“Learning Should Be Permitted in the Investment Advice Field to the Same Extent That It Is Permitted in Every Other Field.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

Since we are in a housing bubble, why don’t you sell your house?  The price might crash on your house.

Selling an entire house is a more extreme step than reducing one’s stock allocation a bit. I have always advised AGAINST extreme actions. What I have said is that investors should seek to maintain the same risk profile at all times, which REQUIRES market timing.

The Buy-and-Holders take the most extreme position imaginable — that discussions of the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research must be prohibited. If you permitted honest posting, you would eventually be won over, Anonymous. We probably would not agree on every single point. It wouldn’t be reasonable to expect that. But it is my belief that we would find ourselves much more in agreement than in disagreement.

Shiller did not hurt us when he discovered that a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy can never work for even a single long-term investor. He helped us. There was a time when the Buy-and-Holders were in favor of the idea of using peer-reviewed research as a guide. I think they were right the first time. We learn new things over time. That’s a plus. I believe that learning should be permitted in the investment advice field to the same extent that it is permitted in every other field. I see it as a win/win/win/win/win.

My best wishes to you.

Rob