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A Rich Life

The Old Ideas on Saving & Investing Don't Work -- Here's What Does

  • "Valuation-Informed Indexing Is the Same Song We Sing. Glad You Belong to the Same Choir We Do."





    Carolyn McClanahan, Director of Financial Planning
    for Life Planning Partners, Inc.

  • "Retirees Now Frequently Base Their Retirement Decisions on the Portfolio Success Rates Found in Research Such as the Trinity Study.... This Is Not the Information They Need for Making Their Withdrawal Rate Decisions."




    Wade Pfau, Academic Researcher

  • "The P/E10 Tool Could Drastically Change
    How the Entire Investment Industry
    Operates and Measures Risk."





    Larry, A PassionSaving.com Site Visitor

  • "The Your Money or Your Life Book
    for a New Generation."





    Beatrix Fernandex, Book Reviewer
    for Dollar Stretcher Site

  • "A Newer School of Thought Believes That the Safe Withdrawal Rate Depends on How Stocks Are Priced at the Time You Begin Making Withdrawals."





    Scott Burns, Dallas Morning News Finance Columnist

  • "A Fascinating Retirement Calculator."







    Michael Kitces, Maryland Financial Planner

  • "The Evidence is Pretty Incontrovertible. Valuation-Informed Indexing...Is Everywhere Superior to Buy-and-Hold Over Ten-Year Periods."




    Norbert Schenkler,
    Co-Owner of Financial WebRing Forum

  • "Every Detail Shows Rob's Respect
    for His Information and His Reader."






    Audrey Owen, Owner of Writer's Helper Site

  • "You’ve Accomplished Something Radical
    With Your Idea of Passion Saving."





    Mark Michael Lewis,
    Money, Mission & Meaning Talk Show Host

  • "Big Moves Out of Stocks Should Not Be Done at All. But Strategic Asset Allocation Can Be Done At Very Rare Times, Maybe Six Times in an Investor’s Lifetime, Three Times When the Market Is Stupidly High and Three Times When Stupidly Low."



    John Bogle, Founder of Vanguard Funds

  • "Valuation-Informed Investing and Passive Investing
    Share More of a Common Ancestry
    Than It Might Appear at First."





    Jacob Irwin, Owner of Passive Investing Blog Carnival

  • "It Is Great to See a Finance Journalist Who Understands That Valuations Matter. Efficient Market Zealotry Is Rampant in the Journalism Community. I Just Love Your Valuation-Based Return Calculator."




    Rich Toscano, Pacific Capital Associates

  • "There Is Always An Unlimited Supply of Complainers Against Any Good Idea."






    Mr. Money Mustache Blogger

  • "Rob: This Has Been One of the Most Insightful and Helpful Comments I Think Anyone Has Ever Posted. Thank You for This Lesson and for Sharing Your Knowledge on This Subject!"




    My Money Design Blogger

  • "There Is An Extensive Literature About the Predictability of Long-Term Stock Returns. There Is an Extensive Literature About Short-Term Market Timing. My Question Is About Long-Term Market Timing. The Literature Seems Slim."



    Wade Pfau, Retirement Income Professor
    at The American College

  • "Your Ideas Are Sound."







    Rob Arnott, Financial Analysts Journal Editor

  • "For Years, the Investment Industry Has
    Tried to Scare Clients Into Staying Fully Invested
    in the Stock Market at All Times, No Matter
    How High Stocks Go. It's Hooey.
    They're Leaving Out More Than Half the Story."



    Brett Arends, The Wall Street Journal

  • "There Are Time-Periods Where Stocks Are a Terrible Addition to That Portfolio. Yet Inexplicably, We As Planners STILL tend to Suggest That It Is 'Risky' to Not Own Stocks When in Reality the Only Risk Is to Our Business."




    Michael Kitces, Maryland Financial Planner

  • "Valuation-Informed Indexing Provides More Wealth for 102 of 110 of the Rolling 30-Year Time-Periods While Buy-and-Hold Did Better in Eight of the Periods."






    Wade Pfau, Academic Researcher

  • "There Is a Growing Behavioral Economics Movement, But It So Far Has Had Limited Impact. Economists Are Not Fond of the Softness and Imprecision of Psychology. These Notions Are Considered Vaguely Unprofessional and Flaky."



    Robert Shiller, Yale University Economic Professor

  • "I Would Occasionally Get a Response Post
    Saying I Was 'the Best Since Rob Bennett
    Challenged Us to Think.'"




    A Popular Bogleheads Forum Poster Named "Retired at 48" Who Was Banned for Challenging Buy-and-Hold

  • "New Research by Rob Bennett Shows That
    Even a 4% Withdrawal Rate Could Cause Failure
    If You Start Retirement When
    Stock Market Valuations Are High.”




    Bernard Kelly, Consultant

  • "FuhGedDaBouDit!"




    William Bernstein, Author of
    The Four Pillars of Investing
    (When Asked Whether We Can Use the Old School Safe Withdrawal Rate Studies to Plan Our Retirements)

  • "This [The Stock-Return Predictor]
    Is a Very Handy Little Tool."






    Felix Salmon, Market Movers Blog

  • "A Much Simpler Way to Bring
    the Valuation Issue to Focus."
    (Referring to The Stock-Return Predictor)





    Karteek Narayanaswarmy, Blogger

  • "It's Informative, It's Based on Solid Data and It Provides Useful Results." (Referring to The Stock-Return Predictor)






    Political Calculations Blog

  • "Meet Three Couples Who Left the Corporate World to Do the Kinds of Work That Satisfied Them."






    Liz Pulliam Weston, MSN Money Columnist

  • "I Like Rob's Fresh Views and Tips
    on the Subject of Saving Money."






    The Digerati Life Blog

  • "A Very Solid Approach to Investing."







    Michael Harr, Founder of Walden Advisors

  • "Rob Bennett Has Been on a Tear With One Outstanding RobCast After Another."





    John Walter Russell, Owner of
    Early-Retirement-Planning-Insights.com Site

  • "It’s Time for a Different Way to Look at Investing, and Rob Is Onto Something Here."






    Kevin Mercadante, Owner of Out of Your Rut Blog

  • "My Afternoon Train Reading."
    (Referring to Rob's Article titled
    Why Buy-and-Hold Investing Can Never Work)





    Barry Ritholtz, Owner of The Big Picture Blog

  • "What Is It With Guys Named Rob?
    Longtime Index Agitator Rob Arnott Has Now
    Been Joined on These Pages by a
    Vanguard Diehard Agitator Named Rob Bennett."




    Jim Wiandt, IndexUniverse.com Publisher

  • "He Offers a Fresh New Perspective
    that Will Motivate You to Get on Track
    With a Solid Savings Plan."





    Lynn Terry, Click Newz Blog

  • "While Browsing at www.PassionSaving.com the Other Day, I Discovered an Article Featuring Ten Unconventional Money-Saving Tips. Each of These Offers a New Way to See Money."




    J.D. Roth, Owner of Get Rich Slowly Site

  • "Rob Has Ideas About Investing That Many Bloggers Find 'Interesting.' His Posts Are Often Controversial and Always Thought Provoking."





    Miranda Marquit, Planting Money Seeds Blog

  • "Is There a Way to Turn Saving Into Something Fun? If There Was, I Bet a Lot More of Us Would Do a Lot More Saving. I Found a Website Where This Basic Premise Is Explored in Great Depth."




    The Great WeiszGuy Blog

  • "I Have Much More Confidence in My Ability to Understand What Is Happening....I Thank You for Your Public Service, and, In Another Dimension, for the Personal Courage It Took to Make It Happen."




    Elizabeth, A PassionSaving.com Site Visitor

  • "I Was Hooked on the Idea of [Passive] Index Indexing, But Something Inside Made Me Wonder "Too Good to Be True?" and "What's the Downside?" I Happened on to Your Site and Valuation-Informed Indexing Seems to Make Sense."



    Coleen, PassionSaving.com Site Visitor

  • "Reads Like a Casual Conversation
    with a Likable Guy Who Wants Nothing More
    Than to Help Others Experience the Same Joy
    and Happiness He Has Found."




    Kara, Reader of Rob's Book

  • "Your 'Secrets' Are Exactly Like Magic Tricks: Once Revealed, They Look So Simple, Yet You Need Somebody to Show You How It Works."





    Kramerizio, Secrets of Retiring Early Reader

  • "Rob's Da Man! Never in the History of the Diehards Forum Has One Poster, Always Making Civil and Well Thought-Out Posts, Managed to Irritate So Many Without Anyone Being Able to Articulate a Good Reason As to Why."




    Mephistopheles, Bogleheads Forum Poster

  • "I’ve Been Surprised at How Controversial This Idea Is, but If Most People Are Buying and Holding, They Are Emotionally Invested in This Strategy."





    Jennifer Barry, Live Richly Blogger

  • "The Findings for [Long-Term] Market Timing Are So Robust That It Hardly Matters How We Do It."






    Wade Pfau, Asociate Professor of Economics

  • "The Elegant Simplicity of His Ideas Throughout Warms the Heart and Startles the Brain."






    Tom Gardner, Co-Founder of the Motley Fool Site

  • "Mr. Bennett Evidences an Unusual Skill....
    You'll Have to Buy a Copy....Extraordinary....
    A Massive Heap of Crap."




    John Greaney,
    Owner of the Retire Early Home Page Site

  • "By Reading All the Information on Your Website I Was Able to Develop a Part of Me I Didn't Know I Would Be Able to Become."





    Javier, PassionSaving.com Site Visitor

  • "Innovative Financial Thinking."







    No Limits, Ladies Blog

  • "Knowledgeable."







    Hope to Prosper Blog

  • "Holy Toledo! This Is Great Stuff!"






    Bill Schultheis, Author of
    The New Coffeehouse Portfolio

  • ""He Offers Down-to-Earth But
    Nevertheless Eye-Opening Insights About
    the Why and the How of Early Retirement."





    Secrets of Retiring Early Reader

  • "Challenges Unfounded Assumptions."







    Bill Sholar, Founder of the Early Retirement Forum

  • "Seminal."






    John Greaney, Owner of Retire Early Home Page Site
    (Pre-May 13, 2002 Version)

  • "It’s Always Good to Read Something New That Challenges Your Way of Thinking."






    Invest It Wisely Blog

  • "Rob, Thanks for All of Your Articulate, Well-Written and Well-Reasoned Commentary."






    Elle, a Poster at the Joe Taxpayer Blog

  • "Although Rob and I Don’t See Eye to Eye
    on Every Detail, His Site Is a
    Valuable Resource for Research."





    Ken Faulkenberry, Portfolio Manager

  • "Thanks, Rob. I Love Seeing So Many
    Personal Finance Bloggers Who Offer Such
    High Quality Content on Their Own Sites Come Here
    to Weigh In [on Your Ideas]."




    Married With Debt Blogger

  • "A Ton of Tremendously Useful Content."







    Network Abundance Radio

  • "Your Enthusiasm Is Infectious."







    Ruth, a PassionSaving.com Site Visitor

  • "I Woke Up at 4:00 am and Stared at the Wall for 20 Minutes....Thank You for Doing What You Do."






    Tasha, A PassionSaving.com Site Visitor

  • "It Might Just Give You
    a New Way of Looking at Saving."






    Kevin Surbaugh, Owner of Debt Free 4Ever Blog

  • "'Staying Too Long in a Job Where You Don’t Feel Relevant Takes a Toll,' Said Rob Bennett, Who Worked for Years in a Well-Paying Corporate Communications Job Where He Didn’t Have Enough to Do."




    The New York Times

  • "You Have Started One of the Most Interesting
    and Stimulating Discussions This Board has Seen
    in a Long Time."





    Poster at Motley Fool Site

  • "A Respected Author and Commentator, Mr. Bennett has Dedicated Himself to Educating Average Investors to Avoid the Most Common Errors."





    Liberty Watch Site

  • "I've Gone from Shattered Dreams of Early Retirement to Glimpses of Hope to Reassurance from Quantitative Research."





    Patricia, A PassionSaving.com Site Visitor

  • "Some of the Most Helpful and Insightful Market Discussions on the Web Take Place on These Pages."





    A Poster at the Safe WithDrawal Rate Research Group
    (Founded by Rob)

  • "Rob is the Only Person I Know (If Only via Message Board) Who has Completely Opted Out of Participation in the Stock Bubble. And You Know What? He Has Benefited Immensely from Doing So."




    Poster at Motley Fool

  • "Makes the Subject of Saving Edgy and Fresh."







    Maxine, A Reader of Rob's Book

  • "Rob Bennett, the Author of a Book Called Passion Saving, Thinks the Saving Problem Is Partly One of Packaging. So He Prefers to Couch it in the Language of Freedom."





    The Wall Street Journal

  • "This Tip Comes from Rob Bennett
    of the Finance Site PassionSaving.com."






    Lifehacker.com

  • "I LOVE This Article and
    Am Proud to be Publishing It!"




    Chuck Yanikoski, Executive Director of
    The Association of Integrative Financial
    and Life Planning

  • "Rob Bennett: Some People Disagree With Him, and He Rubs a Lot of People the Wrong Way. But He Has Interesting Ideas About Valuation-Informed Indexing, and He Delves Into a Lot of What Makes a Successful Investing Strategy."



    Miranda Marquit, Planting Money Seeds Blog

  • "Rob….Wow…..Your Response Sent Shivers
    Up the Ol’ Pilgrim Spine."






    Neal Frankie, Owner of the Wealth Pilgrim Blog

  • "I Have Counseled My Clients to Allocate a Percentage to Equities Based Upon Market Valuations....I Feel Like I've Found a Kindred Spirit. Fascinating Web Site."





    Tom Behlmer, Financial Planner

  • “A Simple Age-Based Asset Allocation Formula Is Not Appropriate, and Any Sensible Asset-Allocation Formula Should Combine Both Age/Investment Horizon and Market Valuation Levels.”




    RationalInvestor.biz

  • "Had a Guest Post This Week from Rob Bennett, Where He Discusses the Benefits of Value-Informed Indexing, Which I Find Very Intriguing."





    Sustainable Personal Finance Blog

  • "I Can Appreciate Rob's Comments.... Buy-and-Hold?
    For the Most Part, a Long Obsolete Theory."






    Neal Deutsch, Certified Financial Planner

  • "Utterly Brilliant!"







    Secrets of Retiring Early Reader

  • "Your Website Is So Enjoyable That It Is Keeping Me From My Research As I Am So Excited That I Have Found Such a Valuable Resource."





    Stuart, a PassionSaving.com Site Visitor

  • "What We're Talking About Here Really
    ...Is Empowerment."






    Motley Fool Poster

  • "The Return Predictor Is Based upon the Principle that Over the Long Term, Stock Market Prices Will Reflect the Ten-Years Earnings Growth of the Underlying Companies. Prices Return to a Common Growth Pattern."




    Links.com Review of The Stock-Return Predictor

  • "Rob’s Arguments in Favor of Value Investing Actually Make a Lot of Sense In a Way That Should Make Any Rational Buy-and-Holder Uncomfortable."





    Pop Economics Blog

  • "What I Don't Understand Is How Rob Can Correspond in Such a Sweet and Polite Way
    -- Yet He Irritates Me to No End!"





    Financial WebRing Forum Poster

  • "You Go About It in a Manner that is Catastrophically Unproductive by Adding Missionary Zeal that Inflates Your Importance and Demeans Others. The Whole Idea That There is a New School of Safe Withdrawal Rates Reeks of Personal Aggrandizement."



    Scott Burns, Dallas Morning News

  • "Inflammatory."







    Morningstar.com Site Administrator

  • “What Warren Buffett Did Was Essentially Quite Close to What Rob Bennett Has Written. Buffett Has in Fact Been Cleverly Incorporating Long-Term Market Timing Based on Valuation of the Market in His Allocation of Money to Stocks.”



    Investor Notes Blog

  • "This Report Offers A Fresh Perspective That Is Rarely Found In Other Financial Literature."






    Secrets of Retiring Early Reader

  • "Rob Bennett Says That Market Timing Based on Aggregate P/E Ratios Can Be a Far More Effective Strategy. This Claim Is Consistent With Shiller's Analysis and I Can See How It Might Be So."




    Rajiv Sethi, Economics Professor at Columbia Univeristy

  • "Retiring Early Was A Concept I Did Not Entertain. I Was Going to Retire at 65 After Putting in 40 Years. Now I Am Glad To Say That All That Has Changed."





    Secrets of Retiring Early Reader

  • "In a Couple of Days, I Had
    Devoured the Entire Book."






    Reader of Rob's Book

  • "FIRECalc May Not Be the Last Word
    on Safe Withdrawal Rates."






    Jonathan Clements, Wall Street Journal

  • "It Seems to Me That Some on This Board Feel Threatened by the Arrival of Rob and His Ideas. They Feel a Threat to Their Perceived Elite Status."





    Motley Fool Poster

  • "You've Got to Say One Thing for Rob. He Has NEVER Lowered Himself to Ad Hominen Attacks -- Subliminal or Otherwise -- on Any Other Person on This Board. Not Once. Ever. At Least Give Him Credit for That."




    Motley Fool Poster

  • "I Have Never Seen Rob Show Incivility. No Matter What. Truly Amazing. Either He Is Really the Output of an Artificial Intelligence Program, or the Man's on the Way to Becoming a Saint!"




    Early Retirement Forum Poster

  • "You're the Politest Guy on the Internet.
    Such a Soft Touch!"






    Jonathan Lewis

  • "Props for Keeping Your Cool in the Married with Debt Article. Best of Luck Combating Buy-and-Hold."






    Money Mamba Blogger

  • "I Caught Up [at the Financial Bloggers Conference] With a Fairly Controversial Financial Blogger
    Named Rob Bennett, Who Struck Me As the
    Nicest Guy Around. There -- I Said It!"




    Digerati Life Blogger

  • "In Rob Bennett's Case, He Was Banned for No Known Listed Forum Policy. Except His Viewpoint Was Different From Other Bogleheads and [He Was Perceived As] a Threat."




    Investor Junkie Blog

  • "Mr. Bennett, You Are Spot on About Integrating Some Type of Valuation Filter to One's Stock Allocation. Astute Investors Have Incorporated Some Type of 'Valuation Timing' Into Their Investment Decisions Since the Beginning of Time."



    Poster at the Psy Fi Blog

  • "His Insights Into What Is Really Going On In The Stock Market Are Quite Compelling."






    Future Storm Blog

  • "It Was an Epiphany...Valuation-Informed Indexing Beats Buy-and-Hold Over Most Long-Term Holding Periods at Much Lower Volatility."





    Sam, a PassionSaving.com Site Visitor

  • "I Am Intrigued By Your Ideas."







    Adam Butler, Portfolio Manager

  • "I Read the Book and I Loved It.
    The Philosophy Resonated with Me.
    I Am a Believer in Your Concept."





    Dr. Peter Weiss, Author of More Health, Less Care

  • "If Your Investment Ideas Can Do for Investing
    What Weston Price’s Ideas Did for Food,
    You’ve Got Our Attention."





    End Times Hoax Blog

  • "I Have Looked at His Website and Reviewed His Research and Find It Both Compelling and Completely Logical and Common-Sense-Based."





    Poster at Free Money Finance Blog

  • "If Investors Paid More Attention to Valuations, We Would Have Fewer Boom-and-Bust Cycles. The Investing Institutions Are Definitely Going to Avoid It Because It Affects Their Income."




    Hope to Prosper Blog

  • "The Calculators on Your Site Are Great Resources. It Amazes Me How So Many People Can Say 'Valuations Matter' Yet, in the Next Breath, They'll Say That We Should Ignore Valuations."




    John Marlowe, Logistics Analyst at Hess Corporation

  • "Must Read As Per My Viewpoint
    For All Value Seekers."






    Ajit Vakil, Value Investing Congress

  • "His Approach Is Both Mathematically Rigorous
    and Easy to Understand."






    Online Investing AI Blog

  • "There Is Nothing More Doubtful of Success Than a New System. The Initiator Has the Enmity of All Who Profit By Preservation of the Old Institution and Merely Lukewarm Defenders in Those Who Gain By the New One."




    Machiavelli

  • "Difficult Subjects Can Be Explained to the Most Slow-Witted Man If He Has Not Formed Any Idea of Them. But the Simplest Thing Cannot Be Made Clear to the Most Intelligent Man If He Believes He Knows Already What Is Laid Before Him."



    Tolstoy

  • "I Am Not Afraid. I Was Born to Do This."







    Joan of Arc

  • "I Certainly Have Seen the Academic Profession Squelching Unfashionable ideas and Have Often Been on the Wrong Side of It. Kuhn Shows How Most Pathbreaking Scientific Ideas Are Rejected at First, Usually for Decades.”




    Carol Osler, Brandeis International Business School

  • "First They Ignore You, Then They Ridicule You, Then They Fight You, Then You Win."






    Ghandi

  • "We Cannot Assume the Existence of Predictability Just Because There Are No Studies That Fully Reject It."






    Valeriy Zakamulin, Economics Professor

  • "I Am Also Extremely Grateful to Rob Bennett for Motivating This Topic and Contributing His Experience and Encouragement."





    Wade Pfau, Academic Researcher

  • "Rob Bennett Was an Early Pioneer in 3rd Generation Modeling by Advocating (Through Various Online Forums) that Withdrawal Rates Must Be Adjusted for Market Valuations Consistent with Research by Campbell and Shiller."



    Todd Tresidder, Financial Mentor Blog

  • "I Am Fascinated by the Growing Body of Research that Revolves Around the P/E10 Ratio by Robert Shiller, Doug Short, Wade Pfau, Michael Kitces, John Hussman, Crestmont Research, Jim Otar, Mike Philbrick, Adam Butler & Rob Bennett."



    Kay Conheady in Advisor Perspectives

  • "Rob Is an Enigma in the Personal Finance World. He Has Interesting Theories on Investing Based on Market Valuations. But He Weaves a Tale Which Makes the Stories of Alexander Litvinenko & Gareth Williams Seem Tame by Comparison."



    Don't Quit Your Day Job Blog

  • "In Recent Years, the 4 Percent Rule
    Has Been Thrown Into Doubt."






    The Wall Street Journal

  • "A Safe Withdrawal Rate Is Very Dependent
    on the Valuation of the Stockmarket
    at the Retirement Date."





    Economist Magazine

  • "I Have Read Everything I Can About Valuation-Informed Indexing. Buy-and-Hold Is Extremely Problematic. I Respect the Passion, Hard Work and Research That You Have Put Into This Very Important Issue. Your Work Has Huge Value."



    Carl Richards, Owner of Clearwater Asset Management

  • "The World of Personal Finance Blogging Needs More Rob Bennetts. He’s Passionate. He’s Intelligent. He’s Writing Things That Go Against the Grain."





    Financial Uproar Blog

  • "Beyond Awesome."







    Larry, a PassionSaving.com Site Visitor

  • "The Wealth Management Industry Seems Intent on Containing This Discussion for Fear Clients Might Discover that the Emperor Has No Clothes."





    Adam Butler, Portfolio Manager

  • "Recommended Reading."







    Jesse's Cafe Americain Blog

  • “All Who Are Still Holding Equities at Present Levels Because Their Financial Adviser Insists that Timing Market Cycles Is Impossible to Do -- Read This!"





    Juggling Dynamite Blog

  • "The Fact that Aggressive and Short-Term Market Timing Was Unproductive Did Not Mean That There Were Never Times When It Would Be Wealth-Maximizing to Get Out of the Market."



    Scott Burris,Director of the Center for
    Health Law, Policy and Practice

  • "The Amount of Return You Can Expect From a Diversified Equity Portfolio Is Inversely Correlated to the Market Valuation at the Start of the Holding Period. It Is One of the Most Robust Statistical Relationships in Modern Finance."




    Todd Tresidder, Financial Mentor Blog

  • "Why Would Your Job Be Jeopardized
    By Such a Sensible Claim?"





    Marcelle Chauvet, Econmics Professor
    at University of California

  • "Received Worrisome E-Mail from Rob Bennett. Warns of Risk with Buy-and-Hold Investing
    -- I Have No Clue."





    Vivek Wadhaw, Business Week Columnist

  • "As Attorney, Tax Expert and Financial Writer Rob Bennett Told Us, the Problem Is That, By the Time Shiller Published His Research, Many Big Names Had Already Endorsed Buy-and-Hold."




    ZeroHedge.com

  • "This Seems to Me to Be a Fundamental Challenge to Some of the Most Basic Tenets of the Boglehead Paradigm."






    Bogleheads Forum Poster

  • "You Want to be Very, Very Wary of Anything Connected with Rob Bennett, the Most Infamous Troll in the History of Investing Forums on the Internet."





    Alex Fract, Owner of Bogleheads Forum

  • “I’ve Had My Fill of Those Long-Winded Posts that Include Distortions, Unsubstantiated Claims, Misquotes and Comments Taken Out of Context.”




    Mel Lindauer, Co-Author of
    The Bogleheads Guide to Investing

  • "Haven't You Noticed Yet That NO ONE Discusses Your Ideas, NO ONE Mentions Your Name, NO ONE Goes To Your Web Site."





    One of the Greaney Goons

  • "I've Had Similar Experiences. I Know of Two Young Professors Who Wanted to Do Research on Fundamental Index and Reported to Me That Their Colleagues Advised Them That This Line of Research Could Derail Their Career Prospects."



    Rob Arnott, Financial Analysts Journal Editor

  • "As with Drug Studies Funded by Drug Companies, It Would Be Churlish to Suppose that the Chicago School of Business Was in the Bag. But It Would Also Be Idealistic to Assume That There Was No Funding Bias at All."




    Bogleheads Poster

  • "This Sort of Intimidation Is Not Acceptable. The Cigarette and Pharmaceutical Industries Found Research Supporting Their Products By Funding It. But That Was Big Money Supporting Outcomes, Not Dissuading Others."




    Lyn Graham, 25-Year CPA

  • "Financial Economists Gave Little Warning to the Public About the Fragility of Their Models. There Is No Ethical Code for Professional Economic Scientists. There Should Be One."



    Paper Titled The Financial Crisis and
    the Systemic Failure of Academic Economics

  • "The Situation [Referring to the Intimidation Tactics Used to Silence Academic Researcher Wade Pfau's Reporting of the Dangers of Buy-and-Hold Investing Strategies] Seems Well Below Any Professional and Academic Acceptable Standards."



    Albert Sanchez Graells, Law Lecturer

  • Many Academics Can Become Quite Strident When Their Views Are Challenged. Academia Is Often Subject to Self-Serving Bias That Obliterates Ethical Bounds."





    Ted Sichelman, Law Professor

  • "I Don't Like Too Much the Conspiracy Idea. I Am Not Pressured By Anyone in My Research."






    Roberto Reno, Economics Professor

  • "This Is What Investing Should Be -- Calculated, Deliberate, Confident, Informed and Simple."






    Aaron Friday, Owner of Aaron's Blob Blog

  • "It Is Obvious that Rob, in Attempting to Identify New Safe Withdrawal Rate Strategies...Is Goring Your Ox. If Rob Improves on [the] Safe Withdrawal Rate Methodology, the Implication Is Clear: You Are All, Metaphorically, Out of Business."



    Bogleheads Poster

  • "I Applaud His Effort to Inject Another Piece of Objectivity Into a Very Complex, Highly Subjective Topic -- Making Money in the Market."





    Bogleheads Poster

  • "Naturally, I Am Finding That Valuation-Informed Indexing Can Allow You to Reach a Wealth Target With a Lower Saving Rate and to Use a Higher Withdrawal Rate in Retirement Than You Could With a Fixed Allocation."



    Wade Pfau, Professor of Retirement Income
    at The American College

  • "A Careful Examination of Past Returns Can Establish Some Probabilities About the Prospective Parameters of Return, Offering Intelligent Investors a Basis for Rational Expectations About Future Returns."




    Jack Bogle, Founder of Vanguard Funds

  • "The Ability to Estimate the Long-Term Future Returns of the Major Asset Classes Is Perhaps the Most Important Investment Skill That An Indivisual Can Possess."




    William Bernstein, Author of The Four Pillars of Investing

  • "The Stock Market Resembles Roulette. In Both Cases, the Accuracy of Sensible Forecasts Rises Over Time."






    Andrew Smithers, Co-Author of Valuing Wall Street

  • "Returns Are for the Most Part a Matter of Simple Arithmetic...Much of Our Industry Seems Fearful of Basic Arithmetic of This Sort."





    Rob Arnott, Financial Analysts Journal Editor

  • "How Can It Be That One-Year Returns Are So Apparantly Random and Yet Ten-Year Returns Are Mostly Forecastable? In Looking at One-Year Returns, One Sees a Lot of Noise. But Over Longer Time Intervals the Noise Effectively Averages Out and Is Less Important."




    Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller

  • "The Notion That Rich Valuations Will Not Be Followed By Sub-Par Long-Term Returns Is a Speculative Idea That Runs Counter to All Historical Evidence. It Is an Iron Law of Finance That Valuations Drive Long-Term Returns."




    John Hussman

  • "It's January and the Temperature Is Below Freezing. If You Asked Me Whether It Will be Warmer or Cooler Next Tuesday, I Would Be Unable to Say. However, If You Asked Me What Temperature to Expect on April 9, I Could Predict "Warmer Than Today" and Almost Surely Be Right."



    Michael Alexanfer, Author of Stock Cycles

  • "If the Response Is "Who Knew?", It Won't Be Much Comfort for Retirees in the Employment Line at Wal-Mart. This is Especially True Since a Rational Understanding of History and the Drivers of Longer-Term Stock Returns Can Help Retirees To Avoid That Surprise."




    Ed Easterling, Author of Unexpected Returns

  • "New of the Demise of the Random Walk Has Only Very Slowly Spread, In Part Because Its Overthrow Came as a Shock. If the Random Walk Hypothesis Were Correct, the Most Likely Return Would Be the Historic Average Return. The Evidence, However, Is Strongly Against This."



    Andrew Smithers, Co-Author of Valuing Wall Street

  • "I Don't Think We Can Debate the Merits of This Type of Forecasting [Referring to the Numbers Generated by The Stock-Return Predictor] Unless We Believe 'This Time It's Different.'"



    Poster at Bogleheads Forum
    (Before the Ban on Honest Posting Was Adopted There)

  • "I've Seen Absolutely Nothing From You That I Can Use in a Tangible Fashion to Formulate an Investment Plan. Your Ideas Are So Mushy That It's a Complete Waste of Time to Even Consider Them."




    Bogleheads Forum Poster

  • "Do You Really Think Your Tool
    [The Stock-Return Predictor]
    Is 'Wiser' Than the Market?
    If It Was That Easy,
    Everybody Would Be Doing It."



    Bogleheads Forum Poster

  • "The Expected Return of Stocks [As Reported By The Stock-Return Predictor] Needs To Be At Least the Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) Rate for Stock Investing To Make Sense."




    Bogleheads Forum Poster

  • "I Have Used Valuations to Adjust My Asset Allocation For Many Years With Very Favorable Results."





    Poster at Bogleheads Forum
    (Prior to the Ban on Honest Posting)

  • "I Don't Care If You Do or Don't Believe That the Market Will Behave Similarly in the Future As It Has in the Past. Either Way, This [The Stock-Return Predictor] Is an Excellent Way to Understand What the Market Has Done In the Past."


    Poster at Bogleheads Forum
    [Prior to the Ban on Honest Posting]

  • "My Role Is To Give People Who Don't Like What the Historical Stock-Return Data Says About the Effect of Valuations on Long-Term Returns Somebody To Yell At On Internet Discussion Boards."



    Rob Bennett at Bogleheads Forum
    (Prior to the Ban on Honest Posting)

  • "It Really Is a Shame and Indefensible That So Many Feel the Need to Jump Into It With No Interest of Posting on the Topic But Just to Disrupt. Are You That Insecure? Some on the Forum Have an Interest in This Topic. If You Don't, Stay Out!"



    Poster at Bogleheads Forum
    [Prior to the Ban on Honest Posting]

  • "Irrational Behavior Does Follow Patterns. But How Many Experts in Behavioral Finance Believe That Such Knowledge Can Be Used to Predict Markets? Basically, None. Your Model Cannot Attain the Level of Predictive Value You Claim."



    Poster at Bogleheads Forum
    [Prior to the Ban on Honest Posting]

  • "The Safe Withdrawal Rate Studies Are Based on History. This [The Retirement Risk Evaluator] Shows, Based on the Same History, What the Probabilities Are for the Future at Various Starting Points. If the First Has Value, Then Surely This Does Too."



    Poster at Bogleheads Forum

  • "There Are Hundreds of People Who Contributed to This. This Calculator [The Stock-Return Predictor] Demonstrates in a Compelling Way the Power of This New Internet Discussion-Board Communications Medium."




    Rob Bennett at the Bogleheads Forum
    (Prior to the Ban on Honest Posting)

  • "A P/E10 of'26' Is Bad. Now Look at the 30-Year Return Predicted by the Calculator -- 5.4 Percent Real. That's Not Bad. There Are All Sorts of Strategic Implications That Follow From Understanding That Stocks Provide Different Sorts of Returns Over Different Sorts of Time-Periods."




    Rob Bennett

  • "I Would Never Invest in Anything Without Having Any Idea What the Expected Return Is. For Instance, I Would Not Walk Into a Bank And Say "I'll Take One Certificate of Deposit, Please" WIthout Asking What Rate They Are Offering."



    Poster at Bogleheads Forum
    [Prior to the Ban on Honest Posting]

  • "I've Seen Things Said on Investing Boards That I Have Never Heard Said in Discussions of Any Non-Investing Topic. The Question of Whether Valuations Affect Long-Term Returns Is a Topic That Causes People More Emotional Angst Than Does Abortion or Impeachment Proceedings or the War in Iraq."



    Rob Bennett at the Bogleheads Forum

  • "It's Not Possible For Those Who Have Come to Believe That Stocks Are Always Best to Accept that Valuations Matter. The Two Beliefs Are Mutually Exclusive. If Valuations Matter, There Is Obviously Some Valuation Level At Which Stocks Are Not Best. The Two Paradigms Cannot Be Reconciled."


    Rob Bennett

  • "The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Is Over. Rob Bennett Has Won.The Technical Evidence Supporting This Assertion Is Rock Solid."




    John Walter Russell,
    Owner of the Early Retirement Planning Insights Site
    [This Statement Was Put Forward on August 3, 2003.]

  • "I Am Afraid that the Emperor SWR [for "Safe Withdrawal Rate"] Has No Clothes."





    A Poster at the Early Retirement Forum
    [This Statement Was Put Forward on October 8, 2003.]

  • "I Cite You and John Walter Russell in My Paper as the Earliest and Strongest Advocates of This Approach [New School Safe Withdrawal Rate Research]."




    Wade Pfau, Professor of Retirement Income
    at The American College

  • "Dear Rob -- I Just Became Aware of Your Past Research in September. Since Then, I've Read Archives From Many Discussion Boards and Websites, and I Always Find Your Writing to Be Very Interesting and Intriguing."



    Wade Pfau, Professor of Retirement Income
    at The American College

  • "I Think Rob Bennett Did Provide An Important Contribution in Terms of Describing a Way for P/E10 to Guide Asset Allocation for Long-Term Conservative Investors. I Also Think He Was Right on the Issue of Safe Withdrawal Rates."


    Wade Pfau, Professor of Retirement Income
    at The American College

  • "What Studies Show This [That Long-Term Timing Doesn't Work]? In Particular, Are There Some Academic Studies That I Haven't Found Yet? That's All I Want to Know."




    Academic Researcher Wade Pfau at the Bogleheads Forum After His Own Search of the Literature Turned Up Not a Single Such Study

  • "Because the Precise Timing of This Mean Reversion Is Not Known in Advance, Expecting the Result to Happen in the Short-Term Will Not Be Possible. But Long-Term Investors Who Can Be Patient Can Wait for This Mean Reversion and Will Eventually Come Out Ahead."




    Academic Researcher Wade Pfau

  • "Your Work Is at Odds with the Ethos of the Board -- Here the Theme is John Bogle's Philosophy, Which Eschews Market Timing. This Board Came Into Existence to ESCAPE One Individual, the Very Individual With Whom You Have Openly Aligned Yourself."




    A Lindaurhead (to Researcher Wade Pfau)

  • "The Problem With Long-Term Market Timing Is That It Takes Too Long to Find Out If You Are Right or Wrong."






    A Poster at the Bogleheads Forum

  • "Why Is It Such an Odious Violation of the Tenets of Bogleheadism to Explore Whether Someone Who Has Enough Patience Might Be Able to Benefit from the Transitory Nature of Speculative Returns (the Idea That the P/E Ratio Eventually Ends Up Where It Started)?"




    A Poster at the Bogleheads Forum

  • "Let Me Explain Why I Posted About This Here. Valuation-Informed Indexing Has Had Critics for Years. But Until Norbert Did It In 2008, Nobody Seemed to Have Provided a Serious Investigation of It. I Couldn't Understand Why. That Bothered Me."



    Researcher Wade Pfau at the Bogleheads Forum
    (Prior to the Ban on Honest Posting)

  • "If You Really Don't Like Market Timing in Any and All Forms, You May Not See Any Point in an Empirical Investigation. You View Me as One of a Long Line of Hucksters Trying to Sell You Some Snake Oil. I Don't Want to Be Such a Person."



    Researcher Wade Pfau at the Bogleheads Forum
    (Prior to the Ban on Honest Posting)

  • "Having a Completely Ineleastic Demand for Equities Is a Bit Bonkers. No One Acts That Way with Life's Other Important Commodities. Campbell Advocates a Linear Valuations-Based Strategy so That You Wouldn't Be Making Big Changes. This Would Be Like Rebalancing But More Flexible."



    A Poster at the Bogleheads Forum

  • "The Whole Idea of Valuation-Informed Indexing Belongs to You. Do You Mind if I call the Paper 'Valuation-Informed Indexing'? I Would Give You Credit. I Have Been Toying With the Idea of Sending the Paper to the Journal of Finance, Which Is the Most Prestigious Journal in Academic Finance."


    Academic Researcher Wade Pfau, in an E-Mail to Rob

  • "I Definitely Need to Cite You as the Founder of Valuation-Informed Indexing, As I Have Not Found Anyone Else Who Can Lay Claim to That. Shiller Pointed Out the Predictive Power of P/E10 But Never Discussed How to Incorporate It Into Asset Allocation, As Far As I Know."




    Academic Researcher Wade Pfau

  • "I Tested a Wide Variety of Assumptions About Asset Allocation, Valuation-Based Decision Rules, Whether the Period Is 10, 20, 30 or 40 Years, and Lump-Sum vs. Dollar-Cost Averaging To Show That the Results Are Quite Robust to Changes In Any of These Assumptions."




    Academic Researcher Wade Pfau

  • "Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing Works!"




    Academic Researcher Wade Pfau
    (Wade Holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton.)
    (The Buy-and-Hold Mafia Threatened to Get Wade Fired From His Job When He Reported His Findings.)

  • "I Wrote Up the Programs to Test Your Valuation-Informed Indexing Strategies Against Buy-and-Hold and I Am Quite Excited. You Say in the RobCast That VII Should Beat Buy-and-Hold About 90 Percent of the Time. I Am Getting Results That Support This."




    Academic Researcher Wade Pfau

  • "Never Underestimate the Power of a Dominant Academic Idea to Choke Off Competing Ideas, and Never Underestimate the Unwillingness of Academics to Change Their Views in the Face of Evidence. They Have Decades of Their Research and Academic Standing to Defend."




    Jeremy Grantham

  • "There's So Much That's False and Nutty
    in Modern Investing Practice."






    Warren Buffett

  • "Following Conventional Wisdom Has Led a Generation of Investors Down the Road to Ruin."






    Steve Hanke

  • "It Is Sad That the Idea That Price Doesn't Matter...Should Ever Have Been Seriously Considered".






    Andrew Smithers, Co-Author of Valuing Wall Street

  • "The Conventional Wisdom of Modern Investing Is Largely Myth and Urban Legend."





    Rob Arnott, Former Editor of
    Fianncial Analysts Journal

  • "Economics Is a Dog's Breakfast of Theoretical Ideas and Alleged Causal Relationships That Are At All Times Unproven and In Dispute."





    Terence Corcoran, Editor of National Post

  • "Since They Did Not Diagnose the Disease, There Is Little Popular Confidence That They Know the Cure. What If Economics Is, Actually, At the Same Level as Medicine Was When Doctors Still Believed in the Application of Leeches?"




    Gideon Rachman, Financial Times

  • "One of the Most Remarkable Errors
    in the History of Economics."



    Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller
    (Referring to the Logical Leap from the Finding That Short-Term Price Changes Are Unpredictable to the Conclusion That the Market Sets Prices Properly)

  • "Everything Has Fallen Apart."






    Peter Bernstein, Author of Against the Gods
    (Referring to Old Views About How Markets Work)

  • "We Wonder Why Funds and Banks, Full of the Best and Brightest, Have Made Such a Mess of Things. Part of the Reason Is That We Have Taught Economic Nonsense to Two Generations of Students."




    John Mauldin, Thoughts From the Frontline

  • "Perhaps Most Scandalously, the Theory [Behind Buy-and-Hold] Remained Received Wisdom Long After Empirical and Theoretical Arguments Had Demolished It Within the Academic Community."




    John Authers, Financial Times

  • "I Love the Humans Dearly (the Title of the Book I Am Writing Is Investing for Humans: How to Get What Works on Paper to Work in Real Life) But They Can Be a Trial at Times. Hey! Helping the Humans Learn What It Takes to Invest Effectively Is Not All That Different From Being Married!



    Rob Bennett

  • "We Are Going to See Hearts Melt Following the Next Crash. I Will Be Working Side-By-Side With All of My Many Buy-and-Hold Friends to Rebuild Our Broken Economy."





    Rob Bennett

  • "Wow, I Did Not Realize You Had Achieved This Much Success and Had Many Devoted Believers/Followers. That’s Great, Then Ignore the Opposition. It Is Great to Have Opposition: That Means You Are Doing Something Right."




    Robert Savickas, Associate Finance Professor
    at George Washington University

  • "I Do NOT Believe I Know It All. I Believe That Shiller Discovered Something Very Important and It Appalls Me That More People Are Not Exploring the Implications of His Findings. My Aim Is To Launch a National Debate."




    Rob Bennett

  • "I Can See How Many Readers Would Be Put Off by the Somewhat Sensational/Scandalist Tone and Would Not Persevere to Read, Thinking You Are Losing Your Mind."




    Robert Savickas, Associate Finance Professor
    at George Washington University

  • "I LOVE Everything About Buy-and-Hold Other Than the Failure to Encourage Investors to Take Price Into Consideration When Setting Their Stock Allocations. That's a Mistake That Was Made Because Shiller’s Research Was Not Available at the Time The Strategy Was Being Developed."



    Rob Bennett

  • "Valuation-Informed Indexing Sounds Like a Real Thing. If It Is and I Can Thoroughly Understand It, Then It Will End Up In My Classrooms and in My Students' Minds (Of Course, With References to You and Wade)."




    Robert Savickas, Associate Finance Professor
    at George Washington University

  • "I Can Confirm Wade Pfau's Experience. Whenever I Send My Papers to the Financial Analysts Journal or Similar Traditional Journals, I Get Rejected."





    Joachim Klement, CIO at Wellershoff & Partners

  • "As a Fan of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, I Know That Progress Can Be Frustratingly Slow and What Is Typically Needed Is Either a Crisis or the Ascent of a New Generation of Scientists Who Did Not Build Their Careers on the Old Models and Theories."




    Joachim Klement, CIO at Wellershoff & Partners

  • "We Trace the Deeper Roots [of the Financial Crisis] to the Economics' Profession's Insistence on Constructing Models That, By Design, Disregard the Key Elements Driving Outcomes in Real World Markets."




    Knowledge@Wharton

  • "Rob Gets Himself So Worked Up Over What Someone Else Is Doing With Their Own Money and Not Bothering Rob in the Least. As Long As They Aren't Knocking on Your Basement Door, What Do You Care? They Are Happy and Content. Leave Well Enough Alone and Focus on Your Own Account."


    Dab, One of the Greaney Goons

  • "I've Been on Forum Since the BBS Days and I Think Rob is Special. He Could Be an Internet Meme If He Put Some Effort Into It. Someday, He Will Realize That the Only Thing He's Good At Is Being an Epic Loser. He Just Needs to Embrace That Idea and Run With It. Watch Out, LOLCats, Here Comes Pathetic Guy!"


    Wabmaster, One of the Greaney Goons

  • "Your Lies Are Not Even in the Realm of the Possible, Much Less Actually Credible, Much Less Actually True."






    Drip Guy, One of the Greaney Goons

  • "I'm Your Friend. I Am Not a Boil on Your Ass."






    Rob Bennett, In a Response Comment
    to One of the Greaney Goons

  • "You Guys [the Greaney Goons] Are the Same Jokers Who Have Done This Before, Sparring with Rob Over Nonsensical Issues On This Site and Others, Leveling Personal Attacks, and You Don't Even Use Real Names! Rob Is Entitled to His Opinion, But the Fact That You Challenge Every Jot and Tittle of What He Says Makes It Clear You Have An Unholy Agenda. Please Take It Elsehwere."

    Kevin Mercadante,
    Owner of the Out of Your Rut Site

  • "Rob, Take This As Friendly Advice. You're a Smart and Articulate Guy and You Could Be Making Valuable Contributions to This Discussion. I've Dealt with the Mentally Ill Before and I've Found That They Sometimes Can Be Reasonable If Gently Redirected."



    Goon Poster

  • "Always Remember Others May Hate You, But Those Who Hate You Don't Win Unless You Hate Them, and Then You Destroy Yourself."





    Richard Nixon

  • "I’m a Numbers Guy. And I Believe I Understand Rob’s Thesis, that Future Returns, Over the Next Decade, Have a Tight Inverse Correlation to the PE10 for the Starting Point. Remember, Correlation Doesn’t Need to be 100%, Only That There’s a Bell Curve of Potential Outcomes that Shift Meaningfully Based on the Input."


    Owner of Joe Taxpayer Blog

  • "What a Difference a Threat to Get the Father of Two Small Children Fired From His Job Has on an Investing Discussion, Eh? Long Live Buy-and-Hold! It’s Science! With a Marketing Twist!"




    Rob, Referring to the Wade Pfau Matter

  • "I Respect Rob and His Analysis. He's Bright, Energetic and Passionate. [The Goon Stuff] Is Really Nonsense. I Enjoy a Thought-Provoking Conversation With People I Respect."





    Owner of Joe Taxpayer Blog

  • "The Fact that Shiller is a Proponent of the Approach Takes it from a Fringe View to Mainstream, in my Opinion."






    Owner of Joe Taxpayer Blog

  • "I Have had Academic Researchers Tell Me That They Dream of the Day When They Will be Able to do Honest Research Once Again. I Have had Investment Advisors Tell me That They Dream of the Day When They Will be Able to Give Honest Investing Advice Again."



    Rob Bennett

  • "Let’s Call a Spade a Spade, Shall We? Wade Pfau Stole Your Research and Put His Name on it, Throwing You Just a Tiny Crumb of Acknowledgement to Ward Off a Lawsuit. He’s Profiting Handsomely By His Theft, Leading a Charmed Life, Widely Published, Widely Respected. While Rob Bennett Continues to Toil in Total Obscurity. It’s So Incredibly Unfair, I Think If It Happened to Me, It Could Actually Drive Me Insane."

    One of the Greaney Goons

Navigation Menu 
  • About Us
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  • Blog
  • Passion Saving
    • 20 Dangerous Money Myths — They Think We’re Stupid!
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  • Valuation-Informed Indexing
    • Why Buy-and-Hold Investing Can Never WorkThe Buy-and-Holders are not evil people. They are smart and good people. They made a mistake. They were so excited about their early findings that they experienced cognitive dissonance when the mistake was revealed. They painted themselves into a corner and now don’t know how to get out. This article explains how the mistake was made and how we came to find ourselves in the trap we are in today.
    • About Valuation-Informed IndexingBackground, Basics and Links to Materials Giving More In-Depth Information
    • The Stock-Return PredictorStocks are NOT always worth buying. That’s a Wall Street lie! This calculator performs a regression analysis on the 140 years of historical stock-return data to reveal the most likely annualized 10-year return for stocks starting from any valuation level. It essentially tells you the price tag for stocks so that you can know whether they are worth buying or not.
    • The Retirement Risk EvaluatorRob pointed out the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies in May 2002. That post kicked off the biggest controversy in the history of the internet. Today, The Wall Street Journal, Smart Money and The Economist all acknowledge that Rob had it right all along. But they still don’t provide calculators that give the right numbers! The safe withdrawal rate is not a constant number but VARIES with changes in the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. This calculator provides all the details you need for effective planning.
    • The Investor’s Scenario SurferI have run this calculator hundreds of time. it is in my assessment the most powerful tool for learning how stock investing works available today. You have the option of choosing a new stock allocation in each year of a realistic 30-year sequence of returns. You can compare your results with what you would have achieved with a Buy-and-Hold strategy. You will find that Valuation-Informed Indexing strategies yield larger portfolios in 90 percent of your tests of the concept. What matters is what happens in the long term! This tool tells you what strategies give the best results in the long term.
    • The Investment Strategy TesterIf you are worried about losses you have suffered in recent years, you can use this tool to learn what you need to do to get back on the track to early financial freedom. The Strategy Tester lets you design a strategy you want to check out. Then it runs the hundreds of Scenario Surfer tests to see how the strategy compares with other possibilities you identify. The color-coded graphic gives you a good idea of what the odds are of good and bad outcomes for up to four investing strategies at a time.
    • The Returns Sequence Reality CheckerWe all root for price gains in the stock market. Should we? This calculator says “no!” Today’s price increase lowers tomorrow’s price increase. This has been so for the entire history of the market. So the question is whether you should want to pay more for stocks now or later. You are far better off paying more later because that means you get to acquire more gain-producing goodness earlier in life and thus you will enjoy more compounding return magic. This one will blow your mind. It’s a very simple concept but a highly counter-intutive one and one that will someday soon change how we all think about stock investing.
    • Nine Valuation-Informed-Indexing Portfolio Allocation StrategiesThis is the most popular of the 200 hour-long RobCasts that I provide at the site. It explores the nuts-and-bolts aspects of Valuation-Informed Indexing — How often do you change your allocation and by how much?
  • The Buy-and-Hold Crisis
    • Academic Researcher Silenced by Threats to Get Him Fired From His Job After Showing Dangers of Buy-and-Hold Investing StrategiesMy aim is to get this story reported on the front page of the New York Times. On the day that happens, all the nastiness will stop. We will all be working together to bring the economic crisis to an end and to enter the greatest period of economic growth in our history.
    • Academic Researcher Silenced By Threats to Get Him Fired From His Job After Showing Dangers of Buy-and-Hold Investing Strategies — Teaser VersionThis is a briefer version of the same article, the article that I believe is the most important one that I have written in my 30-year journalism career. I believe that the story told at this web site is the most important economic and political story of any of our lifetimes and this article sums up the key points in one little package of dynamite. If Buy-and-Hold were a legitimate strategy, every Buy-and-Holder would be ashamed to learn that even one academic researcher was threatened. We cannot move forward so long as the intimidation tactics of the Buy-and-Holders dominate all discussions of what works in stock investing. I use this short version of the article in my e-mail campaigns aimed at getting researcher and stock advisors and bloggers and journalists and policymakers involved in our effort to open the internet up to honest posting on ALL investing topics. Please help get others involved if you can. We are all in this together!
    • Corruption in the Investing Advice Field — The Wade Pfau StoryThis article provides links to all of my reports on my 16 months of correspondence with Academic Researcher Wade Pfau, the collaboration that produced the research we co-authored that shows millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent (Ssshh! The Wall Street Con Men don’t want this one getting out!) If you retain doubts re whether Valuation-Informed Indexing is a real thing, looking over the materials available at this page and then reading a few of the reports that strike you as particularly important will dispel them. I believe that Wade will someday win a Nobel prize for the work he did here. The reports show his own skepticism and his transformed into excited BELIEVER in the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept.
    • The Bennett/Pfau Research Showing Middle-Class Investors How to Reduce the Risk of Stock Investing by 70 PercentYou do not have to take on a large amount of risk to obtain good returns. Why should you? When you buy an index fund, you are buying a tin share in the productivity of the U.S. economy. The U.S. economy has been sufficiently productive to support an average annual stock return of 6.5 percent real for 140 years now. So that’s what you can expect if you invest in a sensible way. But you are not being sensible if you follow a Buy-and-Hold strategy. You MUST consider price when buying stocks just as much as you must consider price when buying anything else. This is the most important investing research published in 30 years. It frees all of us from dependence on Wall Street “experts.”
    • Buy-and-Hold Caused the Economic CrisisThe first step to curing an illness is coming up with a correct diagnosis. What we have been hearing thus far about what caused the economic crisis is Democrats yelling at Republicans and Republicans yelling at Democrats. This political attack-game gibberish will not cut it. We borrowed huge amounts of money from our future selves to finance the insane bull of the late 1990s. Now we are our future selves! Now we are paying the price! It hurts to know we caused this. Buy you know what? We never have to suffer through something like this again once we acknowledge the realities.
    • The True Cause of the Current Financial Crisis — Questions and AnswersYale Economics Professor Robert Shiller predicted the economic crisis in his book “Irrational Exuberance,” published in March 2000. How did he know? Shiller knows how stock investing works. He knows that the Pretend Money created during times of overvaluation ALWAYS disappears over the course of 10 years or so. When that money disappears from our portfolios, we cannot afford to spend as much. So tens of thousands of businesses fail and millions lose their jobs. We avoid economic crises by avoiding out-of-control bull markets. We avoid out-of-control bull markets by letting investors know the truth — When stocks are selling at insanely inflated prices, they offer a very poor long-term value proposition. The lies that Wall Street tells about stocks are destroying out free-market economic system.
    • Investing Discussion Boards Ban Honest Posting on ValuationsLots of people hate me. There was a time when I was receiving fresh death threats in my e-mail inbox on an almost daily basis. But lots of people love me too. Thousands of my fellow community members have told me that I am the first person who ever described how stock investing works in a way that truly hangs together. This article offers 101 comments of my fellow community members asking the Buy-and-Holders to knock off the funny business and permit civil and reasoned discussion of the last 30 years of peer-reviewed academic research. This article reveals the emotionalism of the Buy-and-Holders and it is the fact that Buy-and-Hold causes such emotionalism that tells me that it can never work in the long run.
    • Wall Street Journal Calls Buy-and-Hold a “Myth,” Endorses Valuation-Informed IndexingLot of smart people know that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage. They are afraid to speak out today because they know what will happen to them if they do. But they try to position themselves for the post-next-crash period, when “Buy-and-Hold” will be an obscene phrase. Bret Arends tells us that the Wall Street Con Men “are leaving out half the story.” Precisely so. The purpose of this web site is to let you in on the half of the story that the Wall Street Con Men have been keeping from you for 32 years now.

“I Have Much More Confidence in My Ability
to Understand What Is Happening”

June 27, 2008 By Rob

I’ve added Elizabeth’s story to the Middle-Class Millionaires section of the site.

Juicy Excerpt: I woke up around DJI 13200, realized I had a lot to learn and had better learn it fast, and found this site. I now have cash sitting in MMFs that has not disappeared out of my retirement funds. I also have much more confidence in my ability to understand what is happening and to respond appropriately as the situation evolves…. I thank you for your public service and, in another dimension, for the personal courage it took to make it happen.

Today’s Passion: We do not learn solely by examining logic chains. We need to hear stories of people like us doing the sorts of things we are thinking perhaps we should be doing to gain the confidence to act on what the logic chains tell us; hearing the words that give us the courage to act on the information bits supplied by the logic chains is a form of learning of its own. You will find many stories of ordinary investors like you coming to terms with the realities of stock investing at times when prices are where they are today at the Letters to the Editor section of John’s site.

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Filed Under: Investor Psychology Tagged With: Investor Psychology, safe investments

Comments

  1. John Walter Russell says

    June 27, 2008 at 10:28 am

    This kind of letter makes it all worthwhile.

    Have fun.

    John Walter Russell

  2. Rob says

    June 27, 2008 at 11:37 am

    This kind of letter makes it all worthwhile.

    Oh, I don’t know. That’s asking an awful lot of one letter, isn’t it?

    I’m joking around, of course. Elizabeth’s e-mails provided my spirits a big lift. And she has helped other community members who are at a point of wondering whether these things really are so by saying what she said.

    Thank you for your kindness, Elizabeth.

    And welcome to the Monkey House! — er, I mean the Financial Freedom Community!

    Rob

Browse Investor Psychology

  • "Many Site Owners Don't Want the Majority of Their Community Members to Be Hurt and Scared and Enraged. So They Go Along with the Demands Made By the Buy-and-Holders to Ban Further Discussion of the Findings of the Last 33 Years of Peer-Reviewed Academic Research. That Is Not the Answer! That Prolongs the Agony!" 12 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I  recently posted to another blog entry at this site: “PERMITTING HONEST POSTING.” Can you please define what you mean by that. I am unaware of any topic that has not been discussed. That’s a good question, Anonymous. What’s honest for you is not the same as what is honest for me. You believe in Buy-and-Hold. So you can put up a post saying “a high stock allocation makes sense today” or “there’s no reason to believe…

  • We Ban What We Fear 0 Comments

    There have been several occasions on which the Greaney Goons have invaded this site and tried to bring the discussions held here into the sewer to which they have pulled discussions held at a number of our Retire Early discussions boards. My reaction? I deleted the posts. In several instances, I banned the posters involved from further participation here. David Forrest has banned honest posting on safe withdrawal rates at the Motley Fool site. Bill Sholar has banned honest posting on safe…

  • "Do We Like What Comes from Telling Lies to Ourselves re What Our Stock Portfolios are Worth?" 1 Comment

    Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent last week to my friend Brian. Brian and I became friends during my days as a Capitol Hill reporter. We have stayed in touch in the years since. Brian asked: "If everyone (or the vast majority) has lost money,  are we really any poorer?" Brian: You're asking a penetrating question. I wish that everyone would take some time and think this one through. If they did, that would help a lot. The full reality is that there has been no…

  • "I Watched a Movie Monday Night ('Compliance') That Shows How Such 'Conspiracies' Really Do Happen in This World When Authority Figures Say Something And Ordinary People Feel Intimidated Into Not Speaking Up About the Absurdity of What the Authority Figures Are Saying. The Strange and Unfortunate Events That Transpire in the Movie Came to an End When One Man Took a Stand and Said That He Just Wouldn't Go Along With the Insanity. Most People Are Scared. I Am Scared. But I Am Even More Scared of What We Are Going to See If No One Stands Up." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site: It is a simple question Rob. If you lack sufficient funds to last through your entire retirement, why don't you get a job? The answer is that the work that I am doing is important work. The fact that I am not able to make money today doing this work is trivial given how important it is that this story be told. I am confident that I will make plenty of money on the…

  • "We Don't Accept the Phony Numbers. We Fear the Emotional Pain We Experience When Our Longstanding Game of Let's Pretend Is Exposed to Daylight. We Are ASHAMED." 0 Comments

    Set forth below are the words of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central board: I'm afraid you're going to have to settle for the "cotton candy" money everyone else accepts without question but which you turn your nose up at!  There's a limited sense in which it is so that I have to "settle" for the cotton candy money that many accept without question. I don't need to invest in stocks at times of insane overvaluation. But I am affected by the economic crisis that follows when…

  • "In the Investing Advice Field, You Can't Just Put Forward Ideas As Something to Think About. People Have to Invest. They Have to Take Choice A or Choice B. And People Don't Want to Invest Their Retirement Money According to Something That You Claim Has a 50% Chance of Working or a 30% Chance or a 70% Chance. They Want 100 Percent Certainty. People In This Field Pick Up On That And Try to Respond To It By Expressing a Level of Confidence That Is Not Justified." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site: Rob, do you think the news about the US handing control of ICANN to the international community will be good for honest posting? I know next to nothing about it. So it’s not right for me to venture an opinion. The tiny bit I have read about it has been negative. The one thing that I can say is that it is not procedural issues that are the problem. The published rules at the Motley Fool…

  • "It Is Hard to Imagine Anything Too Much Worse Than Devoting Your Life to the Promotion of an Investing Strategy That You Believe Is Helping People and to Learn Late in Life That All Along Your Were Hurting People." 16 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site: Buy and Hold is “get rich slowly”   That certainly is how it is promoted, Sensible.And I believe strongly that that is what the people promoting it believe it to be. And I believe strongly that that is what the people following it believe it to be. But I do not believe it to be that. And I don’t say that because of some sort of bias against Buy-and-Hold. I…

  • "Hearing Doubts Expressed Is Disconcerting. It Hurts, Especially If In Some Part of Their Minds They Entertain Similar Doubts. I Have Said Many Things That Have Caused Many Buy-and-Holders to Feel Pain." 28 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to a discussion of a blog entry at this site: Say that the Phillies are playing the Yankees in the World Series and that it is the seventh game and that you do a statistical analysis showing that the pitcher they have slated to go is not up to the job. Say that you write this in a column with the aim of persuading the manager to use a different pitcher who according to your statistical analysis is more likely to win the game. Is…

  • "Those Who Treat Irrational Exuberance as Real Always Feel Threatened Because It Is Impossible to Have a Quiet Confidence in Something That Is Inherently Irrational. When You Place Your Confidence in Something Irrational, You Have a Fear That It Is Going to be Taken Away at Any Moment." 4 Comments

    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’s a fact that Teslas do not have microwave ovens and my observation is of similar nature as your Greaney comment. Say that someone said on an internet discussion board that he believed that Teslas should come equipped with microwave ovens. Would we see death threats and acts of extortion and board bannings and all the rest? We would not. All of the people who…

  • Buy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: "You Have Lost All Sense of Reality." Rob's Response: "Today's CAPE Value Shows Us That Stock Investors Have Lost All Sense of Reality." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: Like I said, you have lost all sense of reality. Today's CAPE value shows us that stock investors have lost all sense of reality. What if we permitted honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research at every site? Would that change things? I believe that it would. Shiller's Nobel-prize-winning research revealed a critically important reality (that…

  • "The Research Is Not Freakin' Human! The Research Doesn't Have a Get Rich Quick Urge Residing Within It. So the Research Doesn't Fall for All the Foolish Fantasies That We Humans So Often Fall For. That's Why We Are Able to Reduce Risk by 70% Just By Being Willing to Abandon the Buy-and-Hold Fantasy." 6 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site: I don’t know Rob, the ability to make guesses about the future and get them wrong doesn’t seem like a very valuable skill. It’s not, Anonymous. We couldn’t possibly agree more. But people have been doing it since the beginning of time, haven’t they? That’s why I love the idea of rooting one’s strategies in the peer-reviewed research so freakin’ much! Doing that gets…

  • "The Same Emotional Roadblocks That Make It Hard to Bloggers to Address These Matters Make It Hard for Me to Get the E-Mails Out" 4 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a thread-starter that I put to the Goon Central board: This is tentative. I think I am beginning to make some slow progress in getting the e-mails out.I should have had hundreds of them out by now.  I think the number was about 12 through yesterday. For today, I think it will be five or six more. No great leap forward. But small movement in the right direction. My hope is that the next week will be better.I believe that the same emotional roadblocks that…

  • Buy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: "When You Go to the Grocery Store to Buy Food, Tell Them About Your Interpretation of Market Timing and See If That Pays the Bill." 0 Comments

    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 am happy keeping my $6 million result.  When you go to the grocery store to buy food, tell them about your interpretation of market timing and see if that pays the bill. I'll try…

  • "I Look at the People Who Get It and Try to Identify Similarities. Part of It Is Caring About Something Other Than Investing Enough to Overcome the Power That the Get Rich Quick Urge Has to Fool Us All About What Works in investing. I Care Deeply About Journalism. John Walter Russell and Wade Pfau Cared About Their Statistical Craft. You Might Have Hopes for an Early Retirement. To Care About the Long Term, We Need to Have Positive Emotions Like Love and Hope As Well As Negative Ones Like Fear and Greed." 4 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site: None of this is about having information or lacking information, Anonymous. It is about giving in to the Get Rich Quick impulse or reining in the Get Rich Quick impulse. The Get Rich Quick impulse is risk. There is now 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing that. That research is based on 140 years of historical data. When you give in to the GRQ impulse (that is, when you fool yourself…

  • "The P/E10 Value Can Never Be Priced In. A Crazy Person Never Knows That He Is Crazy. If He Did, He Would Be Sane. So Overvaluation Can Never Be Priced In. That's Why P/E10 Is a Metric Like No Other." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central board: I agree it's entirely possible that the stock market (i.e., the S&P 500 Index) could drop precipitously for any number of "real-world problems, geopolitical turmoil, economic weakness, high unemployment, you name it." There's a quote from Tolstoy that sums up precisely the trouble that you are having understanding how stock investing works, Yip. He said (I am paraphrasing): "There is no concept…

  • "I Wouldn't Feel Comfortable Counting on Money That Is Only Irrational Exuberance When Doing My Retirement Planning. To Me, That's Like Counting on a Feeling That You Have When You Are Drunk That You Can Run Red Lights and Not Get Hurt." 2 Comments

    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 can spend what you have on your statement.  You can't spend what you don't have (like a $500 million fantasy scenario). I wouldn't feel comfortable counting on money that is only irrational exuberance when doing my retirement planning. To me, that's like counting on a feeling that you have when you are drunk that you can run red lights and not get hurt. The…

  • Buy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: "I Guess I Will Have to Wipe Away My Tears With $100 Bills." 0 Comments

    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 guess I will have to wipe away my tears with $100 bills. $100 bills that have a real, lasting value of $50, according to the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this…

  • "For 11 Years Now, We Have Been Seeing Emotions Evidence Themselves, Often in Very Juvenile and Destructive Ways. That’s an Investing Issue. Investor Emotions Are an Investing Issue." 3 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Investor Junkie blog: Rob, I approve comments that make legit counterpoints. I do not know the full history with Early Retirement Forum, nor do I personally care. His comment is a legit question (though the personal attack is not). If the commentator does not keep it on topic, he will be banned and comments removed (same applies to you also). Otherwise I do not moderate and allow each to have their own opinion. I…

  • "Vehement Denial is Common Among both Drunks and Passive Investors" 7 Comments

    A community member named "James" wrote in an e-mail: "I just listened to your podcast on Buy-and-Hold Cannot Work.  I was referred to it by a friend with whom I have recently been discussing the same concepts. "What you don't mention in this podcast is the primary basis for the Stay-the-Course concept.  As I understand it, the idea is that: The market is smarter than any one individual and automatically prices value effects into itself.  Ergo, it's safe to be passive! "Quite…

  • "Why Would Someone Who Acknowledges the Error Say That There Is No Need to Correct the Study? That's the Problem. That's the Irrational Part of Irrational Exuberance." 6 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: “ Evidence-Based Investing has acknowledged that the Greanry retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. This guy is a general in Greaney’s Goon Army. He has no bias against Greaney.” Evidence has said it didn’t need it and that there was no error. What does that have to do with you not fixing your financial failure? Why would someone who acknowledges…

  • Site Visitor to Rob: "I Will Never Go Back. I Feel No Emotional Worry This Way. With Buy-and-Hold I Lived With the Emotional Fear of Losing 50 Percent of My Retirement Portfolio. I Thank You Again for Doing the Research Because It Saves Us Emotional Hardship and Family Problems As Well." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of  a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: Hi Rob , After learning about Value Investing on your site , before I had been brain washed by my Buy and Hold Broker. I finally learned on my own about Value Investing I will never go back. In fact using your calculator with these insane values I allocated 20% to stocks. Am I glad I did I have still had a decent gain with no worry! If my portfolio looses 80% I am…

  • The Community Toilet Is Overflowing 0 Comments

    I drove my mother to Atlantic City on Saturday. I don't gamble (except in poker games with friends) So I spent much of the day sitting on a bench on the boardwalk writing articles for the web site. One of them is entitled "Investor Emotions." The article attempts to correlate the emotion with the greatest influence on investor psychology at a given time with the P/E10 value that applies at that time. It's highly tentative stuff. But it's potentially highly significant stuff too. Our most…

  • "Your Question Is Like a Drunk Saying 'I Can Drive Home, I Feel Absolutely Great!'" 0 Comments

    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, a guy that has been successful over 30 years should give consideration to what you think are positive reactions to your posts and your opinions? Everyone should be open to taking what the peer-reviewed research says into consideration. It is always when irrational exuberance gets wildly out of control when we experience a Buy-and-Hold Crisis. What are people…

  • "The Experts Couldn’t Have Continued Making the Mistake If We Had Called Them Out. So We Are All In On It. That Makes It Double Scary. Acknowledging That It Was the Heavy Promotion of Buy-and-Hold That Caused the Economic Crisis Is Like Accusing Ourselves of a Crime. The First Instinct Is to Go Into Denial." 2 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: "They don’t want to be social outcasts.” Not believable. They can post anonymously. It’s true that they could post anonymously. I don’t think that people like even flirting with the idea of becoming social outcasts. The protection that comes from posting anonymously doesn’t assure them. It’s not just that they don’t want other people to know…

  • "Adjusting for Irrational Exuberance Doesn't Pay the Bills. You Can Spend All Day, Every Day, 'Adjusting for Irrational Exuberance' and That Won't Put Food on the Table or Make a Mortgage or Rent Payment." 2 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: "adjusting for irrational exuberance" Adjusting for irrational exuberance doesn't pay the bills. You can spend all day, every day, "adjusting for irrational exuberance" and that won't put food on the table or make a mortgage or rent payment. I think we all should be adjusting for irrational exuberance. When we fail to do so, we come to believe that the…

  • "You Are Angry With Me Because You Are Trying to Suppress a Part of Yourself That Knows That I Am Right. You Hate Me Because You Hate the Part of Yourself That Causes You to Suppress Your Capacity to Engage in Reason re Investing Issues" 13 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to a discussion thread at this blog: Rob, Since you believe that you are right and everyone else is wrong, you must have a massive net worth by now. Care to share the details? We all believe we are right, Sparky. You believe you are right. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here. The difference between me and you is that, while I believe I am right, I ALSO believe that it is possible that I could be missing something…

  • We Are Ashamed to Post Guest Blog Entries Saying We Are Ashamed to Talk About Our Investing Debts 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent to the owner of the Frugal Dad blog on June 3. Jason: This is Rob Bennett, author of the "A Rich Life" blog. I hope things are going well with you. I would be grateful if you would consider the submission below for possible posting at your site as a Guest Blog Entry. In the event that you choose not to use it, I would be grateful if you would let me know so that I can shop it elsewhere. Thanks. Rob The submission was…

  • "If Someone Walked into a Bank and Said "I would Like Two CDs" Without First Checking What Return Is Being Offered, You Would Say That He Is a Fool. That's Precisely What Any Investor Who Refuses to Engage in Market Timing Is Doing. He Is Implicitly Saying 'I Don't Care What Return Is Being Offered on Stocks, I Am Going to Go With the Same Stock Allocation Regardless.' It's Irrational." 2 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: There is risk in stock. There is risk in buying bonds. There is risk in buying CDs. There is risk in buying a home. Each and every one of them is also variable. You can choose to participate or you can sit at home and do nothing like you. Sorry, but we have decided to live our lives while you waste your time away. We agree that there is risk in all of these…

  • Is the Financial Freedom Quest a Guy Thing? 0 Comments

    Men posters outnumber women posters by a 10 to 1 ratio at the raddr-pages.com discussion board on early retirement topics. Is the financial freedom quest "a guy thing"? I say "no." My experience with my book has been that women respond to it more strongly than men. My sense is that women and men respond to different aspects of the financial freedom question. Ask a man if it is a good idea to pay off the mortgage and he is likely to start performing calculations to determine whether he can…

  • "If You Were Confident in Your Buy-and-Hold Beliefs, You Would Laugh Off Any Challenge to Them. You Would Have Zero Problem Being Friends With Me. You Can't Do That. It Hurts Too Much." 14 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted at another blog entry at this site: It sure does take this VII a LONG time to work. 15 years now and still vastly inferior returns to anyone using buy and hold. It would take now a greater than 65% drop in equities to even be on equal footing and that doesn’t even account for rebalancing and how much more conservative a persons portfolio would have become over the course of 15 years. VII where you can spend 20 years stashing…

  • "Journalists Change the World for the Better By Daring to Tell Important Truths that People of Power and Money Want Covered Up. I Did the Thing That All Journalists Aim to Do in a Very Big Way When I Worked Up the Courage to "Cross" John Greaney By Telling the World About the Errors He Made in His Study." 17 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site: You put things out there that provoke people and then act like a victim. Did my famous post of May 13, 2002, pointing out the errors in John Greaney’s retirement study provoke people? It did. I know because I was there. Lots of people who I consider friends used that study to make decisions as to when to hand in resignations from high-paying jobs and then live only on their savings…

  • "People Are Scared. An Irony of Economic Progress Is That, the Richer People Are, the More Vulnerable They Are to Setbacks. Lots of People Are Okay With How They Are Living Today. But They Feel That They Are on the Edge. They Do Not Feel Secure. So They Cannot Even Imagine How It Would Feel to Experience a Loss of 50 Percent of Their Life Savings. So They Block the Thought of Those Losses Out of Their Mind. So Long As People Do Not Think About the Losses, They Cannot Take Steps to Avoid Them." 20 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: Why haven’t things worked out the way you said they would? Why didn’t we see the big crash? This is a big question. If Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research (I believe that it is), then this is a question that we should be examining at every investing site on the internet on a daily basis. If Shiller is right, then when stocks are…

  • "What Wade Pfau and I Discovered in That Famous Peer-Reviewed Research Paper We Co-Authored Is That Nearly 70 Percent of the Risk of Stock Investing Is Attributable to the Lies That Investors Tell Themselves." 5 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site: Of course, you are an expert at lying, Rob. All of us humans are, Anonymous. Have you read Freud? Isn’t projection a form of lying? Are there ANY humans who don’t engage in even a tiny bit of projection (that is, a tiny bit of lying)? How about Dostoevsky? When his character Raskolnikov killed the old woman, did he not justify doing it by telling himself lies…

  • "I Detected a Coldness in the Vibe in the Room When I Was Giving My Talk. If You Talk to an Alcoholic About Cutting Back on Drinking, He Will Deny Having a Problem. That's Not Because He Believes Deep In His Heart That He Doesn't Have a Problem. My Stuff Made the Bloggers in the Room Feel Shame." 10 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted at another blog entry at this site: Didn’t a coach in the Financial Blogger audience tell you that you came across as bitter? You are thinking of Jaime Tardy, owner of the Eventual Millionaire site. I talked to Jaime at FinCon13 and told her I would like to hire her for help with spreading the word about Valuation-Informed Indexing. She asked me a number of questions about the VII concept and about my experiences…

  • Buy-and-Holder to Rob: "I Think You Have Rationalized MANY Things in the Last Two Decades." 0 Comments

    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 think you have rationalized MANY things in the last two decades. There’s no doubt but that I have, Anonymous. We all do. The worst of it is that we don’t see it when we are the ones doing it. We often see it in others but rarely in ourselves. I wish you all good…

  • Buy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: "I Never Said I Knew the Extent to Which Valuations Might Affect Future Stock Prices. Correlation Data Suggests Historically They May Have to Some Extent, Some of the Time, Though Correlation Doesn't Always Mean Causation. I'll Be the First to Admit That the Future Is a Very Uncertain Place." 14 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment recently posted to another blog entry at this site: Oh, don’t worry! I never said I knew the extent to which valuations might affect future stock prices. Correlation data suggests historically they may have to some extent, some of the time, though correlation doesn’t always mean causation. I’ll be the first to admit that the future’s a very uncertain place. No boorish hocomania here. I focus on the things I can control, like gainful employment…

  • "God Wants to Steer Us in the Right Direction by Insisting We Follow His Ten Helpful Suggestions" 0 Comments

    An earlier blog entry (Do We Like What Comes from Telling Lies to Ourselves re What Our Stock Portfolios Are Worth?) reported on my recent correspondence with my friend Brian. Brian recently sent a follow-up e-mail. The text of my response to the follow-up e-mail is set forth below. Brian: Your thought that people often gain more from losing money than from accumulating it is a far-reaching one.  I agree in part but I strongly disagree in part too. The title of my blog is "A Rich…

  • "Bernstein's Lie Is Almost a Charming One. He Is Pretty Much Holding Up a Sign When He Tells It That Says 'Don't Believe a Word I Say!' You Are Capable of Seeing Every Lie That I See. YOU JUST DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM." 4 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site: You always seem to read everyone’s mind since you know what they are thinking and when they are lying. Perhaps you should have a second career as a mind reader . Do you not know when politicians are lying to you, Anonymous? We all do. Give me a break. Ataloss sent Bill Bernstein an e-mail asking him if he agreed with me that the methodology used in the Old School retirement studies is…

  • Rational Investors Do Not Become Permabears! 2 Comments

    I recently posted a Letter to the Editor at John Walter Russell's site entitled Rational Investors Do Not Become Permabears! Juicy Excerpt: To be a perma-bear is as bad as to be a Passive Investor. The two psychologies are two sides of the same emotional coin. The biggest danger we face today is that millions of middle-class investors are going to become perma-bears because they fell for the Passive Investing gibberish and are now disillusioned with how it works in the real world. Stocks…

  • Buy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: "If Buy and Holders Did Not Have Confidence, They Would Have Done Something Different." 0 Comments

    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 buy and holders did not have confidence, they would have done something different.  It is obvious you spin a story to try and cover up the embarrassment of your failure. And the do do something different. Every time. They tell themselves that the stock market is the only market that ever existed in which price discipline is not 100 percent required. Over that,…

  • "Say That the Big Factor Is That Investors Felt Reassured When the 2008 Price Drop Did Not Remain in Place for Long. If That Is the True Reason for the Price Rise, We Should All Be Scared re What May Happen Next." 0 Comments

    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. Another article in which Robert Shiller says that Rob Bennett and his VII timing scheme are wrong. https://www.fa-mag.com/news/was-the-stock-market-boom-predictable-44086.html?print If investors would have follow Rob’s advice with VII, they would have missed on on the big market boom. Articles like this won’t look good in front of your jury. I’m…

  • How Minds Change -- About Retirement Studies and Site-Building Strategies 2 Comments

    I recently posted the following words -- titled How Minds Change -- to the Suckers Buy It! forum: A2DKristi said (in the thread on university courses) that: I just finished reading the entire “No Trolls Allowed” thread from the SBI forum (I love that people send me this stuff), and believe me, these people worship Ken like he’s the messiah, and talk about me like I’m the devil. They simply don’t care. I have lots of personal experience with the phenomenon that you are…

  • "No One Ever Talks About the Intense Emotional Pain of the Buy-and-Holders. I Don't Think There Is One Article in the Literature About It. But Here It Was. I Was Seeing It With My Own Eyes. Investors Have Become MORE Emotional in the Buy-and-Hold Era. This Got My Attention." 9 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site: How do you feel about people you meet who make such enormously boastful (and in this case easily disprovable) statements? Are you attracted to those people? Do such antisocial behaviors earn them many friends? People don’t like boasting. That’s certainly so. But those words are required by the job I am doing here, Anonymous. The Buy-and-Holders are in a trap. When the…

  • "We All Need to Understand Our Goonishness on a Deep Level If We Are to Become Effective Long-Term Investors. Saying That You Don't Want to Hear About Goonishness is the Equivalent of Saying You Don't Want to Hear About How to Reduce the Risk of Stock Investing by 70 Percent." 12 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central board: And it's very important to those new folks clicking on your site for the first time imagining it might be a place where they could learn something about the S&P 500 Index market timing scheme you're trying to peddle to watch you rehash all those old comments. At least it won't take them long to realize they're wasting their time if they thought the Plop would be a source of how one could…

  • "How Do You Think Price Crashes Happen? Millions of People Who Swore on a Hundred Bibles That They Will Always Hold See Something That Causes Their Inner Doubts to Break Through and They Sell Like Mad." 16 Comments

    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, they are not doing a thing different.  They continue to just buy and hold like always.  You even state that.  You don’t like the fact that they keep buying and holding. I would like to see every U.S. investor working together to get the CAPE value down to a less scary level. I think we should have public service announcements telling people that "only you…

  • The Rumors About Stocks Are True 0 Comments

    My wife and I were driving down the road the other day and we passed a Ruby Tuesday restaurant. "What was that song supposed to be about, anyway?" she asked. I said that it was about a hippie-chick who was so unwilling to become tied down by social norms that she refused to answer to any one name. This got me to thinking about stocks. Stocks are like hippies in that they are always changing their look. In the last three years of the 1990s, the DOW went up by about 30 percent a year. There…

  • "If I Showed How We Can Reduce the Risk of Stock Investing By 10%, I Would Be the Most Popular Person in the Investing World Today. But 70%? It Doesn't Seem Possible. How Could It Be Possible? It's Because Investor Emotion Has Been the Great Forbidden Subject for Many Years Now. We Have Decided as a Society to Adopt a Social Taboo Against Talking About the Subject That Covers 80% of What We Need to Know to Become Effective Investors." 25 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site: It is so common to see as these leading financial experts threatening people with prison and lawsuits. It is not common at all to see leading financial experts refer to the need for prison sentences for you Goons, Anonymous. That’s why we are in an economic crisis. I was a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. I gave it up on the evening of August 27, 2002. That’s the night…

  • "Instead of Me Agreeing Not to Talk About the Goon Phenomenon We Need to Get Everyone Else to Take Up Talking About It. Your Behavior Shows That You Lack Confidence in Buy-and-Hold. A Strategy Must Inspire Confidence to Work in the Long Run. Your Goon Behavior Is a Substantive Issue That All In This Field Should Be Exploring." 14 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site: Well, I’m sure once you provide her (and the rest of us) with evidence of your assertions, she (and the rest of us) will come around. She came around. She accepts that you Goons did everything that I said you did. But she doesn’t agree with my strategy for dealing with the problem. She says that I should ignore you. LOTS of people tell me that. My wife tells me that. So I understand…

  • The Wisdom of Crowds 0 Comments

    I'm excited about a book I've begun reading entitled The Wisdom of Crowds. The Introduction explains in compelling terms both the reasons why the discussion board is potentially such a powerful communications medium and why it is only when reasonable posting rules are enforced in reasonable ways that this communications medium is able to achieve its potential. Here's the key claim put forward by James Surowiecki (the book's author): "If you put together a big enough and diverse enough group…

  • Nine Signs That Stocks Are a Cheat 0 Comments

    1) When you ask direct questions about things you've seen in the historical stock-return data, all you hear in response are vague references to "efficient market theory" which do not really seem to be responsive to the questions asked. 2) When you raise the possibility that maybe you allowed yourself to get in this thing too far too fast, the glib reply is: "You and me are in this together for the long-term, aren't we, babe?" 3) When you point out that you still don't have a ring on your…

  • "Given That Humans Lie About Everything They Do and That It Is Only Humans Who Buy Stocks, Humans Obviously Lie About Stocks. Do You Think It Is a Better Approach to Pretend That Humans Become 100 Percent Rational Creatures When Buying Stocks and Thus Get All the Numbers We Use to Inform Our Investing Strategies Wildly Wrong or Do You Think It Would Be Better to Acknowledge That We Are Inclined to Tell a Lot of Lies and to Develop Tools That We Can All Use to Rein in the Lying a Bit?" 20 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: Why hasn’t Shiller partnered up with you to take down this mass conspiracy and expose all of these liars? No matter who you ask about, the answer is going to be the same, Anonymous. Shiller is much like Bernstein. And Bernstein is much like Bogle. And Bogle is much like Bennett (remember that I didn’t speak up about the errors that I knew about in Greaney’s…

  • "We All Know What the Stock Price Is and Make Our Choice to Buy It or Not Buy It. If You Don’t Like the Price, It Is Simple. Just Don’t Buy It." 4 Comments

    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. What I am saying is that, if Wendy’s says in a commercial that their Junior Bacon Cheeseburger costs $3 but then charges you $6 for it, all of the people who are hurt by this dishonest practice should be permitted to call them out on their dishonesty” What? We all know the stock price when we are buying it. It is not like I put in an order to buy a…

  • "Emotion-Informed Investing Is the Future. Emotion-Ignorant Investing (Buy-and-Hold) Is the Past. Bogle Should Be Interviewed in Psychology Today. He Couldn't Handle It Today. But Once He Brings Himself Up to Speed on the Peer-Reviewed Academic Research of the Past 32 Years, He Will be Just Fine." 2 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the discussion of a blog entry posted at this site: When is your interview with Psychology Today? I understand that you are being sarcastic, Sparky. But an interview with Psychology Today would be 100 percent appropriate and 100 percent wonderful. I look forward to the opportunity to participate in such an interview. The Buy-and-Holders achieved an amazing advance in rooting their strategies in the academic research. I…

  • Arrogance Parading as Humility 2 Comments

    A recent Washington Post article argues that: “Humans, no matter how hard we try, act in ways that cause us to make the wrong investment decisions almost all the time.” I like the lyrics but not the melody to which they are attached. The guy writing the article describes how he made a poor investing decision. He looked into Behavioral Finance and concluded that his problem is that even the smartest among us are not capable of making good investing decisions, that “when it comes to…

  • The Confession Box 0 Comments

    I am a Catholic. That means that I pay regular visits to the confession box. My guess is that those of other faiths do similar sorts of things. I know that people in 12-step programs occasionally "take a fearless moral inventory." It sounds like it is something along the lines of a whole bunch of trips to the confession box rolled into one. There are two things about the confession-box experience that just about everybody who goes through it remarks upon. It feels awful going in. It feels…

  • "If You Read the Newspaper Reports, They Will Say Something Like "Stock Prices Have Been Going Up Because Investors Are More Confident That the Economy Will Be Doing Well." That's a Rational Explanation of the Price Change. You Never Read That "Stock Prices Went Up Because Investors Are Concerned That They Have Not Saved Enough and Thus Do Not Have Enough to Retire On." That's Irrational Exuberance at Work." 0 Comments

    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: We have already looked at the numbers. It has been a disaster for you. Further, your retirement plan failed and you have admitted that you have to go back to work. You're not exactly an unbiased observer, Sammy. I never retired in a complete sense. I saved enough money so that I would only need to earn a small amount doing work that was highly…

  • "Banning Any One Individual Goon or Even All of Those Who Have Behaved in an Insanely Goonish Manner Is Not Going to Solve Our Problems. The Ultimate Goal Is to Overcome the Goonishness That Resides Within ALL of Us. When We Root Out Our Goonish Desire to Develop Confidence in Get Rich Quick Strategies, We Reduce the Risk of Stock Investing by 70 Percent." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site: “We need to overcome you Goons.” That’s easy. Just delete 100% of the Goon comments (a small increase from your current 90+%.) Since you post nowhere else anymore, the Goons can no longer reach you. Problem solved. Then watch as your fans slowly crawl out from under their beds and start posting honestly here. If you fail to take this simple step, one has to wonder what your goal…

  • Obama's Debate Performance and Buy/Hold 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a thread-starter that I put to the Goon Central board: A lot of people are saying that explanation for Obama's sub-par debate performance is that he was been protected from effective questioning for years by an adoring media.I see the same sort of phenomenon going on with the Buy-and-Holders. They tell each other that they have it all figured out, that everyone is wrong but them. It makes them feel good when they silence those reporting on the last 30…

  • Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? 0 Comments

    What do you know? How do you know it? You need to know certain things to get from the place where you are when you pull yourself out of your bed in the morning to the place where you are will be when you throw yourself back into it at night. For example, you need to know about gravity. If not for gravity, you would need to dress differently. You might need to wear heavy boots to keep from floating off into space. Gravity matters. Since you know that gravity exists, you keep this reality in…

  • "Intellectual Work Is 20 Percent of the Work I Have Done Over the Past 10 Years. The Hard Issues Are Emotional Issues." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the Goon Central board: Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central board: it's just that not enough folks have yet been introduced to your insanity profound insights in order to create a tipping point which will make the Hocomania Wave unstoppable!  Yes, it's a Tipping Point thing. EVERYONE (including you, Yip!) knows that GRQ is garbage. That's close to…

  • "We Need to Become More Comfortable Mixing the Two Types of Analysis (Statistical and Psychological)" 0 Comments

    I recently posted a Letter to the Editor at www.Early-Retirement-Planning-Insights.com site entitled Michael is Asking Cutting-Edge Questions. Juicy Excerpt: As we move deeper into a Rational Investing analysis (it is rational to accept that emotions matter), we will be confronting more and more questions that are more psychological than statistical in nature (but in many cases looking at the data will help us come to a better informed understanding of psychological realities). We need to…

  • "I Have Been Invested Solely in Super-Safe Asset Classes for 14 Years -- That Biases Me" 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I put today to a discussion thread at the Free Money Finance blog on the topic of the merits or lack thereof of market timing: Thanks for your kind words and thanks for indeed adding some thoughts that those listening in here very much need to take into consideration, MBTN There's no question (at least in my mind, but I believe that I probably speak for a lot of people re this one) that you are making an important point. Stock prices can be…

  • "If Those of Us Who Believe in Research-Based Strategies Are Going to Be Effective in Pointing Out the Dangers of Buy-and-Hold, We Are Going to Have to Reiterate Basic Principles Many Times, Just as the Buy-and-Holders Repeat Their Claims Over and Over Again. The Human Mind Places Confidence in Claims That It Hears Many Times." 25 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site: I’d say once per thread, and on topics related to the thread. There’s no need to repeat yourself. Any assertions should be cited. Keep your responses brief and to the point. And respond politely, and without hyperbole. Buy-and-Holders repeat themselves endlessly. If I have heard that “timing doesn’t work” once, I have heard it ten-thousand times. If those of us who believe in…

  • "You Can't Have a CAPE Value of 38 Unless Most People Are Deceiving Themselves About How Stock Investing Works." 4 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: Funny how everyone else is wrong and here you sit as the broke guy in the room. By definition, you can't have a CAPE value of 38 unless most people are deceiving themselves about how stock investing works. If we were all thinking clearly, the CAPE value would be a reasonable number. And, when most people are deceiving themselves to the extent they are today, most…

  • Please Do Not Feel That You Must Read This Blog Entry 3 Comments

    Intimidation undermines science. Intimidation interferes with the reasoning process. Intimidation causes confusion. Intimidation turns friend against friend. Intimidation biases research. Intimidation can trump logic for a time. Intimidation causes worry about the long term because intimidation cannot trump logic indefinitely. The use of intimidation reveals the weakness of an argument. Intimidation is bad manners. The desire to make use of intimidation comes from a…

  • "That Guy Was Telling Us How He Really Feels. I Bug the Piss Out of Him. Your Solution Is to 'Protect' Him From My Words. My Solution Is To Figure Out Why My Words Bug the Piss Out of Him." 4 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site: No. You are wrong of course. Those five reasons are what you would like the issue to be. But none of them are the issue. The issue is the way you behave when interacting with others either by email or or discussion boards. Numerous people come to the same conclusion independently. And tell you so. And you ignore them. Over and Over again. I’ll give a slightly different…

  • "Rob, Your Claim That a 65 Percent Price Drop Is the Default Expectation Is Just Absurd. Breathtakingly Absurd." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central board: Hocus, that a 65% drop is the DEFAULT position is just absurd. Breathtakingly absurd. Was it absurd that the safe withdrawal rate was 1.6 percent back when I first reported that it was 1.6 percent? The Nisiprius post at Bogleheads yesterday hit it on the head. Anything less than 7 percent was absurd in the mid-90s. Then anything less than 4 percent was absurd after the Old School SWR…

  • "If You Don't See That Causing Millions of Failed Retirements Is a Bad Thing, You Are Either Suffering from Cognitive Dissonance or Are a Psychopath" 6 Comments

    Set forth below is a comment that I posted in response to a comment by a community member named "What" on the discussion thread for the blog entry titled It Breaks My Heart When People Don't Comment on My Investing Posts. All you did was point out some underlying assumptions and limitations of the study that any educated reader already knew and understood. No. I was at the Motley Fool’s Retire Early board in the years when people were putting up threads on a daily basis about…

  • We're Not Feeling as Fearful As We Think We Are 4 Comments

    Many investors acknowledge that we all were feeling greedy back in the 1990s. But now that stocks have performed poorly for over eight years, those days are behind us. The problem today is that, if things keep going like they have been going lately, it is our feelings of fear that will be getting out of control. Right? Not right. Today’s P/E10 value is 25. We are now at one of the highest valuation levels experienced in the history of the U.S. market. Stocks have never given a strong…

  • "I Wouldn't Say That the Buy-and-Holders Are Generally Irrational. If Anything, They Embrace It Too Tightly. The Buy-and-Holders Put Such Value on Rationality That They Cannot Bear to Consider How Irrational It Is to Fail to Consider Price When Buying Stocks." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: “ Most alcoholics and drug addict are rational, intelligent people.” No they are not. Rational people know the dangers of addictions and avoid substances that would cause addictions. Same goes for market timers. A rational person doesn’t want to go broke with a silly market timing scheme. Okay, Anonymous. We disagree on this point. I suppose that that is…

  • "Jeff at the Sustainable Life Blog Liked Talking to Me. But I Am Not the Only Person That Jeff Liked Talking To. 90 Percent of the People He Liked Talking To Have Blogs Where They Have Posted Positive Words About Buy-and-Hold. What Are All Those People Going To Think of Jeff If He Comes Back From the Conference and Writes a Blog Post Saying That He Spoke to This Rob Bennett Fellow and He Now Realizes That the Whole Buy-and-Hold Thing Is a Con That Is In the Process of Destroying Millions of Middle-Class Lives?" 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a recent comment that I put to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: Does Jeff still talk to you, or was he scared away by the goons as well? He did not respond to the words of the e-mail set forth above, Critter. That tells the tale. Jeff is like all the rest of us. He wants to be friends with me because he likes me. That’s why he made contact with me. He finds the idea of the Campaign of Terror absurd, which is why he said what he…

  • "I Exercise Price Discipline Every Time I Buy Stocks. I Have Never Paid a Cent Over the Market Price." 2 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: "There is no rational case that can be made for failing to exercise price discipline when buying stocks." I exercise price discipline every time I buy stocks. I have never paid a cent over the market price. You are rejecting the concept of irrational exuberance. If irrational exuberance is a thing, then the market sometimes sets the price at an improper place…

  • I Hope You Suffer 8 Comments

    Sometimes I say things in the heat of the moment just to have something to say and, then later, when I read the words back, they make sense! It sometimes really does happen that way. It makes me wonder if there really is a God or something. Some Goon was sticking his elbows out at me in comments he put to a recent blog entry and I went into my usual riff about how all you need is love and love is the answer and what the world needs now is love, sweet love, blah, blah, blah, blee, blee. blee.…

  • to Understand What Is Happening”" target="_blank">"I Have Much More Confidence in My Ability
    to Understand What Is Happening”
    2 Comments

    I've added Elizabeth's story to the Middle-Class Millionaires section of the site. Juicy Excerpt: I woke up around DJI 13200, realized I had a lot to learn and had better learn it fast, and found this site. I now have cash sitting in MMFs that has not disappeared out of my retirement funds. I also have much more confidence in my ability to understand what is happening and to respond appropriately as the situation evolves.... I thank you for your public service and, in another dimension,…

  • "If We Were All Independent Thinkers All the Time, We Would in General Die Sooner Than We Do. Evolution Doesn’t Like to See Us Dying Sooner. So It Edited Out Extreme Free Thinking. It Put in Us a Gene That Causes Us to Want to Follow the Herd and to Dedicate Lots of Brain Power Not to Discovering Truth But to Rationalizing Dangerous Stuff That the Herd Wants to See Rationalized. But Evolution Also Sees Benefit in a Measure of Free Thinking. So We Also Have an Ability to See Through the B.S. of the Herd and to Move Forward As a People." 8 Comments

    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 problem is with Shiller. He won’t say what you want him to say, which makes him a goon. My problem is with human nature, as is yours. There is something in human nature that makes us want to lie to ourselves, to tell ourselves that things are better than they really are and to thereby put ourselves in danger. There are people who are 100 pounds overweight…

  • "Greaney Doeesn't Like to See People Talking About It. The More They Talk About It, the More That Their Common Sense Becomes Dominant Over Their Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold Impulse. " 0 Comments

    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 do that. Nobody is saying that you can’t do that. You should do what you think is best. Some others might want to do something different. So what, you know? You do you and they can do them.” And that is what we have done. We go with buy and hold because it works. We avoid risky timing schemes so that we don’t go broke (like you). We ban internet trolls…

  • "When You Mix Research and Emotion, You Don't Get Something Better Than Emotion Alone. You Get Something Far, Far Worse. Mix Research and Emotion and You Get Investors Who Not Only Are Emotional But Who Have Lost the Ability to Question Their Emotional Strategies Because They Believe That They Are Research-Based." 2 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the Goon Central board: Hocus, you've been predicting the stock market (which of course we know on HocoWorld refers solely to the S&P 500 Index) will drop by 65% within three years. I just wanted to establish a firm date, since we know you to be less than truthful after the fact on various issues. Goes with the territory when you're a Habitual Liar like Rob "hocus" Bennett I guess!    I believe you made your…

  • "I Believe in Something Called 'Anti-Marketing.' Marketing Is Saying Whatever You Need to Say to Get People to Like You. Anti-Marketing Is Caring So Much About Integrity That You Are Willing to Say Things That Drive Customers Away for the Time-Being." 4 Comments

    Yesterday's blog entry set forth the text of a post that I put to the Suckers Buy It! forum on the topic of How Minds Change. Set forth below is the text of a follow-up post: when you’re dealing with people who have a cult like allegiance to a thought or ideal, I guess it’s not such a stretch. Anyway, a belated welcome to the club of Jindiviks (aboriginal for the hunted one). Thanks for letting me into the club, Jindvick. I think! The question that I am always focused on (because…

  • "Peer Pressure Is a Huge Influence on the Human Mind. Bull Markets Are the Product of Peer Pressure. Buy-and-Hold Is the Product of Peer Pressure." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site: It sounds like it is all one big conspiracy and only you have it completely figured out and exposed. I have gone farther than anyone else in two departments: 1) Exploring the implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings; and 2) Using plain, easy-to-understand language re the massive act of financial fraud used to achieve the 34-year cover-up. Thousands of…

  • Dogma Is the Enemy of the Middle-Class Investor 12 Comments

    I recently wrote a Guest Blog Entry for the The Oblivious Investor blog entitled Dogma Is the Enemy of the Middle-Class Investor. Juicy Excerpt: Perhaps I’m wrong. If so, I’d like to find that out. Or perhaps I’m right. Either way, what’s needed today is a national debate on the merits and flaws of the conventional investing wisdom. A rockin' comments section on this one. Juicy Excerpt: Does it make sense to pay attention to how much you’re paying for something? Of course…

  • Why Do the Same People Who Applaud
    Bull Markets Disdain Credit-Card Debt?
    1 Comment

    You hear these guys all the time. They can be highly judgmental. "Dickens was wrong. These people with their credit-card debt should be put in prison. Thank you, God, for making me so much better than them." That sort of thing. Then the subject of bull markets comes up. They're doing a happy dance. They're rolling the dice and singing that "Baby needs a new pair of shoes!" It's an entirely different tune. Huh? What's bad about credit-card debt? Living on credit-card debt is living a…

  • "There Was a Huge Response to My Post. It Was Like a Nuclear Explosion. Outside of You Goons, the Most Common Thought Expressed Was: 'Thanks, Rob, for Starting the Most Exciting Discussion in the History of This Board.'" 2 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: "Did “everyone” speak up about it on those occasions when Greaney would say that a 4 percent withdrawal is “100 percent safe” even at the sort of valuation levels that applied in the last 1990s. I don’t recall “everyone” doing that." Why would they speak up about it? No one said it, no one thought it, only one person obsesses about it. Repeatedly…

  • "I Really Was Right in My May 13, 2002, Post Saying that the Old School Retirement Studies Lacked a Valuation Adjustment. But I Am Human Like All the Others and Social Pressure Caused Me to Doubt Myself. Just As Bogle Has Doubted Himself When His Common Sense Has Told Him That Buy-and-Hold Is a Big Pile of Smelly Garbage." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site: "I said on the morning of May 13, 2002, that the numbers in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies were wildly wrong. "You Goons said that I must have forgotten to take my meds." Here is a link to the thread in question. http://boards.fool.com/price-adjusted-safe-withdrawal-rates-17209214.aspx?sort=whole and a juicy excerpt or two ” As I read the data, it appeared to me that had I made…

  • "The Buy-and-Holders and the Valuation-Informed Indexers Share a Desire to Minimize Emotion in Stock Investing, Their Approach to Doing So Is Different. The Buy-and-Holders Disdain Emotion. They Don't Talk About It. They Act As If It Doesn't Exist. The Valuation-Informed Indexers Tackle It." 30 Comments

    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 told us you were the one with emotional issues and that’s why you couldn’t finish the book. All humans have emotions, Anonymous. There are no exceptions. The Buy-and-Holders and the Valuation-Informed Indexers share a desire to minimize emotion in stock investing, Their approach to doing so is different. The Buy-and-Holders disdain emotion, They don't…

  • "When We Have the Reassurance of Knowing That Lots of Other Humans Are Having the Same Thoughts, THEN We Feel Confident Enough in What Our Reasoning Capabilities Tell Us to Make Decisions Based on Logic." 6 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site: If you really had a strong case, someone would take it on contingency. I called about six places and I did not find anyone willing to take it on contingency. There was one fellow who came close. He was a sole practitioner. He loves the case. He wanted to take it. But when he looked closely, he saw how big it was and felt that he would need to put all his waking hours into the case. So his…

  • "The Prospector Would Still Be At That Same Spot Still Digging With His Even-More-Callused Fingers" 23 Comments

    Today's blog entry is a guest post by Arty, one of the best contributors to the Retire Early and Indexing discussion-board communities in recent years. I've read hundreds of articles about our economic crisis. Few have made the key point about the cause of the crash as clearly and succinctly as the words below.  Arty put forward the words as a comment to the blog entry entitled "This Month's Permanent Portfolio," where he also offered dozens of other comments also worth checking…

  • Is It Emotional Humans Or Is It Hocomania? 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: “ My guess is that they will say something to the effect of: “Humans!” Rob” My guess is they will say “Hocomania!” It's definitely one of those. Take care,…

  • "The Thing That Is Really Off in the Investment Advice Field Is That the Non-Experts -- the People Who Will Be Suffering Huge Losses in the Event That the Stock Market Continues to Perform in the Future Somewhat As It Always Has in the Past -- Tolerate the Cover-Up. That's Nuts. But They've Got That Get Rich Quick Impulse Residing Within Them That Makes Them Like Buy-and-Hold, that Makes Them Think That This Might Be the First Time in History When It Doesn't End in Tears for Everyone." 0 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: Did you care about what happened to your ex-wife’s retirement account? Very much so. If we experience another Buy-and-Hold Crisis, she is one of the millions and millions of people who will get hurt by it. I obviously don't want to see that happen. The question is -- Why do we not apply the same rules that apply in every field other than the investment advice…

  • "My Famous May 13, 2002, Post Ended Not With a Period But With a Question Mark. That Was Fear. My Apology on the Night of Day Three Was Rooted in Fear. I Held Back for a Long Time From Saying That I Know More About How Stock Investing Works Than Jack Bogle. That Was Fear. I Held Back for a Long Time From Saying That You Goons Are Headed to Prison. That Was Fear. There Is No Intellectual Debate Here. It's All About Fear." 9 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment recently posted to another blog entry at this site: The lack of any supporting comments on this board speaks volumes, Rob. No, people are not afraid to post here as they would be anonymous. The lack of supporting comments certainly tells us something important, Anonymous. You and I do not agree re what it tells us. But we are 100 percent in agreement that it is a telling reality. You are of course correct that people are free to post anonymously…

  • "Indexing Pretty Much Takes Intelligence Off the Table as a Factor. All the Things That People Used to Study Are Priced In. You Don’t Need To Be Intelligent to Obtain Great Investing Results Today. But You Need to Rein in Your Emotions. You Can Ruin the Indexing Thing By Getting Too Emotional." 21 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site: Rob, Specifically, who are the goons? What makes them goons? Who are the leaders of the goons? Who are the goons that are most responsible for what you see as the problems? Are we talking about a handful of goons or just a small select group? How do I spot a goon? A Goon is someone who is too filled with hate and fear to have a constructive discussion. We ALL have goonishness within us.…

  • "You Are Not the Only Buy-and-Holder Who Lacks Confidence. They All Do. Not All Buy-and-Holders Threaten to Kill the Family Members of Those Who Disagree With Them and Insist on Their Right to Post Honestly About Why They Disagree. But the Vast Majority Tolerate Such Behavior Even Though It Goes Against the Core Beliefs of Our Society." 2 Comments

    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 has been 30 years for me. That is long term. My buy and hold strategy has worked just fine. I am now sitting on $2.6 million in diversified holds and adding more to my positions everyday. Your words say one thing and your actions say another, Anonymous. Your words say “I’m fine.” Your actions say “I’m worried.” If you were confident, you…

  • "It Hit Me at Some Point That, When I Say 'I Might Be Wrong,' I Am Projecting a Confidence That Those Who Are Trying to Silence Me Do Not Project" 2 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Suckers Buy It! forum: No one here is trying to convince people not to use SBI.  My thought is that it would be a good idea to give this expression of intent greater emphasis. I have experience with this sort of thing. There are people who believe firmly, strongly and without any acknowledgment of doubt that my investing ideas are wrong. They believe this so strongly that they won’t permit other people — who…

  • "The Intellectual Side of This is 20 Percent of the Job. The Hard Part is the Emotional Side. When You Tell People That Gains That Result From Irrational Exuberance Are Not Real and Lasting and Should Not Be Counted When Preparing for Retirement, You Are Telling People Something That They Very, Very, Very Much Do Not Want to Hear. You Are Telling Addicts That They Need to Give Up the Addiction to Become Able to Live Better and Richer and Fuller Lives. If You Have Ever Had a Friend With a Drinking Problem That You Tried to Help, You Know How Well That Sort of Thing Often Goes Over." 22 Comments

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: “ Why do you fight the idea of permitting honest posting so hard?” I am trying hard to push for honest posting, but you keep blocking it. Why can’t you work a job and do a book on the side? You have been working on this book for well over 10 years, so you are obviously not spending that much time on it. Everyone else can work a job and still do other…

  • Hate Is Not a Sound Long-Term Investing Strategy 0 Comments

    I've seen loyalty. I've seen deception. I've seen friendship. I've seen intimidation. I've seen responsibility. I've seen willful ignorance. I've seen generosity. I've seen arrogance. I've seen courage. I've seen cowardice. And that's just on internet discussion boards dealing with the topic of stock investing! It's humans who buy stocks. That rarely noted fact explains why the conventional advice re how to invest for the long term does not work. The conventional advice is rooted in an…

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Browse Rob Bennett

  • “It Is the Roller Coaster Ride Created By the Buy-and-Hold Mindset (No Price Discipline When Buying Stocks Now!) That Causes All the Crazy Ups and Downs. All of That Is Optional Today and Has Been for 44 Years Now, All We Need To Do At This Point Is To Get the Word Out.”

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: The sellers are market timers because they don’t have enough dry powder. Someone sitting there with only a few hundred thousands has no ability to hang on for the long term. They will always bail during any perceived time of risk. I have already shared some of my details. You probably remember that my portfolio generates $300K plus a year in interest and dividends. I also have other sources of income. I don’t need to sell and I just keep doing just like the rest of the top 10% in that I keep accumulating assets. It is fine if you don’t want to hold stock. People like me will continue to buy. Remember the old saying: “The are two types of people with McDonald’s. One type is the customer that buys the burgers. The other type is the guy that owns McDonald’s (stock). Pick which one you want to be. Valuation-Informed Indexers don’t count phony gains as real. So they don’t perceive risk in the disappearance of the phony gains. They are looking at the realities and the realities of stock investing are very reassuring — gains of 6.5 percent real annually. It is the roller coaster ride created by the Buy-and-Hold mindset (no price discipline when buying stocks now!) that causes all the crazy ups and downs. All of that is optional today and has been for 44 years now, All we need to do at this point is to get the word out. Irrational exuberance is the cancer of the personal finance world. Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is the cure for cancer. We should permit people to partake in the cure. Rob Related PostsValuation-Informed Indexing #264: Shiller’s Findings Revolutionize Our Understanding of How the Economy Works Too“Some People Have Been Waiting Since the Mid 90s for Stocks to Be Cheap Enough (in Their Opinion) to Buy.”“Those 29 Years Were Not Good Years for Stock Owners.”Buy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: “If Buy and Holders Did Not Have Confidence, They Would Have Done Something Different.”Valuation-Informed Indexing #596: Stock Prices Drift Upward Unless Most Investors Practice Market Timing“Shiller Showed Us That It Is Primarily INVESTOR EMOTION That Determines Stock Prices, Not Economic Developments. So We All Need to Make a Switch to Talking Primarily About Investor Emotion. We Should […]

    (24 Comments)

  • “The Idea Behind Valuation-Informed Indexing Is to Take the Emotion Out of the Stock Investing Project. All That We Need To Do To Stop the Horrible Losses Is To Stop the Insane Highs.”

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: Yep. Market timers are selling there stock and just look at how everything has been consolidated at the top. Not surprising and it is not just stock. Take a look at real estate holdings and how that has changed over the years. You can decide if you want to follow those that have been successful or you can go with the 90% that struggle. The people who you are calling “market timers” are just Buy-and-Holders who have lost confidence in their strategy. Buy-and-Hold is a confidence game. Excessive confidence causes prices to go to crazy high levels and excessive pessimism causes prices to go to crazy low levels. The idea behind Valuation-Informed Indexing is to take the emotion out of the stock investing project. Those times of low prices are horror stories. We should all want to bring an end to them. To do that, we need to focus on what causes them. It’s high prices that cause the insane price drops. All that we need to do to stop the horrible losses is to stop the insane highs. That’s done with valuation-based market timing. Valuation-based market timing is the key to long-term investing success. Irrational exuberance is a snare and a delusion, Anonymous. It is not real. It hurt us. We should all work together to to keep it from getting out of control. We should all work to keep the CAPE level at a reasonable levels. My sincere take. Rob Related Posts“We Don’t Accept the Phony Numbers. We Fear the Emotional Pain We Experience When Our Longstanding Game of Let’s Pretend Is Exposed to Daylight. We Are ASHAMED.”“The Losses That We Need to Cover as a Result of the Continued Promotion of Buy-and-Hold ‘Strategies’ are $24 Trillion, $6 Trillion More Than the Entire Federal Debt of $18 Trillion, Constituting All the Annual Budget Deficits Going Back to the Days of George Washington Added Together. Buy-and-Hold Is Truly Bad Stuff.”“Market Timing Is the Thing That Permits the Market to Do its Core Job — Get Prices Right. It Is Market Timing That Keeps the Market Functional.”“Is There Any CAPE Level at Which Stocks No Longer Represent a Bargain According to Your Perspective on Things?”“Child Porn and Slave Trading and Murder for Hire Are Far, Far, […]

    (6 Comments)

  • “Say That the Alcoholic Beverage Industry Con Men Didn’t Want to Acknowledge Their Mistake. They Might Say That the Explanation for the Millions of Deaths That They Caused Is That Six Beers Isn’t Really Enough, That People Need to Drink a Minimum of Eight Beers Before They Can Drive a Car Safely.”

    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 do not intend to write fresh material.” When did you ever write fresh material? I have never seen anything new. Valuations affect long-term returns. That’s the story. It’s a pretty darn simple message. But it’s important. Say that that the alcoholic beverage industry got control of all the driving schools and put out a message that the key to safe driving is always to drink six beers before getting behind the wheel. That would be a catastrophe equal to the catastrophe that we have seen in the investment advice field with this garbage about how there might be some alternate universe in which valuation-based market timing might not be 100 percent required for every investor. Say that that the alcoholic beverage industry con men didn’t want to acknowledge their mistake. They might say that the explanation for the millions of deaths that they caused is that six beers isn’t really enough, that people need to drink a minimum of eight beers before they can drive a car safely. And on and on like that. When you make a mistake this big, the best thing to do is to acknowledge it and move on. Covering it up just makes things worse. My sincere take. Rob Related Posts“I Used to Believe in the Buy-and-Hold Garbage. I Know How It Feels to Be Tricked Re This Stuff. Legitimate Strategies Can Be Defended Without Death Threats. I Earned My Retirement Money. I Expect to Be Able to Find Accurate and Honest Reports re What the Peer-Reviewed Research Says About How to Invest It. I Deserve That. We All Do. We All Should Demand It.”“The Fact That Wade Pfau Won’t Speak to Me Today Definitely Tells a Tale That Needs to Be Widely Told.”“The Wall Street Con Men Are Not Convinced That Buy-and-Hold Cannot Work. They See the Holes in the Concept. They Become Insanely Defensive When Challenged. But They Tell Themselves That Buy-and-Hold May Work Well Enough. They Tell Themselves That There Is Nothing Better.”“There Are Cases in Which Someone Drinks Six Cans of Beer and Does Not Get in an Accident. So Those Who Follow the Buy-and-Hold Approach to Data Analysis Say: ‘You Cannot Look at the Number of Cans of Beer Consumed to Know If There […]

    (12 Comments)

  • “Maybe It’s Okay to Believe It So Long As You Don’t Give Voice to What You Believe in a Public Place.”

    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, we are all not victims.  Reasonable people know that they are responsible for their own well being.  Making up these silly posts are not helping anyone.  It seems your therapist has his work cut out for him. Anyone who believes that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment must be nutso. Or maybe it’s okay to believe it so long as you don’t give voice to what you believe in a public place. Rob Related Posts“It Means It [the Greaney Retirement Study] Never Needed Correction and That It Has Been Explained to You Well Over a Thousand Times.”“Is It My Failure If Many Buy-and-Holders Did Not Call for the Greaney Retirement Study to be Corrected Even Though It Is Obvious to Anyone Who Checks That It Lacks a Valuation Adjustment?”“I’m Not the One Who Permitted the CAPE Value to Rise to 37. That Was the Buy-and-Holders. That Number Suggests That It Is Today’s Stock Market That Needs a Therapist.”“Do You Think That I Should Lie About My Belief? Should I Say That It Appears to Me That the Greaney Retirement Study Contains a Valuation Adjustment Even Though My Sincere Belief Is That It Lacks One?”“You Need Either to Point to the Page in the Greaney Retirement Study Containing a Valuation Adjustment or Join Me in Insisting That He Correct the Error Immediately.”“At the Very Bare Minimum, We Need to Make It a Practice to Tell Both Sides of the Story. Reasonable People Need to Absolutely Insist on That Much.”

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  • “Unfortunately, There Is a Feeling Among Some Buy-and-Holders That They Will Not Be Perceived as Super Duper Experts If People Come to Learn That They Didn’t Always Know It All. “

    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 are always the victim, aren’t you Rob.  The whole world has orchestrated a mass conspiracy against you and even your ex-wife is in on this scheme.  Poor Rob. We are all victims of this massive act of financial fraud, Anonymous. We all would be living richer and freer and happier and better lives if every site on the internet had been opened to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research in this field on May 13, 2002, as I proposed at the time. I is not possible for the Rational human mind to imagine any possible downside, I mean, come on. Learning is this world one true free lunch. There was a time when we didn’t know all that we needed to know to invest in stocks successfully for the long run. Now we do. Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize for his research because it represented such a huge advance over what came before. Unfortunately, there is a feeling among some Buy-and-Holders that they will not be perceived as super duper experts if people come to learn that they didn’t always know it all. Well, they didn’t. I don’t think that the mistake they made was that big a deal. But the cover-up of the mistake has hurt millions of people and hurts more each day that it continues. We all need to pull together and insist that every site be opened to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research so that we can all move forward together into a better tomorrow. Where I’m coming from. Rob Related Posts“The Bennett/Pfau Research Shows That Market Timing Is 70 Percent of What It Takes to Achieve Long-Term Stock Investing Success. So 70 Percent of What We Hear From Investment Experts Should Be Telling Us Ways to Avoid Getting Sucked in By the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold Garbage.”“I Certainly Am Not Going to Demand Prison Sentences If Most Others Do Not See a Need for Them.”“My Buy-and-Hold Friends Are Good and Smart and Hard-Working People. They are Trapped in Unfortunate Circumstances. But They Want To Be Giving Sound Investing Advice. I Know Because I Have Talked To a Good Number of Them re How They Feel About All This.”“This Is a Field Where People Don’t Admit Their Mistakes. The ‘Experts’ […]

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  • “Say That There’s a 1 in 100 Chance That What I’ve Been Saying for 23 Years Now — That the Greaney Retirement Study Lacks a Valuation Adjustment — Is Accurate. After 23 Years of This Stuff, I Personally Would Put the Odds at 99.9999 Percent. But Let’s Say for Purposes of Discussion That There’s Only a 1 Percent Chance That Greaney Got the Numbers Wrong in His Study. If There’s a 1 Percent Chance, Then We Should Be Talking About It at Every Site on the Internet.”

    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 did many things to help her. She owns her own home today. That came from money that I provided” From what money? You haven’t worked in 25 years. Meanwhile, your ex-wife has been working multiple jobs the whole time. Notice you even admit in your last post, like you have done before that she needed you to bring in an income. There is zero excuse for ANYONE to not support his family if you are physically able. I don’t think that there’s any excuse for anyone who knows about the 44-years cover-up not to do everything in his or her power to bring it to an end. It affects the retirement accounts of millions of people. I couldn’t sleep at night knowing that I was aware of the problem and just let another Buy-and-Hold Crisis take place. Say that there’s a 1 in 100 chance that what I’ve been saying for 23 years now — that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment — is accurate. After 23 years of this stuff, I personally would put the odds at 99,9999 percent. But let’s say for purposes of discussion that there’s only a 1 percent chance that Greaney got the numbers wrong in his study. If there’s a 1 percent chance, then we should be talking about it at every site on the internet. Greaney isn’t the only person who advanced that loony-tunes 4 percent rule. There are millions of people who put together their retirement plans thinking that that was something real and who need to be advised that it was all just a scam. How do you think that word is going to get out if no one works up the courage to stand up to you Goons. There’s no other way that it could happen. And look at today’s CAPE level. It’s pretty darn scary. If we had opened every site to honest posting re the research on the afternoon of May 13, 2002, as I proposed at the time, we would obviously never again have to endure such an insanely dangerous CAPE level. We would have people explaining why valuation-based market timing is the key to long-term stock investing success at every site. How do you think we are going […]

    (2 Comments)

  • “The Thing That Is Really Off in the Investment Advice Field Is That the Non-Experts — the People Who Will Be Suffering Huge Losses in the Event That the Stock Market Continues to Perform in the Future Somewhat As It Always Has in the Past — Tolerate the Cover-Up. That’s Nuts. But They’ve Got That Get Rich Quick Impulse Residing Within Them That Makes Them Like Buy-and-Hold, that Makes Them Think That This Might Be the First Time in History When It Doesn’t End in Tears for Everyone.”

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: Did you care about what happened to your ex-wife’s retirement account? Very much so. If we experience another Buy-and-Hold Crisis, she is one of the millions and millions of people who will get hurt by it. I obviously don’t want to see that happen. The question is — Why do we not apply the same rules that apply in every field other than the investment advice field in the investment advice field as well. That’s what makes sense. In every other field, we apply laws that show that we understand that experts can make mistakes and that those mistakes need to be corrected over time. So we permit honest posting re new research and thereby provide a means for the experts to come to terms with the mistakes that they have made and to develop stronger ideas. The thing that is really off in the investment advice field is that the non-experts — the people who will be suffering huge losses in the event that the stock market continues to perform in the future somewhat as it always has in the past — tolerate the cover=up. That’s nuts. But they’ve got that Get Rich Quick impulse residing within them that makes them like Buy-and-Hold, that makes them think that this might be the first time in history when it doesn’t end in tears for everyone. Can we overcome it? I believe that we are working up to that magic moment. I believe that the arc of history in the personal finance field bends toward rationality. I believe that opening up one large site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research will get us over the line will get us there. At that point, my ex-wife and millions and millions of others will be able to have some confidence that the numbers on their portfolio statements are accurate. I see that as being a huge step forward. We’ll see. Rob Related Posts“We Don’t Accept the Phony Numbers. We Fear the Emotional Pain We Experience When Our Longstanding Game of Let’s Pretend Is Exposed to Daylight. We Are ASHAMED.”“Peer Pressure Is a Huge Influence on the Human Mind. Bull Markets Are the Product of Peer Pressure. Buy-and-Hold Is the Product of Peer Pressure.”“Jeff at the Sustainable Life Blog […]

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  • “You Are Broke. You Are Divorced. You Got Everything Wrong. Take Responsibility and Stop Blaming Everyone Else.”

    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 are broke.  You are divorced.  You got everything wrong.  Take responsibility and stop blaming everyone else. And I was right about the Greaney retirement study lacking a valuation adjustment. Rob Related Posts“I Developed the Ideas Tested in the Study That I Co-Authored with Wade Pfau. Wade Did Great Work Testing Them and Proving Their Legitimacy. He Never Tried to Hog Full Credit for the Study. He Said Many Times That He Considered Me the Lead Person Behind the Development of the Valuation-Informed Indexing Concept and That He Believed That the Shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing Is the Biggest Advance That We Have Seen in the Investing Field in Many, Many Years.”Goon Poster to Rob: “Why Do You Continue to Do What You Do? Clearly You Are Not Making Any Money.”“You Are Broke. Who Got the Numbers Wrong?”Buy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: “You Are a Quintessential Don Quixote.” Rob’s Response: “This Nation Is a Don Quixote Nation. People Tell Us Good Things That We Are Trying to Do Are Impossible and we Go Ahead and Do Them Anyway.”Goon Poster to Rob: “Any Wife Would Be Saddened by a Husband Who Is Capable of Working But Hasn’t ‘Made a Dime in 13 Years.’ Since You Acknowledge That Fact, To What Extent (If Any) Does It Bother You?”“That Explains Why I Am Banned at Every Large Investing Site — I Never Had Any Success Convincing People. Makes Sense!”

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  • “Buy-and-Hold Fails Every Time There Is a Change in Valuations and There Is an Investor Who Fails to Change His Stock Allocation”

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site; Just because you say something, it doesn’t make it true. Buy and hold has never failed and you cannot point to one single person with a buy and hold failure. To the opposite, you can’t point to even one single successful outcome with market timing. You are broke, Rob. You lost the game. You got everything wrong. Everyone abandoned you. You fail to acknowledge your long list of mistakes. Buy-and-Hold fails every time there is a change in valuations and there is an investor who fails to change his stock allocation. I mean, come on. Even the Buy-and-Holders say that investors should seek to “Stay the Course.” Well, an investor who stays at the same stock allocation when the CAPE value has changed is not exactly staying the course, is he? The Buy-and-Holders got it right about staying the course and about following the peer-reviewed research. They got it wrong about there not being a need to practice valuation-based market timing. Price discipline is critical in all markets. We now have 44 years of peer-reviewed research showing that the stock market is not the sole exception to the common-sense rule. Buy-and-Hold is a marketing gimmick. It’s what sells. Valuation-Informed Indexing (Buy-and-Hold updated to reflect what we’ve learned from the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research) is what works. I would permit honest posting re the peer-reviewed research at every site and see what happens. Rob   Related Posts“Shiller Has Never Put Forward a Single Word Suggesting That Investors Should Not Be Using CAPE to Practice Effective Long-Term Timing. If It Is True That Valuations Affect Long-Term Returns, As Shiller Showed, Then Long-Term Timing MUST Work.”“There’s Risk in Long-Term Market Timing? Huh? Long-Term Market Timing Is Price Discipline. The Risky Thing Is to Exercise Price Discipline? I See It Just the Other Way Around. I Exercise Price Discipline With Every Single Good and Service I Buy. The Risk Is in FAILING to Exercise Price Discipline.”“The Peer-Reviewed Research Looks at the Entire History of the Stock Market While Your Scoreboard Is How Things Feel at a Moment in Time When Irrational Exuberance Is Out of Control and the CAPE Value Is Scary High.”“The Buy-and-Holders Don’t Subtract for Irrational Exuberance When They Determine Whether Their Retirement Is Fully Funded […]

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  • “The Buy-and-Hold Team Has Failed for 23 Years to Insist That the Greaney Retirement Study Be Corrected. The Object of the Game Is Not to Avoid Admitting That You Ever Got Anything Wrong. The Object of the Game Is to Help the People Who Listen to Your Investment Advice. Acknowledging Mistakes Is a Key Part of What It Takes to Win the Game.”

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: When two sports teams compete, one side wins and the other side loses. The losing team accepts the fact that they were wrong (did not do the right things to win the game). The losing team doesn’t blame the winning team for their own failures. Get the picture? You are broke. You are on the losing team. You made the wrong choices. The buy and hold crowd one the game with consistent retirement successes. Stop blaming those that made the successful people for making the right choices. Accept the fact that you were wrong and are broke as a result of your decisions. The Buy-and-Hold team has failed for 23 years to insist that the Greaney retirement study be corrected. The Buy-and-Hold team lost the game. The object of the game is not to avoid admitting that you ever got anything wrong. The object of the game is to help the people who listen to your investment advice. Acknowledging mistakes is a key part of what it takes to win the game. That’s where I’m coming from re this terribly important matter, in any event. Rob Related Posts“We Don’t Accept the Phony Numbers. We Fear the Emotional Pain We Experience When Our Longstanding Game of Let’s Pretend Is Exposed to Daylight. We Are ASHAMED.”“At the Very Bare Minimum, We Need to Make It a Practice to Tell Both Sides of the Story. Reasonable People Need to Absolutely Insist on That Much.”“Do You Think That the Buy-and-Holders Support This Cover-Up? I Surely Do Not Think That.”“The Side Pushing the Death Threats (the Buy-and-Holders) Are Also the Side Pushing the Pure Get Rich Quick (No Market Timing!) Approach to Stock Investing.”“If Shiller Put Forward a Statement That ‘The Buy-and-Hold Retirement Studies Are in Error and Should Be Corrected Within 24 Hours Because of the Harm That They Will Otherwise Do to Lots of People,’ He Would Get the Same Reaction That I Have Gotten. It Is Not That It Is Rob Bennett Saying the Things That I Say That Causes Buy-and-Holders to Lose Their Freakin’ Minds, It Is the Content of the Message.”“The Primary Effect of Buy-and-Hold Is to Take People’s Attention Away From the Most Important Factor Affecting Long-Term Stock Investing Success — Valuations.”

    (2 Comments)

  • “Buy-and-Hold Is Not Based on Research. Wade Pfau Devoted 16 Months of His Life to the Project of Trying to Find One Iota of Research Showing That Valuation-Based Market Timing (Price Discipline!) Is Not Always 100 Percent Required for Every Investor. He of Course Came Up Empty-Handed. There of Course Is No Such Research. It Is a Logical Impossibility That There Could Ever Be Any. It’s Like Looking for a Perpetual Motion Machine.”

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: Buy and hold is based on research.  Market timing is all speculation as there has never been one successful outcome.  Why go on speculation when we all know what works and what has failed. Buy-and-Hold is not based on research. Wade Pfau devoted 16 months of his life to the project of trying to find one iota of research showing that valuation-based market timing (price discipline!) is not always 100 percent required for every investor. He of course came up empty-handed. There of course is no such research. It is a logical impossibility that there could ever be any. It’s like looking for a perpetual motion machine. Rob Related PostsBuy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: “Valuation-Informed Indexing Failed. You Have Been Wrong. You Just Can’t Bring Yourself to Ever Admit It Because Then You Would Have to Admit That the Last Two Decades of Your Life Have Been Wasted.”“The Thing That They Call a Price Crash Is Really an Emotions Crash.”“Looking for Data to Support the Idea That Market Timing Is Not Required Is Like Looking for Data to Support a Perpetual Motion Machine.”“The Price That Is Set at a Time When Honest Posting re the Research Is Banned Is Obviously Not the Price That Would Apply If Honest Posting re the Research Were Permitted.”“If Buy-and-Hold Were a Real Thing, Those Who Advocate for it Would Welcome Questioning of Their Strategy.”“For Investors to Set Prices Properly, They Need Access to the Information Needed to Make Good Choices. The Peer-Reviewed Research Is Obviously Critically Important Information.”

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  • “I’m Not the One Who Permitted the CAPE Value to Rise to 37. That Was the Buy-and-Holders. That Number Suggests That It Is Today’s Stock Market That Needs a Therapist.”

    Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site: Perhaps this is a topic best discussed with your therapist. I’m not the one who permitted the CAPE value to rise to 37, Anonymous. That was the Buy-and-Holders. That number suggests that it is today’s stock market that needs a therapist. I believe that the best possible therapy for a stock market that has produced a CAPE value of 37 is open discussion of the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. Rob Related Posts“After the Crash, the Floodgates Open. People Will Give Up Their Feelings of Embarrassment and Shame and Become Determined to Get Things Back on the Right Track. At That Point the Owners of the Bogleheads Forum Are Not Going to Be Resisting My Efforts to Take Over. They Are Gong to Be Asking Me to Take Over. We Are Going to Be Friends.”“The Fact That Wade Pfau Won’t Speak to Me Today Definitely Tells a Tale That Needs to Be Widely Told.”“I Used to Believe in the Buy-and-Hold Garbage. I Know How It Feels to Be Tricked Re This Stuff. Legitimate Strategies Can Be Defended Without Death Threats. I Earned My Retirement Money. I Expect to Be Able to Find Accurate and Honest Reports re What the Peer-Reviewed Research Says About How to Invest It. I Deserve That. We All Do. We All Should Demand It.”“The Primary Effect of Buy-and-Hold Is to Take People’s Attention Away From the Most Important Factor Affecting Long-Term Stock Investing Success — Valuations.”Goon Poster to Rob: “Any Wife Would Be Saddened by a Husband Who Is Capable of Working But Hasn’t ‘Made a Dime in 13 Years.’ Since You Acknowledge That Fact, To What Extent (If Any) Does It Bother You?”“The Greaney Study Hasn’t Been Corrected to This Day. What Does That Tell You?”

    (25 Comments)

  • “Price Discipline Works for Every Investor Who Employs It. It’s Impossible for the Rational Human Mind to Imagine Any Exceptions to That Rule.”

    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 didn’t work for you in the long term.  In fact, you can’t even name one person in which market timing has worked out. Price discipline works for every investor who employs it, Anonymous. Ir’s impossible for the rational human mind to imagine any exceptions to that rule. You don’t subtract for the effect of irrational exuberance when determining the size of your portfolio. That’s what confuses you. Irrational exuberance gains are imaginary gains. They are not real. They disappear into the mist in time. Rob Related Posts“If There Is No Such Thing As Irrational Exuberance, Buy-and-Hold Is the Ideal Strategy. If Irrational Exuberance Is a Real Thing, Buy-and-Hold Is the Most Dangerous Strategy Ever Concocted By the Human Mind.”“Does It Not Make Perfect Sense To Divide By Two At A Time When Stocks Are Priced At Two Times Their Fair Value?”“If Irrational Exuberance Is a Real Thing, It Is the #1 Enemy of Stock Investors.”“At the Very Bare Minimum, We Need to Make It a Practice to Tell Both Sides of the Story. Reasonable People Need to Absolutely Insist on That Much.”“Do You Believe That Irrational Exuberance Is a Real Thing?”“Markets Don’t Work When Access to a Free Flow of Information Is Blocked”

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What’s Here

  • Bennett/Pfau Research (62)
  • Beyond Buy-and-Hold (117)
  • Bill Bengen & VII (8)
  • Bill Bernstein & VII (4)
  • Bill Schultheis & VII (2)
  • Brett Arends and VII (1)
  • Carl Richards & VII (8)
  • Daily Caller Articles (10)
  • Economics — New and Improved! (102)
  • Financial Highway Column (11)
  • From Buy/Hold to VII (381)
  • Guest Blog Entries (96)
  • Index Universe & VII (11)
  • Intimidation of VII Advocates (66)
  • Investing Basics (518)
  • Investing Experts (91)
  • Investing Strategy (55)
  • investing theory (23)
  • Investing: The New Rules (120)
  • Investor Psychology (94)
  • J.D. Roth & VII (17)
  • Joe Taxpayer & VII (14)
  • John Bogle & VII (97)
  • Larry Evans and VII (12)
  • Lindauer/Greaney Goons (471)
  • Michael Kitces & VII (43)
  • Mike Piper & VII (31)
  • Podcasts (200)
  • Reactions to Pfau Silencing (71)
  • Reality Checker (4)
  • Return Predictor (11)
  • Risk Evaluator (11)
  • Rob Arnott & VII (4)
  • Rob Bennett (304)
  • Rob E-Mails Seeking Help (67)
  • Rob's E-Mails to Researchers (1)
  • Robert Shiller & VII (103)
  • Roger Wohlner and VII (5)
  • Saving Strategies (23)
  • Scenario Surfer (3)
  • Scott Burns & VII (8)
  • Silencing of Wade Pfau (96)
  • Strategy Tester (5)
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  • Uncategorized (23)
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  • VII Column (720)
  • Wall Street Corruption (353)
  • Warren Buffett & VII (5)

Rob on the Internet

  • Rob's Weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing Column at the Value Walk Site.

  • Rob's Weekly Beyond Buy-and-Hold Column at the Out of Your Rut Site

  • Rob's Articles at the Financial Highway Site

  • Rob's Articles at the Balance Junkie Site

  • Rob's Daily Caller Articles: (1) Can We Handle the Truth About Stock Investing?; (2) How We Invest Is a Political Question; (3) The Economic Crisis Is Trying to Tell Us Something (and We're Not Listening); (4) Facts Don't Matter; (5) Going Google Stupid; (6) How Much Transparency Can We Handle?; (7) Confessions of an Internet Troll; (8) Conservatives Fall Into a Trap by Blaming Obama for the Bad Economy; (9) Meet the New Media, Same as the Old Media; and (10) How Restoring Honor Will End the Economic Crisis

  • Humble Money Experts Are the Best Money Experts, (Rob's Article in the Integrative Advisor, the Journal of the Association for Integrative Financial and Life Planning)

  • Articles on the Return Predictor, the RIsk Evaluator, the Scenario Surfer and the Strategy Tester

  • The Myth of Buy-and-Hold and Seven Other Guest Blog Entries

  • The Good Side of Stocks' Lost Decade and Seven Other Guest Blog Entries

  • A Better and Safer Way to Invest in Stocks and Seven Other Guest Blog Entries

  • The Economic Crisis Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us and Seven Other Guest Blog Entries

  • The Bankers Did Not Do This to Us! and Seven Other Guest Blog Entries

  • Stock Volatility Kills! and Seven Other Guest Blog Entries

  • The Risks of Buy-and-Hold and Seven Other Guest Blog Entries

  • The Future of Investing and Seven Other Guest Blog Entries

  • What the Stock Investing Experts Don't Want You to Know and Seven Other Guest Blog Entries

  • What's the Best Age at Which to Experience a Stock Crash? and Seven Other Guest Blog Entries

  • Guest Blog Entry Compares Our Effort to Open the Internet to Honest Posting on Stock Investing with the Civil Rights Struggle of the Early 1960s

  • Our Monster Thread (153 Comments!) on Whether Bill Bengen Should Correct His Retirement Study Now That He Acknowledges the Errors He Made In It

  • Google Search Results for the Term "Valuation-Informed Indexing"
  • Favorite RobCasts

    • Bogle and Valuations

    • When Stock Losses Are True Losses and When They Are Not

    • There Is No Free Lunch! Or Is There?

    • Risk Tolerance in the Real World

    • Cash Is a Strategic Asset Class

    • Nine Valuation-Informed-Indexing Portfolio Allocation Strategies

    • Why the Stock Market Does Not Set Prices Properly (Even Though Other Markets Do)

    • Only Valuations Matter -- Everything Else Is Priced In

    • Low Stock Prices Are Better Than High Stock Prices

    • 30 Investment Myths in 60 Minutes

    Links That Matter

    • Ten Bogus Investing Truths

    • Study by Associate Professor Wade Pfau Showing That Long-Term Timing Provides Higher Returns at Reduced Risk

    • Study by Associate Professor Wade Pfau Showing That Valuation-Informed Indexing Beat Buy-and-Hold in 102 of 110 Rolling 30-Year Time-Periods in the Historical Record

    • Wall Street Journal Article Pointing Out That the Idea That Long-Term Market Timing Does Not Work Is a "Myth" of Stock Investing "That Will Not Die" Because "This Hoary Old Chestnut Keeps Clients Fully Invested" Even When It Is Contrary to Their Best Interests

    • Wall Street Journal Article Pointing Out That" "This Ratio (P/E10) Has Been a Powerful Predictor of Long-Term Returns" and That "Valuation Is By Far the Most Important Issue for Investors"

    • The Internet Blowhard's Favorite Phrase: Why Do People Love to Say That Correlation Does Not Imply Causation?

    • Michael Kitces (One of the Bravest of the Good Guys in This Field) Asks: "Who's Really at Risk When Avoiding Overvalued Stocks?"

    • Financial Mentor Article Reporting on How Our Knowledge of How to Calculate Safe Withdrawal Rates Has Grown During the First Nine Years of The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Debate

    • Does the Trend Matter?

    • Improving RIsk-Adjusted Returns Using Market-Valuation-Based Tactical Asset Allocation Strategies

    • A Value Restoration Project Blog Post That Sums Up in Three Paragraphs All You Need to Know to Become a Highly Effective Investor

    • Year 20 Annualized, Real, Total Return v. P/E10

    • Year 10 Annualized, Real, Total Return v. P/E10

    • Valuation-Informed Indexing Always Superior to Buy-and-Hold Over 10-Year Periods

    • The Valuation-Informed Indexing Advantage

    • What P/E10 Predicted vs. What Actually Happened

    • Normal and Valuation-Adjusted Wealth Accumulation

    • Valuation-Informed Indexers Can Retire Five Years Sooner

    • Following Valuation-Informed Indexing Strategies Reduces Stock Investing Risk by 80 Percent

    • S&P 500 Tracked by P/E10 Level

    • Treasury Inflation-Protected Income Securities (TIPS) Table

    • Best, Average and Worst Returns Since 1871

    • Compound Annual Growth Rate Calculator

    • Investing Through Time

    • Mapping S&P 500 Performance

    • S&P 500 at Your Fingertips

    • S&P 500 Return Calculator

    • Russell's Research

    • Shiller's Data

    • Safe Withdrawal Rate Research Group