Yesterday’s blog entry set forth the text of an e-mail that I sent to Carl Richards, author of the Behavior Gap blog, last November. Carl sent me a response on November 14, 2009. Carl has not given me permission to post the full text of his e-mail. So I have provided only a summation of its contents below.
Carl started by saying “every journalist I know respects ‘off the record’ conversations.” He then declared that all of our e-mail conversations, both those held in the past and any to be held in the future were “off the record.” He claimed that I was “completely misrepresenting” his intentions. He said that he did not ban me from his site because of my message but because the way in which I was presenting the message was driving people away from the site. In Carl’s words, “You seem intent on causing fights so you can claim that your message is being censored.”
Carl said that it was his goal to challenge conventional investing assumptions “In a way that leads to dialog instead of fighting.” He asked that I not quote any part of any e-mail from him or any content from his site “without explicit permission from me, which I will deny.” He concluded by imploring me to “consider changing the way in which you deliver the message so you don’t kill it.”
Rob
What part of “off the record” do you not understand? Again and again, he asks you not to use his emails and yet you continue to do so.
Carl offers some very good advice. You would be wise to take it. I am quite sure you won’t.
What part of “off the record” do you not understand?
I understood well enough what “off the record” meant to know that I would not be serving my readers to agree to Carl’s request, RIAFD.
Again and again, he asks you not to use his emails and yet you continue to do so.
That’s essentially correct, RIAFD.
The one caveat to that is that I do not quote the e-mails in full. I think it would be better to quote them in full as then there would be no possibility that I would misrepresent Carl’s views in some way. But I see it as being his call as to whether he wants the e-mails to be quoted in full or not. So I have honored his request.
Carl offers some very good advice. You would be wise to take it. I am quite sure you won’t.
It’s not my intent today to take Carl’s advice, RIAFD.
I don’t agree that Carl has offered good advice re the “message” that I am trying to communicate. I am trying to warn people that Buy-and-Hold is dangerous, that it causes failed retirements and economic crises. I hear Carl saying that it would be better to water down that message. If I water it down, I don’t think people will hear it. Carl waters it down. Are Carl’s readers aware of just how dangerous Buy-and-Hold Investing is? I don’t think so. If they were, they wouldn’t object to my message.
The reaction to the message (hostility) that Carl acknowledges is a reality that tells me how important it is that the message be communicated in undiluted form. The very fact that there are a good number of people who get extremely upset just to hear the basics of investing described at blogs and discussion boards tells me how much damage the promotion of Buy-and-Hold has done to investors. It has turned a good number of us stark raving bonkers!
Rob
You are trapped in some bizarre groundhog day time loop, but unlike Bill Murray, you refuse to learn from experience.
Please recall what Rob Arnott said about today’s conventional investing wisdom, RIAFD. He said that it’s rooted in “myth and urban legend.”
Am I going to invest my retirement money pursuant to ideas rooted in “myth and urban legend”? Um — No thanks.
I submit to you that perhaps it is the “experts” in The Stock-Selling Industry who are rooted in some bizarre groundhog day time loop. They are intellectually capable of appreciating the realities and of giving advice 10 times better than what they offer today. But the key that opens the door to all this wonderful stuff is their gaining the ability to pronounce The Three Magic Words.
You cannot learn something new until you can bear to contemplate the possibility that did not always know it all perfectly.
I say that not to hurt anyone’s feelings. I say it because that is truly the way that it is. Or at least that is how Rob Bennett sincerely believes it to be.
When I put up something with my name on it, it is going to contain my sincere beliefs, RIAFD. Deal with it.
I know of no other field of human endeavor in which following such a policy would generate eight years of “controversy.”
Holy moly!
Rob
Rob
My last word on the subject and then I will leave you to the relative isolation of your blog
I have been following your act since you first showed up at the original vanguard diehards forum on Morningstar. In all that time, not one person has asked you to change your message. You have only been asked to change your behavior, to stop turning every conversation into one on value informed indexing. If you can’t see that basic difference, then frankly you are beyond help.
You often speak of integrity, but your actions betray your true character. From twisting the words of others for your own purposes, to ignoring Carl’s simply request, you again and again choose to act unethically.
“You have only been asked to change your behavior, to stop turning every conversation into one on value informed indexing.”
It’s the community that decides what the conversations will be about, RIAFD.
Those of us who understand the dangers of Buy-and-Hold obviously have a responsibility to note them when others promote Buy-and-Hold strategies. At that point, it becomes the community’s decision as to whether to engage in an ongoing discussion of these questions or not.
You are of course correct that we have seen huge interest in Valuation-Informed Indexing at every board at which it has been discussed. That’s hardly a bad thing. That’s a wonderful thing. For so long as there are so many community members seeking to learn more about the realities of stock investing, I will continue to do my best to help them out by responding effectively to their questions.
In the event that there ever comes a time when there are not so many questions, I think that is fine too. There are many smart and good people who sincerely believe in Buy-and-Hold and those people should of course be free to follow their own beliefs and to hold their own discussions amongst themselves.
I offer no apologies for trying to help out the thousands of my fellow community members who have expressed a desire to learn more about the ideas we have developed together over the past eight years. These are the people who built our communities. We all own them a debt of gratitude for doing so and we all owe them the respect of permitting them to hold the conversations that they elect to have at our boards. Each of the Goon posters clicked the “I Agree!” button before being permitted to post in our communities. So they knew the community norms coming in and should not be showing any surprise about them now.
If the Goon posters want to build different communities with different norms of behavior, they may do so. But I do not want to say anything to suggest that these sorts of individuals might feel welcomed at any of the Retire Early or Indexing boards or in the Personal Finance Blogosphere. I’m afraid that we just don’t need the business that bad!
The way it is, RIAFD.
Rob
But I do not want to say anything to suggest that these sorts of individuals might feel welcomed at any of the Retire Early or Indexing boards or in the Personal Finance Blogosphere. I’m afraid that we just don’t need the business that bad!
However history shows that it is your business that the boards and blogs don’t need that bad!
Oh my!
Rob