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

You’re broke, your wife divorced you, people won’t talk to you. Gee, I wonder what might be going on here?

Someone is living in an alternate universe and I wonder who that might be………hmmmmmmmm.

There’s only one difference between Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indeixng, But that one difference is a doozy. The difference is whether irrational exuberance should be celebrated or attacked. These are indeed alternate universes. That’s why as a nation of people we have had a hard time making the transition. Which just makes it that much more important that I do my part,

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:

It is interesting that you bash buy and hold, which has never failed and then promote VII, which has never worked.  Which path has more risk based on outcomes?  Why are you broke?

It is the Buy-and-Holders who put the thought in my head that it is a good idea to pay attention to the peer-reviewed research. I just wish that they had listened to themselves!

Hang in there, my good 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:

<i>A smart guy once said:

“ Rob, suppose the stock market does drop 65% as you are expecting. It might happen, who knows.
Step 1: Stock Market Drops 65%
Step 2: ??
Step 3: Rob wins $500 million settlement from the Goons, the Goons are sent to prison, the investing public learns about and adopts VII.
What is Step 2? There isn’t one. You will still be in the same position as you’ve been in for the last 10 years. Why didn’t something happen for you after the 2008 financial crisis? You are like the guy who keeps predicting new ends for the world as each previous prediction date passes by.
That is why I’m telling you, from one human being to another, that it is time to move on.”</i>

Step Two is the owner of one large site opening his site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research. It will take guts. You Goons will go after that guy like mad. But a lot of the people who work in this field possess a long-supressed desire to do honest work, to actually help people rather than to destory their lives. My sense from my years of interacting with lots of experts is that just about everyone in this field feels this way. Bogle did. Bernstein does. Kitces does. Tressider does. Shultheis does. Burns does. And on and on and on and on and on.

The leverage here is off the charts. Once a site becomes known as a place where people who post honestly are safe, experts will flock to it. And, the more people there are posting honestly, the more safe it is for new people to join them. The power of you Goons comes from one thing — your ability to isolate those who post honestly, to employ intimidation tactics to stop others from posting in support of the guy or gal who risks career destruction by talking about what the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world.

Support for Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is a mile wide and an inch deep. If Shiller had published his Nobel-prize-winning research in 1961 instead of 1981, there never would have been a Buy-and-Hold strategy, no one would have ever cooked up this loony-tunes idea that the stock market is the only market that has ever existed in which price discipline is not 100 percent required for every market participant. People want to use their life energies to do good work. That’s the way it is in every field other than investment analysis and that’s the way it is in the investment analysis field as well. The problem in this field is that, while the intellectual support for Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is precisely zero, the institutional support for it is huge. For the Buy-and-Holders to come clean, they not only have to acknowledge their initial mistake, which is no big deal, but also the 42-year cover-up of the mistake, which makes them look really, really, really bad.

People don’t want to see their careers destroyed. They want to post honestly but they do not want to see their careers destroyed. The abusive stuff is so off the charts that people decide to let someone else be a hero. But will they be able to continue doing that after the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, when they see millions of lives destroyed. I believe that there will come a time when someone will just not be able to bear it any longer and he will just go ahead and open his site to honest posting. As more people join him, there will be a greater number posting honestly and eventually the isolation stuff will just not have much of an effect anymore. It will become the thing to do to post honestly and the New York Times will publush a series of articles about the long cover-up on its front page and that will be that. We will all be working together to learn how stock investing works in the real world, as we would have been all along if only we had been thinking clearly.

What’s the alternative, Anonymous. The Buy-and-Hold Crisis of 1929 almost caused the entire thing to go under. Are we going to continue risking that? I think that’s too big a risk. I believe that some brave soul will work up the courage to open his site to honest posting after he sees the ocean of human misery that we will see in the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis (I am presuming that stocks will continue to perform in the future somewhat as they have always performed in the past).

P.S. I am confident that Wade will flip back when he sees that it is safe to do so The things he told me in the many emails that we exchanged made clear that those days in which he was posting honestly were the happiest days of his life. Everyone who works in this field will get to experience those feelings in coming days. And everyone who lives in the United States will reap the benefits of learning about the first true research-based strategy.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

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:

So you think drug addicts and alcoholics are rational people, but those of us that don’t want to go broke like you are irrational.  Got it.

Yes, people who suffer from addictions do not behave in a rational manner. They behave in a self-destructive manner. But it is not that they lack the capacity for reason. Addicts often evidence rationality in many other areas of life. The problem is that the addiction cancels out rationality in the area where the addiction takes hold.

If Buy-and-Holders were capable of thinking clearly, they would be happy to see discussions of what the peer-reviewed research says. If you look at statements by Buy-and-Holders, you will see that they often recommend taking the peer-reviewed research into consideration. It was their focus on the peer-reviewed research that drew me to the Buy-and-Hold strategy in the days when I was a Buy-and-Holder. If only the Buy-and-Holders had listened to themselves!

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:

If you have evidence of criminal activity, then file charges.  However, you can also be charged with filing a false police report if you are just making it up……..which is probably why you haven’t filed charges.

The Greaney retirement study remains uncorrected 21 years after I brought the error in it to the attention of the Reire Early community that met at the Motley Fool site. What more evidenve could any rational-thinking person require?

The hold-up is that today’s stock investors are highly IRRATIONAL, as shown by today’s CAPE value. We can do all sorts of wonderful things once we get past our addiction to Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategies.” Will all of the magic begin to happen in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis? I think so. I hope so. But I don’t believe that anyone can say with absolute certainty given that we have never been in a situation like this before.

My best wishes to you.

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:

If you are there in person, everyone will have to listen to you. This is your big chance. If this is REALLY your life’s work, you would be there in a heart beat.

If you don’t go, then it just played itself out……which means nothing happens.

The issue played itself out for the time-being because those of us who want to see the national debate take place were overcome by you Goons. But the issue will return over and over and over again in the event that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research. A world in which valuations affect long-term returns and market timing is always 100 percent required is a very different world than a world in which the market is efficient and timing doesn’t even work. The question at the root of the controversy is a fundamental question re how the market works.

Discussion of the matter can be suppressed for a time. But the issue can never go away. If market timing is required and all that investors can hear is that it never works, there are consequences that follow from that. Every earlier Buy-and-Hold Crisis has brought on millions of failed retirements and hundreds of thousands of business faioures and millions of people thrown out of work. Things like that tend to get written up in the papers. We didn’t have 42 years of peer-reviewed research showing us how to solve those problems in earlier days. But we do now. I see that as a significant difference.

I believe that something will happen. I do not know for certain. I do not have access to a crystal ball. But I believe that the core issue her is too big for nothing to happen. I know which side I want to be standing on when it does, you know?

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:

And in that 20 years, no one, but you, thinks there is any cover up.  What information is missing?  You have plastered your crap on this website and hundreds of others.  Unfortunately for you, no one is buying your crap.

The information that is missing is the pain that millions of people will experience during the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. A Get Rich Quick approach always possesses appeal for so long as it is putting money in your pocket. The allure is diminished when the imaginary money disappears and you need to rebuild your life.

Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning resesarch was not available until 1981. So, until then, irrational exuberance was just one of those things we had to live with. Starting in 1981, it became optional. The Bennett/Pfau research shows that, once we open every site to honest posting, we can reduce the risk of stock investing by naarly 70 percent. We have not had an extended bear market from 1981 forward. Prices dropped a little below fair-value levels in the wake of the 2008 Buy-and-Hold Crisis. But they recovered within a year. So we have not seen the bad side of irrational exuberance. In the event that stocks continue to perform in the future somewhat as they always have in the past, we will begin seeing that within the next year or two or three. That’s the missing information — the negative side of the rentless promotion of a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy for stock investing.

I hope that helps a tiny bit, Anonymous.

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:

“What matters is what a jury says.”

Only if the matter comes to a trial. In your 20 year campaign there has never been a single person (other than you) who thinks a trial will happen.

There was a time when the executives of tobacco companies were fighting hard to keep people from learning about the research that showed that smoking causes cancer. If you took a poll at the time, the vast majority of the population would have said that there would never be litigation re that issue. But there was. Litigation almost by definiton can only come after a cover-up has been exposed.

There are all kinds of wonderful things that begin happening once this cover-up is exposed. The key is getting it all out in the open, launching a discussion of the realities of stock investing as revealed by the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research at every site on the internet.

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:

Was your ex-wife a drug addict, gambling addict or sex addict.  Just asking since you brought it up and made the claim.

My claim was that we all have the potential to become such things. It is in our nature to engage in self-destructive behavior.

The nistake that the Buy-and-Holders made was to assume the oppotiste, that we are all always 100 percent rational when buying stocks. If that really were so, market timing/price discipline really would not be required becase stocks would always be priced properly. It was a huge advance when Shiller showed with uis Nobel-prizr-winning research that none of that is even a tiny bit true, that irrational exuberance is a very real thing. So of course market timing is always 100 percent required to combat it.

One of the things that helps us all not to become drug addicts or gambling addicts or sex addicts is that it is common for people to point out the negatives of these sorts of self-destructive behavior. The problem in the investment advice realm is that the Buy-and-Holders go nuts whenever anyone points out how destructive it is to create a mountain of irrational exuberance. The Buy-and-Holders count irrational exuberance gains as if they were real. So they don;t like it when people like me tell invesors that they need to subtract their irrational gains when calculating the safe withdrawal rate.

Think how many more drug addicts we would have if there were a time when people had come to believe that a drug addiction is a very good thing — that it makes you feel good or some such nonsense. Then, when it was discovered through subsequent study that drug addiction is actually a bad thing, these people sent out goon squads to threaten to murder the loved ones of those who pointed out the realities, Drug addiction is a bad thing and should be discovered. Just as failing to pratice market timing/price discipline is a bad thing and should be discouraged.

If we all practiced market timing, there could never be another bull market. If there never was another bull market, there could never be another bear maarket, If there never was another bear market, there could never be another Buy-and-Hold Crisis. It all ties together. We should be permitting honest posting re the peer-reviewed reserch at every site, without a single exception.

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:

Taking 30 years to build up $6.3 million is a get rich quick scheme?  Really?

It is.

Not entirely. Most of the wealth you have accumulated over that time is real. The U.S. economy is a highly productive economy. Buying stocks permits you to participate in this awesome wealth creation machine. So far, so good. All of that is wonderful.

But the part where you count irrational exuberance gains as real is not wonderful at all. That part is both self-destrucitve and destructive of our economic and political system when it is widely promoted as a research-based “strategy.” There is nothing “strategic” about counting irrational exuberance gains as real, thereby getting the numbers wildly wrong in safe withdrawal rate studies. The people who congregated at the Motley Fool board to learn about how to put together Retire Early plans had every right in the world to be able to talk about the 41 years of peer-reviewed research showing that it is impossible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate accurately without taking valuatiions into consideration. It is an obvious good to get the numbers right in retirement studies. There shouldn’t be any “controversy” over this.

So why is there?

The problem is that in the 1960s. when the Buy-and-Hold concept was being developed, Shiller had not yet published his Nobel-prize-winning research showing that market timing is always 100 percent required for every investor. The people developing Buy-and-Hold had to take a shot in the dark on some matters. There is solid research showing that short-term timing does not work. These people jumped to the hasty conclusion that, since short-term timing doesn’t work, maybe no form of timing is 100 percent required. So the genuine and helpful finding that short-term timing does not work became transformed into the loony tunes and harmful and 100 percent false claim that timing doesn’t. So, today, if people try to help investors out by telling them about the research showing how important it is to engage in long-term timing, Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads go into freak-out mode and threaten to murder their loved ones and destroy their careers and so forth because it makes the Buy-and-Holders look bad to show people that they are 41 years behind in their reading of the peer-reviewed research.

Otherwise kind and intelligent people have learned to keep it zipped re the collosal error made by the Buy-and-Holders. The result is that today’s CAPE value is 30. The fair-value CAPE value is 17. So every stock portfolio is today priced at nearly two times its fair value. People who think they have accumulated $1,000,000 in reality have accumulated only something more than $500,000. People who think that they have accumulated $200,000 have in reality only accumulated something more than $100,000, And so on and on. What do you think will happen when trillions of dollars of spending power disappears into the mist (irrational exuberance always disappears into the mist — there has never been one exception in the history of the U.S. market)? Those millions of people will cut back on spending. We will see millions of failed retirements. Hundreds of thoudsands of businesses going under. Millions of people thrown out of work. A dramatic increase in political frictions.

For what?

So that the Buy-and-Holders who made the colossal error back in the 1960s never have to learn how to pronounce those horrible (in their eyes — but in reality these words are tremendously empowering, they permit one to do better work in the future than one had ever been able to do in the past) word “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” That’s. That’s the only possible “benefit” to anyone resulting from the internet-wide ban on honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.

Irrational exuberance is the product of Get Rich Quick thinking. 100 percent. The U.S. economc system is a dynamo and stocks are an amazing asset class. But the relentless promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategy” for investing in stocks is killing us as a nation. We should urge the Buy-and-Holders to acknowledge their colossal error and thereby to open up the possibility for thousands and thousands of good and intelligent people to make important contributions in this field. We would all benefit from those contributions. We would all live better lives as a result of them. There should be no “controversy” over whether ot not those people should be permitted to make them.

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

My best and warmest wishes to you, Anonymous.

Rob