Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central board:
Some words appeared today on a discussion board I follow that I think you Goons need to see because of what it suggests re your lawsuit concerns.My site is hosted by a company called “SiteSell.” SiteSell had a system that it used to help its customers rank well in Google. I never used it because it does not work for my type of site (it only works for niche sites and my site covers pretty much any personal finance topic). But I can testify that it provided very good results for a good number of people for a long time.Now that the system has failed, there is a growing amount of criticism on the internet. Lots of people saw their businesses destroyed overnight. They are understandably quite emotional. A number have taken to criticizing SiteSell in very harsh terms in webmaster forums. The owner of SiteSell is very upset about this. He put forward the following words today:
We are pushed into a corner that is unfortunate. As much as This is clearly a threat to sue these people. Perhaps he won’t follow through. Perhaps the suits will not be successful if he does follow through. Perhaps he will be widely criticized for bringing lawsuits and will live to regret having done so. No one knows where this path will lead. The point I aim to make with this post is — this sort of thing was inevitably going to happen sooner or later. A good number of the people who came to the internet in its early days came to view it as their private playground. They came to believe that you can say anything you please on the internet and not be held accountable. That was never a realistic take. The laws on defamation were adopted for an important purpose. You cannot do harm to someone’s business through malice and not expect to be held accountable. There is no internet exception to the defamation laws. The key to a successful lawsuit, of course, is a showing of malice. In non-internet circumstances, malice is hard to prove. It’s NOT hard on the internet. The exact words of each poster are stored in Post Archives. The sorts of words that are needed to show malice can be quoted years later with precision because they still exist in lines of code. And you can show that these types of words were not spoken once or twice in a heated moment but many, many times over the course of a long period of time. My guess is that you all see what I am getting at here. I mention the lawsuits regularly not in an effort to intimidate you. I do it in an effort to help you. I am bringing lawsuits as soon as it becomes a realistic option for me to do so (that is, after the next price crash). There has never in the history of the United States been a defamation case in which the hard-to-prove element of malice has been proven so many times over. You Goons will no doubt continue to do what Goons do. I will continue to do what Normals do — I will do all in my power to lead things in a constructive and positive direction and then play the cards that have been dealt me in the event that I am shown once again that my efforts to lead things in a constructive and positive direction have not brought forth good fruit. I naturally wish you all the best that this life as to offer. Rob the Loser |
The Pink Unicorn says
“I mention the lawsuits regularly not in an effort to intimidate you. I do it in an effort to help you. I am bringing lawsuits as soon as it becomes a realistic option for me to do so (that is, after the next price crash). There has never in the history of the United States been a defamation case in which the hard-to-prove element of malice has been proven so many times over.”
No, Rob, you think you will scare away those that are critical of your comments. Every time you feel you are on the losing end of a debate, you immediately switch to the mode of threats.
“You Goons will no doubt continue to do what Goons do. I will continue to do what Normals do — I will do all in my power to lead things in a constructive and positive direction and then play the cards that have been dealt me in the event that I am shown once again that my efforts to lead things in a constructive and positive direction have not brought forth good fruit.”
You do what normals do??? Really? Like repeating a stupid take off a Seinfeld quote over and over again? Responding that you have Tourette’s response that includes profanities? Sending thousands of emails to people you don’t know, obsessing over a professor that has asked you to stop talking about him?
Tell us again about being normal?
Rob says
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Pink.
I think!
Rob the Uncertain
bannwd plop contributor says
Rob,
Based on your attempts to draw parallels between ‘sitesell’ and ‘buy and hold’ I did some poking around on the net.
Information and valid, direct, fact-based, irrefutable criticism of ‘sitesell’s proprietary, closed, opaque methods and overall ‘turn-key product’ approach has been available for a VERY long time. Check just this one typical informed link from 2008 by a professional site developer:
http://www.tomdisher.com/sitesell
Now, lay people like you who got burned by buying some self-annointed SEO ‘gooroo’s’ marketing puffery about being able to game Google forever, deserve just what you got IMHO — shut out, ultimately, because SEO gaming is never about organic ‘true’ results, but about working ‘the system’ to get lesser contented sites to place higher in search results and ranking than actual sites with superior content. In other words, lazy people try to jump the line in front of those actually blogging, and actually providing information, news, content, solutions, etc.
So, I don’t see anything too instructive about the whole thing except that ‘a fool and his money are soon parted’. That’s what happened to people who bought into Ken Evoy’s pitch, and that seems to be what happened to you. WordPress and other more open solutions have been around a LONG time.
So, regarding sitesell, I see nothing that can be illuminating about a supposed weakness in buy and hold, or the need to sue people for $500 million dollars. Perhaps being the philosopher, financial guru, website developer and reporter that you claim to be, you can do a single, short, clear, fact-based piece to make your points? Otherwise, you merely appear to be flailing aimlessly, whining about getting the short end of a stick that you could have seen was short, before you even bent over to pick it up! Most others (except the uninformed cattle, willing to be a party to ‘gaming’ Google’s system) certainly avoided ‘services’ like sitesell, seeing it’s VERY obvious limitations and constraints.
Looking forward to you making the associations to buy and hold more clear.
Rob says
I didn’t get burned by SiteSell, Banned. I never employed their system. I just used it because it was an easy way to get a site up. And SiteSell did provide that (at a cost, to be sure).
The connection to Buy-and-Hold is very strong. I used to listen to people praising the SiteSell system to the skies in the days when it was working. I never trusted it. I suspected that it was going to fall apart in days to come. Now that has happened.
And people are angry. Not everyone. There are still people who defend the SiteSell system. But there are lots of people who are very angry that the marketing pitch did not deliver on its promise.
That’s how people are going to feel when Buy-and-Hold causes them to suffer a wipeout. People don’t believe in Buy-and-Hold because they think it makes sense. They believe in it because we all are drawn to Get Rich Quick schemes and Buy-and-Hold is the ultimate GRQ scheme. People are going to be very angry when they lose all their money.
I do NOT adopt your attitude of: “They got what they deserved!” People said that about the investors who invested with Madoff too. I didn’t buy it then either.
ALL humans are drawn to GRQ schemes. We should be helping people avoid them, not chastising them when they are taken.
I want people to see through the mumbo jumbo of Buy-and-Hold. I do NOT want people to get angry about being taken. If people get too angry, they will tear our country apart. This is my biggest fear.
I am going to do all I can to calm people down, to try to explain that even the “experts” who promoted Buy-and-Hold were taken in by it (they are human too!) and that we should not be too cynical about what has been done to us.
I worry that my words are going to fall on deaf ears. My experience with people taken in by the SiteSell claims tells me that that is going to be the case. I will give it my best shot regardless. I won’t lie about the tactics that have been employed by the Buy-and-Hold advocates. But I do intend to make a serious effort to put their actions in the best possible light while not engaging in any outright dishonesty.
Rob
Rob says
or the need to sue people for $500 million dollars.
I expect to be bringing lawsuits for a very large multiple of that number, Banned.
I have floated the possibility of me agreeing to a settlement of $500 million on the condition that this amount be paid prior to the next price crash.
The idea here is to provide an enticement for the Wall Street Con Men to put the ugly side of this business behind us so that we all can get to work rebuilding our broken economy. That works to everyone’s benefit. I am far better off getting $500 million in a booming economy than getting a much larger number of dollar bills in a economy that has gone into a Second Great Depression that is putting the continued viability of our political system into question.
$500 million is a lot of money. I feel that that is more than enough for my needs and the needs of my family for many generations to come. So I think a settlement makes all the sense in the world.
But please don’t misinterpret the idea that I have floated as part of an effort to make things better for every single person involved as some sort of suggestion that I will not be seeking full compensation for the financial harm done to me in the event that the Wall Street Con Men fail to bite at the offer that has been put before them.
If there is no settlement prior to the next crash, my intent is to present the case to a large law firm and to let the lawyers advise me as to how best to proceed. If they urge me to accept a settlement, that’s probably the direction in which I will take things. If they advise me that it is better to pursue a much larger sum and not to settle, I will ask them to present their reasons and listen carefully to what they have to say.
Rob
bannwd plop contributor says
Rob – thanks for a rarity from you – a reply that seems to contain some actual facts, and also some points we may agree on:
“I didn’t get burned by SiteSell, Banned. I never employed their system. I just used it because it was an easy way to get a site up. And SiteSell did provide that (at a cost, to be sure).”
Excellent. Thanks for the clarification, and it sounds like you were wise to use them just as basic ‘infrastructure’, although you obviously could have gotten it better and cheaper elsewhere, if that’s all you required.
“The connection to Buy-and-Hold is very strong. I used to listen to people praising the SiteSell system to the skies in the days when it was working. I never trusted it. I suspected that it was going to fall apart in days to come. Now that has happened.”
Interesting. Except for the first sentence, that is so far unsupported, again, I honestly applaud your foresight regarding sitesell.
“people are angry…. that the marketing pitch did not deliver on its promise.”
Ah, but you see, as far as I can tell, they were knowingly complicit in the sham that sitesell intended to pull on both Google and potential readers who got duped by bogus search results. So for one thing, sitesell DID appear to deliver on it’s promise to direct buyers – for a couple of years, at least. Which is in eternity on the web. But yes, it did foreseeably fail once Google decided to tweak it’s own systems to eliminate the fraud.
So if those people are angry, I do NOT think it’s justifiable, nor do I think a court would be too sympathetic, either.
“That’s how people are going to feel when Buy-and-Hold causes them to suffer a wipeout.”
Ah. So that’s your whole premise: sitesell was a ripoff, people bought into, and (to you) so is b&h. Got it. But no other facts, analogies or truth is on the table, for you to make that case. Got it.
“People don’t believe in Buy-and-Hold because they think it makes sense. They believe in it because we all are drawn to Get Rich Quick schemes”
Here you are frankly lying, or just mentally fractured. Many many of your own past pieces claim b&h’ers are ‘true believers’ in their approach, not trying to push a scheme. And it’s worth pointing out at least once again, that the OPPOSITE of buy… then hold… would be any sort of active get rich QUICK scheme. “Quick” is not “long”. “Buy and hold long term” is not “make trades on a trigger, such as valuations.” Antonyms are not synonyms, Rob. Reporters should be aware of that fact. It is foolish to pretend opposites are the same.
“I do NOT adopt your attitude of: “They got what they deserved!” People said that about the investors who invested with Madoff too. I didn’t buy it then either.”
Without excusing the bad (up to criminal) behavior on the first part, we just have to disagree, then. I think those who get into scams are typically open to them due to larceny in their own hearts: “You can’t con an honest man”.
“ALL humans are drawn to GRQ schemes. We should be helping people avoid them, not chastising them when they are taken.”
As per above, YOU might be drawn to GRQ schemes; but me, and others who actually practice buy and hold for real, both believe and practice the direct opposite.
“I want people to see through the mumbo jumbo of Buy-and-Hold.”
There is no mumbo jumbo. There is no fast talking. There is only clear, cogent, fact-based, slowly explained, continuously reiterated basic immutable, mathematically certain principles. The fact you wish it otherwise so much that it hurts seems to drive your unusual pathology.
“I worry that my words are going to fall on deaf ears.”
Rob, if you speak the truth. IF you use actual facts. IF you don’t embellish, lie, prevaricate, appeal to emotion, convolute, commingle, tar, smear, etc, then people WILL listen. So far, though, you seem unwilling and or unable to do that.
“I won’t lie about the tactics that have been employed by the Buy-and-Hold advocates. “
Yes. Yes, you will. Past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior
“I do intend to… not engage[e] in any outright dishonesty.”
Asked and answered. Your writing speaks for itself.
Rob says
if those people are angry, I do NOT think it’s justifiable,
Justifiable or not, it is the way people react when they learn they have been taken.
If humans were saints, they would see through this sort of thing. Most of us are not saints.
I have zero problem with blaming the people who were taken up to a point.
What I say is that those doing the taking are in positions of higher responsibility and thus bear a larger measure of blame.
I DO acknowledge that the millions of middle-class people who bought into the Buy-and-Hold mumbo jumbo should have seen through it. It doesn’t take an I.Q. of 140 to see that it is a Get Rich Quick scheme.
That said, how many of us saw through it with any great clarity.
If you had asked me on the morning of May 13, 2002, what investing strategy I followed, I would have said that I was a Buy-and-Holder. The same was true of John Walter Russell. The same was true of Wade Pfau.
The same was true of lots of good and smart and hard-working people.
We cannot pin all the blame on the Wall Street Con Men. That’s not fair. We all were complicit.
But the Wall Street Con Men put themselves forward as experts. That’s worse.
And we need to show a good bit of sympathy for the Wall Street Con Men as well. All signs are that they deceived themselves before they deceived millions of middle-class investors.
ALL the humans are to blame. We need to forgive ourselves AND learn from the experience.
Rob
Rob says
Many many of your own past pieces claim b&h’ers are ‘true believers’ in their approach, not trying to push a scheme.
Both things are so.
The vast majority of Buy-and-Holders (I think it is entirely possible that this is true of ALL Buy-and-Holders) believe that Buy-and-Hold works. I see a mountain of evidence supporting that belief.
But Buy-and-Hold IS objectively a GRQ scheme.
The people pushing it believe that they are helping people. But they are not. Do you think people are incapable of making mistakes?
And that was true of Evoy. Evoy is a smart guy. He was very excited to help people achieve success on the internet. And lots of people who followed his system achieved great success over a good number of years.
When people pointed out the downside to his system, he rationalized away their concerns. That’s what the Buy-and-Holders do when people point out the flaws in the Buy-and-Hold system.
Just as people are angry at Evoy today, people are going to be angry at the Buy-and-Holders following the next crash. People tend not to blame themselves. They blame others.
And in this case you have a situation where there is 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing that there is zero chance that Buy-and-Hold can ever work for even a single long-term investor. People are going to be VERY angry to learn that. People are going to ask why they were not told. When they learn that the “experts” encouraged Goon squads to use death threats and defamation and board bannings and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs to keep the information that millions of investors needed to hear from them, we are going to see so much anger that it may well threaten the continued viability of our political system.
We’ve already seen anger growing with the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Tea Party Movement. What do you think you are going to see when millions of people see 70 percent more of their retirement money go “Poof!” And then learn that the academic research has been saying that this is how things were going to end up for over three decades now?
I am going to do all I can to help my Buy-and-Hold friends. But I ain’t going to lie for them. Forget prison sentences. I think it is fair to say that those who are still lying today about what the academic research says about Buy-and-Hold are taking a risk of seeing their heads put on the chopping block.
You don’t mess with people’s retirements. Not if you are even a tiny bit familiar with how the humans hurt by such lies respond to learning that they have been taken.
Rob
Rob says
I think those who get into scams are typically open to them due to larceny in their own hearts: “You can’t con an honest man”.
I agree 100 percent.
The problem here is that every human who ever lived has larceny in his heart to at least a small extent. There are few out-and-out saints walking among us.
There is a huge temptation for those in The Stock-Selling Industry to exploit our human weaknesses for personal profit. That’s been going on for a long time. But never has the exploitation reached the levels it has reached during the Buy-and-Hold Era. Death threats? Board Bannings? Tens of thousands of acts of defamation? Threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs for the crime of having produced honest research?
Word on that sort of stuff is going to go viral following the next crash, Banned. And I’ve got 11 years of documentation of the biggest (by a country mile!) case of financial fraud in the history of the United States at this site, Banned. It ain’t gonna be a pretty site for you Goons following the next crash, my long-time abusive posting friend.
It’s one thing to observe that we all are weak. It’s something else to exploit our weakness in the manner in which you and your Goon friends have for the past 11 years. I am happy to be able to say that there is no one on the internet who has stood up to you to the extent that I have.
The full truth here is that there is no one even in a close second place.
Rob
Rob says
There is only clear, cogent, fact-based, slowly explained, continuously reiterated basic immutable, mathematically certain principles.
That explains the death threats and the board bannings and the tens of thousands of acts of defamation and the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs.
Good point, Banned.
I forgot.
Rob the Forgetful
Rob says
Past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior
You’re right about this one, Banned.
Your writing speaks for itself.
Fair enough, my old friend.
Rob of the Long Track Record
bannwd plop contributor says
and Rob quickly but predictably devolves…
“Buy-and-Hold mumbo jumbo…
Get Rich Quick scheme…
zero chance that Buy-and-Hold can ever work for even a single long-term investor… Buy-and-Hold IS objectively a GRQ scheme…
Goon squads…
death threats…
Tens of thousands of acts of defamation…
prison sentences…
threats to get academic researchers fired…”
And so, I’m out of here…..
Rob says
I can’t tell you how many times I have had a Buy-and-Hold advocate say to me: “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”
Your comment is more honest about the true nature of the dispute.
The Buy-and-Holders don’t want people to know that there is 32 years of peer-reviewed research showing that this stuff can never work for a single long-term investor. They don’t want people to know about the Goon Squads. They don’t want people to know about the death threats. They don’t want people to know about the threats to get academiic researchers fired from their jobs.
I DO want people to know all that. I believe that people trying to decide whether this investing strategy is for them MUST know all that. If you employ death threats to keep people from talking about the peer-reviewed academic research, it’s not science. If you threaten academic researchers, it’s not science.
Buy-and-Hold ONCE was science. It was science in the days before Shiller published his research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. Now it is a scam. And not any old scam. Buy-and-Hold is today the scam that caused the biggest economic crisis in U.S. history.
I care about my Buy-and-Hold friends. I admire them. I respect them. I am grateful for what I have learned from them. I acknowledge that they built the framework on which Valuation-Informed Indexing — which is everything that Buy-and-Hold was meant to be when the pioneers began their important work — was built.
But I do no favors to my Buy-and-Hold friends by prolonging their agony,
If there is a case to be made for Buy-and-Hold that can be made without resort to intimidation tactics, I want to hear it and to tell others about it. If there is no legitimate case to be made, I want to bury the smelly thing 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.
I want that not just for me and for the millions of middle-class investors who are in the process of seeing their financial futures ruined by the relentless promotion of this Get Rich Quick garbage. I want it for my Buy-and-Hold friends, who deserve a lot better than to have their names associated with a “strategy” that can only be “defended” through use of the sorts of tactics that we have seen Mel Lindauer and John Greaney resort to over the past 11 years.
This is not a strategy fit for humans, Banned. Once upon a time, it was. 32 years ago, it was. Not today.
Today we have a true research-based strategy to explore. We all should be directing our energies to exploration of the first true research-based investing strategy, Valuation-Informed Indexing. That’s what the Buy-and-Hold pioneers would have wanted had they known when they were started out how things were going to go.
The value of a research-based strategy is that the merit of the strategy can be tested. When the strategy fails the test, those who have come to believe in it must let it go. Otherwise, they become the opposite of what they set out to be when they first began their efforts to develop a research-based strategy.
There is no group of investors on the face of Planet Earth who possess the burning hate for the peer-reviewed academic research that is today held by the Buy-and-Holders. That is a reality sad beyond words.
I didn’t make you feel that hate. It is the part of you that all along wanted to follow a research-based strategy that makes you feel that hate. You feel that hate because you betrayed your own beliefs when you continued to follow a strategy that had long been exposed as a Get Rich Quick scheme.
It’s not Banned at war with Rob Bennett. It’s Banned at war with Banned.
When the good side of you wins out, please come to me asking for help in getting your prison sentence reduced a bit. I’ll be there for you, man.
Rob the Straight-Talking Believer in True Research-Based Investing Strategies
The Pink Unicorn says
Just hilarious to see banned make a post about how Rob typically responds only to be followed by a response from Rob in which he responds in the manner that banned just described.
Some people never learn.
Rob says
I don’t want to learn what you Goons are trying to teach me, Pink.
I am proud that I was the person to discover the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies. I think that was wonderful.
And I am proud that I have developed scores of powerful investing insights in the 11 years that followed as a result of what I learned about Buy-and-Hold by watching how the Buy-and-Holders responded to that first insight.
We are working at cross purposes, Pink. You are trying to keep Buy-and-Hold alive. I am trying to bury it 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.
Do you see?
Rob the Buy-and-Hold Slayer
The Pink Unicorn says
Why is it, rob, that everyone you attack seems to be doing better financially then you? Results point to the truth. It doesn’t look good for you, Rob.
Rob says
Bernie Madoff made millions before he was sent off to prison, Pink.
I expect to make hundreds of millions doing this.
But honestly.
Otherwise, no deal. If it cannot be done honestly, I would prefer that you try to find someone else.
Rob
The Pink Unicorn says
Yes, I know, you are like Bernie. You have a GRQ scheme and you will fail like he has and your tactics are far from honest. The ones you attack EARN their money.
Rob says
That makes sense, Pink.
Rob the Promoter of GRQ Investing Schemes