I have been sending e-mails to numerous people, letting them know about my article reporting on The Silencing of Academic Researcher Wade Pfau by The Buy-and-Hold Mafia.
Yesterday’s blog entry reported on my correspondence with Joachim Klement, Chief Investment Officer at Wellershoff & Partners, Inc. Set forth below is the text of the e-mail that Joachim sent me in response to my e-mail to him reported on in the earlier blog entry:
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It’s a weird coincidence that you mentioned Financial Analysts Journal. I don’t follow the journals so it is possible that I am confused. But I believe that Rob Arnott was the editor of that journal a few years back. Is that right?
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Rob and I had a discussion about this stuff just yesterday. He said that he has not been able to get a journal to publish an article he wrote with Harry Markowitz which shows that a modest amount of error in stock prices would fully explain the Fama-French size and value effects. He wrote: “Journals turning down a Nobel Laureate? Yep, it happens.”
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No matter how many times i hear about or see something like this, it amazes me. I am NOT an investing expert. I am a journalist. So I tend to focus on the public policy implications, which are HUGE. If overvaluation is a real thing, then it was the promotion of Buy-and-Hold that caused the economic crisis. All that you need to do to show that is to calculate the amount of overvaluation experienced in the U.S. market in 2000. It was $12 trillion. If that $12 trillion was all phony gains fated to disappear over the course of the next 10 years or so, then $12 trillion of spending power was fated to disappear from the hands of the U.S. consumer. There’s your economic crisis!
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I am sorry to vent. I just see this as being so big that I cannot get over it. I understand that people have different points of view. That’s normal and healthy. But as someone outside the field I feel that people inside the field have become immune to appreciation of the significance of this. People have come to accept that it takes time for new ideas to catch fire in the academic community and are just sitting back waiting for things to happen. They are not grasping how big this is.
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Shiller’s ideas turn the fundamentals of our understanding of how stock investing works on their head. So we just need to figure out for sure whether he is right or not. I don’t blame people for proceeding slowly. That makes all the sense in the world. You don’t want to rush to adoption of a new understanding of the fundamentals. But we cannot advance our understanding without full and frank discussions in which lots and lots of smart people participate, including not just academics but also policymakers and journalists and all sorts of other stakeholders. We ALL have an interest in having the stock market function properly and in not seeing overvaluation corrected through crashes and the economic crises that follow from them.
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I apologize for directing so many words at you. I am to a large extent thinking out loud. My conversation with Arnott yesterday sort of blew my mind. He takes it in stride. He says that I am right on all the substance questions. He doesn’t see what is happening on the process side as being so shocking. I sure do! A Nobel Laureate cannot get work addressing an issue of fundamental importance published in a top-rate journal — Yikes! I don’t think that the average investor has any idea whatsoever that this sort of thing goes on. I say that because I think of myself as an average investor. I am 100 percent shocked by this stuff.
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Is there any place you know of where people explore the process issues? I feel that this side of things just falls between the cracks. The substance side gets addressed in the journals (or in some cases does not). The process side? I see that as something that we should be hearing about in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or in a best-selling book. But it has not yet happened. Politicians spend tons of energy discussing the Federal budget deficit and the economic crisis. We need to have them directing their energies to dealing with the true CAUSE of the crisis if this in fact is the true cause. How do we get them doing that when the journals won’t even publish super-important articles?
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I don’t expect you to have answers to these questions. I am grateful to you just for your willingness to engage in a little back and forth. I am just venting because to my eyes this is so crazy. If you have any thoughts as to how I could get a national debate launched on the process side of this matter (it’s the process side that I most care about as a journalist), I sure would be grateful if you would pass them along. Is there anyone that you can suggest that I might talk to about doing something on the process side?
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If not, I 100 percent understand. I of course get it that none of this is your doing. I just feel that we have a matter of huge public policy significance that is falling between the cracks (most journalists feel that investing is too complicated for them to understand and thus elect to let the experts take care of it) and that I need to figure out how to get the process side of this on the national agenda.
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The Pink Unicorn says
Gee, more hard hitting journalism. A guy getting turned down on publishing his paper. That happens about what…….98% of the time since publications get bombarded with papers.
Rob says
It happens more than 98 percent of the time to papers that point out the 140 years of historical return data showing that Buy-and-Hold is the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind, Pink.
I worked with Wade Pfau for 16 months on the research paper we did together showing millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. Wade has a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton. So he should have known the track record of Buy-and-Hold. But he didn’t. He was amazed to learn what the historical record tells us — Buy-and-Hold has precisely zero chance of ever working for a single long-term investor.
Wade couldn’t believe what the data showed. He thought that he must have made a mistake. He searched the entire record of peer-reviewed academic research in this field trying to find one study suggesting that there was no need for investors to engage in long-term timing. He found nothing. He went to the Bogleheads Forum to see if anyone there had ever heard of a single study lending even a sliver of support to the Buy-and-Hold “idea.” No one there had heard of a single study. Not Jack Bogle. Not Bill Bernstein. Not Larry Swedroe. Not Rick Ferri.
Not too much later, you Goons threatened to get Wade fired from his job in the event that he continued publishing honest research. Bogle had no problem with that. Nor did Bernstein. Nor did Swedroe. Nor did Ferri.
Now Wade understands why no one had published this important research before he and I did.
The tobacco companies used to promote cigarette smoking as a health aid.
Millions of people died from cancer as a result.
Personal integrity matters. Even in the investing advice field. This is my sincere take re this important subject, in any event.
I wish you all good things.
Rob the Believer in the Idea that Personal Integrity Matters (Even in the Investing Advice Field)
The Pink Unicorn says
Rob,
You repeat the same diatribe over and over again with zero proof. You throw out some phony statistic of 98% and can’t back up a thing. Further, you talk about Wade and use him as proof, yet Wade said you are WRONG. You continue to talk about people trying to get Wade fired, yet you have zero proof. Yet we have proof in which we see that Wade says that you have caused him much more harm.
Finally, you throw out some comment on cigarettes, yet it has nothing to do with the discussion. I might as well say that Ford pushed the Pinto on the US market just like you push market timing on the US public.
Personal integrity means that you have facts to back up your comments. You lack facts and, therefore, lack integrity.
Rob says
Here is the article that I posted re the Wade Pfau matter, Pink:
http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/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-strategies/
You will have an opportunity to tell your story to a jury and it is that jury that will determine the length of your prison sentence. That’s the way the system works.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.
Rob the Jury Favroite
The Pink Unicorn says
Once again, you are just providing a link you your own comments.
The jury won’t like your continued harassment of Wade and you just keep adding to your prison sentence on a daily basis. Wait until the Jury hears this from Wade:
“I will make one more attempt at a reality check for you. You go on and on about how I allegedly lack personal integrity because I allowed the Goons to threaten me into silence.
The reality is that though I may have for a brief moment got a bit too caught up in YOUR drama, I do not have any fears about the Goons.
The reality is that you are causing me 1000x more career damage than the Goons ever could have by filling Google with so much nonsense about me, and sharing embarrassing private details such as my overly ambitious journal submission strategies, etc. Those in particular are highly private. People don’t publicly share where they submit articles to unless those articles are accepted. You’ve violated my trust in so many countless ways and yet you still proclaim to be my friend. ”
Uh oh, Rob. The jury sure won’t like that. Statements like that will add many years to your jail term. They won’t like the fact that you have sent out over 20,000 emails about Wade, yet you withheld this information that Wade has said. Not good for you.
The problem is that while you think you can delete emails that don’t look good for you, things really don’t go away.
Again, Uh Oh for you.
Rob says
I don’t withhold that statement at all, Pink. There is a link to the post in which I report on that statement at the “The Buy-and-Hold Crisis” section of the site.
I believe strongly that Wade should be permitted to post honestly. So should everyone else with an interest in these matters. The fact that you Goons threatened an academic researcher is shocking. The fact that people of statute in the field like Jack Bogle and Larry Swedroe and Bill Bernstein and Rick Ferri failed to speak up when it happened is doubly shocking.
I think it would be fair to say that the investing field is 100 percent corrupt today. That’s not my doing. I am the one who discovered the errors in the Old School SWR studies way back in May 2002 and who has argued from that day forward that the studies should have been corrected within 24 hours of the moment the errors in them became public knowledge. None of the people who have participated in the 11-year cover-up would be facing prison sentences today had the studies been promptly corrected.
I cannot wave a magic wand in the air and arrange for a do-over. The best I can do is to use my energies to help everyone affected by the economic crisis become aware of these matters. The sooner your prison sentence is announced, the shorter it will be and the fewer will be the number of people joining you in prison.
So I do what I can do.
Please take good care, man.
Rob the Good Solider
The Pink Unicorn says
You keep pointing at your own posts, Rob. That is not proof.
Wade has had his say and I posted his words above. He also pointed out how you were wrong on SWRs when he said the following:
“But I don’t believe that. I do not believe you have offered a valid correction to the safe withdrawal rate question. And I believe that retirement income strategies go much further than the question of a safe withdrawal rate. And so that is why I’ve had to endure your ongoing harassment for months on end now. ”
Note how he says you are wrong on SWRs. That is a direct statement and totally undermines everything you have ever said as you have made SWRs your main theme. Note how he also talks about your ongoing harassment. Despite him asking you to cease talking about him, you continue doing this and that is ongoing harassment. You must talk about prison so much because you are fearful that this is the place that you will be spending much of your future.
Again, Uh Oh for you, Rob.
Rob says
The jury will decide the matter, Pink.
I wish you all good things.
Rob the Believer in the Jury System
The Pink Unicorn says
Yes, Rob, the jury will wonder why you have sent out over 20,000 emails that have defamed Wade after he asked you to stop doing so and how Wade had expressly stated you have harassed him.
Rob says
I told Wade to go to the police when you Goons threatened him, Pink.
Wade will have the same opportunity to explain his behavior to a jury that you will have. That’s the way the system works for him as well.
If I am asked whether I believe that Wade held a sincere fear that his career would be destroyed by the Buy-and-Hold Mafia if he continued to publish honest research, I will testify that I believe that his fears were sincere and entirely justified by what we have all seen from the Buy-and-Hold Mafia for 11 years now.
I won’t say that this justifies his acts of defamation. It is my strong belief that, if Wade feels 100 percent that it is impossible for a person of integrity to work in this field, his only legitimate course of action is to find another career. Still, I do think his legitimate fears are something that a jury would want to take into consideration.
There is nothing that would make me happier than to do further honest research on stock investing with Wade after his prison term comes to an end. I think he is a great guy and I enjoyed the time I spent working with him very much. I believe that the work we did together may well earn him a Nobel prize. I think he deserves it.
My warmest regards to you and yours.
Rob the Good Friend to a Future Nobel Prize Winner
The Pink Unicorn says
Defamation and integrity? Well Rob, let’s look back again at what Wade had to say about you:
“And the further reality is that if I *did* lack personal integrity, I could have made this all stop just by saying the meaningless sentence you want so desperately to hear: “I think the errors in the traditional safe withdrawal rate studies must be corrected by using Rob’s analytically valid method.”
But I don’t believe that. I do not believe you have offered a valid correction to the safe withdrawal rate question. And I believe that retirement income strategies go much further than the question of a safe withdrawal rate. And so that is why I’ve had to endure your ongoing harassment for months on end now. ”
Wade is not hiding from anything. Instead, he is commenting specifically on you.
The Pink Unicorn says
By the way, deleting posts are a clear sign of your guilt.
Rob says
Wade is not hiding from anything. Instead, he is commenting specifically on you.
Of course the Wade Pfau of today is hiding from something. He is hiding from the honest Wade Pfau of yesterday who spent 16 months working on the most important research published in the last 32 years in this field. There are scores of quotes from Wade reported on at the link below on scores of different topics. No one changes his views on that many different issues in the course of a single day which also just happens to be a day when a band of internet Goons (to which my good friend Jack Bogle lends his implicit support by letting them use his name on their “discussion” board) threaten to destroy his career if he continues publishing honest research.
http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/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-strategies/
All of these things will come out in the trial, Pink. Bogle will be called to testify. I will be called to testify. Wade will be called to testify. You Goons will be called to testify. A jury will decide on the length of your prison sentence (and on whether there will be prison sentences for Jack and Wade). That’s how the system works.
My best wishes.
Rob, the Fellow Who Didn’t Need to Threaten Academic Researcher Wade Pfau Even One Time to Persuade Him to Advance SCORES and SCORES of the Kindest and Most Gratifying Comments About His Work That Wade Could Have Possibly Advanced
Rob says
By the way, deleting posts are a clear sign of your guilt.
No, it isn’t. It’s a sign that I don’t want to join you in prison, Pink.
Your crime is financial fraud. You have engaged in death threats and board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs because you want to cover up the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies, right? Well, isn’t any site moderator who fails either to respond effectively to your abusive posts or to delete them ALSO participating in the cover-up?
It sure seems so to me.
I have zero interest in joining you in prison, Pink. So I ain’t going there.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.
Rob, the Responsible Site Administrator
The Pink Unicorn says
Rob,
I think you should change the name of this site to “A Pathetic Life”. It would be more fitting for someone that thinks that his non-stop internet trolling is more important than his wife and kids.
Rob says
I’ll take that one under advisement, Pink.
Please take good care.
Rob the Open-Minded Executive
Anonymous says
We need to say no to people like Rob that promote market timing. It is nothing more than a get rich quick scheme.
http://rorfinance.com/why-market-timing-is-dangerous/
Rob says
All of the words that appear at that page are rooted in a belief in the Buy-and-Hold Model for understanding how stock investing works, Anonymous.
The Buy-and-Hold Model was discredited by peer-reviewed academic research published by Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller in 1981.
The Buy-and-Hold Model was developed by people who really and truly believed that market timing does not work and is not necessary.
These people were both right and wrong.
They were right about short-term timing. Short-term timing never works and is not required. It was the second biggest breakthrough in our growing knowledge of how stock investing works when we learned this.
They were wrong about long-term timing. Long-term timing always works and is 100 percent required for any investor seeking to have a realistic hope of long-term investing success. Today’s research shows that Buy-and-Hold has never once in 140 years worked for a single long-term investor. It is a logical impossibility that this could ever change. To fail to practice long-term timing is to fail to exercise price discipline when buying stocks. It is impossible that failing to exercise price discipline could ever produce good results when buying ANYTHING.
The mistake was made because the early researchers ONLY tested short-term timing. When every test showed that it doesn’t work, they jumped to the false and unjustified conclusion that no form of timing is required.
Shiller was the first researcher to test long-term timing. He found that long-term timing is 100 percent required. Every test done for the 32 years since has confirmed Shiller’s finding. There is zero support in the research for the Buy-and-Hold strategy.
The relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold by the Wall Street Con Men caused the economic crisis.
You Goons have committed thousands of acts of financial fraud by covering up the errors in the Old School SWR studies for 11 years now.
The best hope of getting your prison sentences reduced a bit is by opening the internet to honest posting on what the peer-reviewed academic research of the past 32 years tells us about how stock investing works. The millions of middle-class investors whose life savings have been destroyed by the Wall Street Con Men are going to be very angry following the next price crash, which will in all likelihood put us in the Second Great Depression.
I naturally wish you and yours all good things.
Rob, the World’s #1 Advocate of Long-Term Market Timing
Anonymous says
Rob is just peddling is get rich quick scheme like a snake oil salesman. Plenty of research to see that the buy and quick con men like Rob will make you go broke.
I don’t want any part of that fraud.
Rob says
We obviously disagree, Anonymous.
My best wishes to you.
Rob, the Fellow Who Can Disagree Without Being Disagreeable
Anonymous says
Not only are you trying to sell your scheme, but you spend almost every waking minute on the internet. You are here 7 days a week at all hours of the day, wasting your life, yet ignoring your family and responsibilities.
Rob says
Dad loves his work, Anonymous.
No apologies.
Do you know how hard the Beatles worked it in those Hamburg clubs?
Most overnight successes have a lot of elbow grease behind them.
I started working this stuff hard long before you even knew me.
In the 90s, when I was at Ernst & Young, I spent every night and every weekend building those 30 binders from which the insights that I used to build the Retire Early board at Motley Fool were derived.
It’s a lucky person who can say that they know what work they were put on Earth to do. I am one of those lucky persons.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. John Greaney played a big role in convincing me of the point. I had a pretty good idea before I ever posted at Motley Fool. But you always want to hear outside confirmation. When I put up a few posts at the Retire Early board and he put up that notice directing all newcomers to the board to my stuff because it was “seminal,” that was a huge confidence boost. I have never forgotten it.
Anyway, thanks for noticing.
Rob the Passionate
Anonymous says
Wasting your life and your wife and kids suffer.
Rob says
They’ll just have to learn how to struggle along somehow on $500 million, Anonymous.
Life is hard everywhere nowadays.
Rob the Poor Provider
Anonymous says
Telling them some fantasy about money that you will never see if just adding insult to injury.
Rob says
A jury will decide the matter, Anonymous.
I have confidence in our system of government.
Rob the Patriot
Anonymous says
A jury looks at facts. The facts are against you. I see time and again how people have provided facts, yet all you can do is make silly statements and link to your own comments.
Put that aside. Even brining up a jury is just plain silly. You just use it as a tool to threaten people. There are no charges brought against anyone and it is just your fantasy that it will happen. All you want to do is just scare people and no one is scared as they know the facts stack up against you.
Rob says
Time will tell the tale, Anonymous.
I can recall a day when there were people saying that there would never be a day when the Wall Street Journal would run an article saying that I was right about safe withdrawal rates.
Things change. The History Train moves on.
You want to be sure that you are not caught standing on the tracks when it comes roaring through town.
I wish you all the best, in any event.
Rob the Respecter of the Power of the History Train
Anonymous says
I don’t recall seeing your name in the Wall Street Journal. I recall a comment in which Wade P said you were wrong on SWR and that it goes way beyond SWR. Here you are on a weekend posting in the early morning hours and still posting into the evening. Notice that you always feel that you have to respond to everything. Responding to this post or even deleting this post will prove that you know you are wrong and/or you have a significant mental illness.
Rob says
I don’t recall seeing your name in the Wall Street Journal.
If you were in a situation in which you could be honest about these matters, you would have objected to that omission.
The same is so with my good friend Jack Bogle.
And with Bill Bernstein.
And with Larry Swedroe.
And with Scott Burns.
And on and on.
For so long as you and these others are not in a situation in which you can be honest about these matters, I hold the advantage, Anonymous.
Perhaps you’ve noticed.
Rob
Anonymous says
“Responding to this post or even deleting this post will prove that you know you are wrong and/or you have a significant mental illness”
Thanks for proving my point.
Unlike you, I am honest.
Anonymous says
“he same is so with my good friend Jack Bogle.
And with Bill Bernstein.
And with Larry Swedroe.
And with Scott Burns.”
They are not your friends and you aren’t even qualified to tie their shoes.
Rob says
Thanks for proving my point.
My warmest wishes to you, Anonymous.
Rob the Warm
Rob says
They are not your friends and you aren’t even qualified to tie their shoes.
I couldn’t possibly disagree more, Anonymous.
One of the things I love about the Wade Pfau e-mails is that you can hear in his words how much he loves helping people. That is what caused him to enter this field in the first place. As he tapped into new insight about how stock investing really works following upon new insight about how stock investing really works, he was like a kid getting a bike on his birthday, jumping up and down with excitement about things he could do tomorrow that he never dreamed about doing in the past.
I am 100 percent confident that there was a day when my good friend Jack Bogle felt the same way. And that there was a day when my good friend Larry Swedroe felt the same way. And that there was a day when my good friend Bill Bernstein felt the same way. And that there was a day when my good friend Scott Burns felt the same way.
A Second Great Depression will cause vast amounts of human suffering, Anonymous. I have a funny feeling that these good people are going to respond to seeing that vast amount of human suffering playing out before them by swallowing their pride a little bit and learning how to pronounce the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.”
I’ll let you in on a little secret. I think that you, my friend, may do the same.
We’ll see.
I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.
Rob the Fellow Who Remains Confident of the Basic Goodness of His Buy-and-Hold Friends
what says
So, when is time going to tell? It has been 11 or 12 years?
Do you talk with your family about how you have 500 million coming your way? You may want to mention it.
Rob says
So, when is time going to tell? It has been 11 or 12 years?
It’s determined by investor emotion, What.
Do you remember the days when I was blacklisted by every investing blog on the internet? It’s not like that today. If I want a Guest Blog Entry to run this week, I have a dozen sites I can go to that will run my stuff. That tells you that the emotion is less than it once was.
But the emotion is still there! Say that I want to run a Guest Blog Entry discussing the length of your prison sentence. That I cannot get published today. I could have gotten it published at the “1,000 Papercuts” site. That was the only place where I could discuss the POLITICAL side of all this.
So investors are today LESS emotional than they were in earlier days. But still heavily emotional. We still cannot talk about the most important stuff.
We all have a Get Rich Quick urge within us and we all have common sense. Those two emotional inclinations do battle and determine stock price changes. People are today holding onto Buy-and-Hold in desperation. But it is getting harder and harder as the economic crisis continues. The price crash will come when people lose interest in phony recoveries, knowing from their common sense that the only way we can see a lasting recovery is to acknowledge the true cause of the economic crisis — Buy-and-Hold — and deal with this monster we have created.
I do not expect it to take more than a year or two or at most three.
Rob the Not-Quite-Blacklisted One (Anymore)
Rob says
Do you talk with your family about how you have 500 million coming your way? You may want to mention it.
I’ve made reference to “hundreds of millions” on a small number of occasions. I don’t believe I have ever referred specifically to the $500 million figure.
My wife doesn’t count the $500 million (or whatever amount) as real. It’s not her style. If I said that a friend of mine promised to give me ten bucks he owed me, she wouldn’t count it in the books until it was reduced to dollars bills. She’s a “Show Me the Money!’ kind of gal.
I’m not that way. I am a conceptual thinker (nice way of putting it) or a dreamer (harsh way of putting it). I see things that do not exist in concrete form and watch them take shape. The Myers-Briggs personality assessment system refers to my personality type as the “Seer.” We don’t use crystal balls. We see into the future because we see connections that other personality types miss. These connections are every bit as tangible to us INFJs as numbers are to the INTJs. We seem to be able to see into the future because we see things going on today that others do not see and we are able to see where those things are leading us.
I didn’t ask to possess this ability. But I don’t apologize for it. We all possess something. This ability to be a “Seer” is the gift that I was given. My job is to make good use of the power.
Anyway, my wife and my boys certainly know that I expect a big payday. They love me but they do not possess the confidence that this is how things will turn out that I possess.
I acknowledge that there’s a chance that the payday will not come. If Bogle never works up the courage to say “I Was Wrong” we all go down together. I don’t want that to happen. But it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it that I have not already done.
Bogle doesn’t want us to go down either, you know. That’s a comforting reality for me. When things get so bad that he sees no other option, he will say the magic words. I want him to say those words NOW. But it’s not my call. I get one vote, like everybody else, like it or not.
When I am up on that stage with my good friend Jack working with him to turn this around, there’s not going to be one person saying “oh, don’t give that fellow $500 million, he should only get $495 million.” The $500 million figure sounds big when you don’t understand what is going on. Once it all clicks for you, you will see that it is a trivial number in relative terms.
Bogle is not a bad person. He will be the first one to sign off on the $500 million payday, in my assessment.
I don’t think you’re an entirely bad person either, What. You may not be the second person to sign off. But I believe that there will come a time when you will sign off. I sure hope so. We will be friends then. Good!
Rob, the Fellow Waiting Patiently for His $500 Million Payday
Rob
what says
Have you laid out your plan of spamming emails to thousands of people to your wife as the primary means by which you will achieve your 500$ million?
What do you say when they ask you what you do online all the time?
Rob says
The responses to the e-mails are available to anyone who cares to view them, What.
The Wall Street Con Men have been screwing millions of middle-class investors for 32 years now.
The losses they have caused have grown so massive that we are now in an economic crisis.
My site documents this massive act of financial fraud.
That’s how change is achieved, What.
How do you think we got the tobacco companies to stop saying that smoking is a benefit to one’s health? We put people in prison. Companies learned that there would be a big price to pay for continuing to work that con. We got the word out to millions. Today, people know the realities. That’s good.
That’s how the system works, my old friend.
Your prison sentence changes everything. Not just yours. The prison sentences of all those who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney change everything. Those prison sentences are how we as a society send a message re what forms of marketing we will tolerate and what forms go so far over the line that they cannot be permitted in a free society.
After your prison sentence is announced, we won’t have one academic researcher publishing honest research. We will have hundreds. Perhaps thousands.
We are in the process of accomplishing something very, very, very cool here.
I am the one who gets the $500 million. You are the one who gets the prison sentence. That’s just the way it happened to play out.
Not because I didn’t want you sharing the $500 million with me. I invited you to the party, remember? I practically got down on my knees and begged you to join the thousands of our fellow community members who expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted.
You chose the path you are on today, my old friend.
Please try not to be a crybaby about it now that you are getting a good sense of where it takes you.
Fair enough?
Rob the Big Fan of Crybaby Posts (Not!)
The Deleted plop contributor says
Another typical week for Rob as he posts 7 days a week, with posts starting well before the sun rises and continuing on through the day and into the evening. He repeats the same lines with the same lies over and over again, throws in his threats of prison and the fantasy of the $500 million monopoly money and through it all he continues to ignore his family.
I guess that is what a serious mental illness will do to someone.
Rob says
The record company that owned the legal right to issue the first three Beatles Singles (Love Me Do, Please Please Me and From Me to You) elected not to issue them because to the great minds of the day the Beatles were obviously nothing more than a fad.
Buy-and-Hold is garbage, Deleted. There is now 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing that. I have my name on the most important piece of research done in this field in the past 32 years, research showing millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent.
You hate me with a burning hate not because you do not see the value of reducing investing risk by 70 percent. You hate me with a burning hate because you DO see the value and you hate the fact that it was not you who was busy developing the Valuation-Informed Indexing Model over the past 11 years instead of wasting your human energies “defending” a model that had been discredited by 21 years of academic research on the day I put forward my famous post pointing out the errors in the Old School SWR studies.
Yes, I will continue to work it.
And, yes, I will win.
And, yes, people will be talking about Valuation-Informed Indexing and all the good it has done for millions of people 50 years from now.
And, no, no one ever will say that the Old School SWR studies did anything other than to destroy millions of middle-class lives.
The only thing unsure at this point in the proceedings is the length of your prison sentence, Deleted.
It will be shorter if you come clean prior to the next price crash, longer if you come clean after the next price crash.
This mentally ill dude has the hand of kindness extended to you.
But this mentally ill dude ain’t ever going to engage in financial fraud himself and thereby earn himself a prison cell next to yours.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob, the Mentally Ill Dude Who Warns People About the Dangers of Buy-and-Hold
The Deleted plop contributor says
Another typical Rob post that includes:
Reference to something that is not even closely related (this time the Beatles).
Buy and hold diatribe (even though buy and hold people have higher returns than Rob)
Reference to Academic research (even though Wade told Rob that he is wrong on SWRs)
Rob talking about hate (when it is Rob that demonstrates his hate)
Rob espousing the merits of market timing (that has been shown time and again to be a get rich quick scheme)
Rob’s delusion that he will “win” despite wasting the last 11 years and continuing to do the same thing
Predicting the stock crash (as he has for the last 11 years)
Threats of prison (typical tactic by someone that knows he is wrong and just wants to try and scare people since he has nothing left to debate)
Another lame signature line
Come on now, Rob. Using the same material over and over again is getting boring. Try harder.
Rob says
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Deleted.
Rob the Lame Signature-Line User