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

Oops, they did it again: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/18/warren-buffett-and-jack-bogle-recommend-buying-and-holding.html

The title says it all, “Warren Buffett and Jack Bogle agree on the formula for long-term success: Buy and Hold”

Buffett and Bogle are super rich, famous and respected. You are the exact opposite of all those things. What is your plan for convincing people that they are wrong and you are right?

Since you never answer questions directly, I’ll handle this one myself. You have no plan, and have never had one. You write this stuff only to distract yourself from the disastrous results of your decades of poor decisions. Doesn’t seem to be working so well though.

Bogle says in the article you linked to: “never, never, never be in or out of the market. Always be in at a certain level.”

What does he mean by “a certain level”? If he means that the typical investor should always keep perhaps 30 percent of his money in stocks, then I agree. Is that what he means? Or does he mean that investors should always stay at the SAME stock allocation regardless of changes in valuations? If that’s what he means, I strongly disagree and so does the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. If valuations affect long-term returns, as the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research shows, then an investor who sticks at the same stock allocation despite dramatic shifts in valuations is permitting his risk profile to change dramatically. Huh? What the f? That makes precisely zero sense.

I posted a blog entry a long time ago about an interview that Bogle did in which he came pretty darn close to endorsing Valuation-Informed Indexing. I recall debating with myself whether I should use the word “endorse” in the headline for the blog entry. Bogle said that there are six times in the life of an investor when he might want to adjust his stock allocation upwards (three times) or downwards (three times) because of extreme valuations. That’s exactly what I say. I once looked at the historical return data to see how often investors would need to adjust their stock allocation in response to valuations to keep their risk profile roughly stable. The answer is that it needs to be done on average once every 10 years. Most investing lifetimes last 60 years, from age 25 to age 85. So what Bogle said in that interview checks out.

Now —

It’s a close call as to whether Bogle actually endorsed Valuation-Informed Indexing or not. He didn’t say that all investors MUST make the allocation changes, as I do. He indicated that he thought that there was a good chance that they would work out if they did. He said things in a way that suggested that he felt some distaste about the idea. The way he said it was, you COULD do this, rather than you SHOULD do this. So I don’t think it is quite fair to say that he endorsed Valuation-Informed Indexing. But he came as close as a person could come to doing that without actually doing it.

So Bogle knows more about all this than he is letting on. Why does he play it so cagey?

He doesn’t want to acknowledge that Buy-and-Hold is a marketing gimmick, a scam, that never in 150 years of stock market history has it worked for even a single long-term investor. The Bennett/Pfau peer-reviewed research shows that following a Buy-and-Hold strategy rather than following the peer-reviewed research ALWAYS dramatically increases risk while also dramatically diminishing long-term returns. Huh? What the f? Why would anyone want to increase risk while diminishing return? Because it feels good in the short term. We all have a Get Rich Quick impulse residing within us and Buy-and-Hold appeals to that impulse. That’s it. That’s the only appeal. There is no intellectual appeal to Buy-and-Hold.

Here is more from Bogle from the interview you link to: “If you try to trade in and out of the market, your emotions will defeat you totally,” Bogle added. “Short-term betting is not a good way to go.”

So he is not talking about long-term timing. He is not rejecting Valuation-Informed Indexing. He is rejecting some crazy way to invest in which the investor engages in short-term timing, an approach that has been discredited not just by 37 years of peer-reviewed research but by 53 years of peer-reviewed research. Surprise! Surprise! Thanks for sharing a link that confirms what we have all known for 53 years now, Anonymous.

If there were even a tiny sliver of evidence suggesting that it is not necessary to practice price discipline when buying stocks, you would have put it forward 16 years ago, Anonymous. No such evidence exists. Common sense tells us that price discipline must work when buying stocks (price discipline is what makes markets work) and of course Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research confirms that what common sense tells us must be so really is so.

If Bogle had it to do over, he would have come clean about the mistake he made when he developed the Buy-and-Hold concept when it was first revealed by the peer-reviewed research, back in 1981. Now he’s trapped. So he engages in the word games that you see in that article. I am trying to help him escape his trap and you are trying to make it harder for him to escape. And you are Bogle’s friend? You are not Bogle’s true friend. I am Bogle’s true friend. Prior to 1981, Bogle believed that investors should consult the peer-reviewed research when deciding on an investment strategy. I think that the big guy was right the first time. Full truth be told, I am 100 percent sure of it.

Research is great. Bogle is a hero to me because his was the loudest voice telling investors to consult the research when deciding on an investment strategy. But part of the scientific process is staying alert to new developments in the field. We saw a huge new development take place in 1981. In the days when Buy-and-Hold was developed, there was research that many people interpreted as showing that the market is efficient and that price discipline (long-term timing) is not required. In 1981, that research was discredited. Now we know how stock investing really works. Now we know that not only does long-term timing/price discipline always work, long-term timing/price discipline is always 100 percent required for investors seeking to keep their risk profile roughly stable over time.

Bogle should be helping us to spread the word about this very, very exciting advance in our knowledge of how stock investing works.

I believe that in the days following the next price crash, he will be. I think he is a good man and, when he sees the ocean of human misery that he has caused by ducking the issue for so many years, he will become a fierce advocate of my idea of permitting honest posting re the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field at every discussion board and blog on the internet.

We’ll see, you know?

I am the biggest Bogle fan in the world. Except for the garbage about how investors do not need to exercise price discipline when buying stocks. That one is a long-discredited lie. It makes my friend Jack Bogle look bad when he engages in word games suggesting that he thinks it is just fine for investors to fail to exercise price discipline when buying stocks. I don’t like to see my friend look bad. So I am going to continue to encourage him to come clean re the garbage aspects of Buy-and-Hold and update the concept to reflect Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research findings. At that point, Bogle will be promoting the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept and I will be proud to stand beside him and promote it with as much energy as he does.

Does all of that not make perfect sense, my dear Goon friend?

The Opposite of Super Rich and Super Famous and Super Respected Rob

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

“It sure won’t be me sending him to prison. I have zero power to do any such thing and zero desire to ever acquire such power.

I will tell the story honestly. I am required to say that Bogle was made aware of the Lindauer Matter by numerous posters at the Bogleheads Forum and did nothing about it. That’s a stone cold fact and that is what I am going to say. Financial fraud is a crime in the United States. That’s a stone cold fact too. The act of fraud does not cancel out the many good things he has done. But it is in the process of doing very serious harm to millions of people. So it is something that everyone in the nation needs to know about and come to terms with.”

You are the only one talking about fraud and prison, so you would have to be the one driving it for it to happen.

No.

I’ve spoken about the possibility on several occasions. But all of my energies for 16 years running now have been directed to avoiding the possibility that Bogle or anyone else will ever go to prison because of the mistakes that were made in the design of the Buy-and-Hold strategy. I find the prospect of Bogle or anyone else going to prison HORRIFYING.

If you see a friend of yours driving drunk and you become worried that he is going to go through a red light and kill someone and end up in prison for reckless manslaughter, would it be fair to say that, if you take him aside and warn him of that possibility, that shows that you are pushing for him to be put in prison? I sure don’t see how. It seems to me that the reality is just the opposite. You are doing all that is in your power to keep your friend OUT of prison. You are being a true friend.

I sent an e-mail to Motley Fool in June 2002 asking that John Greaney be removed from the Retire Early board for his insanely abusive posting practices, which were causing all of our best posters to leave the site. The response of Motley Fool’s site administrator was to thank me for my “thoughtful” e-mail and to pass along the observation that it would be “ideal” if Greaney were to permit honest posting re retirement planning at that retirement planning board. Motley Fool liked the money that Greaney brought in with his relentless promotion of his Get Rich Quick retirement study.

It’s Motley Fool that started Greaney down the road where he is now looking forward to a long prison sentence in the days following the next price crash. Had Greaney been banned, I would have put up a post six months later asking that our old friend be permitted to post again, everyone in the community would have endorsed it, and Motley Fool would have granted the request. By playing it the way that he played it, the site administrator made it almost inevitable that Greaney would be going to prison somewhere down the line. He couldn’t deny that he knew about the errors in the study at that point. So things just got worse and worse and worse for him. In time he found himself threatening to send defamatory e-mails to Wade Pfau’s employer in an effort to get him fired from his job.

Greaney is responsible for his own behavior. I am not saying that anyone else is responsible for him going to prison. But it is a reality that we live in communities and that we all have responsibilities to others who live in those communities with us. Greaney made a mistake. That sort of thing happens. Greaney gave in to a temptation to cover up the mistake rather than acknowledge it. That sort of thing happens too. The proper thing to do when something like that happens is to EXPOSE the cover-up so that it is brought to a full and complete stop before it can do more harm. Fail to expose a cover-up and it grows and grows and grows and the person at the center of the cover-up can never be free again because he now needs not only to cover up the original mistake but also the cover-up and the cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up.

I acted like John Greaney’s friend when I asked that he be banned. That was the proper response to his insanely abusive posting. You hurt him in a very serious way by aiding his cover-up, Anonymous. You were no friend to him at all.

And of course the same basic realities apply with Bogle as well, just on a much bigger stage. In an ideal world, Bogle would have in 1981 made the changes in Buy-and-Hold required by Shiller’s publication of his “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) research findings. If cognitive dissonance blocked him from doing that (which I believe is the case), then his friends would have insisted that he at a bare minimum acknowledge that there were now two schools of academic thought re how stock investing works and that no more would he act as if there were only one. That would have been enough to keep Bogle on the right side of the law. And that would have been enough for all of us to have learned amazing things over the past 37 years about how stock investing works and to be living far richer (in every sense of the word) lives today.

It didn’t happen. So now we have this huge mess to clean up. A mess that appears likely to get my friend John Greaney tossed in a prison cell in days to come. And a mess that may even possibly get my friend Jack Bogle thown in a prison cell in days to come. My voice has been the strongest and the firmest and the loudest and the clearest speaking in OPPOSITION to continuation of the massive cover-up of the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies for 16 years running now, Anonymous. There is no one else even in a close second place.

Are you joking?

I am the one who has been doing everything in his power for a long, long time now either to see that there are no prison sentences or that, if it is too late for that, that the prison sentences that we will be seeing in days to come will be as short as they can possibly be given the circumstances that prevail today. Please given me a freakin’ break.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, dear Goon friend.

Prison-Sentence Opponent Rob

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

“I spoke to Bogle. He says that he is grateful for the show of support for Buy-and-Hold but wonders if going to prison for it might be taking things a bit too far.”

If you are still planning on sending Jack to prison, you better hurry up. The guy is 89 years old and probably doesn’t have too many years left.

I hope he lives forever. I love the man. I rate him as a Hero to the Middle Class.

It sure won’t be me sending him to prison. I have zero power to do any such thing and zero desire to ever acquire such power.

I will tell the story honestly. I am required to say that Bogle was made aware of the Lindauer Matter by numerous posters at the Bogleheads Forum and did nothing about it. That’s a stone cold fact and that is what I am going to say. Financial fraud is a crime in the United States. That’s a stone cold fact too. The act of fraud does not cancel out the many good things he has done. But it is in the process of doing very serious harm to millions of people. So it is something that everyone in the nation needs to know about and come to terms with.

I have learned many important things from Jack Bogle. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing without the many valuable contributions of Jack Bogle. I hope to be working closely with him in the days following the next price crash, when I am 100 percent certain that he will make a full and complete break with Mel Lindauer and with all those who have posted in “defense” of him. I think of Jack as a friend and always will.

I think of you as a friend too, Anonymous. I haven’t learned as much from you as I have learned from Jack Bogle. But I have indeed learned things from you over the years and I am grateful for that.

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.

Bogle-Loving (But Not Financial Fraud Loving) Rob

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

Rob your opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF1RodFhFwc

Rock star stuff, John.

This sort of presentation is the reason why I love Bogle so much. When I was trying to figure this stuff out, he was the only guy I discovered who talked in a real and straight-talk fashion like this. I personally rank Bogle second only to Shiller in terms of the help he provides investors. And I wouldn’t argue too much with someone who put Bogle first. None of the work that I have done over the past 15 years would have been possible without Bogle’s enormous contributions.

Rob

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

No, that is the third line, plus you need to follow the conversation as such:

You said “They are all ashamed of their behavior.”

which was responded to as follows: “How do you know this? Do you read minds?”

and then you said “I observe behavior. People don’t put forward death threats when they believe that there is peer-reviewed research supporting what they are saying.”

It’s the third line.

The second line –“People don’t put forward death threats when they believe that there is peer-reviewed research supporting what they are saying” — doesn’t translate into what you said either. Jack Bogle and Wade Pfau did not personally put forward death threats. But Wade Pfau would be doing honest research work today if he did not see others putting forward death threats and also see Jack Bogle not speaking up about it. So Wade’s behavior has certainly been influenced by the death threats put forward by others.

And Bogle’s behavior has been influenced too. Bogle would be speaking up in opposition to your death threats in the same way that I have if he didn’t think that you Goons would lose your minds if he responded to your death threats in a responsible way. Bogle knows that he created a monster when he failed to come clean in 1981. Bogle rationalized not coming clean in 1981 because he never imagined that valuations would ever again rise to fair-value levels (remember, valuations were at one-half fair value in 1981). Then, when we got to fair-value levels, he rationalized not speaking up on grounds that valuations would probably not go too much higher and thus no real harm would be done. Then, when we got to two times fair value, he rationalized that that was the highest we had ever gone and that surely valuations would soon begin heading downward even if he failed to speak up. Then, when we got to three times fair value, he rationalized that coming clean re what the peer-reviewed research shows would have caused an economic crisis and who wants an economic crisis?

It’s always something, you know?

Get Rich Quick schemes are addictive, Anonymous. Do you think that Bernie Madoff knew on the day he created a fake fund where it was going to lead? I doubt it very much. If he knew he was going to end up in prison, he would have pursued a different way of turning a buck. He got into the Get Rich Quick stuff because he saw that it was an easy way to turn a buck and then things got out of hand. I am sure that that’s what happened with Bogle. He did not intend to cause an economic crisis. In fact, I am highly confident that he tells himself to this day that Buy-and-Hold was not the primary cause of the economic crisis. But here we are, you know?

Do you think he will continue to get away with promoting Buy-and-Hold as a research-based strategy following the next price crash, when the economic crisis caused by Buy-and-Hold will have destroyed many more lives than it has thus far? Somehow, I have my doubts.

All the humans are prone to rationalizations. The biggest reason why I was once a proud Buy-and-Holder myself is that I heard that it was rooted in the findings of the peer-reviewed research and I believed that rooting a strategy in the peer-reviewed research was a great way to avoid all the rationalizing that has been killing stock market investors every since the first market was formed. I think it would be fair to say that the joke was on me re that one! Rooting Buy-and-Hold in the peer-reviewed research WOULD be a great way to avoid rationalizations if only there really were peer-reviewed research supporting the idea that it is not necessary for investors to exercise price discipline when buying stocks. As we know from what Wade Pfau told us when he researched this question with great care, there is precisely zero peer-reviewed research supporting that core Buy-and-Hold claim.

It’s a lie. And it has been for 36 years now. The last 36 years of peer-reviewed research show just the opposite of what the Buy-and-Holders claim it shows. The last 36 years of peer-reviewed research show that stock investors must ALWAYS practice price discipline when buying stocks, not that there is some mystical, magical world where it might work out okay for them to fail to practice it. Science is funny how it often tells you things other than what you expected it to tell you or what you wanted it to tell you, isn’t it?

I don’t see what point you are making in the part of your comment where you go through the statements that you made and my responses to them. Yes, I said that I know that the Buy-and-Holders are ashamed of their behavior not by reading minds but by watching behavior. I suppose that you are suggesting that because I used “People don’t put forward death threats” as one example of the abusive behavior we have seen from Buy-and-Holders that I was saying that every Buy-and-Holder has personally put forward death threats. I obviously don’t believe that.

But TOLERATING death threats put forward by others comes pretty darn close to putting forward death threats yourself, does it not? It’s in the same general neighborhood. It certainly is not behavior that we see commonly evidence itself in any field of human endeavor other than in the investing analysis field. Why do we only see this behavior in this one field? Why is it that every board at which I have ever posted has rules prohibiting the intimidation tactics employed by you Goons and yet not at one of them has those rules been enforced?

It’s because every Buy-and-Holder is ashamed. Every Buy-and-Holder possesses common sense and common sense rules out the possibility that it could ever be a good idea to fail to exercise price discipline when buying something. And yet the “experts” (in marketing perhaps) say that it is of critical that investors not exercise price discipline when buying stocks. Huh? Mel Lindauer actually went so far as to say that it would be “dangerous” for people to use the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research as guidance re this question. What the h? And Bogle permits his name to be used at a discussion board at which Lindauer participates on a daily basis. Um — That makes good sense, Anonymous.

Again — it is a serious life setback to suffer a failed retirement. This is not a big joke. Not to the millions of middle-class investors whose lives are in the process of being destroyed.

My sincere take.

Rob

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

Except you probably put a bunch of content in your letter which would lead any reasonable person to assume you have mental issues.

The texts of the e-mails that I wrote to Bogle are available as earlier blog entries at this site. Anyone who cares to look at them to find out for herself or himself what they contain may do so either now or in the days following the next price crash.

I don’t have precise recall of what I wrote in those particular e-mails. But all of the blog entries here give the general idea. There has never been even a sliver of peer-reviewed research supporting the core Buy-and-Hold claim that it is not necessary to practice price discipline when buying stocks.It is widely believed that there IS such research. The Buy-and-Holders have made claims that there is such research thousands and thousands of times. They believe that the claims are true. They believe because they know about the research that shows that short-term timing does not work. They fail to distinguish short-term timing from long-term timing (price discipline). So the core reality here is that the Buy-and-Holders have on thousands and thousands of occasions made demonstrably false claims that they themselves believe. These demonstrably false claims have put the retirements of millions of people at great risk. These demonstrably false claims caused the economic crisis that began in 2008.

Does that paragraph reveal me as someone with mental issues? It’s an incredible reality that I describe, Laugh. But everything I say in that paragraph is a reality documented at this site. I need to persuade Bogle to help us to bring the ugly side of this to an end and I cannot bring on all the positive stuff that follows from us opening the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics without persuading Bogle. So I tell him the realities when I write to him, whether those realities happen to be incredible or not.

There’s no other way to get the job done, Laugh. So I am going to continue to play it the way that I have played it. If he wants to tell people who ask following the next price crash that the reason why he did not respond to my e-mails is that he thought that I had “mental issues,” I guess that that is what he will say. I would not feel comfortable going with that one. I do not advise my good friend Jack to go with that one. But Jack gets to decide for Jack. It’s not my call. M y job is just to report accurately and fairly what happened.

I won’t say that John Greaney included an adjustment for valuations in his retirement study. To do so would be financial fraud, a felony under the laws of the United States. I will not say that there is not 35 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. Again, to do would be financial fraud under the laws of the United. States. Anything that I can do to help my Buy-and-Hold friends I am happy to do. But I obviously cannot commit felonies. That one is so far over the line that I cannot even give it two seconds of consideration.

I love Jack Bogle. I even feel a measure of fondness for the members of his various Goon Squads. But I don’t commit felonies. Not once. Not ever. Not in 15 years. Not in 15 billion years. Not this boy. No way, no how. It doesn’t happen.

I naturally wish you all good things, Goon friend.

Rob

Una

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

Yes or No: Are you more important than John Bogle?

I would rate Bogle and me as roughly equal in importance. I obviously could not have developed the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept without the years of important contributions from Bogle that I use to support every aspect of the model other than the valuations-related aspects. But Buy-and-Hold without the valuations-related aspects is an unmitigated disaster; it has caused the biggest economic crisis in U.S. history. So what good is Bogle’s stuff without the elements that I have added over the first 15 years of The Debate About Having a Debate? Just as I am nothing without Bogle, Bogle is nothing without me.

The issue here is that both Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing are numbers-based strategies. When you root your strategy in numbers, it is important to get the numbers right. Numbers-based models have more power than other models because people trust numbers in way that they do not trust subjective opinions. But what if you get the numbers wrong? And what if the thing you get wrong is 80 percent of the story? When you leave out valuations, you don’t just get little things wrong. You get all of the most important questions WILDLY wrong.

I don’t ever want to try to diminish Bogle’s contributions. He laid the groundwork for the VII strategy. So for me to diminish Bogle is for me to diminish myself, which makes no sense. But I don’t feel comfortable lying to people about what the peer-reviewed research says re the numbers they use to plan their retirements and Bogle lies about that issue on a daily basis. So, yes, my correction of Bogle’s lies is a very, very big deal.

The best way to think about it is that Bennett’s work makes Bogle’s work honest and real. Bogle did work of huge importance but like all of those darned humans he is capable of making a mistake and he made a doozy. To unleash the power of all of the genuinely amazing work that Bogle has done, someone had to come along who absolutely refused to lie about the safe withdrawal rate issue and about scores of other critically important investment-related topics. I am that someone.

My work COMPLETES Bogle’s work. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the investing strategy that Bogle would have gotten behind if only he knew what Shiller showed us in 1981 back when he first started talking about stock investing. Bogle was ignorant of how investing works in his early years because the entire world was ignorant of how investing works in Bogle’s early days. Nothing Bogle has done counts for anything until he corrects the error he made.

But Bogle is deeply ashamed of having destroyed millions of lives and of having caused an economic crisis. He is deep in cognitive dissonance. I am in the process of building a national movement of people who will DEMAND that honest posting re the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research be permitted on the internet. That movement will force Bogle to give up his cognitive dissonance and give meaning to all the good work he has been doing for decades.

Bogle doesn’t work without Bennett and Bennett could never have dreamed of doing what he has done without Bogle. You can’t have one without the other. The two have made contributions of equal importance.

Fair enough?

Rob

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

Hey Rob. Here is your chance. According to this link on Bogleheads, Jack Bogle looks at the letters that are sent to him. Perhaps you can write him a letter and send it to him. You can then post the letter and response here:

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=203980&sid=3d5ca916ec62bc7ba172d38949fbb871

Bogle is working a con, Anonymous. Con men rarely turn themselves in.

I wrote to Bogle years ago. As you know. And a good number of others at the Bogleheads Forum wrote to him at that time. When he says that he responds to letters, he is telling a lie. He responds to letters that do not expose his con. He ignores those that ask him why he lies about what the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research tell us about how valuations affect long-term returns.

I don’t believe that Bogle started out as a con man. I believe that he was sincere in believing that the market is efficient in his early days. Perhaps you are cynical enough to believe that he was a con man going back to the first day. Your tone suggests that. I don’t believe that. I believe that he made a mistake and that he fell victim to cognitive dissonance when his mistake was discovered by the publication of Robert Shiller’s “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) research findings in 1981. Then, as the number of people whose lives have been destroyed by the relentless promotion of the Buy-and-Hold lies grew larger and larger, Bogle felt that he had no choice but to engage in a cover-up to keep people from discussing openly how things really work in the stock market. At some point, he became desperate enough to associate with the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney. And here we are.

I love the man. I am grateful for the hundreds of powerful insights that he developed that have helped us all to develop a stronger understanding of how stock investing works. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing today were it not for the fine work that Bogle put forward a good number of years back. In fact, it was by reading Bogle’s book that I learned about the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirements studies that I posted about in my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002.

I will continue posting honestly on safe withdrawal rates and on scores of other critically important investment-related topics. I will continue to praise my friend Jack Bogle to the skies re every subject except where it would constitute financial fraud to pretend not to know about the mistake he made and has covered up for so long that has put millions of middle-class Americans at grave risk of suffering failed retirements. I am 100 percent confident that things will work out for the best following the next price crash. This is exciting stuff. The good news here is 50 times more good than the bad news here is bad.

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, my good friend.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

Yes, it makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is for you to sit home playing the role of an internet troll for year after year, instead of working a job to support your family.

I was kidding around when I said that it makes sense, Sammy.

The last 35 years of peer-reviewed research is the most important 35 years of peer-reviewed research in the history of investing analysis. If we could go back in time, I am 100 percent certain that my good friend Jack Bogle would make a different choice when confronted a second time with the publication of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) research findings. Bogle loves his country. Bogle has devoted his life to helping people. Bogle believes in using the peer-reviewed research as a guide to one’s investing strategies. It is impossible for me to imagine that this great man would even consider any other option when faced with such a momentous decisions and when armed with knowledge of the consequences of making a bad choice (which Bogle would posses were he to be able to retain his memory of how things have actually played out when he took his trip backwards to 1981 in his time machine).

We all make mistakes, Sammy. One of the things that we all learn from experience is that the best thing to do when a mistake is uncovered is to come clean about it. Once one acknowledges a mistake, a great learning experience commences. When instead of coming clean, we go into cover-up mode, terrible consequences that one could not imagine when making that choice often follow. I think it would be fair to say that that is what happened when our good friend Jack Bogle made a decision in 1981 not to incorporate Shiller’s finding into his Buy-and-Hold Model (which would have transformed that model into the Valuation-Informed Indexing Model, the first true research-backed investing model).

Look at what happened to Hillary Clinton. If she could go back in time to the day when she was first asked a question about her private e-mail server, do you think that she would again choose to go into cover-up mode? I sure don’t. She could have come clean immediately and put the entire thing behind her following two or three days of news articles and the entire matter would ultimately have proven to have been no biggie. She was embarrassed and she thought she could get away with a cover-up and her friends did not dare risk her wrath by trying to advise her to take a wiser course and then an incredible series of events followed that ultimately placed her in the circumstances in which much of her life’s work has been put into disrepute. That all was good for Hillary Clinton how?

Bogle has advanced hundreds of powerful insights that have enriched all of our lives in important ways. I want to see the man get credit for those insights. To get that credit in a permanent way he needs to come clean re what the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research shows. It does not show that the market is efficient. It shows that valuations affect long-term returns, which means that risk is variable and not static and that investors therefore must be willing to adjust their stock allocations in response to big changes in stock valuations to have any hope whatsoever of keeping their risk profiles roughly constant over time.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

If we look at your column that you posted on your blog today, we once again see how disgusting you are when you strike a comparison between Jack Bogle to that of Bill Cosby and disgraced priests.

Yet another example of poor behavior that has led to you being banned at boards.

I strongly disagree, Sammy. Our differences re this matter are the key to understanding what is going on in the investing realm today.

Bill Cosby was a great comedian and in most respects a great man. He was an inspiration to millions. He had one grave flaw. Almost all of us have flaws. The right thing for us to do when we see that someone has a flaw is to help him overcome it. That didn’t happen with Cosby. He had lots of power and money and connections. So lots of people who knew that there were seriously wrong things going on kept their mouths shut. As a result, the problem got worse and worse until things reached a point at which Cosby’s reputation is all but destroyed.

That never should have happened. It’s a terrible shame that things played out that way. Cosby is responsible because we all are responsible for our own behavior. But everyone who knew and kept his or her mouth shut contributed to the problem in a less direct and less significant way. As a society we failed Cosby and all the women he hurt.

That’s how things have played out re Jack Bogle. Bogle is a great man, he is a genius and he has helped us all in many amazing ways. In a perfect world, I could stop there, that would be the end of the story. We don’t live in a perfect world.

Bogle should have come forward when Shiller published his “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) research in 1981. Even if Bogle was not convinced that the research pointed to something real (it is my strongly held belief that Bogle was and still is suffering from cognitive dissonance), he should have come forward and noted that there was now serious research showing that Buy-and-Hold can never work for a single long-term investor and that all investors who follow Buy-and-Hold strategies need to know about that research and take it into consideration when forming their own assessments re how to plan their retirements.

Had Bogle done that in 1981, there would have been thousands and thousands of good and smart people participating for the past 35 years in a national debate about how stock investing works. As a society we would have generated hundreds of powerful insights. We would all be living better lives today. I of course believe that Valuation-Informed Indexing would be the dominant investing strategy today had things played out that way. But that doesn’t really matter so much. The important thing is that everyone in this field would have felt free for that entire 35 years to post his sincere views re this terribly important subject. Knowledge would have continued to advance. Everything would be on the level and we would all feel better about ourselves.

We cannot go back to 1981 and change things. The past is past. We can change the future. Everyone who works in this field needs to pull together to insist that Bogle come clean re these matters. There is not one school of thought re how stock investing works. There are two. Buy-and-Hold was once a legitimate strategy and there are millions of good and smart people who believe to this day that it is a legitimate strategy. But there is 35 years of peer-reviewed research showing otherwise. People need to know that. We all need to be exploring how stock investing works in the event that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate, even those of us who continue to believe in the merits of Buy-and-Hold.

That’s my sincere take, Sammy. I love Jack Bogle. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing if not for Bogle’s many amazing contributions. I rank Bogle as the second most important investing analyst of all time, second only to Robert Shiller. But the full reality is that Bogle messed up big time when he failed to come forward and at least acknowledge doubt back in 1981 when Shiller published his “revolutionary” findings. The longer the cover-up continues, the more pain we cause to all our fellow humans, including the Buy-and-Holders and very much including my good friend Jack Bogle.

These are my sincere thoughts re these terribly important matters. I think of Jack Bogle as a friend. That’s one of many reasons why I INSIST that he come clean by the close of business today.

I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, my good friend.

Rob