Well, I was going to try to stay out of this thread, but I cannot help myself.
First, I will say that Saul has been ever generous with his time and information, and just in starting and keeping up with this board over the past 18 months (and 10,000 posts!) I have had private conversations with him and disagreements, and the exchanges have been quite satisfying.
Second, let me add that I have tussled with commonsense on more than one board (Apple and Berkshire come to mind) and I must say she has never been anything but polite with me or with others that I can recall, even when the argument has become heated, which it surely has, and even when she has been desperately wrong 
I reread the entire thread and have a few observations. Her question was neither disrespectful nor accusatory. She asked for an explanation of the math involved in Saul’s claims, since hers did not match. Indeed, I found the question phrased courteously and mannerly.
I also found Saul’s first response defensive. I know that will not be a popular observation, but there it is. His “I don’t know what more I can offer you” rubbed me wrong, but he fixed that by posting a long explanatory and informative post several hours later, when his time zone caught up with the thread.
I do not find it particularly unusual to survey results for 10 years (as commonsense asked and others, not Saul, seemed to find offensive), nor for 5 or “since inception”, since that is the way virtually every mutual fund, hedge fund, and other investment vehicle does it in public documents. The fact that the 10 year period includes 2008 is, well, unfortunate, but it’s quite real and everybody lives and dies by the same metric, more or less. (Unless you want to go with the “hot hand” of brilliant performance for two years or something, as many internet investors did in the 90’s, to their chagrin.)
The 10 year period isn’t “arbitrary”, nor is it “insulting”. It’s typical, traditional, real, and measurable. Type “10 year results Warren Buffett” into any search engine and you will be drowned in results. That’s just how it works. If that’s not enough, note that Warren himself has made many “10 year bets” on the outperformance of Berkshire against several other benchmarks (and has yet to lose, FWIW.)
Finally, let me just point out that a “300 bagger” is not “300%;” it’s an astonishingly large number. A two-bagger is a stock that appreciates 100%. A three-bagger goes up 200%. A three-hundred bagger goes up 20,000%. That’s some serious smack.
Almost finally, I’ll just disagree that most people think “risk” is the “permanent loss of capital.” A temporary loss of capital is “risk”, and I am sure in 2008 there were tons of people who were bailing out at 30%, 40% and 50% losses (otherwise how would the market have kept going down?) and I’ll wager they define “risk” differently. Many people stayed in, of course, some because they believed the market would come back, some (like Saul, perhaps) who felt trapped that it had already fallen so far, and some - like mutual funds - who are constrained from bailing and having less than 95% (or 90% or whatever their stated charter) in the market. That last one, of course, is a huge number, but not a big enough one that it stops a “market panic.”
Lastly, it’s good that this thread hasn’t devolved into name calling and loud argument, although it has threatened to a couple of times. Question(s) asked, answers given. Not necessarily completely satisfying to all, but that’s life on the message boards.
Continue.
