is the key. I also agree with Crash, that the last item (the one that expands the 3x5 card to a 4x6 card) makes it worth splurging on the larger index card.
How much an investor spends (budget) is under his direct control. This, in turn, affects how much he saves. Market returns are not under his direct control. The cost basis of when he invests in the market is of paramount importance. The last two corrections have been 49% and 57%.
The last correction (spanning 2015-2016) was 13.3%. Before that were corrections of 12.4% (2014), 19.4% (2011), and 16.0% (2010).
That was using a definition of a 10%+ decline of the S&P 500. If one wants to include "minor" corrections of 5%+, these occurred in 2014 (twice), 2013, 2012 (twice), and 2011. https://www.yardeni.com/pub/sp500corrbear.pdf
Good luck timing the corrections. Perhaps you meant bear markets (20%+ decline). The last two of those were indeed 57% (2008-2009) and 49% (2000-2002). Then you might have chosen to wait out this whole decade waiting for the next bear market. Making 1% in cash?
Given the near quadrupling of the market since the last bear, you may not come out ahead even if the market crashes 50% next year.
For an investor in retirement down 57% and continuing to withdraw for income he won't care whether its called a correction or bear market. The pain is the same. Good luck NOT timing the market. Re: 1% cash...IMHO how much you don't lose is more important than how much you make.
Some (much) of it clearly is luck in the timing. Trying to retire in 2000 was brutal, if not impossible for many, and the same for 08 even if that turned out not so bad, since the memory of 2000 was so vivid.
"For an investor in retirement down 57% and continuing to withdraw for income he won't care whether its called a correction or bear market."
For an investor in retirement down 19.4% and continuing to withdraw for income he won't care whether it is called a correction (-19%) or a bear market (-20%).
Yet you ignored a drop of this magnitude even though names don't matter. Was it too small a drop? How large does a market decline have to be for you to care?
We've got at least one fan here of Monte Carlo simulation. I've given many reasons why I find existing tools (not the concept) inadequate. But they apply to probabilistic future projections. Backtesting shows what would have actually happened - no probabilities involved since real market data are used over real periods.
Compound aggregate growth rate (CAGR) was positive - around 1.8%/year. It was even positive after adjusting for inflation (about 0.1%/year real return).
Ran the same simulation starting March 2000, except I had to pick another bond representative (AGG started Sept 2003). So I used VBMFX. Sure enough, with two crashes within a decade, that one didn't come out as well.
CAGR was still positive, at 0.23%/year, but after adjusting for inflation, the portfolio lost 1.9%/year in real value. About 18 years after starting, the retiree's portfolio in nominal dollars was up only 4.2% from where it started.
Still, not the dire straits it seems you were expecting.
I ran it through Oct 2017. It's this decade that picked up the slack. Without rerunning it, I recall that the max drawdown (roughly from start to somewhere in 2009) was about 1/3 (i.e. 2/3 of original value remaining). So it must have gone up by a factor of about 3/2 (including withdrawals) to roughly break even since then.
It is scary to imagine how one would respond and cope with, say, DODGX 2000-2012 and 1% annual contrib, especially when you click inflation-adjusted. CAGR under 5%. No withdrawals. With 10% annual withdrawal instead, it still is not zero at the end. Hmm. Must run some more-plausible ones.
More thoughts...If you had no income and had no assets and inherited $1M today tax free..... would you invest it all in the market today at a 4% withdrawal rate (many people are 4-5.5%)? This Bull market is up 3.5 times since 3/9/2009 low. Or for that matter DCA into the market? The above Portfolio Visualizer success rate analysis thru 2017 assumes equal odds of markets moving higher vs markets moving lower from this huge bull run as of today. I personally do not like those odds. Cost basis is critical. These withdrawal rate calculators/simulations often focus on did the investor run out of money altogether (success rate analysis)? I would argue that permanent impairment of capital can occur without going to zero. An investors quality of life can be affected if annual income is reduced by a significant amount due to decreases in portfolio value (with static 4% withdrawal program). I am not against buy and hold but I am a proponent of establishing a cost basis with some degree of caution.
yeah, this is standard good advice, but my thinking has always been that the time to go in is now, and if you need it soon, for that amount, don't go in at all.
More thoughts...If you had no income and had no assets and inherited $1M today tax free..... would you invest it all in the market today at a 4% withdrawal rate (many people are 4-5.5%)?
This article sheds some light on the topic and one fund (VWINX) succeeded at providing a 4% withdrawal and capital appreciation.
I'm still wondering why you ignored a 19.4% drop in the market.
Regarding the "above Portfolio Visualizer success rate analysis thru 2017 assumes ..." It makes no assumptions at all. That's what I was trying to convey in saying that backtesting works with real data. It takes the market as it performed; there are no odds, assumed or otherwise. Run it, run again, run it again, and you'll get the identical result over and over, because the past performance of the market doesn't change.
These results of past investments are as real and meaningful as your statement that the last two (bear) market drops were 57% and 49%.
I stated that I have significant issues with existing tools for simulations of future results. So I'm in agreement that these tools have major limitations, not just under current market conditions, but anytime. That said, I disagree with some aspects of your concerns.
Most simulation tools use mean and standard deviation to project future results. Think bell curve centered at some point above zero (since the average return is positive). So the way they work, they figure that more than half the time the market moves up - there are more points to the right of zero than to the left. They don't assume equal odds.
"An investors quality of life can be affected if annual income is reduced by a significant amount due to decreases in portfolio value (with static 4% withdrawal program)."
I didn't use a "static 4% withdrawal program." I used as static, inflation adjusted dollar amount independent of portfolio performance.
Using your $1M pot, I started with a $3,333/mo ($40K/year) draw, and adjusted that draw only for inflation. I did not increase or decrease the draw based on the value of the portfolio. I mirrored what Bengen did in his original 4% rule analysis. Only later did he suggest modifying the amount withdrawn based on portfolio value.
In your question about what to do with a $1M inheritance, you didn't say how this person with no assets and no income was living. For the sake of argument, I'll assume his cash flow needs are $40K/year (4%), inflation adjusted.
I like Buffett's approach (which is one of the ideas in the article above - buffer assets, avoid selling at a loss). Buffett suggested keeping 10% in short term treasuries (effectively cash) and the rest in the S&P 500. Personally I'd up the cash figure to 12% or so, and diversify the equity portfolio more broadly, but that's the general idea.
msf, did not mean to totally direct the post to you but I will answer you now. Not to get too far down in the weeds....my OP suggests that long term savings rate is important and is within direct control of the investor and secondly, at what price you establish a cost basis of your portfolio is critical.
To put my second point in understandable terms: Would you invest $1M TODAY requiring a $40,000 inflation adjusted cash flow needs given that this market is up 3.5X from the lows? How would you answer that?
I am drawing a conclusion from your excellent analysis that investing anytime with an appropriate withdrawal rate is acceptable. Maybe I misunderstand. I just would not feel comfortable with my $$ taking that approach after this particular bull run.
If you need a mitigating sequence risk strategy rather than the 50/50 portfolio we began with then maybe you are suggesting you would not.
The 95% success rate with 4% withdrawals you see in so many portfolio allocation simulation strategies looks really good unless you are in the 5% that went to zero. What was the reason for these 5%?
A sequence of return risk always exists so long as there are withdrawals. If there are no withdrawals, it doesn't matter whether the market starts off down and then goes up, or starts off well and then declines, so long as it winds up in the same place.
That leads to the (rhetorical) question: why use a 50/50 mix rather than simply a diversified equity portfolio? One reason is real though not especially rational - emotional discomfort in seeing numbers drop (for all the non-Vulcan investors out there). Another reason is pragmatic. Withdrawals when the market is down eat away at a larger percentage of the portfolio; keeping a bond (or cash) allocation mitigates that risk.
To be clear. We're all talking about mitigating sequence risk. We just have different views on the best way to do that. There's an interesting column by Kitces, where he shows that using asset allocation is mathematically equivalent to using buckets with rebalancing. In other words, the 50/50 portfolio is the same mitigation strategy as drawing from bonds/cash in down markets so long as one rebalances periodically.
I think one can do better with, say, an 88/12 (cash) bucket strategy without rebalancing. Except for the dotcom bubble (that took 31 months from peak to trough), markets have generally bounced back in three years. At least most of the way. After waiting it out one can replenish the cash bucket from equities. So I'm comfortable keeping a three year cushion. Starting now, or starting anytime. Right now though, I'd use cash for that cushion because bonds add risk and don't add much to returns.
The reason why I continue to return to the threshold question about when declines matter, is that corrections are both frequent and erratic. Like the saying that indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions (Samuelson), one may be out of the market most of the time if one is constantly concerned about the inevitable next correction/bear. (Look at how many years people have been saying that the bond market is about to decline - we're coming up on a decade now.)
If a retiree (inferred from the "no income" hypothesis) has $1M and needs $40K/year, staying completely out of the market isn't unreasonable. A 65 year old male can get an annuity paying $40K/year, with 3% annual adjustments, for about $840K. He can have fun with the rest - invest, travel, build a legacy, save for unexpected expenses. Annuities are another way to mitigate risk, as Pfau discusses in his Forbes column cited previously.
Unlike the 95% success rate you mentioned, the annuity provides a 100% success rate (assuming that the AA rated insurance company doesn't fold).
I agree with you in being concerned about a 5% chance of failure. It's not like you get 20 lifetimes and get to discard one of them. You've only got one shot at this, and you don't want to be the 1 in 20 who goes broke.
Perhaps I've misread posts, but a response I've read seemed to say to me, "well, these 5% outliers aren't real, but just artifacts of the way the simulators work." You're never going to see in real life, for example, three years in a row of 20% declines, even if they do show up in random simulations.
I take that not as reassurance, but reason for concern that the simulators have fundamental flaws in their design. So while I might agree that the 5% won't actually happen, I'm less sanguine about the accuracy of the other 95% of predictions.
I won’t comment on the wisdom embued. However, I’ve always felt that if it can’t be explained in a single page (or less) it’s too complicated. The index card certainly meets that standard.
Along a similar vein to the card’s professed wisdom ... the simplistic slogan I credit with turning my financial life around more than 25 years ago is: “Pay yourself first.”
I first heard it voiced by an (ironically) unlikely mutual fund promoter of the time, Richard Strong. His Strong Capital Management used the slogan prominently in its advertising. Up to that point I’d thought of saving only as depriving oneself of something. The slogan turns that idea upside-down and makes saving sound much more like a reward. Sure helped me get turned around.
>> using asset allocation is mathematically equivalent to using buckets with rebalancing.
yeah, it is from him that I got my construct notions
>> I think one can do better with, say, an 88/12 (cash) bucket strategy without rebalancing.
and this is what I am moving to, though you do have to sell, to replenish cash, a kind of rebalancing, seems to me
>> After waiting it out one can replenish the cash bucket from equities. So I'm comfortable keeping a three year cushion.
I do less than that; maybe should reconsider. Three years in cash, huh.
>> Right now, though, I'd use cash for that cushion because bonds add risk and don't add much to returns.
I often wonder about my Pimco allotment. Why not bail into cash? (Greed.)
>> If a retiree (inferred from the "no income" hypothesis) has $1M and needs $40K/year, staying completely out of the market isn't unreasonable. A 65 year old male can get an annuity paying $40K/year, with 3% annual adjustments, for about $840K. He can have fun with the rest - invest, travel, build a legacy, save for unexpected expenses. Annuities are another way to mitigate risk, as Pfau discusses in his Forbes column cited previously.
My wife has posed, if we have enough to cover expenses (@4% withdrawal), actually just enough, why not go even more conservative than our 50-50 (including SS as bond)? I usually mutter about travel, emergencies, housing loans / help / gifts to kids, future education help to grandkids, health surprises (we do have LTC), and greed.
Yes, the 12% allocation = 3 years at 4% each year. Perhaps even one year higher dependent on comfort levels.
The main reason I brought up this issue of cost basis is I have a personal belief that market drawdowns will become more severe during recessions than historical norms going forward. Mostly due to algos/computer trading and ETF proliferation and other pin action things that those two affect that we are not aware of. This is a new phenomenon therefore an investor must be cautious when back testing. One could argue that my opinion is wrong, but the truth is no one really knows yet. Therefore, IMHO cost basis becomes a more important aspect of portfolio management for investors who have the luxury of time.
Comments
judgment, people
To max out $18K (401k) + $5500 (IRA) while saving 20% would require an income of at least $117,500. Even more if you're over 50, or have a 457(b) plan that lets you save another $18K on top of your 403(b).
On the other hand, if you are earning that much, there are tax advantages to investing (in limited amounts) in your company stock (an individual security). I've done that through ESPP and ESOP plans.
As davidrmoran wrote, flexibility is the key. I also agree with Crash, that the last item (the one that expands the 3x5 card to a 4x6 card) makes it worth splurging on the larger index card.
That was using a definition of a 10%+ decline of the S&P 500. If one wants to include "minor" corrections of 5%+, these occurred in 2014 (twice), 2013, 2012 (twice), and 2011.
https://www.yardeni.com/pub/sp500corrbear.pdf
Good luck timing the corrections. Perhaps you meant bear markets (20%+ decline). The last two of those were indeed 57% (2008-2009) and 49% (2000-2002). Then you might have chosen to wait out this whole decade waiting for the next bear market. Making 1% in cash?
Given the near quadrupling of the market since the last bear, you may not come out ahead even if the market crashes 50% next year.
On that possibility, see Grantham's expectations: https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/36466/jeremy-grantham-predicted-two-previous-bubbles-and-now
This is one of those assertions you see all the time, but if I had followed it over the last half-century, I would have to be still working.
In other words, the ability to wait it out, keep investing, and the comparative shortness until breakeven, have paid off.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/26/investing/stock-market-crash-bubble-investing/index.html
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/150226110022-crash-recovery-bar-780x439.jpg
Some (much) of it clearly is luck in the timing. Trying to retire in 2000 was brutal, if not impossible for many, and the same for 08 even if that turned out not so bad, since the memory of 2000 was so vivid.
For an investor in retirement down 19.4% and continuing to withdraw for income he won't care whether it is called a correction (-19%) or a bear market (-20%).
Yet you ignored a drop of this magnitude even though names don't matter. Was it too small a drop? How large does a market decline have to be for you to care?
We've got at least one fan here of Monte Carlo simulation. I've given many reasons why I find existing tools (not the concept) inadequate. But they apply to probabilistic future projections. Backtesting shows what would have actually happened - no probabilities involved since real market data are used over real periods.
So just for fun I ran portfolioVisualizer from Oct 2007 to Oct 2017 with a representative 50/50 retirement portfolio (SPY/AGG), rebalanced annually. I started monthly withdrawals at 0.33% of the start amount (i.e. 4% annual rate) and increased the withdrawal amount just for inflation.
http://traderhq.com/illustrated-history-every-s-p-500-bear-market/
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio
Compound aggregate growth rate (CAGR) was positive - around 1.8%/year. It was even positive after adjusting for inflation (about 0.1%/year real return).
Ran the same simulation starting March 2000, except I had to pick another bond representative (AGG started Sept 2003). So I used VBMFX. Sure enough, with two crashes within a decade, that one didn't come out as well.
CAGR was still positive, at 0.23%/year, but after adjusting for inflation, the portfolio lost 1.9%/year in real value. About 18 years after starting, the retiree's portfolio in nominal dollars was up only 4.2% from where it started.
Still, not the dire straits it seems you were expecting.
Wow, I would not have thought that, even with loss in real value. Must try this with mixes other than 50-50.
if I do some sims with other ratios, will report
yeah, okay, did a few wack ones:
It is scary to imagine how one would respond and cope with, say, DODGX 2000-2012 and 1% annual contrib, especially when you click inflation-adjusted. CAGR under 5%. No withdrawals. With 10% annual withdrawal instead, it still is not zero at the end. Hmm. Must run some more-plausible ones.
Great stuff as always.
The above Portfolio Visualizer success rate analysis thru 2017 assumes equal odds of markets moving higher vs markets moving lower from this huge bull run as of today. I personally do not like those odds.
Cost basis is critical. These withdrawal rate calculators/simulations often focus on did the investor run out of money altogether (success rate analysis)? I would argue that permanent impairment of capital can occur without going to zero. An investors quality of life can be affected if annual income is reduced by a significant amount due to decreases in portfolio value (with static 4% withdrawal program).
I am not against buy and hold but I am a proponent of establishing a cost basis with some degree of caution.
long-term-growing-income-open-end-mutual-fund-possible
Regarding the "above Portfolio Visualizer success rate analysis thru 2017 assumes ..." It makes no assumptions at all. That's what I was trying to convey in saying that backtesting works with real data. It takes the market as it performed; there are no odds, assumed or otherwise. Run it, run again, run it again, and you'll get the identical result over and over, because the past performance of the market doesn't change.
These results of past investments are as real and meaningful as your statement that the last two (bear) market drops were 57% and 49%.
I stated that I have significant issues with existing tools for simulations of future results. So I'm in agreement that these tools have major limitations, not just under current market conditions, but anytime. That said, I disagree with some aspects of your concerns.
Most simulation tools use mean and standard deviation to project future results. Think bell curve centered at some point above zero (since the average return is positive). So the way they work, they figure that more than half the time the market moves up - there are more points to the right of zero than to the left. They don't assume equal odds.
A problem is that returns aren't symmetric like a bell curve. There are slightly more up days than down days, even though the up days aren't (on average) as big as down days. Here's Forbes' data on the DJIA from October 1, 1928 through January 28, 2016:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2016/01/29/fast-facts-on-the-dow-jones-stock-index/#145fcc6a6972
"An investors quality of life can be affected if annual income is reduced by a significant amount due to decreases in portfolio value (with static 4% withdrawal program)."
I didn't use a "static 4% withdrawal program." I used as static, inflation adjusted dollar amount independent of portfolio performance.
Using your $1M pot, I started with a $3,333/mo ($40K/year) draw, and adjusted that draw only for inflation. I did not increase or decrease the draw based on the value of the portfolio. I mirrored what Bengen did in his original 4% rule analysis. Only later did he suggest modifying the amount withdrawn based on portfolio value.
In your question about what to do with a $1M inheritance, you didn't say how this person with no assets and no income was living. For the sake of argument, I'll assume his cash flow needs are $40K/year (4%), inflation adjusted.
There are many ways of mitigating sequence risk. I've posted this link before:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadepfau/2017/04/12/4-approaches-to-managing-sequence-of-returns-risk-in-retirement/#2b188f486fcf
I like Buffett's approach (which is one of the ideas in the article above - buffer assets, avoid selling at a loss). Buffett suggested keeping 10% in short term treasuries (effectively cash) and the rest in the S&P 500. Personally I'd up the cash figure to 12% or so, and diversify the equity portfolio more broadly, but that's the general idea.
To put my second point in understandable terms: Would you invest $1M TODAY requiring a $40,000 inflation adjusted cash flow needs given that this market is up 3.5X from the lows? How would you answer that?
I am drawing a conclusion from your excellent analysis that investing anytime with an appropriate withdrawal rate is acceptable. Maybe I misunderstand. I just would not feel comfortable with my $$ taking that approach after this particular bull run.
If you need a mitigating sequence risk strategy rather than the 50/50 portfolio we began with then maybe you are suggesting you would not.
The 95% success rate with 4% withdrawals you see in so many portfolio allocation simulation strategies looks really good unless you are in the 5% that went to zero. What was the reason for these 5%?
That leads to the (rhetorical) question: why use a 50/50 mix rather than simply a diversified equity portfolio? One reason is real though not especially rational - emotional discomfort in seeing numbers drop (for all the non-Vulcan investors out there
To be clear. We're all talking about mitigating sequence risk. We just have different views on the best way to do that. There's an interesting column by Kitces, where he shows that using asset allocation is mathematically equivalent to using buckets with rebalancing. In other words, the 50/50 portfolio is the same mitigation strategy as drawing from bonds/cash in down markets so long as one rebalances periodically.
I think one can do better with, say, an 88/12 (cash) bucket strategy without rebalancing. Except for the dotcom bubble (that took 31 months from peak to trough), markets have generally bounced back in three years. At least most of the way. After waiting it out one can replenish the cash bucket from equities. So I'm comfortable keeping a three year cushion. Starting now, or starting anytime. Right now though, I'd use cash for that cushion because bonds add risk and don't add much to returns.
The reason why I continue to return to the threshold question about when declines matter, is that corrections are both frequent and erratic. Like the saying that indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions (Samuelson), one may be out of the market most of the time if one is constantly concerned about the inevitable next correction/bear. (Look at how many years people have been saying that the bond market is about to decline - we're coming up on a decade now.)
If a retiree (inferred from the "no income" hypothesis) has $1M and needs $40K/year, staying completely out of the market isn't unreasonable. A 65 year old male can get an annuity paying $40K/year, with 3% annual adjustments, for about $840K. He can have fun with the rest - invest, travel, build a legacy, save for unexpected expenses. Annuities are another way to mitigate risk, as Pfau discusses in his Forbes column cited previously.
Unlike the 95% success rate you mentioned, the annuity provides a 100% success rate (assuming that the AA rated insurance company doesn't fold).
I agree with you in being concerned about a 5% chance of failure. It's not like you get 20 lifetimes and get to discard one of them. You've only got one shot at this, and you don't want to be the 1 in 20 who goes broke.
Perhaps I've misread posts, but a response I've read seemed to say to me, "well, these 5% outliers aren't real, but just artifacts of the way the simulators work." You're never going to see in real life, for example, three years in a row of 20% declines, even if they do show up in random simulations.
I take that not as reassurance, but reason for concern that the simulators have fundamental flaws in their design. So while I might agree that the 5% won't actually happen, I'm less sanguine about the accuracy of the other 95% of predictions.
Along a similar vein to the card’s professed wisdom ... the simplistic slogan I credit with turning my financial life around more than 25 years ago is: “Pay yourself first.”
I first heard it voiced by an (ironically) unlikely mutual fund promoter of the time, Richard Strong. His Strong Capital Management used the slogan prominently in its advertising. Up to that point I’d thought of saving only as depriving oneself of something. The slogan turns that idea upside-down and makes saving sound much more like a reward. Sure helped me get turned around.
>> using asset allocation is mathematically equivalent to using buckets with rebalancing.
yeah, it is from him that I got my construct notions
>> I think one can do better with, say, an 88/12 (cash) bucket strategy without rebalancing.
and this is what I am moving to, though you do have to sell, to replenish cash, a kind of rebalancing, seems to me
>> After waiting it out one can replenish the cash bucket from equities. So I'm comfortable keeping a three year cushion.
I do less than that; maybe should reconsider. Three years in cash, huh.
>> Right now, though, I'd use cash for that cushion because bonds add risk and don't add much to returns.
I often wonder about my Pimco allotment. Why not bail into cash? (Greed.)
>> If a retiree (inferred from the "no income" hypothesis) has $1M and needs $40K/year, staying completely out of the market isn't unreasonable. A 65 year old male can get an annuity paying $40K/year, with 3% annual adjustments, for about $840K. He can have fun with the rest - invest, travel, build a legacy, save for unexpected expenses. Annuities are another way to mitigate risk, as Pfau discusses in his Forbes column cited previously.
My wife has posed, if we have enough to cover expenses (@4% withdrawal), actually just enough, why not go even more conservative than our 50-50 (including SS as bond)? I usually mutter about travel, emergencies, housing loans / help / gifts to kids, future education help to grandkids, health surprises (we do have LTC), and greed.
The main reason I brought up this issue of cost basis is I have a personal belief that market drawdowns will become more severe during recessions than historical norms going forward. Mostly due to algos/computer trading and ETF proliferation and other pin action things that those two affect that we are not aware of. This is a new phenomenon therefore an investor must be cautious when back testing. One could argue that my opinion is wrong, but the truth is no one really knows yet. Therefore, IMHO cost basis becomes a more important aspect of portfolio management for investors who have the luxury of time.