A Rich Life

The Old Ideas on Saving & Investing Don't Work -- Here's What Does

“In Some Cases, It Is Just Ego. People Are Too Proud to Admit Mistakes. In Some Cases, It Is Done for Profit. Research-Based Works. GRQ Sells. In Some Cases, It Is Done to Win Favor With One’s Clients or Readers. The Biggest Reason of All Is That People DO NOT THEMSELVES Know the Realities.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I posted to the Goon Central board:

ban on honest posting? 
 
How is that being communicated and enforced? 
 
by whom? 
 
To what ends? 
>

How is that being communicated and enforced?

>

It is communicated every time someone is banned for honest posting or suffers some other detriment for telling the truth about stock investing.

Have you ever known anyone banned for getting the SWR wrong, Drip Guy?

It has never once happened.

Yet I have been banned 15 times for getting the SWR right.

That is how the ban in communicated and enforced.

Everyone who is paying a tiny bit of attention knows that the rewards are great for pushing Get RIch Quick and the penalties are great for mentioning what the peer-reviewd academic research says.

Rob

by whom? 

>

By Buy-and-Holders.

Who else?

Rob

To what ends?

>

In some cases, it is just ego. People are too proud to admit mistakes.

In some cases, it is done for profit. Research-based works. GRQ SELLS.

In some cases, it is done to win favor with one’s clients or readers. People LOVE to hear that their portfolios are bigger than what they really are. Buy-and-Holders flatter investors. This might be done for profit. But it might also be done just because one does not want to LOSE one’s readers. People rationalize not telling the truth about Buy-and-Hold by telling themselves that it is not possible for someone who tells the truth to make a living in this field.

The biggest reason of all is that people DO NOT THEMSELVES know the realities. The vast majority of Buy-and-Holders fool themselves about how stock investing works before they fool anyone else.

Rob

Comments

  1. Yet I have been banned 15 times for getting the SWR right.

    Yet in all 15 cases the reason given for your ban was not that. It’s amazing how many foul filthy liars are running discussion boards.

    Once you do your early morning copy/paste job here, it seems your day’s labor is completed. There must be hundreds of other finance boards and blogs from which you have not been banned. Why are you not participating on those? Are you giving up?

  3. You have neenah banned due to your behavior. Period.

    I’ve obviously been banned for my behavior, Pink. What else would I be banned for?

    The behavior that I have been banned for is posting honestly on safe withdrawal rates and lots of other critically important investment-related topics.

    We need MORE people posting honestly on stock investing, not fewer. People respond to incentives. We need to REWARD those who have the courage to post honestly.

    We need to PUNISH those who post abusively. ALL of the nasty stuff has come from the Buy-and-Holders, none from the Valuation-Informed Indexers.

    We need to ban the Buy-and-Holders who post abusively so that the Buy-and-Holders who are open to hearing new ideas will be able to explore them in civil and reasoned discussions.

    That’s how we kill Buy-and-Hold. Once we have allowed honest posting on the peer-reviewed academic research for six months, even you Goons will be making the switch.

    Or so Rob Bennett believes.

    My best wishes to you.

    Rob

  4. “I have been banned 15 times for getting the SWR right.”

    What a sad way to waste an entire human life — pinning one’s major life activities for over a decade, on a single obvious, trite, ridiculous, and easily dismissed delusion.

    And what activities have those even been? Pretty much limited to posting drivel into the comments section of a few obscure little-read blogs.

    As sad as that is, of course it’s even much more sad for those lives beyond yours that are inevitably pulled down by your self-pitying and selfish undertow.

    Please get a grip, Rob. Pull yourself together. Man up. Take charge. Admit reality. You are not a ‘financial consultant’. You are not a writer, of ANY bent. You are a failed small-time ex-PR flack, who now, late in life, after an extended period of unemployment, needs to find a fruitful, if small, JOB. A real job, not a make-believe internet one. One that actually earns a paycheck, and maybe some minimal benefits.

    Grow up, for Pete’s sakes, and accept your responsibilities, and your lot in life. Don’t just be known as another “Time Cube Man” internet crank, when you shuffle off this mortal coil. Be remembered as a provider, father, and lucid, contributing member of society.

    You’ve got a lot of catching up to do, but you can do it if you start now.

  5. “The behavior that I have been banned for is posting honestly on safe withdrawal rates and lots of other critically important investment-related topics.”

    Wrong.

    “We need to punish…”

    THERE’S your problem, right there, slick.

  6. Yet in all 15 cases the reason given for your ban was not that.

    You’re wrong about this one, Bizarro.

    I’ve had people praise my work to the skies and tell me that I am the only person who they have ever read who has talked about investing in a way that made sense and then ban me for doing so. That hasn’t happened to me just once. It has happened multiple times.

    The people who do this cite two reasons: (1) They are afraid of what you Goons will do to them personally and what you Goons will do to destroy their businesses; and (2) They are afraid that they will lose customers if they tell the truth.

    They WILL lose customers of they tell the truth. And you Goons WILL try to destroy their businesses. So there is something to their fears.

    The other side of the story is that you Goons have no power over us once 10 of us stick together and call you out on your nonsense. And our customers and potential customers will love us once they realize how the Wall Street Con Men have tricked them for so long.

    This is a win/win/win/win/win. But only in the long-term, not in the short-term. And it does take some courage to take on the Wall Street Con Men and their internet Goon squads.

    The long-term payoff, though, is absolutely enormous. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance in the history of investing analysis. And it comes at a time when a lot of people are in sore need of positive news about our economic future!

    Take care, man.

    Rob

  7. Rob,

    So, as you have admitted, you were banned because of behavior, versus the actual topic.

  8. It’s amazing how many foul filthy liars are running discussion boards.

    You said it, not me, Bizarro!

    I am kidding around.

    It IS amazing how many of our fellow human have rationalized bad behavior re this matter. If you had asked me on the morning of May 13, 2002, what the odds were that we would see transpire the events that we have seen transpire, I would have said “one in a billion.” So, yes, developments have been shocking.

    It doesn’t follow that we should give up on our fellow humans. These mess-ups are the only fellow humans we’ve got. If we give up on them, we are going to be mighty lonely in days to come. I think we need to try to UNDERSTAND why so many of our fellow humans have been such mess-ups re this matter.

    The most important thing to keep in mind is that the advance has been so huge. The research shows that stocks are no longer a risky asset class, we can reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent just by burying the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can no longer hurt humans and other living things. If this were a small advance — if we were reducing risk by 10 percent — every one of you Goons would be on board and singing my praises every day. You wouldn’t have your minds blown by a small advance. This advance is so big that it is equal in power to all the advances we have seen before all put together. That big a jump is hard for you to take. It hurts your pride. It makes you envious. It makes you defensive. It makes you ashamed. All sorts of emotional stuff comes into play when there is an advance this big.

    I think it makes sense to turn that negative into a positive. The reason we are having a hard time is that the advance is so huge. Does that not suggest that, once we open the internet to honest posting, we are all going to begin living dramatically richer (in all senses of the word) lives? It sure seems so to me.

    Another thing to keep in mind is that the fear of speaking out shows how important emotions are to an understanding of the investing project. You express amazement that so many have been afraid to speak out. You know what that shows? It shows that Buy-and-Hold can never work. Why? Because it shows that humans are emotional creatures. Buy-and-Hold ignores emotions (valuations). So how the heck can it work? The Buy-and-Holders are trying to use a model for understanding how stock investing works that ignores one of the key characteristics (emotionalism) of the humans who buy and sell the stocks.

    Finally, I would keep in mind that it is not only cowardice and jealousy and anger and defensiveness that we have seen over the past 11 years.

    We have seen THOUSANDS of our fellow community members express a desire that honest posting be permitted. It took a lot of courage for those thousands of people to speak up, given the behavior they have seen over the entire 11 years from you Goons. Those people are heroes anyway you look at it. And there have been thousands of them.

    We have seen the Wall Street Con Men suffer pangs of conscience and include honest insights in the mix along with all their Buy-and-Hold garbage. I learned about the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies by reading John Bogle’s book. You focus on the ugly stuff, that Jack has failed to take effective action re the Lindauer Matter despite being asked to do so numerous times. I don’t deny the ugly things that have happened. I don’t even deny that my good friend Jack may be headed to a prison cell following the next crash. But I also don’t deny that he wrote the words in his book that led me to that initial insight, the one that led to all of the hundreds of powerful insights that we have all enjoyed together over the past 11 years. He didn’t have to write those words. It wasn’t in his best interests as a Buy-and-Hold advocate to be honest for those few paragraphs. But he was. Please think over a bit what was going on there, Bizarro.

    And Jack was by no means the only one. Bernstein was honest at times. Swedroe was honest at times. He even got banned for it for a time. Burns was honest at times. Bill Sholar tried being honest for a time. ES was honest for a time. The administrators at the Morningstar board were partly honest for a time. Wade Pfau was obviously very honest and very brave for a good bit of time.

    So the story is not anywhere near as ugly as you Goons like to make it sound. We have seen a lot of human courage evidence itself over these past 11 years. And all signs are that we will be putting you Goons in prison cells for a long time to come following the next price crash. So who are the real losers here, the humans or the Goons? I say that it is the Goons who will be seen as losers in the history books, not the humans. The humans will be seen as flawed creatures that in time worked up the courage to do the things that they kinda sorta knew on the first day they were eventually going to have to do.

    Do I like it that it has taken us 11 years?

    I don’t like it one bit. I advocated kicking Greaney our the door in a post that I advanced on November 23, 2002. So, no, I am not going to say that everyone has behaved perfectly at every moment.

    But we still end up reducing the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. Whether it took us 11 hours or 11 days or 11 years, we still end up with the biggest advance in the history of investing analysis. I still end up with a $500 million payday. And you still end up spending the last decades of your life in a prison cell.

    Given all that, can you truly say that the humans are ALL bad?

    I cannot. I acknowledge that we are flawed. But I think that when you look at history, you see that we make our way to the right place over time using a highly circuitous route. We are not 100 percent efficient. But, when the chips are down, we get the job done one way or another.

    My sincere take.

    Rob

  9. Once you do your early morning copy/paste job here, it seems your day’s labor is completed.

    I send out 50 e-mails re the Wade Pfau matter every day, Bizarro.

    And there is other stuff. There are a number of long articles that I have planned for next year. For example, there will be one that will list 101 acts of intimidation, with links. And there will be one that will list 101 powerful investing insights that we have developed together, with links.

    There’s always stuff going on.

    Rob

  10. There must be hundreds of other finance boards and blogs from which you have not been banned. Why are you not participating on those? Are you giving up?

    I am not aware of any major investing discussion boards at which I have not been banned. I don’t know them all. If you are able to list some where I should try exposing people to the ideas, I would be grateful. But the ones that come to mind for me have all banned honest posting.

    There are LOTS of blogs. And I have had a lot more luck since the 2008 price crash getting Guest Blg Entries posted at investing blogs. For a time, I did a lot of that. And my guess is that I will do more of that in days to come once again.

    I got a bit bored of it because people were not taking action. Some of the claims that I put forward demand action. For example, if I point out that we have known since May 13, 2002, that the numbers in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies are wildly wrong, there are obvious STEPS THAT NEED TO BE TAKEN by the people who become aware of this reality as a result of reading a blog post. People were not taking those steps.

    My primary concern today is that we be ready when things reach a point where people will be willing to take those steps. The next price crash is likely to bring about a 65 percent drop in prices. The collective financial losses will be large enough to put us in the Second Great Depression. I believe that it is when we see those losses that people will work up the courage to take the steps that need to be taken. I want to have all the resources available that people need to take advantage of when that day comes.

    That’s why I am focusing now on the sorts of articles that I made reference to above. Or on other things of that nature.

    I do think that Guest Blogs are helpful. I enjoy writing them and I enjoy the discussions that follow from them. I don’t see them as Priority #1 today. But I expect to get back to them when time opens up for it. For 2014, I expect to spend most of my time preparing materials that will be needed when we see the next crash.

    I hope that helps a bit, Bizarro.

    Rob

  11. Are you giving up?

    I’m just getting warmed up, my old friend!

    In all seriousness, this is work that I expect to be doing for the rest of my lifetime. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

    After the next crash, I expect to see HUNDREDS of sites writing about this stuff on a daily basis. I am going to be very busy. So I want to have as many reference-type articles as possible available to people to answer their questions. That’s my focus today.

    After the next crash, I am expecting to see interest in the peer-reviewed academic research in this field to just explode. Those of us who are not in prison cells are going to be very, very busy. Time will be of the essence for those of us trying to hold off an economic collapse.

    My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

    Rob

  12. So, as you have admitted, you were banned because of behavior, versus the actual topic.

    I was banned at the demand of Buy-and-Holders in every case., Pink. I posted honestly about what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research says about how stock investing works. The Buy-and-Holders feel that there is zero chance that they can persuade anyone to adopt their smelly Get Rich Quick “strategies” if there is someone in the room posting honestly about what the research says. I don’t disagree with them about this. They are right. We are working at cross purposes. They WANT to promote Get Rich Quick garbage and I want to help millions of middle-class investors learn why Get Rich Quick strategies never work in the long run.

    Do you see?

    Rob

  13. “I am not aware of any major investing discussion boards at which I have not been banned. ”

    That speaks volumes. It shows that YOU are the problem. We see discussions all the time on SWRs, so we know your excuse is wrong.

    You been given plenty of advice as to how you could change your behavior, yet you fail to do so. Instead, you decide to threaten people and continue to live in some fantasy world.

    All of your problems are a result of your actions

  14. “We need to punish…”

    THERE’S your problem, right there, slick.

    I don’t say that you are entirely wrong about this particular point, Anonymous.

    The Buy-and-Holders see it as “unfair” that I talk about the 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research that shows how dangerous their “strategy” is. It’s not really me that is punishing them. It is the academic research that is punishing them. I am just the mild-mannered reporter that points to what the academic research says.

    The Buy-and-Holders were pioneers. They were the first ones that said that investing strategies should be rooted in peer-reviewed academic research. I love them for that. It annoyed me when I read stuff about investing from four different “experts” and heard four different ideas about how to proceed. If the experts don’t agree on even the basics, they are not true experts. If they can’t agree on the basics, there is no legitimate body of knowledge to which they are making reference. If there is no legitimate body of knowledge to which the experts in a field make reference, knowledge in the field is not sufficiently developed for us to say that it is possible to come to possess a true expertise in that field.

    The Buy-and-Holders feel burned. They want to use the fact that they root their strategies in peer-reviewed research to shut everybody else down. But, since they made a mistake about what the research says, they have ended up shutting themselves down. This is what makes them angry. This is what makes them feel punished. This is what makes them hate me.

    I am 100 percent in tune with the ORIGINAL Buy-and-Hold mission. I believe in following what the research says. The nature of research-based strategies is that they must change when the things taught by the research change. All of us who believe in research-based strategies are essentially slaves to the research-based findings. We cannot just reject those findings because we don’t like them. We must obey the lessons of the research or stop putting ourselves forward as advocates of research-based strategies.

    It is not my intent to punish the Buy-and-Holders. It is my intent to honor the research. But, yes, the Buy-and-Holders feel it as a punishment because they do not want to be bound by the findings of the past 32 years and I just refuse to stop making reference to them.

    I like the Buy-and-Holders. I see my work as an extension of their work, a reform of their work, an improvement on their work, a correction of their work. I respect the work they did and I honor them in all my writings and I like them as people and I am grateful for their many powerful insights. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing today if we had not had Buy-and-Hold yesterday.

    But I think that my Buy-and-Hold friends are making a terrible mistake by being unwilling to correct their mistakes. They are destroying the lives of millions of middle-class people and I do not believe that that was at all their intent when they started out. So I feel bound to point out those mistakes and to do all in my power to bring them around.

    I like the Buy-and-Holders. It is BECAUSE I like them that I “punish” them by talking about what the research really says. In the long term, they won’t see it as a punishment to learn how stock investing really works. But in the short term they do indeed see it that way because of a false pride.

    The Buy-and-Holders should take pride in their genuine achievements while correcting the things they got wrong. By causing financial devastation to millions, they are running the risk that in days to come many will not even give them credit for the many powerful insights they really did develop and offer to us all.

    I see myself as the greatest friend the Buy-and-Holders have in this world. But you are correct that there are a good number of Buy-and-Holders who view any reference to the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research in this field as a terrible punishment.

    Whachagondo?

    Rob

  15. “We need to punish…”

    THERE’S your problem, right there, slick.

    Why do you think we have as a society adopted laws against financial fraud, Anonymous?

    Why do you think we made that crime a felony?

    There are times when punishments are needed. There are times when a society need to protect itself from people like you.

    Please recall that I urged the removal of Greaney from our community on November 23, 2002. I am confident that there would have been no prison sentences had he been removed on that date.

    Did you help out back then, Anonymous?

    Or were you one of the ones hiding under the bedcovers, telling yourself that this individual’s behavior was someone else’s problem?

    I did what I could to keep you and lots of others out of prison back at a time when that was an attainable goal. Just as I am today doing what I can do to keep those prison sentences as limited as possible.

    And what are you doing today to help take things in a positive and constructive and loving and life-affirming direction?

    Please think it over, my old friend.

    Rob

  16. “We need to punish…”

    THERE’S your problem, right there, slick.

    There are millions of middle-class people whose hopes of someday being able to retire have been destroyed by the 11-year cover-up, Anonymous.

    Do you have any concern about the punishments that have been delivered to them?

    Rob

  17. It shows that YOU are the problem.

    I am a big problem for those trying to push Get Rich Quick investing strategies.

    I like to think that that much is so, Pink.

    Rob

  18. We see discussions all the time on SWRs

    How often do you see corrections of the Old School studies?

    I put up my famous post on the morning of May 13, 2002.

    Rob

  20. You are not a writer, of ANY bent. You are a failed small-time ex-PR flack, who now, late in life, after an extended period of unemployment, needs to find a fruitful, if small, JOB. A real job, not a make-believe internet one.

    And you are one of them there Unemotional Investors, Anonymous.

    I can tell.

    Rob

  21. Rob,

    You are the one banned from the boards, not me. Bad behavior has consequences. All you have is 11 years of wasted time.

  22. You are the one banned from the boards, not me.

    I’m banned from 15 internet discussion boards and you are on your way to serving a long prison term.

    And I am the loser here, Pink?

    Somehow I don’t see it.

    Call me madcap.

    Rob

  24. All you have is 11 years of wasted time.

    And my name on research published in a peer-reviewed journal showing millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent.

    Boo freakin’ hoo for me.

    Rob

  25. It seems the thesis of this blog is that valuations affect returns. We see in historical data that this is sometimes the case, see : https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/s338.pdf for example.

    This topic is discussed ad nauseum on the internet and in the media. A Nobel prize was just awarded for it. No one knows the future, but some folks do choose to tweak their asset allocation based on this, while others don’t. Both approaches are valid, given, again, and unknown future.

    So…is that you’re only point?

  26. It seems the thesis of this blog is that valuations affect returns.

    This statement is 100 percent correct.

    We see in historical data that this is sometimes the case

    This statement is not quite correct. We see in historical data that valuations ALWAYS affect long-term returns. There has never in 140 years been a single exception. In fact, it is impossible for the rational human mind to imagine how there ever could be one. To say that valuations don’t matter is to say that price doesn’t matter. To say that exercising price discipline doesn’t matter when buying stocks is irrational and irresponsible. There have been four times in U.S. history when the idea that price doesn’t matter when buying stocks (Buy-and-Hold) became popular. The collective losses suffered were so great in each of the four cases that we suffered an economic crisis each and every time. We have not had a single economic crisis in 140 years that was not caused by the reckless promotion of Buy-and-Hold “strategies.”

    This topic is discussed ad nauseum on the internet and in the media.

    There is now 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing that valuations is by far the most important issue in investing analysis. It is 80 percent of the story. It is hard to imagine how anyone who gets valuations right could fail to achieve good long-term investing results. It is also hard to imagine how anyone who failed to consider valuations (that is, someone who follows a Buy-and-Hold “strategy”) could ever achieve good long-term results. Given that valuations is 80 percent of the story, the topic is not given anything close to the attention it merits.

    A Nobel prize was just awarded for it

    That’s so.

    No one knows the future

    No one knows the future with precision. But the pure Get Rich Quick approach (Buy-and-Hold) has a long track record. It has brought about a financial wipeout of every investor following it on every earlier time in which the Wall Street Con Men were successful in promoting it. In the event that stocks continue to perform in the future anything at all as they always have in the past, we will be seeing a 65 percent price drop sometime in the next few years. The collective losses will likely be large enough to bring about the Second Great Depression and perhaps the collapse of both our economic and political systems.

    some folks do choose to tweak their asset allocation based on this, while others don’t.

    That’s so.

    Why do some only “tweak” their allocations? The most likely long-term return in 1982 was 15 percent real. In 2000, it was a negative 1 percent real. That change in valuations calls for a lot more than a tweak. I think it would be fair to say that the reason why millions of middle-class people are in the process of suffering devastating losses is the Campaign of Terror that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia has employed over the past 11 years to keep millions from learning what the peer-reviewed academic research of the past 32 years says.

    Both approaches are valid, given, again, and unknown future.

    Then why is it that only Buy-and-Holders have engaged in death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs? The 11-year cover-up is the greatest act of financial fraud in U.S. history. Why would advocates of a legitimate approach engage in financial fraud?

    So…is that you’re only point?

    One important point that I have tried to make to my Goon friends is that it does not make sense to go to prison because you got an important number wrong in a retirement study. Whatever your prison sentence will be if you come clean today, it will be much longer if you don’t come clean until after the next crash. It is my hope that you will do all you can to SHORTEN your prison sentence.

    My warmest wishes to you, Scooter.

    Rob

  27. Ok…From the first half of your response, I see you’ve turned an interesting historical data pattern into something far more important and certain than it is.

    From the second half, you appear to be suffering from mental health issues, though I am not a mental health professional.

    I’ll be moving on now, nice chatting with you!

  29. And there you go with the prison threat that is just put fantasy, and yet you still fail to understand the REAL reason you are banned from the boards.

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