Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Joe Taxpayer blog:
Joe:
You get the numbers part of it perfectly.
But I feel a need to add a non-numbers reality that I believe explains the problem we are seeing with the signal-to-noise ratio.
Say that all scales and mirrors were removed from the world. And say that a law was passed saying that no one was permitted to tell someone else that he was putting on weight. And say that we all were forbidden from looking to see how much our bellies had come to stick out. Do you think that the average weight would increase over time or decrease over time?
It would increase. A LOT. We all love chocolate ice cream. We all struggle not to let our weight get too out of hand. But, to do that effectively, we need FEEDBACK. We need people telling us how we are doing and we need scales and we need our own eyes.
Buy-and-Hold took away our feedback!
Buy-and-Holders say it doesn’t matter. If you ask them whether valuations matter, they say “yes.” But they never say to do anything about it! That’s the practical equivalent of saying they don’t matter. They say one thing with words but their actions (staying at the same stock allocation at all price levels) send a very different message.
Say that you go from 160 pounds to 240 pounds because you are not receiving any feedback on your habit of indulging yourself with too much chocolate ice cream. How do you now feel when someone says: “You are really, really FAT, brother! You’re probably going to die soon because you are so fat.”
You don’t like it. Nobody likes to hear that kind of message.
We need to be reminded on a regular basis of the dangers of overvaluation so that things never get too far out of hand. It’s a terrible mistake to wait until stocks are priced at three times fair value because at that point people freak out when you give them an accurate report on what the numbers mean. What we need are tools that tell us — stocks just went up x and that means that your long-term return just went down y, so you need to reset your stock allocation so that it continues to make sense for someone with your particular risk tolerance.”
We didn’t do that when stock prices started rising. The primary reason is that we didn’t know enough to tell people what worked back in those days. Shiller didn’t come out with his research until 1981 and it really was revolutionary stuff. People are not able to absorb the significance of revolutionary stuff overnight. So it took some time before we were able to develop tools like The Stock-Return Predictor (a calculator at my site that applies a regression analysis to reveal to investors the most likely annualized 10-year return starting from any possible starting-point valuation level).
We NOW know what we need to know to inure that we never see another bull market. Which means that we will never see another bear market (every bear in history was caused by the runaway bull market that preceded it). Which means that we probably will never see another economic crisis (every economic crisis in U.S. history was caused by the loss of wealth we experienced in one of those bear markets that was caused by the bull market that preceded it).
We are in a very, very good place today. Intellectually.
We are not yet in such a good place emotionally. We need to break it to investors gently that we didn’t always know it all and as a result we made some mistakes and as a result they are in the process of suffering some very big losses. The future is bright. But for the good stuff to happen, we need to explain what works. And that requires acknowledging that we did not understand things perfectly back in the days when the Buy-and-Hold concept was getting off the ground.
The story here is a very positive one. But we cannot talk about the positive stuff until we explain why just about everything we have told people about how stock investing works for the past 30 years is wrong. People get angry with me when I spill the beans because it is upsetting to learn that you have been doing everything wrong for so many years. But how else do we get to the good place where we all deep in our hearts want to be?
If we cannot acknowledge that there was a time when we did not know it all, we have ruled out all learning experiences. Why do that? We are looking at the most wonderful learning experience in personal finance history.
The change is small in one sense. Everything stays the same except instead of ignoring valuations we make it Job #1 to ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS pay attention to valuations when buying stocks. The payoff for making that change is so great that it is impossible to overstate it.
Think about the payoff that comes from paying attention to your weight. It’s huge, no? You live longer. You look better. You have a higher energy level. It’s good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff.
Imagine that we once had research that seemed to show that the key to keeping your weight in line was always to eat six bowls of ice cream a night and that the people who gave that advice didn’t want to acknowledge the mistake once it was discovered. We would all die early deaths. For no good reason.
The Buy-and-Holders did not intend to cause this problem. We certainly should show them great respect and gratitude and affection for all of the many good things they did for us all. But we are not being kind to them to pretend that they didn’t make a mistake. Their intent was to help us. Instead, they caused the biggest economic crisis in U.S. history. We are making them feel worse about themselves by pretending that the mistake doesn’t need to be corrected.
We all want the same things. We all should be working together to learn the realities. We all should be grateful to those speaking from the other side because it is by being challenged re our current beliefs that we become capable of learning new stuff.
We need to inject the consideration of valuations into our consideration of every possible investing topic. Getting your stock allocation right is 80 percent of the game. If you get that part right, you can get everything else wrong and you will still probably do very well. If you get that one wrong, you can get everything else right and you will still probably do poorly. Valuations is pretty much everything you need to know to become a successful long-term investor. And, because of a mistake we collectively made 30-some years ago, we have as a society prohibited the intelligent discussion of the effect of valuations on investing decisions. This MUST change (in my view!).
The numbers stuff is important. But the non-numbers stuff is important too. Because all the investors are humans and humans are influenced by emotions as well as numbers. We have created circumstances that make it hard for people to hear this message. But we just have to do the best that we can do. We all lose from any further delay in getting the message out. Learning the realities causes some short-term pain. But the long-term benefits are so big that it is hardly even worth taking note of the short-term downside. After you get over that initial shock, it’s good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff.
The purpose of my talk was to highlight the FUNNY side of this. My thought was that, if people could learn to laugh about this stuff, we could all come to see the wisdom of working together. A very smart and fun person that I met at the conference told me this morning that the people sitting around her said that I sounded “bitter.” That’s the OPPOSITE of how I was trying to sound . And I worked this one hard. Viewed objectively, those slides were lighthearted, not bitter. I am SURE.
People need to take the defensiveness down about seventeen-thousand notches. I mean, come on.
Rob
Related Posts
“Even People Who Are Super-Educated About These Matters Do Not Appreciate the Effect of Valuations Today. Wade Pfau Holds a Ph.D. in Economics. So He Should Have Known All This. His E-Mails Show That He Did Not. That Lets the Buy-and-Holders Largely Off the Hook. They Were Not Lying When They Said That They Didn’t Believe That VII Works. They Hadn’t Yet Enjoyed Their Epiphany Experience.”
“The Core Realities Here Are the Most Amazingly Positive Realities We Have Ever Experienced in the History of Personal Finance. Think of the Ugly Stuff as the Final Cry of a “Strategy” That Died Intellectually Over Three Decades Ago. If Only We Had Gotten About the Business of Burying the Body When It First Began Stinking Up the Joint!”
“There’s One Thing That Really Is Like a Religion to Me. Free Speech. I’m a Journalist. It’s All I Ever Wanted to Be. It’s in My Blood. So, Yes, the Idea that People Use Intimidation Tactics to Block a Very Important Discussion That Thousands of People Have Expressed a Desire to Have for 11 Years Rubs My Fur the Wrong Way.”![Owner of Joe Taxpayer Blog: “I Respect Rob and His Analysis. In Person, He’s Bright, Energetic and Passionate. This Back-and-Forth [the Intimidation Posts Put Up by the Lindauerheads and the Greaney Goons] Is Really Nonsense. I Enjoy Thought Provoking Conversation With People I Respect.”](https://arichlife.passionsaving.com/wp-content/plugins/related-posts/static/thumbs/14.jpg)
Owner of Joe Taxpayer Blog: “I Respect Rob and His Analysis. In Person, He’s Bright, Energetic and Passionate. This Back-and-Forth [the Intimidation Posts Put Up by the Lindauerheads and the Greaney Goons] Is Really Nonsense. I Enjoy Thought Provoking Conversation With People I Respect.”
“Why Do I Make Such a Fetish Out of Telling the Truth? Because It Was Our Collective Dishonesty That Caused the Economic Crisis.”
Owner of the Joe Taxpayer Blog: “The Fact That Shiller is a Proponent of the Approach Takes It From a Fringe View to Mainstream, in My Opinion.”
Believe me, Rob, we are all laughing when we see the made up stories on death threats and the silly comments about prison sentences and fantasy lawsuits. The only bitter comments I see come from you. Read what you wrote. Someone that doesn’t seem to really have any skin in the game tells you that you are bitter, yet you just dismiss her comment.
Jaime did not say that I am bitter, Pink. Jaime said that she found my ability to stick to my guns “inspiring.”
Jaime does not personally have any problem with anything I have said. Her problem is that others have a problem with things I have said. The people who said I was “bitter” are people who were sitting near her when I gave my presentation. When it was over, she asked them for their take. That is what they told her.
You make an important point when you describe her a “someone who doesn’t seem to have any skin in the game.” I always pay close attention to what people like that say. Those are the people who will decide this. And those people are talking straight. If anything, Jaime should be biased in my direction. I was going to hire her. So she was going to make money from this. So it is important to figure out — Why didn’t she take the job?
She doesn’t want to violate the Social Taboo. She doesn’t want you Goons threatening her and smearing her and trying to destroy her web site. She is afraid of you Goons. And it is obviously not you Goons alone who inspire that fear. Internet Goon are all over the place. The usual procedure is that you report them and they are removed and the problem is solved. In this case, that doesn’t work. I have reported you Goons at lots of places. You are still around causing trouble. Why? That’s the question that needs to be answered for us to be able to take this to a good place.
You Goons are still here because Motley Fool didn’t ban you and Morningstar didn’t ban you and Bogleheads Forum didn’t ban you and Jack Bogle himself has not spoken out about the problem even after he was asked to do so.
What’s going on?
The transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. It’s a wonderful thing. We now know how to avoid economic crises. We now know how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. It’s good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff.
That’s how things appear when you look at them from a global perspective, as I usually do. Things don’t look that way from the individual, selfish perspective of those who have written books promoting Buy-and-Hold or who have built careers promoting Buy-and-Hold or who have endorsed Buy-and-Hold at their web sites or whatever. Those people feel threatened when they see this huge advance taking place. It means that they need to rewrite their books. It means that they need to rebuild their careers. It means that they may be held liable for bad advice they have given in earlier days. In extreme cases (like yours!), it means that they will be going to prison. So there are people who oppose this amazing advance, an advance which benefits millions of middle-class people in a very big way.
Those people comprise the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. My job is to defeat the Buy-and-Hold Mafia and to get accurate and honest reports on what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research says out to millions of middle-class investors. That’s the deal here.
Jaime has zero problem with being part of that. She loves the idea of playing a role. Her concern is — she doesn’t want you Goons trying to destroy her. Just like Wade Pfau loved the idea of doing honest research but didn’t want you Goons destroying him. Just like Mike Piper said “there is nothing I would like better” than to permit honest posting at his site if only he could find a way to do so without seeing his site destroyed by Mel Linduaer (whom Mike fears) and you Goons.
We have to get from this ugly place where you Goons have led us to the wonderful place where we will be when we bury the entire Buy-and-Hold Mafia 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.
You don’t like the idea of going to prison. I get that loud and clear, Pink. The problem is that there is nothing that any of us can do at this point to help you avoid that outcome. It’s not in my power any more than it is in your power. I believe that I can get your sentence reduced a bit and I have offered to do what I can. That is within the realm of the possible. Getting to a place where you will have no sentence for you to serve after what is already in the record is just not in the cards.
You can help me to get your prison sentence reduced or you can let things play out and see what happens to you following the next price crash. There are no other options.
Jaime and I will be working together in future days. I have zero doubt re that. She wants to see that the coast is clear before she gets involved. I think she is wrong to be so worried. I think the coast is pretty much clear today. I think if she got involved, we would soon have a large investing site permitting honest posting and then we would see the entire Buy-and-Hold Mafia collapse before our eyes. So I believe that she made a bad call. I believe that her millionaire friends made a bad call too. They could make many more millions by signing up for Valuation-Informed Indexing before it becomes the hot thing to do. It is those who pioneer a huge advance who make the most money from it.
But both Jaime and her millionaire friends will be signing up somewhere down the road. They will see support for Buy-and-Hold collapse following the next crash and that will be that. EVERYONE will be signing up at once at that time. You Goons won’t know what hit you, you know?
I tell you that as a friend. I WANT your prison sentence to be as short as it possibly can be. So the hand of kindness is extended. But there are limits to my powers. Once the crash comes, I have a funny feeling that there aren’t going to be too many taking heed of any requests I make to extend charity to you Goons. I mean, come on.
I don’t dismiss Jaime’s comments. I listened to what she told me carefully. I think she made a bad call. I think her millionaire friends made a bad call. But I also think we all know where things are headed. So we will just have to keep working the fields a little harder and reminding ourselves that the greatest rewards go to those who are most patient waiting for them.
Anyway, I certainly wish you the best of luck with whatever investing strategies you elect to pursue, my long-time abusive posting friend. Jaime would want me to tell you that she sends her warm regards as well, I am sure.
Rob
So, the people around Jamie’s said you are bitter. There you go. Read your responding post. It is bitter.
You thought you had something better than buy and hold. It has not worked out for you. Others around you continue to succeed by sticking to their plans. Read your post. You want buy and hold to fail. It hasn’t and that makes you look like a failure. Over time, your frustration continues to build. It shows in your posts. The recent revelations about Shiller and the fact that he is heavily invested in the market has decimated what little position you had.
Yes, we continue to laugh at you, but I guess it is a bit sad as well. After all, the people around you are the ones that suffer.
Jaime told me that the people sitting near her reacted to my talk by describing me as “bitter.” I am 100 percent sure that she is shooting straight re this. It’s an important fact to throw in the mix.
When I got on the stage, I had a huge positive reaction to the title of the talk (“How to Become the Most Hated Blogger on the Internet”). I also had a good laugh in reaction to one of my earlier sentences. At that point, I felt I had the crowd eating out of my hand.
I did not hear any further reactions from the crowd until they applauded at the end (as they do for everyone). I “lost” them. That’s my take on it.
There were no signs of bitterness in the talk. Zero. I took special care re that one. So I know that there was nothing bitter in there.
There was lots of stuff that was hard to take for people who have advocated Buy-and-Hold at their blogs, however. That much is certainly so. Again, that was deliberate. I always make the points as well as I can possibly make them. I am famous for it. I am the only one in this field who is on the Valuation-Informed Indexing side and who is doing that today. That’s an amazing but true fact.
The talk made people hurt.
Not because I want people to hurt. Because I want people to know the truth. And because the truth hurts after years of hearing the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage again and again and again.
The people who were hurting had to say something. They didn’t want to say I was right. They could find no point on which to make a case that I was wrong. So the words that came out of their mouths were “that fellow sounds bitter.” That’s where things stand today.
What will those same people say following the next price crash, Pink?
That’s what matters.
I am going to keep telling those people the truth and see where it takes me.
I wish you all good things.
Rob
Read your responding post. It is bitter.
It’s honest.
It may well be that “honest” sounds like “bitter” to a Buy-and-Holder at this point in the proceedings.
But “honest” and “bitter” are not at all the same thing, Pink.
It is my job to be honest.
If some others had been doing their jobs all along, we wouldn’t be in this fix in the first place.
We are the luckiest generation of investors who ever walked Planet Earth. There’s nothing even a tiny bit bitter about that claim, which is my most important claim of all.
Rob
Yes, we continue to laugh at you
I don’t laugh at you, Pink.
I have the hand of kindness extended to you.
I will never post dishonestly re safe withdrawal rates or re any other critically important investment-related topic. Not in 12 years, not in 12 billion years. It would be cruel of me ever to suggest otherwise.
I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors, in any event.
Rob
Rob,
You still don’t get it. Here is an analogy. I drive a Mercedes S class sedan. I belong to a Mercedes forum as well and participate in discussions about how I might maintain my car and ways of increasing performance. Let’s say you drive a Chevy Impala. You then come up to me and tell me how you think your car drives better than mine. We debate the points and don’t agree. Instead of moving on, you continue to say that your car is better and that if I continue to drive my car, it will someday explode and you also contend that it will kill everyone else around me as a result. I tell you that you are crazy and that I am just fine with my Mercedes. You then tell me that your Chevy can fly over mountains and is flame retardant. I ask for proof, but the you either ignore my question or link to a comment you made earlier about your car. When I check in on the Mercedes forum, I see that you have filled up the board with posts on Chevys. People humor you for awhile, but soon grow tired. You think it is okay to continue to talk about Chevys on the Mercedes forum because a) we are talking about cars after all b) you say that you are trying to save Americans from getting burned alive by the evil Mercedes cars. A few members do note that your Chevys seems to have a few problems and you better get them fixed so that it doesn’t break down on your way to the retirement home. Of course, you ignore the warnings. The Mercedes forum members grow tired of you for continuing to talk about your Chevy, so the ban you from the board. You then go on a campaign about how the Mercedes forum owner is evil and should go to jail for banning you and that goes for the others on the boards as well if they don’t demand your immediate return. You are also shocked to see that your friends Wade and Robert trading in their Chevys for Mercedes. Clearly, they have betrayed you and will be sitting in jail one day, that is if the avoid being burned in a car fire, now that the drive a Mercedes. One day, we see you sitting along the roadside in your broken down Chevy and we cruise right by in the Mercedes, waiving as we pass you. Of course, you think the driver of the Mercedes is bitter because he had the gall to waive as he drove by.
FinCon14 will be in New Orleans.
http://finconexpo.com/
Will you be going?
“Super Early Bird prices end February 28th”
I’ll continue to post honestly re safe withdrawal rates and other critically important investment-related topics, Pink.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors.
Rob
Yes, I am signed up for FinCon14, Evidence.
My thought for an Ignite presentation this year is: “How to Predict Stock Returns for Fun and Profit.”
Rob
People have a right to know why and how their lives have been destroyed, Pink.
I’ll tell the story, the biggest economic and political story of any of our lifetimes. The millions whose lives have been destroyed will decide on the length of the prison sentences of those involved. It’s not my call.
I’ll put in a few words to help you out. I don’t think those words will make much difference after the next crash. But I’m not God. Maybe I will be proven wrong. No one can say for certain.
You certainly have my best and warmest wishes, in any event.
Hang in there, man.
Rob
Rob,
You are peeing in someone else’s pool and trying to tell them it is “spring water”.
By the way Rob, my Mercedes and my portfolio are doing just fine. Let me know if you want me to call AAA to come tow away your old Chevy.
There is a part of you that shares my doubts re Buy-and-Hold, Pink. If there wasn’t, you could laugh off anything I say and be perfectly good friends with me regardless of any investing beliefs I might hold. I give voice to a message that your own common sense has been trying to send you for a long time and it drives you bonkers.
Buy-and-Hold died intellectually 33 years ago. Get Rich Quick strategies always have the marketing edge. We all have a Get Rich Quick urge within us. How are people ever going to learn about what the last 33 years of research says if someone doesn’t work up the courage to tell them despite what you Goons do to him?
Should we just live through the Second Great Depression and only then open up the internet to honest posting? Somehow that doesn’t strike me as a smart way of playing this one.
There never has been even a tiny sliver of research or data supporting Buy-and-Hold. Wade Pfau confirmed that. So why do people believe in it? Because the Buy-and-Holders don’t permit discussion of the research. How does that ever change unless someone calls them out on their b.s.?
You knew what you were doing when you committed your acts of financial fraud. Millions of people suffered in very serious ways as a result. Why do you think we enacted laws against financial fraud in the first place?
You don’t own this pool. The people of the United States own this pool. I am not the one who committed financial fraud. It is the ones committing financial fraud who are peeing in the pool.
Is it the people who turned in Bernie Madoff who are the bad guys? When someone does stuff like that, there are no ways of handling the matter in which no one suffers. If you turn the guy in, he goes to prison. If you don’t turn the guy in, millions of people lose their life savings.
I offer no apologies for turning you in. I care about the millions whose lives you have destroyed. So long as my commitment to those millions of people has been honored, I am fine with trying to help you out a bit too. But those people matter to me. And if helping them learn what they need to learn means seeing you go to prison for a long time, that’s just the way things go sometimes. It is not my doing.
It is not for you to determine what is “spring water.” That’s for the people who read the boards and blogs to decide. After they have heard from both sides, both the Get Rich Quickers and those who favor research-based investing strategies.
I hope that helps a little bit.
My warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
my Mercedes and my portfolio are doing just fine.
Those who invested in the Madoff fund were doing “just fine” until they lost all their retirement money.
Those who knew about that act of financial fraud should have called Madoff out on it.
The losses suffered by the Madoff investors add up to a drop of water in the Atlantic Ocean compared to the losses of the Buy-and-Holders, presuming that stocks continue to perform in the future at least somewhat as they have always performed in the past (as documented by the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research).
I will continue to call out those who participate in cover-ups and massive acts of financial fraud.
I naturally wish you all good things, my long-time felon-committing friend.
Rob
Is there a warning message to those who visit the Bogleheads Forum stating that: “Honest Posting on the Last 33 Years of Peer-Reviewed Academic Research Is Absolutely Forbidden at This Web Site As It Would Hinder Our Efforts to Promote the Purest and Most Dangerous Get Rich Quick Scheme Ever Concocted By the Human Mind”?
If not, why not?
The fact that you are not straight with people shows that you have something to hide.
I want no part of it other than to gain a reputation all across the internet as the most severe critic of Buy-and-Hold alive on Planet Earth today.
My best wishes.
Rob
We each own our own pool, Rob. We can do what we want with our own pool. If you want to pee in your pool, go ahead, but don’t come pee in my pool.
I don’t have any doubts about not peeing in my pool, but I do get a laugh watching you pee in your pool and trying to convince everyone else that they should as well.
People can choose to do what they want. I tell them that I prefer clean water and that they would probably benefit by swimming in clean water as well. They are free to do what they want for themselves. Just remember that when you tell them that you have data that says it is better to swim in a pool filled with pee, then you better be able to back it up with real data and not just links to your own comments on pee.
Also, you must repect other owners to ban you from their pools when they tell you that they no longer want you hanging around when you keep wanting to talk about peeingbin their pool.
We each own our own pool, Rob. We can do what we want with our own pool.
So Bernie Madoff cannot be prosecuted for financial fraud because all of his victims were enticed by his fraudulent claims to sign up at his pool? That’s not the way it works, Pink.
If you live in the United States, the United States is your pool. It is the laws of the United States that apply.
Rob
People can choose to do what they want.
And no one may advance death threats or demands for unjustified board bannings or tens of thousands of acts of defamation or threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs to intimidate them into not doing so.
Rob
you must repect other owners to ban you from their pools when they tell you that they no longer want you hanging around when you keep wanting to talk about peeingbin their pool.
I do not respect acts of financial fraud.
Bernie Madoff didn’t like it when people spilled the beans on his acts of financial fraud either. Too friggin’ bad for Bernie. The people whose lives he destroyed matter.
Rob
Bernie’s Madoff stole someone else’s pool equipment, he didn’t take their water. What he did has no relevance to the discussion of how we choose to invest.
People are free to ban you from their pool. You might not like or think the reason isn’t justified, but it doesnt really matter. It is their pool and not yours.
I have yet to see any third party proof that some one issued a death threat or threatened someone else’s job. Always happy to comment once you should the actual threat. Until then, all you have is just a pool full of piss and not much more and I don’t see a line of people waiting to dive in.
Buck up, little soldier.
Any heat you think you are feeling today will feel like a walk in Central Park in May compared to the perpetual furnace you will be living in following the next price crash.
Bernie had it easy. And rightly so. He did a comparatively tiny amount of damage.
I’ll send you a popsicle to cool things off for about three seconds. What are friends for?
Rob
I have yet to see any third party proof that some one issued a death threat or threatened someone else’s job.
I suggest that you pay closer attention when the evidence is presented at your trial than you did during the first 12 years of out discussions of the realities of stock investing.
The jury members whose lives have been destroyed (which is likely to be the majority of them) won’t be sleeping through the presentation, I’ll betcha.
Hang in there, man.
Rob
People are free to ban you from their pool.
Not if the purpose is to cover up an act of financial fraud, they’re not.
I put forward my famous post pointing out the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies on the morning of May 13, 2002. It was nearly 10 years later that the Wall Street Journal published an article saying that I was right all along. And the studies haven’t been corrected to this day.
Don’t let the bad guys get you down, old buddy.
Rob
It is their pool and not yours.
If it is their pool, they should enforce the rules that they had every poster agree to before he was permitted to put forward a single post.
Your jury will be hearing this argument.
Oh, my!
Rob
I don’t see a line of people waiting to dive in.
Hence the need for the prison sentences.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
It is their pool and not yours.
The jury may decide that it is their pool.
The pool is located within the United States and thus is covered by the laws adopted by the people of the United States.
You might not want to be saying things likely to antagonize the jury, Pink.
There are Post Archives.
Rob
Rob,
Go over to Donald Trumps estate and jump in his pool. When security removes you, try to tell them that the US government really owns the pool and that they can’t throw you out.
Secondly, the court demands actual proof and won’t just take your word for it Rob. When you cant even come up with any proof to back up your claims, you have NOTHING.
Just shocking how you don’t understand that people don’t want to jump in your pee-filled pool. Unfortunately, your family is left to suffer with your choice of aquatic content.
A good number of the site owners that banned honest posting wrote me e-mails apologizing for doing so and made clear that they hated doing so and the only reason they did so was because you Goons threatened to kill family members or to destroy their sites and they knew from your many years of engaging in such behavior that you would follow through with your threats and that big shots like Jack Bogle and Bill Bernstein and Larry Swedroe and Scott Burns would not raise a peep of protest.
One of the questions your jury will be taking up is — Why can’t the owner of the pool run the pool the way HE wants to?
Rob
When you cant even come up with any proof to back up your claims, you have NOTHING.
If I didn’t have a mountain of evidence, you Goons would have never advanced a single death threat or a single demand for a single unjustified board banning or a single act of defamation or a single threat to get a single academic researcher fired from a single job.
It’s not your pool. But it WILL be your prison cell.
Hey! Taylor can call his “The Prison Cell That Jack Built”!
Rob
This is a fun thread, Rob. Enjoying it immensely. However, I hope I can make one tiny point of order, without peeving you off:
You say: “no one may advance demands… for unjustified board bannings…” Well………..
Rob, as a lawyer, surely you know that’s dead wrong. If someone wants to advocate banning you, or me, or all current moderators, or all current members, or whoever, then voicing that opinion somewhere is certainly not an actionable offense, either civilly, but most especially not criminally.
Now, when you get to” death threats or… tens of thousands of acts of defamation”, well then, now you’ve potentially got something. That would be actionable, certainly civilly (for the defamation), and criminally (on the death threats, IF and only if they appeared to be genuine and not just hyperbolic mutually antagonistic ‘web-talk’ — and that’s if any such example towards you or the family even exists at all.) All anyone will need is proof, of course. Which you have never provided.
So, I hereby thank you in advance for at least removing ‘unjustified board bannings’ or advocacy thereof, from your list of alleged horrific legally actionable offenses.
You are wrong, Anonymous.
If you demand an unjustified board banning for the purpose of covering up a massive act of financial fraud, that is a felony in itself.
The same applies if you ban honest posting at a web site you own. If the purpose is to aid a cover-up of a massive act of financial fraud, that act becomes a felony.
Financial fraud is bad stuff. And covering up financial fraud is bad stuff.
I want no part of it.
Rob
Rob,
Can you show one other person with a legal background (besides yourself) that says specifically that there is grounds for financial fraud.
You don’t need to be a legal genius to know that it is financial fraud to threaten to send defamatory e-mails to an academic researcher with the aim of getting him fired from his job because you got an important number wrong in a retirement study published at your web site and you have been covering up the error for years and this academic researcher has published honest research that highlights the error. Give me a friggin’ break. What else would you call that?
I can show you the ACTIONS of hundreds of people in this field that reveal that they view the field as 100 percent corrupt, Anonymous.
Look at the Wade Pfau story. Wade was contemptuous of Scott Burns for the role he played in the cover-up. He was indignant when Mel Linduaer charged him with unethical research practices. He was amazed at the behavior he saw at the Early Retirement Forum. Wade knew financial fraud when he saw it. That’s why he freaked out when he learned that I was going to report on our 16 months of e-mail correspondence. Once Wade joined in on the financial fraud himself, his view on it changed. Now he wanted it all covered up.
I have had many people tell me “oh, Rob, the things you say about investing are all true and important but you must be careful not to use words like “Goons” and “fraud” and “prison” or people will be turned off by your stuff.” People ARE turned off, that much is so. But it is because people have not spoken up about this stuff that it has gotten so out of hand. The worst possible thing that any of us can do when we see financial fraud is to keep quiet about it. It’s not just the victims who are hurt when we fail to speak up. The people committing the fraud are hurt very seriously. A lot of people will pull back when they are called out on their bad behavior. When they seem to get away with it, they are drawn farther and farther and farther down the dark path.
I don’t believe that the people who have committed financial fraud first got involved in this field with an intent to commit financial fraud. Again, Wade is the perfect example. When he learned the realities of stock investing, he was jumping off the walls in excitement. He was talking about winning the Nobel prize and about getting published in the Journal of Finance. He thought that the investing field was being run on the up and up, that it was possible to do honest work and not be driven out of this field of endeavor.
He expressed amazement to me that no one before him had done the research that we did together. He just couldn’t figure it out. After you Goons threatened to destroy his career if he continued to do honest work, I think it would be fair to say that he figured out why no one had taken on this obvious research project for 33 years. Now he gets it and now he is part of the cover-up himself.
You’re not going to get anyone in the field to tell the truth so long as the penalty for telling the truth is a career death sentence, Anonymous.
But it doesn’t follow that there won’t be lots of people coming out after we are in the Second Great Depression. There are people in this field who love their country. It is my belief that my good friend Jack Bogle is one of them. I believe that Jack will flip following the next crash. If he doesn’t, I am confident that lots of others will.
The people who tell me not to just tell the plain facts with plain language are wrong. Yes, it is ugly stuff. Yes, people react negatively to it. But what we should all want to do is to put the financial fraud behind us. We are the luckiest generation of investors ever to walk Planet Earth. We should be enjoying our good fortune, not enduring an economic crisis. But we cannot talk about what needs to be done to end the crisis because it would make the Buy-and-Holders “look bad.” There are so many layers of corruption in this field today that any positive and constructive and life-affirming action that can be imagined makes the Buy-and-Holders “look bad.” I guess when you have spent decades of time and millions of dollars of money pushing the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind, it doesn’t take much good stuff to make you “look bad.”
You wouldn’t be here asking these questions if you weren’t worried about going to prison, Anonymous. Give me a friggin’ break.
Bogle is worried too. And Bernstein. And Swedoe. And Burns. And Pfau. And lots and lots and lots and lots of others.
I am the best friend that any of them has in this world. I am the one who came up with the cognitive dissonance stuff. No one has gone to as much trouble to help these people out of the corner into which they have painted themselves.
I’ll still keep trying. But I won’t lie about anything that is in the Post Archives. For obvious reasons.
My ability to help is of course diminished with every passing day. Does it make me sad? It does. But there is nothing I can do about it. I have to accept it, like it or not.
Your stupid questions get you precisely nowhere. What gets you somewhere is coming clean.
You may now ask your next stupid question or advance your next effort at deception and intimidation. The world waits with bated breath.
Rob
Rob –
I own a pool. Please do not come and pee in my pool. I am perfectly happy with the condition of the water.
If I find that you are putting poison in the water in your pool, I am going to warn people about it, Trebor.
The research showing that Buy-and-Hold never works long term was not published last week. It was published 33 years ago. The fellow who wrote that research has been awarded a Nobel prize in economics. So this is serious stuff.
If you put up a warning at your pool telling everyone who comes that honest posting on the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research is banned at your pool, then it’s no longer my business. People are getting what they came for. But you don’t do that. You lie. You tell people that your water is peer-reviewed water and it is not. Your water has been discredited for 33 years now.
Please remember that it was my posts that built the Retire Early board into the #1 board at Motley Fool. The people who met there were my friends. And their lives were being destroyed on a daily basis by Greaney’s constant promotion of his study. Those people matter to me and I had every right to tell them the truth. And the board community made clear that that was what they wanted. I had a thread where I asked whether people thought that honest posting should be permitted on the peer-reviewed research, and it was virtually unanimous that it should be.
Greaney is the guy who got the number wrong in his study, not me. Greaney is the guy who threatened to kill family members of any posters who posted honestly, not me. Greaney is the guy who destroyed the board, not me. Greaney is the guy who threatened to send defamatory e-mails to Wade’s employer, not me. Greaney is the guy going to prison after the next crash, not me. Greaney is the guy who has enticed a number of his friends to do things that will get them sent to prison following the next crash, not me.
I am the anti-Greaney in every possible way. I extend the hand of kindness to him. But I hate to see him destroy so many humans lives, including his own.
I wish you all good things.
Rob
I am perfectly happy with the condition of the water.
If this were so, you would not support the advancing of death threats or unjustified board bannings or tens of thousands of acts of defamation or threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs.
Actions speak louder than words. Your actions show that you lack confidence in Buy-and-Hold.
If the Goons trying to “defend” it lack confidence in it, why should those of us who believe in following research-based strategies believe in it?
You are not “perfectly happy with the condition of the water.” You are scared to death that the water is poisoned and killing you. You are just afraid to discuss the matter.
I’m not afraid to discuss the matter.
I know Buy-and-Hold is b.s. and I intend to get that message out to the millions of middle-class investors who need to hear it.
I am telling the health inspectors about the poison in your pool and about the deaths that have resulted from your actions. I am doing so as an act of love.
I naturally wish you the best of luck with whatever investing strategies you elect to pursue.
Rob
Rob
Invited guests can swim in my pool. I have never had any complaints from my guests. There is no poison in my pool. You know nothing about the water in my pool so your accusations are completely baseless.
If someone shows up off the street and starts harassing my guests or yelling over the fence that I have put poison in my pool, I am within my rights to ask that person to leave. If that person refuses to leave, I can call the police and they will remove that person from my pool.
I have never had any complaints from my guests.
You have had THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of complaints. I have an article at this site that lists 101 of them. I could have made it 1001 if I cared to take the time. There are scores and scores of complaints quoted in the “People Are Talking” section.
People don’t like having to engage in unethical behavior. People don’t like seeing their retirement plans destroyed. People HATE your death threats. People are appalled that you would threaten an academic researcher.
You started getting complaints on the morning of May 13, 2002. You have heard complaints ever since. And the complaints will multiply following the next crash. Consider your prison sentence a very, very loud “complaint” from the millions of middle-class people whose lives you have destroyed.
Rob
There is no poison in my pool
33 years of peer-reviewed academic research says otherwise.
Rob
If someone shows up off the street and starts harassing my guests or yelling over the fence that I have put poison in my pool, I am within my rights to ask that person to leave.
If someone shows up at your pool and points out that you got an important number wrong in a retirement study you are handing out to people who use the pool, there are four things you need to do within the next 24 hours:
1) Correct the error;
2) Apologize to the people whose lives were destroyed by the error;
3) Thank the person who brought the error to your attention; and
4) Get on with your life.
It is the people who fail to ask you to remove the poison from your pool who you should remove.
To fail to demand that poison be removed from a pool is to make an implicit statement that you believe the person who owns the pool is 100 percent corrupt.
I treated you as a friend by presuming that you would remove the poison as soon as you learned about it.
Rob
If that person refuses to leave, I can call the police and they will remove that person from my pool.
I have numerous e-mails from the police who removed me from your pools apologizing to me and telling me that they knew it was wrong to remove me but that they felt they had to do so because of your threats to destroy them if they failed to do the wrong thing and because the Wall Street Con Men with all their money and power and influence signaled their support of your intimidation tactics.
I wonder why.
Rob