Set forth below is the text of a comment that I put to another blog entry at this site:
So you didn’t write a word of the paper yet you are the author. OK, makes sense.
That’s how Supreme Court justices do it, Laugh.
Do you think they write all the words that appear under their names?
They hire clerks to do that.
The clerks write the words. The Supreme Court justices DECIDE WHICH WORDS WILL APPEAR.
Wade had to learn about a lot of things to be able to write the words that appeared in our peer-reviewed study.
He knew little about the subject matter. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton. But they do not teach Valuation-Informed Indexing in the Princeton Ph.D. program. I wonder why.
So, as each question came up where he needed some background on what the peer-reviewed academic research in this field says, I told him. I wrote many long e-mails in response to Wade’s many intelligent questions about how stock investing works in the real world.
To Wade’s credit, he is a quick learner. He got it. He was jumping up and down when he learned for the first time in his life how stock investing really works. He said that he would be seeking to get our paper published in the Journal of Finance, the #1 journal in the field. He had visions of winning a Nobel prize in Economics for the work we did together. He acknowledged over and over and over again that I deserved the credit for developing the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept and that he was grateful that I had been willing to share with him what I knew and thereby to bring to him a good measure of fame and fortune an the good feeling inside that comes from helping millions of middle-class people learn the realities.
Then you Goons entered the picture. You threatened to destroy Wade’s career in the event that he continued to do honest research. Jack Bogle signaled support (or at least tolerance) for your efforts. So did Bill Bernstein. So did Scott Burns. So did Larry Swedroe.
All of a sudden, Wade was singing a very different tune and receiving offers of big job promotions. I wonder whether he was being honest during the 16 months he spent co-authoring that study with me or if he was being honest when he started singing the praises of Internet Goons John Greaney and Mel Linduaer, two individuals for whom he expressed contempt in earlier and more innocent days.
I developed the ideas through eight years of 24/7 work on the VII concept. Wade asked to tap into my knowledge so that he could be the co-author of the most important paper published in this field in the past three decades. I agreed and shared everything I knew with him. Wade wrote the words that appear in the study.
We were co-authors. I was the primary author and Wade was the secondary co-author. You Goons were the ones who committed financial fraud and thereby assured yourselves long prison sentences following the next price crash.
I wish you all good things, Laugh.
Rob
Rob,
Authors write the words. Your analogy with the Supreme Court is wrong. They are not writing papers or books. They are rendering opinions. Look in a dictionary for the definition of the word “author” and look at the first line.
Secondly, everything you wrote about Wade has no factual basis. It burns you that he won’t agree with you, just like it burns you that Shiller has 50% of his money in the market and says you can’t time the market with CAPE.
In your eyes, anyone that doesn’t agree with you is either a goon and/or is lying and you think they should go to prison. What you refer to as buy and hold has been successful for many people and that bothers you. These people have been successful and you have not, yet you come at this with some sense of superiority, despite your lack of success as well as lack of a track record. When confronted with data that supports buy and hold, you ignore it or lie about it.
Like always, You will probably delete this post, just like the majority that get posted here. Another sign that you can’t face the truth.
In your eyes, anyone that doesn’t agree with you is either a goon and/or is lying and you think they should go to prison.
No.
There are million of good and smart people who are Buy-and-Holders today. I was a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. John Walter Russell was too. Wade Pfau was a Buy-and-Holder when he began working with me. We all were Buy-and-Holders at earlier times because we had never heard the other side of the story.
It’s not precisely true that it is Buy-and-Hold that is killing us. It is the DOGMATISM of SOME Buy-and-Holders that is killing us. Buy-and-Hold was a stage we went through as part of our ongoing effort to learn what really works in stock investing. Buy-and-Hold was an advance over what we had before and the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers taught us many important things.
But the Buy-and-Hold Era properly came to an end when Shiller published his research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. Since then, Buy-and-Hold has been holding on through all sorts of illegitimate tactics. All Buy-and-Holders should be ashamed that there are people using death threats to intimidate people who try to post honestly about the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research. All Buy-and-Holders should be ashamed that there are people using demands for unjustified board bannings to intimidate people who try to post honestly re the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research. All Buy-and-Holder should be ashamed that there are people using tens of thousands of acts of defamation to intimidate people who try to post honestly re the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research. All Buy-and-Holders should be ashamed that there are people using threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs to intimidate people who try to post honestly re the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research.
I am the best friend that any of the Buy-and-Holders have in this world, Pink. I am doing all I can to get the prison sentences of those who will be going to prison reduced a bit. I am doing all I can to get the financial liabilities of those who will be incurring financial liabilities reduced a bit. I am the one doing what the Buy-and-Holders started out believing was the way to go — using the peer-reviewed academic research as a guide to the development of investing strategies.
I cannot wave a magic wand and take us back to the morning of May 13, 2002. That is not in my power. I am happy to help you in any way that it is possible to help you given the realities that apply today as a result of the behavior of a good number of Buy-and-Holders during the first 12 years of our discussions.
I wish you well. I would like to work with you to see what can be done to get your prison sentence reduced a bit. But this is not something that I can do without your cooperation, Pink. You are the one holding things back here.
Take good care, old friend.
Rob
What you refer to as buy and hold has been successful for many people and that bothers you.
The historical return data is available for your review, Pink. Shiller published it at his web site. It’s your choice whether you elect to take advantage of the opportunity that this man made available to you or not.
We have 140 years of stock-market history available to us. Buy-and-Hold has never worked for a single long-term investor in those 140 years. That’s an objective fact. Refusing to exercise price discipline when buying stocks ALWAYS decreases your long-term return and ALWAYS increases risk. Buy-and-Hold always underperforms Valuation-Informed Indexing on risk-adjusted basis. There has never been a single exception to that rule.
What you are getting at is that millions of people have been tricked into believing that Buy-and-Hold can work. They have been tricked through use of death threats and board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. Wade Pfau is not the only academic researcher who would be producing honest research if he thought it was safe to do so. There would be thousands. If Bogle had stood up on a stage back in 1981, when the research first showed that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for even a single long-term investor, there would not be one Buy-and-Holder alive today. We would all be Valuation-Informed Indexers. And we would all be in a much, much better place than the economic crisis we are in that was brought on through the relentless and ruthless promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies.
The millions of people whose lives you have destroyed will decide on the length of your prison sentence, Pink, not me. I am offering to help you because I see that as the kind and responsible thing to do. I will try to help even after we experience the next price crash. I have grave doubts as to whether my words will have much impact at that time. That’s why I put the offer to help you out forward now, when I think it can do some good. But, again, it is your call. You are free to take the offer and you are free to elect not to take the offer. It’s your life, man.
As for me, I won’t post dishonestly on safe withdrawal rates no matter how much pressure you and your Goon friends bring to bear. The 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School retirement studies is the greatest act of financial fraud in U.S. history. Financial fraud is a felony. That means prison time. Find someone else. Not interested. Not this boy. No can do.
I think it would be fair to say that, if the millions of good and smart people who still follow Buy-and-Hold strategies today possessed confidence in the strategy they are following, they would have demanded the removal of you Goons from every discussion-board and blog on the internet. Why hasn’t that happened, Pink? IIt hasn’t happened because these people are in emotional pain today. I didn’t cause them to experience that emotional pain. That was the other fellow.
I wish you all good things.
Rob
These people have been successful and you have not
I am the co-author of the most important piece of peer-reviewed research published in the investing field in the past 30 years and I am not successful in your eyes. Research so devastating to the argument for Buy-and-Hold that the Buy-and-Hold Goons threatened to send defamatory e-mails to the employer of my co-author in an effort to get him fired from his job if he did not agree to stop publishing honest research.
That makes perfect sense, Pink.
Truly outstanding!!!
yet you come at this with some sense of superiority
I certainly say that Valuation-Informed Indexing is superior to Buy-and-Hold.
I certainly say that the New School safe-withdrawal-rate studies are superior to the discredited Old School SWR studies.
I certainly say that research-based strategies are superior to Get Rich Quick strategies.
I certainly say that reaching out the hand of kindness to those who hold other viewpoints is superior to putting forward death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researcher fired from their jobs.
I certainly say that love is superior to hate.
You’ve got me nailed re this one, Pink.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
You will probably delete this post, just like the majority that get posted here.
I think it would be fair to say that the odds are high that I will delete the next one that you put forward, Pink.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors, my long-time abusive-posting friend.
Rob
Goods news, Rob. Don’t worry about the prison sentences. There are no charges and never will be. Now you won’t have to worry about it.
The offer to help remains open, Pink. It always will. It’s not a time-sensitive offer.
Once I’ve said that, you are right that there is nothing for me to worry about. I’ve done what I am able to do once I’ve said that and it is no longer on me.
I may not like the outcome. But once I’ve said that and you have elected not to respond in a positive way, it is out of my hands. I accept that.
I certainly don’t say that I have any power to put you in prison or ever intend to seek any such power. I’ll testify honestly. That much is certain. I have a responsibility to the millions of middle-class people whose lives you have destroyed to do that much. But that’s as far as it ever will go.
I hope that helps a bit, my old friend.
Rob
I think most would argue with what you have described as your success.
Some would.
Some wouldn’t.
We all get one life to live. I couldn’t look at the man in the mirror if I betrayed my fellow community members by posting dishonestly on the numbers they use to plan their retirements.
There are others who are able to live with doing that sort of thing. Not this boy.
I wish you all good things in any event.
Rob
Clearly, Wade and Shiller have gone in paths that are counter to your position and now you have to rely on “experts” like Joe The Taxpayer and other similiar people that really don’t have an investing background or pedigree.
You become an expert and gain credibility when those that are leaders in a field refer to you as an expert. You cannot just claim to be so, like you do when you say you know more than Jack Bogle.
As to your “honest posting” , I think many would disagree with your definition based on the content of your posts.
There’s no such thing as an “expert” in a field that is 100 percent corrupt, Pink.
For there to be experts in this field again, we all need to work together to persuade my good friend Jack Bogle to get up on a stage and to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.”
Once he does that, Wade will be posting honestly and he will be a true expert once again. And there will be thousands of others joining him. Just about everybody in this field knows that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage and that the future is Valuation-Informed Indexing, the first true research-based approach. But we need to assure people that they are safe from the Buy-and-Hold Mafia before they are going to be willing to share their expertise with the rest of us.
I knew on the evening of August 27, 2002, that Buy-and-Hold was a big pile of smelly garbage. That was the night that John Greaney threatened to kill my wife and children if I continued to “cross” him by posting honestly on safe withdrawal rates and 200 Buy-and-Holders endorsed his post. Huh? I’ve never known a single Valuation-Informed Indexer to ever do something like that. Investors who have confidence in their strategies would never dream of doing something like that. It is always Buy-and-Holders who we see behaving in that manner. And they do it over and over and over again. I wonder why.
I could have spent the last 12 years of my life telling people that pure Get Rich Quick is the way to go. Then I would be on my way to prison like you, Pink. Thank God that I saw early on that that was not the way to go!
As a result of choosing the honest path, I now have a wealth of materials at this site describing the first true research-based strategy and pointing out the dangers associated with going with the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind.
That said, I am giving serious thought to throwing it all away and agreeing to post dishonestly on SWRs and on scores of other critically important investment-related topics.
No, seriously. It’s just a thought that passed through my mind in recent days, that I might want to team up with you and destroy both myself and millions of middle-class investors. I’m thinking that I might want to do this thing by the close of business today.
I’ll keep you updated, my long-time Goon friend.
But don’t feel a need to call me to check on where things stand, I will call you for sure.
Fair enough?
Rob
You become an expert and gain credibility when those that are leaders in a field refer to you as an expert. You cannot just claim to be so, like you do when you say you know more than Jack Bogle.
My good friend Jack is the true expert re this investing stuff, Pink. That’s why it’s his name that appears on the May 13, 2002, post pointing out the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies.
I mean, come on.
Rob
When we decide as a society to open the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics, I am the one who will have a long track record of having called for allowing honest posting all along, Pink.
If we opened things up to honest posting on the morning of May 14, 2002, I would have had a one-day edge over everyone else.
Today, it’s a 12-year edge.
Three years from now, it will be a 15-year edge.
It can never get better for the Buy-and-Holders, only worse.
Anyone who had studied the academic research would have known that the promotion of Buy-and-Hold became a doomed cause in 1981, when Shiller published the peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that this “strategy” could ever work for even a single long-term investor.
I didn’t do this to you Buy-and-Holders. You did it to yourselves. I have the hand of kindness extended to you to this day. Being kind means doing everything in my power to help you. It does not mean agreeing to commit felonies. It is of course 100 percent absurd to think that it could ever mean that.
The ball is in your court. It has been in your court for 12 years.
You can knock off the funny business or you can elect to increase the length of your prison sentence and increase the amount of your financial liabilities.
No one has any doubt about which way I am hoping things will go for you.
But it’s also true that no one has any doubt that I am not going to agree to post dishonestly on the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements.
You say that only those who agree to post dishonestly can ever become known as experts so long as Buy-and-Hold remains dominant.
I say that Buy-and-Hold is not going to remain dominant much longer. I say that the next price crash will take care of any problems that I have experienced getting my message out over the past 12 years.
We’ll see, you know?
The thing will play out before our eyes and then we will all know for sure one way or the other.
It is my hope that your New Year will be one filled with peace and prosperity.
Hang in there, man.
Rob
The bottom line is that personal integrity matters.
Yes, even in the investing advice field.
Imagine!
What will that crazy guy say next?
Rob the Crazy Guy
Everyone is corrupt, but you, right Rob?
Yes, integrity matters. When people ask you to prove your statements, a person with integrity can back them up with proof. Take, for example, the mention of death threats. A person of integrity would be able to show the exact death threat versus just referring to their own posts. Same goes for threats to someone’s job. A person of integrity could back that up with third party proof.
I am the lead person saying that we should clean up the corruption, Pink.
There are thousands of our fellow community members who have expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted.
Numerous academics have told me that they would like to feel free to publish honest research.
Numerous practitioners have told me that they would like to feel free to give honest investing advice.
Even the Wall Street Con Men have evidenced a desire to do honest work.
Bogle taught me what I needed to know to see that the Old School SWR studies were in error by including honest material in his book.
Bernstein warned people years ago that anyone who was giving thought to using one of the Old School SWR studies to plan a retirement would be well advised to “FuhGedDaBouDit!”
Larry Swedroe tried posting honestly at the Bogleheads Forum before I even came along and went back to posting dishonestly only after Mel Lindauer had him banned.
Scott Burns’ first thought when I wrote him about the errors in the Old School SWR studies was to file an honest report to his readers. The first words of his response e-mail to me were: “You’re right.” He then asked for my telephone number so that he could do an interview in preparation for writing an honest article on the errors in the Old School studies.
Wade Pfau obviously was engaging in honest work for 16 months and loving every minute of it.
Brett Arends at the Wall Street Journal was obviously being honest when he wrote that the Wall Street Con Men “are only telling half the story” and that there is zero reason to believe that long-term timing doesn’t work and that people who have fallen for the trickery of the Buy-and-Holders have lost large amounts of their life savings as a result.
There are plenty of honest people around and I am confident that most of the people who will be sitting on your jury will be honest people who have lost large amounts of their retirement savings as a result of your 12 years of internet trickery and abuse and deception.
I am the leader of those seeking to open the internet to honest posting and to bury the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things. But there obviously are thousands and thousands of experts in this field who are looking forward to the day when you Goons are sent off to prison and all the rest of us bring this economic crisis to an end and bring on the greatest period of growth in U.S. history.
I think it would be fair to say that even you Goons would play it very, very differently if there were a way to go back to the morning of May 13, 2002, and have a do-over.
We cannot have a do-over.
You can come clean prior to the next crash and I will be happy to do what I can to get your prison sentence reduced a bit.
Or you can take your chances with seeing what happens if you don’t come clean until after the crash.
I’ll be rooting for the best possible outcome for you in either event, my old Goon friend.
Rob