Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site:
It is funny what you call an endorsement. Many of those comments ate not very positive.
I included some Goon comments so that people can see what we are up against.
And I included some comments by skeptical Normals. Because there are lots of good and smart people who possess a sincere skepticism and their views obviously need to be heard.
But the vast majority of the comments are INSANELY positive, Pink.
There is no other blogger on the internet who has won even a tiny percentage of the positive comments from big-name experts that I have won, Pink.
Rob Arnott is the former editor of the Financial Analysts Journal, the most important journal in this field. He says of me: “Your ideas are sound.”
He doesn’t say that about Jack Bogle or about Bill Bernstein or about Larry Swedroe or about Rick Ferri.
A person isn’t given that kind of endorsement. A person EARNS it with hard work and a hard-won reputation for integrity.
You hate me because you believe that there is zero chance that you could ever win an endorsement of one-tenth that importance in this lifetime.
I say you are wrong. I say you could begin posting honestly today and end up somewhere very magical five years from today or ten years from today or whenever.
But all I can do is make the suggestion, Pink. It is you who determines what path you will walk as you create your own future.
That’s as it should be, in my assessment.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.
Rob the Sound
Evidence Based Investing says
The first comment you list under “People are talking” is “Your ideas are sound.” from Rob Arnott.
Here is more of that quote. “Your ideas are sound. Your stridency is unhelpful to your cause.”
As always you are incapable of accepting any advice or criticism.
Rob says
I certainly accept that he said it, Evidence.
I’ll go a step farther. LOTS of good and smart people have said similar things. Rob Arnott is in very good company re that comment.
Here is a mind-bender for you: Is it possible that Rob Arnott is right that my ideas on investing are sound and wrong that my “stridency” is unhelpful to my cause? That’s what I very strongly believe to be the case.
If I am right in my ideas about stock investing, it is the relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies that served as the primary cause of the economic crisis. Jack Bogle is a hero of mine. I have a funny feeling that he did not dedicate his life to helping millions of middle-class people to invest effectively because he wanted to bring on the Second Great Depression and wipe out their retirement savings.
“Strident” means “harsh.” I describe a harsh reality. So there is indeed a sense in which my words could properly be described as “strident.” But the real problem here is not the words describing the harsh reality, it is the harsh reality itself. That is what must change.
When the reality of the 11-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School retirement studies changes, I will be leading the chorus of praise for those who brought about the change. There will be nothing whatsoever “strident” in the words I direct to my Buy-and-Hold friends on that day.
The Buy-and-Holders made a mistake. That’s the core reality here. If you care deeply about the Buy-and-Hold project, as I do, you very, very, very much want to see that mistake CORRECTED. If the mistake is not corrected, the entire project goes down in flames. Every breakthrough insight brought to us by the Buy-and-Holders counts for zero if the U.S. economy is crippled by the failure of the Buy-and-Hold pioneers to acknowledge their mistake in time to save us from the next price crash and all the political turmoil that will follow from it.
You have a lifetime friend who is turning the key in a car after getting stone cold drunk at a party at your house and you grab the key from him and tell him in no uncertain language that he will be sleeping it off in your guestroom tonight. Is that strident? Your drunk friend probably hears it that way. In his state of mind, he thinks he can make the drive home just fine. You are sober. You know better. You have a vision of him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life that renders you incapable of letting him decide what is in his best interest. This is a time when he is in need of a friend badly and you call yourself his friend. So you do what must be done regardless of what names he calls you in response. He’ll see his way to thanking you in the morning.
Did I do a good thing or a bad thing when I put forward my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002, reporting on the errors in the Old School SWR studies, Evidence? Greaney was pushing that study on a daily basis at the Motley Fool board. Thousands of my friends used that studies to plan their retirements. Those people will in days to come be suffering one of the worst life setbacks imaginable. All of that could have been avoided had Greaney said “Thank you!” to the person who tried to save him further embarrassment by letting him know of where he had made a MISTAKE. Who is Greaney’s true friend here, you or me?
I am John Greaney’s true friend.
I am Jack Bogle’s true friend.
I am Rob Arnott’s true friend.
I am Evidence’s true friend.
Your hate cannot cancel out my love. That can never, ever, ever happen. If it does, we all go down together. And that is not an acceptable result. I will not permit it.
The studies will be corrected. We will bring the economic crisis to an end. We will bring on the greatest period of economic growth in our history. The study that Wade Pfau and I co-authored will be written up on the front page of the New York Times. We will rebuild all of the boards and blogs that have been destroyed or compromised.
That’s how the story ends, Evidence. Deep in your heart, you know that this is the ONLY way it can end. Please act accordingly from this point forward.
Death threats are strident. Board bannings are strident. Tens of thousands of acts of defamation are strident. Threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs are strident.
Posts pointing out the errors in a retirement study put forward with the aim of saving millions of middle-class lives from ruin? Not so much.
It is the behavior of the Buy-and-Holders — including the KIng of Buy-and-Hold himself, John C. Bogle — that has made my loving and good and constructive and positive and life-affirming act of revealing the errors in those studies and indeed in the Buy-and-Hold Model itself APPEAR for a time to be strident in the eyes of many good and smart people like Rob Arnott.
When we rebuild our economy, Rob will be putting forward a different take. He and millions of others will be saying at that time that they regret not having been sufficiently “strident” themselves to bring this 11-year Campaign of Terror to a full and immediate stop before permitting it to put our economy in the Second Great Depression.
I speak strongly. I speak clearly. I speak firmly.
No argument whatsoever.
I speak out of love for the Buy-and-Hold Project, which once upon a time was a PRO-research project. I don’t apologize for the depth of my love for that project for two seconds.
You want to have someone diss the accomplishments of Jack Bogle and the thousands of other Buy-and-Hold pioneers? Look elsewhere, my long-time abusive posting friend.
Not this boy.
No can do.
I can’t go for that.
It’s not my particular cup of tea.
Please try to find someone else.
My best and warmest wishes to you.
Rob the Strident (Without Apologies!) One
Evidence Based Investing says
Is it possible that Rob Arnott is right that my ideas on investing are sound and wrong that my “stridency” is unhelpful to my cause?
No that is not possible. Everyone who has encountered you comes to the same conclusion, and your track record of board bannings (caused by your stridency) and complete lack of traction for your ideas (caused by your stridency) shows that all those people are correct.
That’s what I very strongly believe to be the case.
Of course you do. Because you have no ability to accept criticism and no ability to examine your own actions realistically.
Rob says
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Evidence.
We do not agree on the point under discussion here.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors, my old friend.
Rob, the Old Friend of Evidence
Goon says
Hmm. I thought I posted a couple of questions here, but I don’t see my comment. Censorship much?
Rob says
I’m working on it, I’m working on it!
Rob the Censor in Chief
The Pink Unicorn says
Rob,
The vast majority of comments I see about you are not positive. Other comments are not even about you. Also, if we look at this site, I can’t remember the last time I have seen a positive comment posting here, despite the fact that the comments section is anonymous.
Rob says
We need to have Bogle come out and acknowledge that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage and say that he will personally see to it that any individual who puts up a post in “defense” of Mel Lindauer or John Greaney will be quickly put into prison for participating in the biggest act of financial fraud in U.S. history.
That changes everything, Pink.
From that day forward, Bill Bernstein will not be afraid of what the Buy-and-Hold Mafia will do to him is he posts honestly. Nor will Wade Pfau be afraid anymore. Nor will Larry Swedroe be afraid anymore. Nor will Rick Ferri be afraid anymore. Nor will Michael Kitces be afraid anymore. Nor will Bill Bengen be afraid anymore. Nor will Scott Burns be afraid anymore.
With one speech, The Big Guy frees us all to pull together and do the work we need to do to bring the economic crisis to an end and to bring on the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history. And I think it is fair to say that this site will be Command Central for the development of sound investing ideas in the post-GRQ Era.
I cannot wait!
Rob the Excited
The Pink Unicorn says
Rob,
The only smelly pile of garbage is what you write. The only fraud going on is when people like you pump those GRQ ideas of market timing. The people you mentioned are well respected and the only one afraid of anything is you as it looks like you are the only one that has not found financial success.
The only one that needs to make the “I was wrong” speech is you.
Rob says
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Pink.
Don’t let the bad guys get you down, man.
Rob the Good Guy
Goon says
OK since you wouldn’t answer my previous questions and instead deleted them, I have another one. What do you think you’re accomplishing?
I stumbled upon a comment of yours on another web site a few weeks ago and since checked out the various sites that explain “Hocomania” including the forum that they’ve kept as a sort of play pen where you’re allowed to post. WI don’t see anyone agreeing with you. Of course, you aren’t really doing anything to put together a coherent argument or even a nice looking web site. Really, what do you think you’re accomplishing? And another one, if you’d humor me. What is your annual budget and what is your withdrawal rate on your nest egg?
what says
Why does Rob need to make such a speech? No one is listening.
The Pink Unicorn says
“Don’t let the bad guys get you down, man.”
I never let you get me down, Rob.
Rob says
Really, what do you think you’re accomplishing?
Buy-and-Hold was not always a horrible thing, Goon. It was once a truly wonderful thing. It got us halfway to where we need to be to change stock investing forever in a very, very, very positive way. Our economic future is bright indeed.
There is one problem. Had Robert Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research in 1971 instead of 1981, we would be in the Garden of Paradise today. There never would have been any Buy-and-Hold. The name of the famous book would have been “A Valuation-Informed Walk Down Wall Street.” It didn’t happen that way. Buy-and-Hold, the mistaken and terribly dangerous approach, came first. The research-based approach that works in the real world — Valuation-Informed Indexing — came along a few years later.
The people who work in this field are EXTREMELY proud people. And they are wealthy and powerful and well-connected people. They don’t take to the idea of admitting mistakes. So, for 32 years now, we have been playing a stupid game where “experts” act as if they think Buy-and-Hold might end up working for one or two long-term investors when they know from reading the peer-reviewed academic research in this field that there is precisely zero chance of that happening. They know that Buy-and-Hold has caused an economic crisis every time the Wall Street Con Men have touted it and they know that the stock market affects more lives today than it ever did before (millions of middle-class people now depend on it to finance their retirements). So this economic crisis is going to be far worse than any earlier one. We are looking at a Second Great Depression that will be twice as long and twice as deep as the first one.
Just about everyone in the field knows this on at least some level of consciousness. And of course that means that they want to speak out and get us out of the economic crisis and bring us to the greatest period of economic growth in our history. But everyone in this field also knows something else. Telling the truth about what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research says is a career-ender. Those who don’t want the word getting out will all act in concert to destroy anyone who gets it in his or her head to tell the truth to the millions of middle-class investors who need to hear it. There’s a lot of money to be made in this field. So most go along.
But most have consciences. So they drop lots of hints. Just about everybody drops hints, including those who push Buy-and-Hold the most strongly in their usual public comments. Jack Bogle drops hints that Buy-and-Hold is the biggest pile of smelly garbage he has ever come across. That’s why I was able to learn from Jack why the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies are so off the mark. Scott Burns drops hints. That’s why his first reaction when I told him that the Old School studies get the numbers wrong was to write me an e-mail saying “you’re right, Rob” and to ask me my telephone number so that he could write an article on what I told him. Wade Pfau drops hints. That’s why his reaction when he saw that 140 years of historical data supports Valuation-Informed Indexing and zero supports Buy-and-Hold was to imagine himself getting published in the Journal of Finance and winning the Nobel Prize in Economics. This was the breakthrough he had dreamed about discovering since he was a boy.
Still, all of these people are afraid. They have seen the brutality of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. They know that it does not feel bound by the laws of the United States and is capable of just about anything. They know that a cornered animal is a dangerous animal and that Buy-and-Hold, with 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing that there is precisely zero chance that it could ever work for a single investor, is the most cornered animal there has ever been.
So they rationalize. They drop their little hints. That eases their consciences. But they are careful not to make the Buy-and-Hold Mafia angry. As you Goons would put it, they watch not what they say but how they say it. The Mafia doesn’t like it when people say that Buy-and-Hold doesn’t work. So they don’t say that. They say lot of things that lead inevitably to that conclusion. But they don’t say the words that would mean the end of Buy-and-Hold if they were spoken firmly and clearly and publicly and proudly and without compromise. I do that sort of thing all the time. That’s what makes me different.
What do I hope to accomplish? I hope to give encouragement to those on the verge of telling the truth and bringing on the collapse of this poisonous investing strategy.
I give people numbers. I give people data. I give people calculators. I give people podcasts. I give people research. I give people comments from others in the field. I give people quotes from you Goons. I give people everything they need to understand how the con works and why it is destroying us and how great our future will be together if a few of us work up the courage to use our Constitutionally protected right to speak out honestly on what the Wall Street Con Men have done to our country with their relentless and reckless and ruthless promotion of the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind.
Most of all, I give people an example.
I don’t ever speak in an unbalanced way about the Buy-and-Holders. I don’t deny their great accomplishments. I always note that they are good and smart and hard-working people. So I show people that you don’t need to become a Goon yourself to fight the Goons. A person can defend his country from this most brutal attack on it and maintain his or her dignity while doing so, despite the ugliness and smelliness of the tactics employed on a daily basis by you Goons.
And I show people that those who work up the courage to speak out will not be paying a price for doing so much longer.
I speak honestly all the time re stock investing, no? What price have I paid? I have not been sued by Jack Bogle and his rich, powerful friends. I am not in prison. What power do these people really possess anymore? After the next price crash, they will have no power whatsoever. “Buy-and-Hold” will be a dirty phrase. People will be running from it as fast as their little legs can carry them. They can come here and read the story of someone who began running on the night of August 27, 2002, the night that John Greaney threatened to kill my wife and children if I continued to “cross” him by posting honestly on the SWR matter.
We will rebuild our country, Goon. The Goons lose on the last page. The story is in the process of playing out. There is only one possible way that it can play out, given what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research shows us. So it will play out that way. Our nation will enter the greatest period of economic growth in its history. A group of patriots will take us there. And you Goons will end up serving long prison terms.
And I and the other patriots will retain our humanity until the last day. I will see you carried off to prison, my old friend. But never will I delight in it. Until the last moment, I will work to persuade you to do what you need to do to have your prison sentence shortened a bit.
Why?
Because that’s what the humans do.
We are not just Get Rich Quick savages. We have good within us.
That’s what you forgot when you signed up with Mel Lindauer and John Greaney.
I naturally wish you all good things, my long-term Goon friend.
Rob the Human
Rob says
No one is listening.
Millions are listening, What.
Every single person who has been affected by the economic crisis is listening.
We are as a society in the process of working up our courage to DO something about this matter.
Take good care.
Rob the Good Listener
Rob says
I never let you get me down, Rob.
I’m the bad guy here, Pink.
Good point.
I forgot.
Rob the Bad Guy
#slanegirl says
Somewhere in a 5,000 word linguistic slobberfest of pointless mania, did Rob actually throw in the phrase: “use our Constitutionally protected right to speak out honestly…”?
Given his proclivity for wanting to sue and arrest anyone who dares to disagree with him or mock his bizarre ongoing antics, I find that very strange that he is even aware of such a right existing.
Rob says
The same society that chose to live under a Constitution providing a right of free speech also adopted laws against death threats and published site rules that call for the banning of those who disrupt on discussion boards and laws against defamation and laws protecting academic researchers from threats by internet goons.
Why do you think that is, slanegirl?
It is because the right to free speech means nothing if we do not have the means to put Goons like you who come to feel a burning hate for the messages that all the rest of us want and need to hear in prison cells. I mean, come on.
We are as a society working up the courage to get the job done. Our future looks bright.
My warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob the Free Speech (and Prison Time for Lindauer and Greaney “Defenders”) Advocate
Goon says
That was a very long reply but I think we could all benefit from a better, and importantly more succinct, explanation. You keep saying that you disagree with the “goons” about SWR, but I haven’t seen you tell us what a SWR is. What’s a safe withdrawal rate?
Rob says
It’s when you are practicing the rhythm method. The amount of time it takes you to pull out after realizing that things are about to come to a quick conclusion is the “safe withdrawal rate.”
Greaney says that it is always precisely four seconds. I say that it depends on the circumstances and mood and other considerations of an emotional nature.
Is that not the general idea?
Rob, the Fellow Who Believes in the Birth Control Strategies of Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller
Goon says
Rob, please stop with the nonsense and just explain your position.
BTW pulling out doesn’t work. People get pregnant when they do that.
Rob says
It sounds like Buy-and-Hold might truly be the best strategy, in that event.
Sorry for the confusion.
Rob the Satisfied
The Deleted plop contributor says
Rob,
Every financial blogger I follow has more positive comments than you.
You are unique, however, as I can’t think of anyone else who makes fake prison threats to anyone that doesn’t agree with them or thinks they can solve their financial problems with a fantasy of getting a grand legal settlement for a made up reason.
Rob says
I tell the truth about what the peer-reviewed academic research in this field says, Deleted.
You are right that that does not make me popular. We all have a Get Rich Quick urge within us that causes us to be drawn to Buy-and-Hold strategies.
I believe that, if you care about people, you tell them the truth. Even if they don’t want to hear it. It makes sense to tell it in a gentle way, to try to cushion the blow. But I firmly believe that we must tell the truth to our friends about the money they are hoping to be able to use to finance their retirements. I also believe that in the long run doing that will make me more popular than the Buy-and-Holders.
Stocks were overpriced by $12 trillion in 2000. The Buy-and-Holders were telling people that that money was real and they were taking credit for it. They were saying — Look how great Buy-and-Hold is, it brought you this $12 trillion in wealth! But please notice that the Buy-and-Holders don’t take the blame when the phony wealth disappears. When we had the economic crisis, the Buy-and-Holders were blaming “the economy.” That big, bad economy! Isn’t it funny how the economy always collapses when Buy-and-Hold becomes popular and people come to believe that they have lots of money that in reality is going to disappear over the course of about 10 years or so!
I want to be popular like everybody else, Deleted. But I also want to be able to sleep at night and to look at the man in the mirror without retching. If I advocated Buy-and-Hold strategies, I couldn’t do that.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. I have spoken to a good number of Buy-and-Holders who very much would like to begin offering honest, research-based investment advice. They are waiting until it is “safe” to do so. I think that’s a mistake. People won’t respect them as much as they will someone who told the truth even when it was not popular to do so.
That’s my sincere take re this important question, in any event.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob the Unpopular
The Deleted plop contributor says
Rob,
People are not afraid to say anything. Market timing has been a failure. You are living in a fantasy world.
Rob says
Okay, Deleted.
Rob the Fantasy World Resident
#slanegirl says
Rob: “I want to be popular like everybody else. But I also want to be able to sleep at night and to look at the man in the mirror without retching”
Don’t hold your breath.
Short, fat, red-faced and crazy is no way to go through life, son.
Rob says
If that’s what it takes to tell the truth about the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements, then that’s what it takes to tell the truth about the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements, Slanegirl.
We all have our crosses to carry as we make our way through this Valley of Tears.
I do wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors.
Rob the Cross-Carrying, Red-Faced Fool