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

You miss the point.

What if your interpretation of the data and its implications–which you admit is at odds with everyone including Shiller himself–is flawed?

What if you are wrong? Is that not possible?

I’ve said that it is possible hundreds of times. You know that. Why do you play dumb re something like this?

Nothing that I have said is at odds with Shiller. Everything that I have ever written re stock investing follows from Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings of 1981. Every single word.

Shiller doesn’t spell things out the way I do. I agree with that much. I spell things out in much greater detail and with much more clarity and depth. I say things that Shiller has never said publicly. But everything that I say follows from what Shiller showed with his research. It’s just a question of proceeding down the logic chain step by step by step by step.

You should be asking why Shiller doesn’t proceed down the logic chain the way I do? Why doesn’t Shiller publicly discuss the implications of his research? Why is there not one word in Shiller’s book addressing the question of what investors should do with their money given his revolutionary findings? That’s odd. People buy investing books to learn what to do with their money. Why does Shiller address every question BUT the most important one of all?

And why don’t people like you ask him that question?

You don’t ask him because you want to remain in your fantasyland where Buy-and-Hold works. It would cause you pain if Shiller were to speak clearly and honestly to the question of what investors should do with their money as a result of his “revolutionary” findings of 1981.

Shiller doesn’t address these questions because he understands that it would hurt you and because he understands that you would attack him the same way you attack me if he did so and, like all the other humans, he prefers not to be attacked so viciously.

Shiller is doing the right thing for Shiller. Is he doing the right thing for you? Is he doing the right thing for Bogle? Is he doing the right thing for Pfau? Is he doing the right thing for his profession? Is he doing the right thing for his country?

You know what I think, Curious. I think we have to violate the crazy Social Taboo that has been holding us back for 35 years now. We now know how stock investing works. That’s wonderful. That’s a huge advance. But it is an advance that is doing us little practical good because, while we now know intellectually how stock investing works, we don’t talk about what we know and as a result we don’t know it with enough clarity and confidence to take much advantage of what we know.

I want to take full advantage of what we have learned from the past 35 years of peer-reviewed research. I want to leave Buy-and-Hold in the dust and move on to something a lot better. That’s where you and I differ. That’s why we are working at cross purposes. You want to protect Buy-and-Hold from effective challenges and I want to blow Buy-and-Hold up and move on to something better, the something that would have become the dominant investing model way back in 1981 had only there never been a Buy-and-Hold. If we didn’t have these rich and powerful Wall Street Con Men protecting this Get Rich Quick approach, we all would have become Valuation-Informed Indexers a long time ago.

Say that I am wrong. Is there any harm that could possibly come of it? I sure cannot see what that might be. If I am wrong, there are thousands and thousands of Buy-and-Holders happy to point out any flaws in my arguments. So my ideas will never catch on if I am wrong. The reality is quite to the contrary. If I am wrong, that will come out and the showing that I am wrong will make people more confident in Buy-and-Hold. If I am wrong and the Buy-and-Holders are right, opening every investing discussion board and blog to honest posting will prove to be a plus for Buy-and-Hold. Which is a good thing presuming that I am wrong and the Buy-and-Holders are right.

The only thing that could possibly justify a ban is that the Buy-and-Holders worry that I might be right and that Valuation-Informed Indexing might prevail in the marketplace of ideas. That possibility represents a threat to the pocketbooks of the Wall Street Con Men and a threat to the pride of you Goons. You hate me with a burning hate not because you think that I might be wrong but because you have seen how many people are drawn to what I say until you Goons step in and destroy the reasoned conversations that people want to have with injections of insane abusiveness.

I will win in time. Because we live in a great country with great laws and great people and both common sense and 35 years of peer-reviewed research support me and nothing but threats of violence and career destruction support Buy-and-Hold. Buy-and-Hold is hanging on by a thread in the year 2016. Buy-and-Hold is going down. The sooner it goes down, the fewer lives you will have destroyed and the shorter will be your prison sentence. So we all benefit by letting the millions of middle-class people who need to know about the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research learn what they need to learn.

I wish that everyone were speaking out today, Curious. Shiller, sure. But not just Shiller. Everyone. The answer is not for me to stop speaking out. The answer is for Shiller and all the others to join me.

My 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:

Uh oh, looks like Michael Kitces slaps you down again Rob. Take a look at the comments section in which he says that there really isn’t much need to adjust the SWR of 4%. Also, if you really read through what he has to say, it seems to make a good case to just stick with buy and hold.

Happy reading:

https://www.kitces.com/blog/should-equity-return-assumptions-in-retirement-projections-be-reduced-for-todays-high-shiller-cape-valuation/

Wow.

That article is AMAZING. I would rank that article as one of the top five articles on SWRs that I have read over the course of the 13 years.

I posted a comment offering a few quick reactions. I will do something a bit more in depth as one of my columns at the Value Walk site.

Your comments about the article are of course completely out to lunch and 100 percent dishonest. Shame on you, Anonymous! Yucko!

Thanks a million for linking to the article here. You have linked to such articles on numerous occasions. I always express my gratitude when you do so and I want you to know that I am truly grateful for your efforts in this regard. You are a Goon. But there are times when you have been an exceedingly helpful Goon. This is one of them (despite the dishonesty you evidence in your commentary). This article is the type of thing we should have been seeing starting 13 years ago. If the experts in this field did not fear the reactions of the millions of investors who they have hurt so much with their smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage, we would have all worked together to launch a national debate re this stuff many years ago and we would today be enjoying the biggest surge of economic growth in our nation’s history rather than trying to sludge though an economic crisis! Holy moly!

Learning about this cheered my day in a major way. I get down about this stuff sometimes. I try not to let it show because I don’t want to appear weak in front of you Goons. But I am made of flesh and bone like everybody else and sometimes things get to me. This sort of thing reveals a hint of the fun we will all be having together when we make it to the other side of The Big Black Mountain. We’re getting close.

I have a theory about what is going to happen following the next price crash that I don’t often talk about. I believe (this is just speculation, however) that Shiller may have already written a sequel to Irrational Exuberance in which he explores in depth the IMPLICATIONS of his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings of 1981 that he has so far not commented on because of his fear re what the Buy-and-Holders will do to him when he explores the implications openly and clearly and firmly. Going by that sort of thinking, it could be that Michael has been sitting on this article for some time, waiting for the time when it looked like the crash was getting close to go public with it. Again, that’s just speculation. But it would be very cool if it turns out that the greatest minds in this field are sitting on a wealth of wonderful material that they will all be releasing once it appears safe for them to do so.

Super stuff! Encouraging stuff!

Forward! More!

Please take good care, my old Goon friend.

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:

Your headline is wrong. You just listed out a number of things that you say Shiller isn’t talking about. Therefore, what you mean is that you think your ideas should be treated as mainstream ideas.

No.

I want to hear what EVERYBODY thinks are the implications of Shiller’s ideas.

I have been writing about what I believe are the implications of Shiller’s ideas for 13 years now. But who am I? I’m some fellow whose “expertise” in this field is that he figured out how to get his words posted to the internet. We need to hear a lot of voices other than my own address themselves to this topic.

How does Bogle think that investors should have changed their strategies in response to Shiller’s “revolutionary” findings? I want to know. You should want to know too, Anonymous. You have your retirement money tied up in this. It’s been 34 years now and Bogle has not seen fit to address this question. That’s okay by you? Huh?

It would be weird if Bogle’s take was identical to mine. I don’t expect that. I don’t even want that. If he agrees with me on some things, great. If he disagrees with me on some things, that’s great too. I learn more when people disagree than when they agree. But I can only learn from Bogle re this matter if he addresses himself to the question. And for 34 years now he has failed to do that.

I have said that we need a NATIONAL DEBATE. Not a Rob Bennett debate. A national debate. I want to see everyone participating. I want to see lots of healthy and respectful disagreement. That’s how we all learn. I want to see thousands of people trying to find holes in all the stuff that I have put forward. That’s how I make my stuff better. We’re not getting that today.

We’re not even getting that from Shiller!

Shiller said following the 2008 crash that investors should not put their money back into stocks until the P/E10 dropped below 10. It hasn’t gone below 10 since. Yet in more recent days he has said that it would be okay for investors to have 50 percent or more of their money in stocks. Huh? Shouldn’t reporters be asking him about that contradiction? That’s how we learn. That’s how Shiller comes to enhance his ideas over time.

Shiller predicted an economic crisis that he said would come by the end of the first decade of the new century if we continued pushing Buy-and-Hold strategies. Then he failed to attribute the crisis to Buy-and-Hold after it arrived. Huh? Why did he do that? Millions of people were affected by the economic crisis. We all should want to know what caused it. No?

Shiller knows about the 4 percent rule. He knows that leading names in this field like Ed Easterling have said that millions of retirees are going to end up as greeters at WalMart as a result of the false claims made in the Old School SWR studies. Does Shiller not realize that this will be the biggest social crisis ever experienced in our nation’s history? Why is he not speaking up?

Rob Arnott told me in an e-mail that I posted at this site that he has seen things similar to what happened to Wade Pfau; he has seen academic researchers told that their careers would be destroyed if they did honest research showing the dangers of Buy-and-Hold strategies. Shiller has surely been seeing similar things. There is no one who has done more to show the dangers of Buy-and-Hold than Robert Shiller. Why doesnt he write a book describing the abusive tactics that the Buy-and-Holders have employed to persuade him to keep it zipped? Would that not be front-page news? Does he not have an obligation to a country that has given him many blessings to do that? It sure seems to me that he does.

I want to see EVERYONE talking about this stuff. Not just me. I have worked hard on my stuff. But I am one guy. We need THOUSANDS offering their takes. Bogle should go first. Buy-and-Hold is Bogle’s baby. Does Bogle believe that valuations affect long-term returns or does Bogle believe that the market is efficient? Both things cannot possibly be so. Does Bogle believe that Shiller is right or that Fama is right? Both researchers cannot possibly be right.

There is no more important public policy question before us today as a nation than the question of whether Shiller is right or Fama is right. We resolve such matters through DISCUSSION. The Ban on Honest Posting has been an unmitigated disaster. We need to work through this pursuant to the laws of the United States. We need to stop the abusive garbage and DISCUSS and LEARN.

That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter in any event, Anonymous.

Don’t let the bad guys get you down, old friend.

Rob

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

People don’t ignore Shiller. They ignore you.

Shiller doesn’t say: “The Buy-and-Holders got the numbers wildly wrong in their retirement studies.” Shiller doesn’t say: “There is zero support in the peer-reviewed research for the claim that price discipline (long-term timing) is 100 percent required for all investors seeking to keep their risk profiles roughly constant through time.” Shiller doesn’t say: “The 34-year cover-up of my revolutionary findings of 1981 is a criminal act of financial fraud and a good number of people will be going to prison for this following the next price crash.” Shiller doesn’t say: “It was the relentless promotion of the idea that long-term timing is not always required that caused the economic crisis that began in 2008.” He predicted in a book published in March 2000 that the continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies would by the end of the first decade of the new century cause a massive economic crisis. But, when that crisis arrived, he kept his mouth shut about what he obviously knew to be the primary cause.

Gee, I wonder why.

There are two things that people who work in the investing advice field want to do. One, they want to make a buck. Two, they want to help their clients or their readers. The problem that we have as a society is that the two goals are in conflict. The market produces trillions of dollars of Pretend Money in bull markets. Every investor on the planet possesses a Get Rich Quick urge (because all humans do). The easy way to get people to like you and to buy your product is to tell them that that Pretend Money is real. That’s Buy-and-Hold. There is a mountain of money to be made promoting the pure Get Rich Quick approach. But the Pretend Money disappears in the bear market that inevitably follows a bull market (irrational exuberance ALWAYS leads to irrational depression — there is not one exception in the historical record). At that point your constant promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick approach has destroyed millions of lives. By promoting Buy-and-Hold, you have failed to achieve your second goal of helping the people who listen to your advice.

I have chosen to pursue the second goal rather than the first. I have demanded recognition of my right to post honestly re the past 34 years of peer-reviewed research because I want my work to be constructive and positive and life-affirming and not to destroy the lives of those who make use of it. The Buy-and-Holders hate me for that with a burning hate. They hate me because they want to be in my shoes and because they have given up hope that they ever will be able to do honest work again. I didn’t do that to them. I want to be working with my Buy-and-HIold friends. But all they can focus on is the shame they will feel when they say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” They have chosen to destroy even more lives rather than do what they need to do to help the people they want to help. The case for Valuation-Informed Indexing is so strong and the damage done by Buy-and-Hold is so great that they cannot bear to face up to the realities of what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research says. That’s too sad, you know? That’s not my doing.

Is it Shiller’s doing? Yes and no. All of my work is rooted in Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) 1981 finding. So Shiller obviously played a huge role here (as did Bogle, to be sure — there would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing if Bogle had not founded Vanguard and made index funds widely available). But Shiller is willing to go only so far with his truth-telling. He doesn’t like the idea of having death threats directed at him or of having demands for unjustified board bannings directed at him or of having tens of thousands of acts of defamation directed at him or of having threats to get him fired from his job directed at him. So he keeps it zipped about the IMPLICATIONS of his revolutionary research. He tells us what the data says and leaves it to each individual investor to figure out for himself WHAT THAT RESEARCH MEANS. Or NOT figure it out, if that is the investor’s preference.

Most of us prefer NOT to figure it out. We all have that Get Rich Quick urge residing within us. By keeping it zipped re the implications of his research, Shiller gets the best of both worlds. He is widely recognized as a genius (which he obviously is). And yet the Buy-and-Holders are okay with him. He tells the truth but in such a limited and tentative way that the millions of investors who prefer a Get Rich Quick approach still give their money to the Buy-and-Holders and are in practical terms none the wiser about the implications of the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That ain’t me, Anonymous. I tell. That’s my job. I have never experienced a moment’s doubt re that one. I have gone beyond Shiller, far beyond Shiller, not because I am smarter than Shiller but because I refuse to keep it zipped re the implications of Shiller’s research. I don’t let the abusive behavior of the Buy-and-Holders slow me down. I work it and work it and work it and work it. And I tell people what I have learned.

Not too many get to hear me nowadays. You Goons have seen to that. I don’t like it. Not one tiny bit. But I don’t let it slow me down. I keep working it. I keep telling what I have learned. That core reality of my being has not changed one iota in 13 years. That core reality of my being will not change one iota in 13 billion years. You can destroy my Google ranking. You can destroy my reputation. You can intimidate my friends into saying nasty things about me. You can frighten my wife into believing that her children’s lives are in danger. You can insult me in thousands upon thousands upon thousands of posts. But that core reality never changes. Given that the Get Rich Quick urge that influences all the humans is strong enough that you have been able to do all those things, perhaps some day you will be able to get me put to death. I don’t think it will happen but then I didn’t think that you would ever be able to get me banned from the Motley Fool board solely for telling the truth about safe withdrawal rates. So perhaps I will be put to death. That’s about as far as abusive posting can go, no? If they give me the chair, they better be sure that the voltage is turning up high enough to get the job done. If they don’t put me down, I will be back posting that weekly column at the Value Walk site. And, if the owner of that site drops the column, I will be back sending e-mails to every other investing site on the internet seeking a new place to house the column. Sooner or later, I will find one and we will be back to where we started. So make sure they turn the voltage up to “11?.

It will turn out the way it turns out, Anonymous. I am who I am. I love the Buy-and-Holders. None of the work that I have done would have been possible without the amazing work done by the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers before I came on the scene. That can never change. And the fact that Shiller published peer-reviewed research in 1981 showing that valuations affect long-term returns can never change either. And the fact that there is something in my life history that causes me to love the idea of being the one to tell millions of middle-class people about the implications of Shiller’s revolutionary findings can never change either. It’s what I am. You’re something different. You’re a Goon. You live to block those millions of middle-class people from learning what they need to know to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent (as shown by the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with my good friend Wade Pfau). So be it, you know?

I don’t like it. I think that our discussions should be governed by the published rules of our discussion-board and blog communities and by the laws of the United States. But the Buy-and-Holders have a strong desire not to go to prison for the 34-year cover-up and see no way to avoid it if the cover-up comes to an end. So published posting rules and laws making financial fraud a felony mean little to them at this point in the proceedings. I cannot change it. Not by myself. So I accept it for the time-being. I believe that this unfortunate reality will change following the next price crash. So I await that day. You are fine with Shiller because he doesn’t expose your con. You’re not fine with me because I do. It’s not the name “Bennett” that bothers you. It’s what the fellow named “Bennett” does and says that drives you mad. I tell. I don’t tell half the story like Shiller does. I let it all hang out. Journalism blood. Sue me. That’s the story. You know it. I know it. Everyone who reads these words either today or years from today will know it.

If the Second Great Depression comes to bother us all enough for us to work up the courage needed to do something about you Goons, we will all live better lives from that point forward. We can take it that way or we can take it the other way and see our economic system fall when millions of middle-class investors see what has been done to them by the Bogles and Shillers and Lindauers and Greaneys of the world. It’s not for me to say which way it goes. I obviously have hopes. And I obviously have beliefs. But it is ultimately not my call. This is a call that will be made by the people of the United States following the next price crash. The worst that can happen to me is that I get the death penalty. That’s the absolute worst that you Goons can dish out. And I don’t have to think two seconds as to whether I prefer the death penalty to posting dishonestly on the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements. I have never in my life felt more settled re any question that has been put before me as I feel re that one.

If you don’t believe me, ask my wife. She’s the world expert on the particular topic of whether Rob Bennett has any give on the question of his willingness to post dishonestly re the numbers that his friends use to plan their retirements. She can tell you lots of tales that will make your Goon hearts flutter. I love my wife. I love my kids. I love Shiller. I love Bogle. I love you Goons. I love my fellow community members. I love my country. I love the wonderful game. I love what I think it is going to do for us all when we get to the other side of The Big Black Mountain. I don’t love the idea of directing my human energies to the task of posting dishonestly re the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements. I sweated blood to get the numbers right in my plan. I worked that one every night and every weekend for nine years. I worked it while I was waiting for the bus to take me to work and I worked that one while waiting for the bus to take me home again. I worked that one during lunch hour. I worked that one before drifting off to sleep at night and I worked that one when I laid in bed in the morning trying to work up the courage to pull the blankets back and step into the cold of the morning. I never stopped thinking about it for those nine years and I never once in the past 13 years have given two seconds of consideration to the idea of betraying whatever Higher Power elected to give me the insight I needed to see that the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies ain’t the way.

I am what I am, Anonymous. You are what you are. I accept that. There is nothing personal in this from my end. I am capable of liking you just fine while remaining 100 percent determined never to agree to post dishonestly re the numbers my friends use to plan their retirements. I hope you understand that there is nothing that you can take away from me that will cause me to betray the things that makes me what I am. It’s BECAUSE I love Bogle that I believe that deep in his heart he wants to help people and that thus deep in his heart he wants someone like me to insist that he come clean re the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. My love for Jack Bogle (and all the others) is a deep love. It is non-negotiable. Deal with it. Or don’t. Either way you will always remain my friend.

Rob

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

It doesn’t look like Shiller is planning on a crash. He says that the S&P is going up and he makes a good case for buy and hold:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/40862634

Thanks much for sharing the link, Anonymous. You have shared a good number of links to Shiller stuff and I am grateful for that. Shiller is the Master. I have a strong belief in the importance of his research and all of my work is an attempt to tease out implications of his research. But there is no question but that Shiller and I do not agree on all points. It is important that people see where the differences are so that they can make up their own minds. You have been super at bringing Shiller videos and articles to people’s attention.

I was not able to play the video at the link you provided. I don’t know why. I tried to find another site offering the video but was unsuccessful in finding one. So all I have to go by is the article that accompanied the video in your link.

The article indicated that all that Shiller said was that the S&P may reach 1430 by the year 2020. I haven’t done the math to see how likely that scenario is but it doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. I don’t agree even a tiny bit that that statement alone would suggest either that Shiller does not expect another crash or that Shiller is making a good case for Buy-and-Hold. We disagree strongly re that one.

It is entirely possible that we could see a crash sometime in the next year or two and then see the S&P rise to 1430 by the Year 2020. In fact, a scenario along those lines is precisely what we should expect given the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. It always happens like that. In the 145 years of historical return data available to us, there has never been a single case in which it did not go like that. We do not know precisely when the crash will come or precisely when we will recover and then boom back up to 1430. But we know from 145 years of stock market history (as analyzed in 34 years of peer-reviewed research) that it is highly likely both that we will see another crash taking us down 65 percent from where we stand today and that we then will see a recovery that will take us to something in the neighborhood of 1430.

I am mystified as to how you could say that the playing out of that scenario would make a case for Buy-and-Hold. I think the playing out of that scenario would make the strongest case imaginable for Valuation-Informed Indexing.

Those who follow Buy-and-Hold will be losing 65 percent of their retirement money over the course of the next few years if this scenario plays out. We will then be seeing a huge boom in stock prices in the years following that crash. The Buy-and-Holders will have very little capital remaining at that time to invest in a booming stock market. The Valuation-Informed Indexers, in contrast, will be loaded. They will suffer only small losses in the crash because they have adopted valuation-informed stock allocations. So they will be able to participate to a far greater extent in a booming stock market. That’s not an advantage? Huh?

It’s a huge advantage. I have performed hundreds of runs on the Scenario Surfer. Scenarios like this show up over and over and over again. In fact, they show up in the MAJORITY of 30-year runs. The scenario that Shiller is describing (going by the text set forth at your link — I have not seen the video) is the one that makes Valuation-Informed Indexing so magical.

What happens is that for many years the two strategies either perform equally or Buy-and-Hold is actually superior to VII for a time. Then we see a scenario of the type being forecast by Shiller and the VIIer goes so far ahead in a very short amount of time that the Buy-and-Holder cannot ever catch up. It’s not just the huge differential in returns. The VIIer obtains compounding on that differential for decades into the future. At the end of his lifetime, the VIIer is usually hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead. I have seen numerous cases in which the VIIer is over $1 million ahead. That is not the norm, to be sure. But it happens not too terribly infrequently.

Anyway, that’s my take.

I expect to try to turn this one into a column. Thanks again for your help here. I am learning from you. I hope that I am giving something back so that it is a two-way street.

My best wishes to you.

Rob

 

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

Just a suggestion, perhaps you should post your rules for acceptable comments. The two comments from Laugh that you served up as today’s post certainly wouldn’t get through anymore.

Comments that add to our collective learning experience are encouraged. Comments that detract from our collective learning experience are discouraged.

I obviously approved the two comments by Laugh. And then I highlighted them by featuring them as a separate blog entry. I believed that there was a learning experience to be had by seeing them and thinking about what they signify.

Now –

If Laugh showed up every day and posted those same words to every blog entry here, I wouldn’t approve them every time. I can see approving the same comment more than once if it was used in two different places where it had some relevance. But I wouldn’t approve the same comment on a daily basis because it would be boring for people to read the same words over and over again.

You need to add something. That’s the bottom line. I’ve approved death threats. Death threats hurt us because they drive good people away. So my first reaction to a death threat is to want to delete it. But death threats signify something in this particular debate. They show how emotional Buy-and-Holders become when challenged with accurate reports of what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research shows. People need to know how much pain the Buy-and-Holders are in. So I have approved a limited number of death threats. I don’t like them. I always criticize them in my responses (while also acknowledging the pain that they reveal and trying to do something to help reduce that pain). But I think that we need a small number of death threats on the record for the record to be complete.

I always consider the context in which a comment is offered. If you say “Bogle is great” as a comment to an argument that Bogle has made at least one big mistake, I would approve it because it expresses the other side of the story. If you said “Bogle is great” as a comment to an argument not relating in any way to Bogle, I would be less inclined to approve it. I might. Any argument on Valuation-Informed Indexing relates at least in an indirect way to Bogle. So it’s possible that that one would get through. It would help if there were another sentence or two explaining why you think Bogle is great.

But if you offered five comments to an article talking about Bogle’s mistake saying “Bogle is great,” I would approve at most two of them. The first one would be okay for the reasons outlined above. I might let the second one pass, especially if somewhat different wording was used. I would not approve the third comment saying the same thing in the same thread even if the comment considered by itself was relevant to the thread and non-abusive.

The comments that I deleted yesterday were just too argumentative. There was no content to them, just contentiousness. I first approved them because I felt that there was a tiny bit of something real to them. One of the issues on the table is whether site owners have a right to delete posts that do harm to their marketing efforts if those comments are backed by 34 years of peer-reviewed research. I say that that is fraud. A lot of good and smart people believe otherwise. I think that people will reconsider after they lose most of their retirement money in the next price crash. But we haven’t yet seen the consequences of these deceptions and so we have seen a lot of non-Goons make that sort of argument. So, while I always disagree with that argument, I usually approve comments making it. I personally view that argument as out to lunch but there are too many people who view it as containing something real for me to feel okay about deleting comments making it as a general rule. But there has to be at least a tiny bit of effort to develop the point evidenced. There were a couple of comments yesterday that showed zero effort. I approved them with the general rule in mind and then deleted them when I reread them a short time later.

If they had stayed up for a full day, I wouldn’t have gone back and deleted them even if I came to realize that they were lacking an effort to develop the argument. After a comment stays up for a day, I would consider it part of the record. And it is exceedingly rare for me to delete a comment even on the same day that I have approved it. But in this particular case I decided that that was the way to go.

You are right to suggest that I have gotten tougher re the approval of Goon comments in recent months. That’s because pretty much everything has been said multiple times and so new comments making points that have been made previously no longer add to our collective learning experience. It might be true that I would not approve Laugh’s second comment today; it would depend on whether it was phrased in a novel way or not. I would be inclined to approve the first comment.

The point that the cover-up of Shiller’s work is a funny sort of cover-up because his book has been widely reviewed and because he was awarded a Nobel prize is a very strong point for your side. This is NOT an ordinary cover-up. Our story is an exceedingly strange one. Lots of people have a hard time accepting that there is an ongoing cover-up of research that was awarded a Nobel prize and featured in a best-selling book. I say that there has been a cover-up of Shiller’s work. But it is a cover-up taking place in broad daylight.Exceedingly strange stuff.  So I view the point that Laugh was making with that comment as a 100 percent fair one.

I do not approve of many of the tactics employed by you Goons. But I don’t at all say that you have never made good points in your comments here. There has been lots of good stuff mixed in with the garbage. Some of your best stuff related to the following points:

1) The fact that Shiller has been disingenuous in his presentation of his own ideas. I was reluctant to believe this for a long time. Shiller is a hero to me (as is Bogle, to be sure). But when a Goon is right, a Goon is right, you know? You guys (and witches) won me over on this one. Shiller has been disingenuous. He remains a Hero of the First Rank for the middle-class investor. I don’t take that back. But the way he states things is often confusing and that has hurt the cause in a serious way. So the point that you Goons made about him needed to be advanced. You gradually forced me to acknowledge that he has been disingenuous. It took me some time to acknowledge it but you were right re that one;

2) The fact that a big reason why Bogle did not call for investors to change their stock allocations in response to big valuation shifts was because he wanted Buy-and-Hold to be as simple as possible and saw this as an unnecessary complication. You haven’t made this point often but there was at least one series of posts in which you made it. I view this as a very strong point. I don’t think it was the only reason why Bogle took the path he did. But I think it was a major factor. It’s a motivation for which I have a good bit of sympathy because I think simplicity is critical and I believe that there is no one in this field who has done more to make investing simple for the average person than Bogle.

3) You questions about how markets really work and about how what we have seen in the stock market is something that we don’t see in other markets. These were the hardest questions for me to answer. I don’t say that I’ve gotten everything perfect in my responses. But I do think that I made reasonable points as a result of struggling with those questions. Those questions prompted a major learning experience for me. So I am exceedingly grateful for the pushback I saw from you Goons on a number of market-related questions.

4) Your points about how few investors are pure Buy-and-Holders or pure Valuation-Informed Indexers. I found these comments highly persuasive. I think that theory is VERY important. But it is also important to recognize that most average people are either suspicious of theoretical arguments or disinterested in them. Most investors follow a modified or compromised version of Buy-and-Hold. And there are more investors who follow a modified or compromised version of VII than there are who follow a pure version of the new model. This insight (which I picked up from my conversations with you Goons) has many practical implications.

I hope that helps a bit. I am always open to hearing new arguments, whether of the Goon or non-Goon variety. It is true that I am approving fewer comments today than I approved in the past. You Goons have been complaining for a long time that the words that appear at this site are repetitive. I haven’t generally gone along with that one. But I now think things have reached a point where there really IS a lot of repetition evidencing itself. So I am today less inclined to approve comments that make points that have been made many times before. You need to come up with something at least a little bit new or find some other way to make use of your time. I will not today approve a comment saying “hocus forgot to take his meds.” That’s so 2002!

Hang in there, man. It gets better. A LOT better.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a recent comment that I posted to a thread concerning one of my column entries at the Value Walk site:

Correct; buy and hold is not the correct market strategy in today’s time. Most simply put that strategy work well for select periods of time, but it will not work where the markets are today. It is actually a rather complicated discussion on why those preaching buy-and-hold want to hold onto this strategy, why this strategy worked historically and why it is flawed for today. Not sure we want to open that discussion … probably more of a white paper kind of thing.

Aaron:

I don’t want to try to entice you into a discussion that you do not think will prove fruitful. But I cannot resist putting forward some words here. I have spent the last 13 years of my life examining this question of why people have not moved from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing (the model for understanding how stock investing works that is rooted in Shiller’s 1981 finding that valuations affect long-term returns) for 34 years now. So I obviously see this as a question of huge significance.

The P/E10 level in 1982 was 8. In 2000, it was 44. That’s a difference of nearly 600 percent. It follows that a 1982 retiree could afford to take out from his portfolio each year SIX TIMES what the 2000 retiree could afford to take out from a portfolio of the same dollar size. If you run a regression analysis on the 145 years of historical data available to us, that’s the result you get. The safe-withdrawal-rate in 2000 was 1.6, meaning that a retiree with a $1 million portfolio could safely take out $16,000 to live on each year. The SWR in 1982 was 9 percent. That retirees could take out $90,000 per year. A pretty big difference!

Shiller’s finding changes the analysis of every strategic question imaginable. It makes zero sense for an investor to go with the same stock allocation when the SWR is 1.6 percent as he goes with when the SWR is 9.0 percent. Stocks are far more risky when the SWR is 1.6 percent. All investors should want to keep their risk profiles roughly constant. It’s not possible to keep your risk profile roughly constant if you are not willing to adjust your stock allocation in response to big valuation shifts.

Why does’t everybody know this? Why doesn’t every investing analyst make this point in every article he writes, in every presentation he gives, in every interview in which he participates? Has there ever been an investing insight of 1/500th the power of Shiller’s 1981 finding that valuations affect long-term returns?

As you say, there are lots of reasons. But one big reason is that the Valuation-Informed Indexers don’t talk about it much. We should be pushing these amazing new ideas but we do not. Shiller’s book is the best book ever written on investing. But I challenge you to say what Shiller recommends that investors do differently as a result of his research findings. Nowhere in that book does Shiller address the practical question of WHAT INVESTORS SHOULD DO DIFFERENTLY as a result of his findings!

Isn’t that odd?

I know why Shiller (and lots and lots of others) shies away from addressing the practical questions. I have spent the last 13 years of my life trying to learn what investors should do differently and then to share with them what I have learned. As a result, I have become the most hated poster on the internet. It’s not that Shiller’s findings have any bad aspects to them. Shiller’s stuff is good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. The reason why people cannot stand to learn what he showed us is that his stuff is such a huge advance over Buy-and-Hold that we cannot bear to acknowledge the mistake we made as a society when we elected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars promoting Buy-and-Hold strategies.

We have seen huge advances in the computer technology field over the past 34 years. I would argue that we have seen BIGGER advances in the investing analysis field. The problem is that we have not reaped the benefits of those intellectual advances. We keep quiet about them because we sense that it would hurt the feelings of the Buy-and-Holders to talk about the advances in a clear way.

That drives me crazy! I want to take advantage of the advances. I want to help others to take advantage of the advances.

That’s my story. That’s why I am here. That’s why I write this weekly column on the implications of Shiller’s findings. That’s why I even chide the great man himself from time to time. I want to see Shiller stop being so shy about what he has accomplished. He is the Steve Jobs of Personal Finance. But we don’t have IPhones in this field today! Because he is too shy to speak out about his huge achievements!

I understand 100 percent if you choose not to respond to these words. But, since the subject came up, I felt that I needed to get that off my chest.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a response that I posted to a comment by Aaron Rainey on one of my Valuation-Informed Indexing columns at the Value Walk site:

Rob, you are only mad because Shiller did not give you a binary response (buy/sell) to his view of the market. Market models are not binary or absolute systems and they are closer to probability systems. With the lack of a binary response you put together a pretty lame attempt to disparage his article. The fact that you would be mad about the lack of a binary response and paragraph 8 comment shows your lack of understanding around the markets, market models and the analysis of markets.

I run my own database and create my own market analytics and I did not recreate any of Shiller’s metrics and while his metric calls for a -32% correction my own metric came in with a correction off -31% percent. The point being; Shiller is quantitatively correct and statistically accurate. More importantly he gave people an accurate and fair warning in which they can base their financial decisions. If those reading his statement are not able to discern the meaning that is their problem; not Shiller’s.

If you look at Shiller’s comments objectively and from a higher-level you can begin to understand his point. For example, posing the following statement to you, if you were told that investing in the S&P 500 today you have the potential of making 6%, but you also run the risk of losing 32% … what would you do??? The answer is quite clear and obvious and the only people that would take issue with this answer is someone who being greedy and really NEEDS the 6% for some reason.
In very basic terms, the above is what Shiller is communicating in his article. In terms of plain English; you can chase the upside if you got the guts, but there is significant downside risk. If your choice is to chase the upside, then don’t cry about it if you get burned.

It doesn’t get any easier and you really should issue an apology article.

A follow-up comment by Aaron stated:

Also, after reviewing your stance on “Valuation-Informed Indexing” you are directionally correct, but still pretty far off the correct solution because you are not looking at the problem correctly.

I LOVE your comment, Aaron. I don’t agree with parts of it. But it hits at the most important points in a way that not too many comments that I have seen in response to my work do. I am grateful to you for taking time out of your day to share your thoughts with us.

I agree 100 percent with your statement that the stock market is a probability system. This is the thing about the market that I believe most people either do not get or have not explored in enough depth to appreciate in full. We never know where stocks are going over the next six months or the next year. But we always have a rough idea of the probabilities of various outcomes over the long run. We should be talking about those probabilities. To talk about them intelligently, we need to QUANTIFY them.

You gave a sample of what a quantification of the going-forward probabilities might look like — “You have the potential of making 6 percent but you also run the risk of losing 32 percent.” There are two things missing in that statement. One, you need to say over what time-period those probabilities apply (I presume that you might have meant over the next year but I am not sure). Two, you need to explain that there is more than one set of probabilities that apply. The 6/32 may be the most likely scenario but there is always more than one.

I don’t think that telling people “you can chase the upside if you want but you might get burned” tells them what they need to know. The general statement is always true. The reality is that the upside is very different when the P/E10 is 8 than what it is when the P/E10 is 30. And the downside is also very different in those two sets of circumstances. You need to let people compare and contrast both the upside and the downside at different valuation levels. That tells them what they need to know to know how much to adjust their stock allocation in response to various price increases. It’s that compare-and-contrast information that makes Shiller’s finding that valuations affect long-term returns ACTIONABLE in the real world.

You suggest that anyone who read Shiller’s words carefully would see that the potential gain from going with a high stock allocation today is too great to justify the potential loss. I agree with that. But please understand that most investors are not inclined to read Shiller’s words that carefully. We all have a Get Rich Quick urge within us. We all have a naturally inclination to believe that we are going to see the best possible result and avoid the worst possible result.

People of course have a choice as to how to proceed. But we cannot expect people to take the responsible course unless we are very clear and firm in our statements as to both the upside and the downside. People tune out warnings that are worded in the way that Shiller words his warnings. He needs to be more clear. He should tell people how many years they are delaying their retirements by going with a Buy-and-Hold strategy. People need to know how dangerous and irresponsible Buy-and-Hold is. Shiller is not getting that point across forcefully enough, in my assessment.

This is why we have bull markets. If investing analysts offered informed takes of how much the value proposition of owning stocks drops as prices increase, investors would act in their self-interest and lower their stock allocations gradually as prices increased. The selling of shares would pull prices back down to fair-value levels. Stock prices are self-regulating so long as investors are informed of the realities! The reason why we have bull markets is that investment advisors are strongly biased in the direction of overselling the benefits of owning stocks and underselling the downside. Most advisors applaud price increases! They lead investors to believe that price increases are a pure good and that sticking at the same stock allocation at all times (Buy-and-Hold) can work. Huh?

Most investors believe what they hear from the “experts.” The result is that valuation levels go up and up and up (with small drops mixed in, to be sure) over the course of the bull portion (which can last 20 years or so) of a bull/bear cycle. Then they have to pay back all of the Pretend Gains for the market to be able to continue to function. That’s why we have price crashes. Price crashes translate into a huge loss of consumer buying power. That’s why we have economic crises. And economic crises scare investors away from stocks and cause bear markets to extend almost as long as the bull markets that preceded them.

All of this is horrible for our entire society and all of this is 100 percent optional. If the “experts” would talk about the implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) findings to their clients and readers, we would never see the bull markets that set all this horror into motion in the first place. The problem is that investment advisors are compromised. The way to sell things is to make people happy with you and telling people that the Pretend Gains from a bull market are real makes them happy. Buy-and-Hold sells. Valuation-Informed Indexing works. But how many “experts” do you see advocating VII over BH in the middle of an out-of-control bull market?

I don’t agree with you about the correction likely being 32 percent. I think you are assuming a return to fair-value price levels. We have seen four bull/bear cycles in the history of the U.S, market. In the first three, the secular bear market did not end until the P/E10 level dropped to 8 or lower. If that pattern holds true this time, we are looking at a price drop of about 65 percent.

And the pattern is not the result of coincidence. That pattern results from the fact that Shiller is right that stock-price changes are not caused by economic developments (as the Buy-and-Holders claim) but by investor emotion (which of course is influenced to some extent by economic developments but not in an entirely rational way). Irrational Exuberance is followed by Irrational Depression because investors treat those bull-market gains as real. They plan their lives around them. When the money they were counting on to fund their retirement plans disappears, they freak out. Prices don’t drop just to fair-value levels but well below that.

The answer once again is to give people accurate, research-based guidance AT ALL TIMES. We have to stop this stuff of pushing Buy-and-Hold strategies during bull markets and then advising everyone to get out of stocks altogether when the bear takes us down to a P/E10 of 8. We should want our markets to be stable. Stability comes from adding a brake to the car. The natural brake is an informed take on valuations. Stocks are a far less attractive asset class when prices are high than they are when prices are low or fair. We need to tell people that. And we need to do so with now hemming or hawing.

It is my take that Shiller is engaging in a good bit of hemming and hawing about his own amazing research because he wants people to like him That undermines the cause. When people see Shiller take a weak position, they think: “Oh, if even Shiller is not all that concerned, maybe this Buy-and-Hold stuff will end up working out after all.” Shiller knows that Buy-and-Hold can never work (or at least he should — I grant that it is possible that he is suffering from a good bit of cognitive dissonance). He needs to say that in clean and firm and unmistakable terms. Or at least so Rob Bennett sincerely believes.

Again, I LOVED your comment. I hope that we will have further opportunities to interact. I have a blog (arichlife.passionsaving.com) where I report on these matters on a daily basis. If you have any interest in writing a blog entry expanding on your criticisms of my approach (in the same fair way that you employed here), I would be thrilled to run that article. It would be a big help to my readers (all three of them!). Anyway, that was good stuff.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, Aaron.

Rob

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

“I observe certain lines when posting at his site, to a large extent in deference to him and to the difficult situation in which he finds himself (and in which we all find ourselves). I limit my comments to the content issues.”

So you have the ability to restrain yourself to the topic at hand. If you exercised such restraint more often then you wouldn’t be banned as much.

You are of course correct that I wouldn’t be banned as much, Evidence. That’s OBVIOUSLY true. That’s why the vast majority of people who have grave doubts about Buy-and-Hold are so careful about how they express those doubts. That’s why they do so in such roundabout ways that most of their readers don’t even catch on that they have doubts. That’s why we are in an economic crisis today.

Shiller didn’t publish peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy can ever work for even a single long-term investor last week. He published it 34 years ago. How long do you think we should all wait until we begin directing our mental energies to examining the IMPLICATIONS of his “revolutionary” (Shiller’s words) findings?

I cannot do my work if I cannot post honestly, Evidence. Neither can Wade Pfau. Neither can Jack Bogle. Neither can Robert Shiller. Neither can Mike Piper. Neither any anyone else.

We ALL need to win recognition of our right to post honestly. When I win recognition of that right for Rob Bennett, I am winning recognition of that right for everyone on this planet. Winning recognition of that right for everyone on this planet will be the biggest advance in personal finance in the history of our nation. There is no other advance that we have ever achieved that even comes close. That’s why I will be receiving the check for $500 million.

I want to talk about content issues. 100 percent. Everyone else wants that too.

But I want to talk HONESTLY about content issues. And that part is 100 percent non-negotiable.

What I am doing in demanding recognition of everyone’s right to post honestly is as important as what Shiller did in posting his revolutionary (Shiller’s word) research. Shiller got us where we need to go intellectually. I am getting us where we need to go in the practical realm. Shiller did amazing work. But millions of investors are completely in the dark re the implications of his amazing work. That needs to change. It is because we have not explored the implications of Shiller’s amazing work for 34 years now that we are in the worst economic crisis in the history of our nation.

I wish that somebody had done this before I came on the scene. If someone had done this before I came on the scene, it never would have entered Greaney’s head that it would be okay to threaten to kill my wife and children as my penalty for having dared to “cross” him by posting honestly on safe withdrawal rates.

EVERYONE should be posting honestly. And EVERYONE should be giving full recognition to everyone else’s right to post hones;y. There should be zero controversy re this point.

There is controversy because those who have engaged in criminal acts don’t want to go to prison.

I am fine with doing what I can to shorten those prison sentences a bit. But if I agree to commit financial fraud myself, I thereby INCREASE the length of all those prison sentences while earning a prison sentence of my own.

Um — no thanks.

I would be grateful if you would try to find somebody else.

No can do

I can’t go for that.

Not this boy.

It’s not my particular cup of tea.

Going to prison is not high on my bucket list.

Call me madcap.

Rob

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

I have a feeling if you read it 7x, you would be reading between the lines and finding where Shiller had written a secret code to warn you of the Goons.

Once you read it 15x, it will teach you how to succeed in your quixotic crusade.

That’s not too far off the mark, Laugh.

I understand that you are making fun of me. But the reality really is a strange one. The words of a book don’t change each time you read it. Yet I really have seen exciting new stuff in Shiller’s book each time that I have read it. How does that happen? How do I miss important things on the earlier reads? That shouldn’t happen and yet it does.

Our minds can only take in so much at a time. That’s the reality. That’s why we have to encourage everyone to post with full honesty and frankness. That’s why it is so critical that no one feel any intimidation when they post. At atmosphere of intimidation causes people to be timid, to hold back. When they do that, we all miss out on a lot of what is in other people’s brains. We all lose. That’s what has to change here.

I wrote a column that will show up at the Value Walk site on Tuesday that gets to the heart of things, in my assessment. I talk about how I used to be ashamed to tell people that I had paid off my mortgage. That’s crazy. That’s something to be proud of, not something to be ashamed of. I should have been spreading the word to all my friends about how they could live richer lives. What was holding me back? It was peer pressure. It was a Social Taboo. That’s what we are up against here.

Everyone wants to know how to invest more effectively. And we all DO know how to do so today — Intellectually. But we all are afraid of giving voice to what we know because it will hurt the feelings of all our Buy-and-Hold friends for them to see that they made a mistake many years back and have left it uncorrected for a long time now. That’s the only thing holding us back. That weird reality creates this strange situation where we say things in code and we need to read books multiple times to hear important parts of the message contained in them.

That’s what I need to change. That’s the job here. When those of us who have seen through the b.s. part of the Buy-and-Hold story start speaking plainly and clearly and frankly, it gets a lot easier for everybody. The practice of speaking in code holds us all back. We need to give that up. It will be huge when we do that.

When I was writing the column, I had to look up what happened in that famous peer-pressure research from the 1950s where they showed people cards and asked them to say which lines on the cards were the same length and when people would give obviously wrong answers if there were others giving those crazy answers (because they were working with the researcher) before it was their time to speak. All of us would deny that we could ever behave that way. But we all do. Peer pressure is a huge force with humans.

And bull markets are a peer-pressure phenomenon. There’s nothing else to them. When we reach the point where we can talk openly about what we know from the psychological literature, we eliminate most of the risk of stock investing. The thing that had made stock investing risky from the beginning of time until now is that we humans flatter ourselves that we do not respond to peer pressure but really we do.

When one of us gains the ability to post honestly, we all gain the ability to post honestly. When we all gain the ability to post honestly on safe withdrawal rates, we all gain the ability to post honestly on every possible subject. We are up against a Wall of Ignorance that was ready to collapse on the morning of May 13, 2002, and needed just one good hard push for it to topple. The purpose of the past 13 years has been to supply that one good hard push and to thereby make all of our lives a lot richer than they have ever been before. We are close today. I think the next crash is going to supply the final elements of that push. We’ll see.

The researchers asked the participants in that study why they gave such crazy answers. Many of the participants said that they knew the right answers all along! So why did they say such crazy things? It seems so impossible!

They said they were being polite! They didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the people who gave crazy answers before them!

That’s why Shiller writes in code. He doesn’t want to hurt Bogle’s feelings. He knows a hugely important thing that Bogle does not yet appreciate. But he holds back from saying it clearly because he knows it will make Bogle feel bad for Bogle to see how many lives he has destroyed. Some friend, huh?

But it is human. That’s what the research is telling us. Bogle is responding in a human way — we all have a hard time acknowledging that we have gotten something terribly wrong. And Shiller is responding in a human way — we all have a hard time letting people know that they have made a mistake. This is a painfully human story in all respects.

There’s your conspiracy! It’s those darn humans and that darn desire to be polite that is hardwired into them! Whatchagonnado?

We’re all too darn polite. We can’t help ourselves. That’s why millions of people are unemployed today. That’s why millions are on their way to experiencing failed retirements. We need to learn how to be less polite. Our excessive politeness is killing us!

That’s a joke. But it’s a joke that expresses an important truth. We really do need to learn to be less polite when there are important truths that have been discovered and that need to become better known. There’s nothing polite about participating in a cover-up that causes an economic crisis. There’s nothing polite about letting your friends suffer failed retirements because you don’t have the courage to say what needs to be said to stop them from suffering failed retirements.

Shiller really does talk in code. That’s the reality here. He does it because he wants to be a nice person.

And one of the things he talks in code about is you Goons. Shiller has experienced the Goon phenomenon. He was telling the truth about stock investing long before I was. I would bet $5 that he has seen MANY death threats and MANY threats of career destruction directed his way. I would bet that he could write a book about the hundreds of intimidation tactics directed his way over the course of the past 34 years.

The difference between Shiller and me is that I want him to write that book. I think that’s the key. I think he needs to stop being so darn polite and just take a blast at those darn Goons! Not out of meanness. He needs to blast them because there is a part way down deep in the Goons where they want to get all this investing stuff right too. The Goons don’t like being told that they made a mistake. But they don’t like suffering failed retirements either.

Shiller INSULTS you Goons when he holds back from blasting you. When he does that he suggests a belief that you are ALL Goon and nothing else. He’s wrong. The Goon Conversations that appear at this site on a daily basis show him to be wrong re that one.

We all need to work up the courage to start blasting you Goons. We need to stop insulting you by thinking that you precious flowers will melt into nothingness if we happen to mention what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research shows and work up the courage to appeal to your non-Goon selves and thereby lift you up to the human level rather than letting you pull us down to the Goon level. That’s how this thing ends. That’s what this thing has been leading up to since the first day.

The Buy-and-Holders show zero hesitance in stating their case. They are “Diehards” to borrow a apt characterization. The Valuation-Informed Indexers are frightened little babies, living in fear of their own shadow lest they hurt the feelings of one of the Diehards by saying what they truly believe in too clear a way. Those on my side of the table need to stop being such frightened little babies. We cannot win this battle of ideas playing it that way. It’s because we act like frightened little babies that this battle of ideas has produced such little good fruit in 34 years.

I’m polite too. I care about you Goons too. The difference with me is that I care enough not to insult you. I respect you for your genuine accomplishments, which came from a belief that this stuff matters. If you believe that it matters, then there is a part of you deep down that wants to get it right. That’s my core belief. Shiller needs to stand up to Bogle and say precisely what he believes, straight, no chaser. That’s when the huge advance takes place. That’s when all the ugliness gets buried 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.

Shiller needs to stop being so darn polite to Bogle, gosh darn it!

I look forward to the day when none of us feels the need to speak in code re how we all need to go about financing our retirements.

Rob the Polite (But in a Different and Deeper Way)