William J. Bernstein

Bodies stacked in the towers of the city walls across the Golden Horn because there was nowhere left to bury them.

William Bernstein estimates that roughly a quarter of Constantinople died in 541 and 542 and that the city's population had fallen by half by the year 700.

Justinian himself caught it.

He survived, which almost nobody did.

While Justinian's successors were bleeding money, a transformation was starting on one piece of the map that the great powers had written off.

For centuries, the Byzantine and the Persian Sasanian empires had been locked in a grinding war with each other.

William Bernstein, in A Splendid Exchange, notes that neither paid much attention to the poor desert tribes to their south.

Arabia had no central authority.

The headline was simply easier to see.

Then there was Bill Bernstein, and I interviewed him in, uh, episode seven three six two thousand twenty-three.

I was excited to interview Bill because he's really great author, and he's written some great books.

Bill is a neurologist.

Forget everything you've been told by others before.

Your opinion on William Bernstein's quote, once you won, quit playing.

I am a firm believer in that.

Get ready for the real deal.

In other words, they don't just underperform, but they do it by a lot.

As William Bernstein, author of The Intelligent Asset Allocator, says, quote, There are two kinds of investors, be they large or small, those who don't know where the market is headed, and those who don't know they don't know, end quote.

And number two, it's mostly just noise.

If you're a long-term investor, and you should be, you don't need to check your stocks every day.

Be in stocks, not because stocks become less risky with time, because they don't, but because the young person has an enormous amount of human capital.

That's William Bernstein, a legendary investor who discussed this point when I interviewed him on the podcast.

When the traditional finance world tells us that a portfolio is only the financial assets that we've accumulated, it misses out a non-tradable part of our wealth, the biggest part, ourselves, our ability to work, that human capital point.

And that human capital and how much of that we have left should inform the risks that we take at different points in our life.

Jason provided an article in the June 26th edition of the Wall Street Journal entitled, How to Build a Retirement that Actually Fits Your Life.

He then discusses a book to be released later sometime, written by Edward Macquarie and William Bernstein.

These authors state that the stock market real return historically has only been about 4.3% over any 30-year period, which is at odds with the 8% to 10% return that is often quoted.

He also says that across all 30-year periods, the stock markets have produced less than 4% annually, only about an eighth of the time.

Classic 60-40 from John Bogle, core four portfolio from Rick Ferry, et cetera, et cetera.

Larry Suedro, Bill Bernstein, et cetera.

The comparison shows the portfolios with the highest safe withdrawal rates are also the portfolios with the lowest volatility.

Can you provide any comments regarding these risk parity type portfolios? If these are accurate, why don't we hear more about these portfolios since everyone seems focused on withdrawal rates? What am I missing? I'm not interested in coming on the show, but appreciate any comments, dialogue you can share.