Morningstar spoke with John Bogle last week about a variety of investing topics, “Brexit” (or England’s vote to leave the European Union, for those living under a rock), among them. Granted, it was before the historic vote, but the legendary investor and founder of Vanguard Group sounded a bit like Yoda.
“Well, you can only control what you can control. I think whatever your view of the world is, you have to invest,” Bogle told Morningstar’s Scott Cooley. “You can’t put the money in the mattress and in this day and age of low interest rates, you can’t put it in the money market fund or a bank CD, so invest, you must.”
He closed on a decidedly pessimistic note about (what else?) fiscal policy and the upcoming presidential election.
“…back in the 1770s there was some contest going on for the Prime Ministership of Scotland and someone said [the] election will ruin the nation and Adam Smith said, ‘there is a lot of ruin in the nation,’” Bogle concluded. “Now, I don’t know if we’re not pushing it here in the United States whether you got that much ruin over our present list of presidential candidates. I will leave it to wiser heads and I think in a setting like this, particularly it’s probably a good idea to stay away from politics.”