Quote from seauouch:
well you would have to pay dividends on all the stocks you are short while not getting any dividends in your long index fund, for this reason alone this strat would be a huge loser over time.
Quote from Susannah:
I think what he's getting at (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the names on the Dow are switched out from time to time, that Dow companies have actually gone out of business.
This is one of the things I don't like about people promoting "buy and hold" using index funds. They aren't truly buy and hold anyway. They're managed, too, whether the die-hard people promoting this method want to admit it or not.