Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to this site’s blog:
Rob said: “Again, these are merely the sincere views of a non-expert who has spent a lot of time trying to understand conflicts and weaknesses in the conventional understanding of stock investing. ” But Rob, you said you are more of an expert than Jack Bogle, William Bernstein, etc.
Both things are so, Pink.
I never went to Investing School. I never managed a big fund. I am no investing expert.
But, yes, I am 11 years ahead of Jack Bogle and Bill Bernstein and Larry Swedroe and all the other Buy-and-Holders.
They aren’t experts either, Pink.
There’s no such thing as an “expert” in a field in which we are as a society only beginning to come to terms with the most fundamental questions. Do valuations affect long-term returns or do they not? That’s the ABCs. When Buy-and-Hold was developed there were smart people who thought that it wasn’t necessary to change your allocation in response to valuation shifts. They didn’t know. If you don’t know the ABCs, you are obviously not an expert.
Now they know.
Now we all know. Now that Shiller has published his research and now that Wade and I have published the research that shows clearly the huge practical implications of Shiller’s revolutionary theoretical findings, we all know. Or at least we all should know.
But Bogle and Bernstein and Swedroe cannot today bear to admit that they don’t know it all. So they play stupid games. And thereby get themselves deeper and deeper into the mess that they created by pretending to know things that they in reality did not know.
I am not an expert. But I am 11 years ahead of those who haven’t even yet acknowledged that they were wrong about safe withdrawal rates and why.
I gave up on Buy-and-Hold on the evening of August 27, 2002, when John Greaney threatened to kill my wife and children if I ever dared to “cross” him again by putting up another honest post on safe withdrawal rates. I never looked back.
When did you come to see that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage, Pink?
If you haven’t done that yet, why haven’t you? What do you need to see?
What is Bogle waiting for? What is Bernstein waiting for? What is Swedroe waiting for?
It’s one thing not to be an expert. It’s not possible for any of the humans to be true investing experts today. Our knowledge of the realities simply is not yet sufficiently advanced for anyone to claim that title.
It’s something else to be corrupt. If you don’t speak out against death threats and board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs, you are acorrupt non-expert.
Is that not so, Pink?
Rob
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