In general, I agree with Bill. However, you asked, so here goes:
1) In general, Buffett is one smart cookie, but I would never buy a fund that he manages. Investing for growth is fundamentally different then investing for yield. I couldn't live off of the dividend that BRK throws off!
2) I share almost all of JWRs views on withdrawal strategies. Where we differ is in some specific minutae. I have been through the angonizing process of figuring one out and have decided that most people (at least the one's who post here, on IDR, and on DH) don't truly understand how strategies fail. The problem is that the traditiional strategies, whenever they get into 'Safe Withdrawal Rates' and 'Probabilities of Success' haven't much of a clue as to the other side of the coin 'Probabilities of Failure'. Whenever markets are thriving, any strategy will work, because that is the mindset of people. Whenever markets are down, people scramble. Statistics and Probabilities are a difficult subject, and at least JWR makes an attempt to inform people.
3) Continuing on, this issue (capital appreciation versus yield) is the King Kong versus Godzilla issue in retirement withdrawal strategies. Even well informed investors oftentimes don't think ahead regarding the effect that capital depreciation has on retirement portfolios.
4) On rebalancing, I agree with him completely. Rebalancing works for two asset classes that have similar returns that are not correlated. Applying it to classes that have drastically different returns (equity versus debt) doesn't work. There is a whole mantra associated with determining the 'correct' asset allocation one should have, in retirement, and rebalancing to maintain that allocation, determined by some risk/reward tradeoff for the individual investor. But whenever you question people about those risks, how they are defined, what they really mean, you oftentimes get the Max Headroom ansers. This keeps a lot of people busy, arguing whether one allocation 'improves' the probability of success of a withdrawal strategy by a percent or two, whenever the 'accuracy' of the predictions of those probabilities is far looser then the results.
5) I've been through the EMH morass, and found it had nothing to offer me, from a practical standpoint. Put another way, I morphed into a 4x25 slice & dicer early on, and have never looked back.
6) You can call me a market timer. I tend to buy whenever yields are high, and sell whenever they are low. Or I hold, unless dividends are cut.
My only problem with JWR, and I mentioned it to him in one of my first posts, is that the details of his math sometimes get in the way of his conclusions. As it always does for me, with an engineering background, not a math background. However, whenever I have questioned things that he has written, we have always had civil and meaningfull discussions.
I would be curious as to where you specifically disagree with JWR. That is, is it more his style of posting, or the substance of his conclusions?
