By Kim Clark
From Kiplinger’s Personal Finance
On the morning of Thursday, Oct. 13, as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 500 points, a gathering of 370 investors and financial advisers—who were, as a group, losing tens of millions of dollars that very moment—calmly noshed on oatmeal and Danish.
“Don’t just do something, stand there!” cheered the meeting’s speakers, quoting the inspiration of the conference, the late Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard and early proselytizer of the index mutual fund.
During a three-day conference at a Chicago-area hotel, the self-described “Bogleheads” did indeed just stand there. And sit there. Nobody called their broker. Instead, on what turned out to be one of the most volatile days in the stock market’s history, they recalled Bogle-isms about ignoring short-term blips….