Bogle Joins Gross-Siegel ‘Food Fight’

Friday’s donnybrook was a continuation of Thursday’s controversy. Responding to a comment made by Siegel on Wednesday that he doesn’t know economics, Gross said Thursday that “Professor Siegel is getting a little nasty here. Yesterday I was praiseworthy, but it seems like gloves are off.”

“It sounds like Prof. Siegel hasn’t even read my piece, let alone understood it,” Gross continued. “I said as well the cult of bonds is dead. When bonds yield 1.75% for investment-grade bonds, then it’s difficult to turn that into a 5%-10% return going forward … If he wants to argue against that, and talk about Dow 5000 and bear and bull markets, then he’s welcome to, but he’s pushing at windmills in my opinion, and he belongs back in his ivory tower. There, backatcha!” 

The piece to which Gross referred was his monthly commentary for August, in which he said the “cult of equities is dying” and compared their long-term returns to a Ponzi scheme, something with which Wharton’s Siegel (left) disagreed.

“I love to hear that equities are dead,” Siegel said. “Whenever you hear in the media that equities are dead that’s usually the start of a huge bull market. I looked back 200 years and found returns in the 19th century for equities were the same as the twentieth century. To say the recent bull market run was a freakish period is simply not supported by the data.”