Set forth below are the texts of three comments put to the Goon Central site: (1) a post by me commenting on a statement advanced by Dab; (2) a response to my post by GW; and (3) my response to GW.
Dab made an important point with his post containing these words:i like how rob gets himself so worked up over what someone else is doing with their own money, and not bothering rob in the least. as long as they aren’t knocking on your basement door, what do you care? they are happy and content, leave well enough alone and focus on your own account.
The stock market is a community resource. The Buy-and-Holders rape that resource for their own benefit. If someone pollutes the ocean and is happy and content to do so, should we all leave well enough alone? If someone puts cancer-causing chemicals in the food he sells us and is happy and content doing so, should we all leave well enough alone? The Southern towns that did not permit people with black skin to choose their own seats on public buses were happy and content. Should we have left well enough alone? There are COMMUNITY values. The entire community of workers builds our economic system. Buy-and-Holders cannot be permitted to destroy our economic system just because there is profit in it. My sincere take. Rob
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Curious says
Question for you Rob. If Shiller’s actions indicate that his interpretation of his revolutionary research differ from your interpretation, is more likely that difference is attributable to Shiller being disingenuous for fear of being spoken ill of on finance blogs, or that you’ve mis-interpreted the implications of his work?
Anonymous says
Community resource? Yet another misinformed comment.
Rob says
Thanks for asking an intelligent question, Curious.
You are referring to Shiller’s recent statement that he is today 50 percent in stocks. I am personally at zero stocks and I have said that the typical middle-class investor should today be going with a stock allocation between 20 percent and 30 percent, based on Shiller’s findings and the 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research that have followed.
It’s certainly possible that I have misinterpreted the implications of Shiller’s work. I did not go to investing school. I have never managed a big fund. I am one of the flawed humans. So people certainly need to understand that one possible explanation here is that I have messed up. I don’t think that’s the case. But then I wouldn’t, would I?
I will make the argument for the case that I have NOT messed up. I am not the person to talk to for hearing the case that I HAVE messed up. Those who believe that I have messed up should make that case.
Shiller has a long record of giving odd responses when asked about the practical implications of his “revolutionary” (his word) findings. In early 2009, he said that investors should stay out of stocks until the P/E10 value dropped below 10. We have not dropped below 10 since then. So Shiller is not following his own advice in going with a 50 percent stock allocation. Do you not find that odd? I sure do.
There’s another contradiction revealed by Shiller’s statement that he is at 50 percent stocks today. A few months ago, Shiller predicted that there will be a crash in 2014. That means sometime in the next nine months. He foresees a price crash and he is at 50 percent stocks? Does that make even a tiny bit of sense? It does not.
Shiller clearly does not know everything, Curious. I obviously love the guy. “Irrational Exuberance” is my Bible. But the guy obviously has not put all the pieces together.
You suggest that the only alternative to me being wrong is that Shiller is being “disingenious.” I don’t agree with that. I don’t think he knows all the answers and is just not revealing them to us. I do indeed think there may be some of that going on. There is a high price to be paid for speaking frankly about these matters. I believe that the Social Taboo holds Shiller back, that he does not say everything he believes because he fears the smears that would be directed at him if he did. He’s like all the rest of us in that regard.
But I also believe that Shiller does not know it all. Shiller is one of the humans and we humans learn by talking things over. We learn through give and take. We unearth puzzles and then we offer our thoughts as to the resolution of the puzzles and then we get some feedback that helps us figure out if we are on the right track or not and so on. That’s how it is done. That process is not taking place today. EVEN FOR SHILLER.
He no doubt has theories on certain questions. But until there is widespread and open and frank discussion of all these matters, he is not going to be able to do his best work. We have as a society crippled him. And that hurts us in a big way. We have also crippled Bogle, to be sure. And of course it is true that I am crippled as well. I would do better work if Shiller were being challenged on his contradictions on a daily basis and if Bogle were being challenged on his contradictions on a daily basis. I would learn from the discussions that would follow and I would be better able to do good work myself as a result. So would Bogle. So would Shiller. So would everyone else.
You challenge me daily to explain everything that goes on in the world of stock investing that seems a bit odd but you never challenge anyone else. Why don’t you start a thread at the Bogleheads Forum about Shiller’s contradictions and see if anyone there can figure things out better than I can? Then please start a similar thread re Bogle’s contradictions. Stop trying to put all the weight on me. I am just some fellow who figured out how to get his words posted to the internet. I don’t claim to be an expert. Bogle does, Shiller does. Those guys should be held to a higher standard than me and you are not today holding them to any standard whatsoever.
Yes, Shiller is afraid to speak out in perfect frankness. If he were not afraid, why would he have published a book that contains only two paragraphs on the how-to questions? Those are the questions of greatest interest to most book buyers. He refrained from addressing those questions because he fears the reaction he would get if he addressed them. It may be that he is not even personally aware of this. It may be that he tells himself some other story. But, yes, I believe that that is a big part of the explanation of the odd behavior.
But I am virtually sure that another big part of the explanation is that he has not put all the pieces of the puzzle together yet. That’s because he has not had enough discussions about his tentative beliefs to check them out and to revise them and to gain confidence in them. He’s like the vast majority of experts in this field in that respect. And it is killing us that that is so!
We should want Shiller devoting all his mental energy to these questions. And we should want that from Bogle. And we should want that from thousands of others. We start getting all the good stuff when we give ourselves permission to have open and free and frank and honest discussions on the implications of the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research.
I have tried for 12 years to get the ball rolling. That is my great “crime.”
Rob
Rob says
Community resource? Yet another misinformed comment.
I think you are wrong, Anonymous.
There are millions of people who invest in the U.S. market. Those people consider price when buying every other good and service they purchase in their daily lives. The Buy-and-Holders told them that there is some magical blue pixie dust that applies in the investing realm that turns all the usual rules on their heads. There is no need to consider price when buying stocks. It will work out somehow or other. The first 140 years of stock market history means nothing. It is all going to turn out different this time! They are so totally sure!
People have common sense. People understand on some level of consciousness that this is a crazy idea, that price must matter. But the people who promote Buy-and-Hold strategies claim to be experts. They must know what they are talking about whether it defies common sense and 33 years of peer-reviewed research or not! So lots of people listened. And when people ripped the brakes out of the car, we went to price levels never before seen in history. The only way the market could get prices back to fair-value values (which is the entire purpose of any market) was through a series of price crashes, the first of which brought on an economic crisis.
There are millions of people out of work today as a result of the Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
There are thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs who sweated their entire lives to build wonderful businesses that help us all and who saw those businesses destroyed in the Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
And you say telling lies about how stock investing works is not a matter of huge public policy significance? I say you are wrong. We all have a stake in the survival of this country and the Buy-and-Hold Lies are in the process of destroying it. I say that we should all fight as hard as we can to protect the country we love from these “experts” who can’t be bothered to read the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in their field.
There is a scene in “Mad Men” where the family has a picnic and at the end of it they just pick up the blanket and let all the trash fall on the grass. They walk to the car and drive away.
People did that sort of thing in those days. They weren’t evil. They didn’t know. There was a time when the effects that our actions have on the environment weren’t a concern. So lots of us didn’t bother to take the most minimal efforts to protect it.
That’s where the Buy-and-Holders stand today. They think it is all about making a buck and they tell whatever lies they need to tell to get the money out of the customers’ pockets and into their own. But that won’t work anymore following the next price crash. There are millions of middle-class people whose only hope to financing their retirements to is gain access to accurate and honest information about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research says. If the Big Shot “experts” in this field refuse to give it to them, there is one internet site that will.
The U.S. economy is a community resource. It benefits us all. The Buy-and-Hold Lies are in the process of destroying that community resource. When people lose most of their money in the price crashes that inevitably follow the promotion of Buy-and-Hold “strategies,” they can no longer buy the goods and services that must be bought for our economy to function properly.
We all have a patriotic duty to see that the internet is opened to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.
My sincere take.
Rob
Curious says
Hi Rob,
I ask these questions because I believe you have derived implications from Shiller’s work that are unfounded. I’ve tried to encourage you to take not just my word for it but to seek out the opinion of others whose opinions you respect. And, importantly, to do so with enough humility and intellectual honesty to accept their reaction at face value rather than constructing an intellectual Rube Goldberg contraption that allows you to dismiss them. Many of my prior comments to you toward this end were deleted.
I’m not familiar with some of the statements you ascribe to Shiller. But I don’t find it shocking in the least that, for instance, he believes stock prices are a bit overvalued yet he still holds a healthy allocation. That’s because he recognizes something important–the future is unknowable. Just because something has happened in the past does not mean it wil happen tomorrow. Shiller invests with a healthy balance of skepticism and prudence.
Rob says
I’ve tried to encourage you to take not just my word for it but to seek out the opinion of others whose opinions you respect. And, importantly, to do so with enough humility and intellectual honesty to accept their reaction at face value rather than constructing an intellectual Rube Goldberg contraption that allows you to dismiss them.
You are asking me to cancel out what my brain tells me and to betray my country because of intimidation tactics used by Wall Street Con Men to silence those who ask hard questions, Anonymous. This I cannot do.
That’s because he recognizes something important–the future is unknowable.
That’s the fundamental question on the table — Are future stock prices knowable or not? If they are not knowable, I agree with you that Buy-and-Hold is the ideal strategy. On the other hand, if they are knowable, Buy-and-Hold is the most dangerous Get Rich Quick Scheme ever concocted by the human mind. It has caused four economic crises and is in the process of bringing on the Second Great Depression.
The “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) aspect of Shiller’s research is that he showed that stock prices are knowable in the long term. That was something new. The entire Buy-and-Hold Model was based on an opposite belief.
The most important economic and political issue before our country today is whether the Buy-and-Holders are right or whether the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research in this field is right. I will continue to do what I can to get the internet opened up to honest exploration of this question.
Just because something has happened in the past does not mean it wil happen tomorrow.
It does not.
But 140 years of past is a lot of past.
And please remember that the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research shows that Buy-and-Hold worked for zero out of those 140 years.
We have to invest in some way. When we have one strategy that has worked for 140 years out of 140 years of stock market history and another that has worked for 0 our of 140 years of stock market history, I feel more comfortable going with and recommending the former over the latter. Call me madcap.
Shiller invests with a healthy balance of skepticism and prudence.
And incoherence. To say that stocks will not be safe to invest in again until the P/E10 value goes below 10 and then to go with a 50 percent stock allocation when that has not yet happened is incoherent.
Shiller is a great man. I rank him even higher than Bogle. But, like Bogle, he is a man. And, like all men, he get things wrong from time to time. His friends are the ones who tell him so and thereby help him on his way to a better understanding and even greater accomplishments.
My sincere take.
Rob
Anonymous says
Rob,
A community resource is some that is part of shared services, like a park. When you buy stock, you are taking ownership in a piece of a company. It isNOT open for consumption by the community at large. Instead, it is solely for the owners.
Rob says
The last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research produced KNOWLEDGE.
There are millions of people who are investing in stocks to finance their retirements and need access to that KNOWLEDGE to do so effectively.
When the Wall Street Con Men deny those millions access to the KNOWLEDGE they need, they destroy our ECONOMIC SYSTEM. We all have a vested interest in seeing that that ECONOMIC SYSTEM not be destroyed.
The ECONOMIC SYSTEM and the KNOWLEDGE produced by the academic research are community resources.
The Wall Street Con Men make a buck by destroying these community resources. These community resources do not belong to them. They have no right to destroy these community resources for their personal profit. We have adopted LAWS to protect us from this sort of behavior. These LAWS call for prison time for those who commit massive acts of financial fraud.
There are RESPONSIBILITIES that go with offering investing advice. It is not just about turning a buck by telling any lie that will get the marks to turn over their life savings.
My sincere take.
Rob
Rob's Little Helper says
Rob, you do realize that this whole thing is not about ECONOMICS or SHILLER or SWRs or WALL STREET CON MEN or HONEST POSTING or DCOMS or even retirement in general, right?
It is solely and only (and ever has been) about observing the ongoing, real-time, pubic unraveling of a lunatic, and the amazing opportunity people have to actually probe and interact with him, engaging him as he paints up more and more delusional scenarios to try to justify his own rampant mental disease.
Right?
You do know that deep in your heart, don’t you?
Because the one consolation that I truly pray you can hold close (if only to to your inner self), is the absolute knowledge that while you seem clearly unable to stop yourself, you are…. crazy.
Truly and spectacularly nuts.
Rob says
I’ll continue to post honestly on safe withdrawal rates and on scores of other critically important investment-related topics, Helper.
I naturally wish you the best of luck with whatever investing strategies you elect to follow.
Rob
Robisadouche says
Did you ever stop to think that these questions are posed as a way of watching you make a fool of yourself?
Rob says
I certainly don’t put it past you Goons to do something like that, Douche. It would be consistent with other behavior I have seen from you for you for you to do something like that.
I cannot control that, can I?
If it were up to me, there would be no Goons. Or, if there were Goons, the owner of every investing site on the internet would honor the published promises he made to protect those of us using the boards and blogs for good purposes from you Goons.
Every site owner has not honored their promises. Perhaps you’ve noticed.
We are the luckiest generation of investors who ever lived. We are the first to know how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. We are on the one-yard line. We have 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing us how stock investing works in the real world. We have this wonderful internet technology that permits us to spread the word far and wide. We have seen over and over again that a good percentage of the middle-class population LONGS to hear honest and accurate investing advice for the first time. There are hundreds of blog owners and publishers and practitioners who stand to make millions by spreading this information. Things couldn’t be better.
Except for one thing — You Goons mess it up every time we get a fire going. People feel afraid of individuals who resort to threats of physical violence when others report honestly on what the peer-reviewed academic research in this field says. The Wall Street Con Men back you up and people worry that the Con Men will use their power and money and influence to destroy them. People feel ashamed and sickened to see human beings sink so low. They flee communities that don’t take prompt action to remove you from the premises rather than sticking around to defend the community by insisting on reasonable enforcement of the published posting rules.
I cannot change all that, Douche. Not by myself. I can speak out against it. But if the site owners don’t back me up, your intimidation tactics achieve their goal. If my fellow community members don’t speak up in strong and firm and uncompromising language, a lot of the site owners don’t feel compelled to honor their promises. They stand to make money by pushing the Get Rich Quick garbage just as the Wall Street Con Men do, afterall. Not as much. But the basic behavior driver is the same.
So I need to get you Goons sent to prison. When you are sent to prison, the story is going to go viral. I am sure. When the story goes viral, people will be curious about the substantive issues that caused people to be willing to risk prison sentences just to silence those seeking to let people know about the findings of the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That will be the end of Buy-and-Hold. There have been a lot of people who have converted from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. I think it would be safe to say that no one has ever converted back. Once we open the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other investment-related topics, I think it would be safe to say that within a year or so there will be no more Buy-and-Hold. We will have pulled together as a community to bury that Get Rich Quick garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.
The laws against financial fraud were adopted for a good reason, Douche. We need to pull together as a society and enforce them and then move on to a much brighter financial future than any of us ever imagined possible back in the Buy-and-Hold Era.
No?
Rob
Curious says
And so you’re saying that you understand the implications of Shiller’s research far better than he himself does.
Perhaps a dose of humility, thought and intellectual honesty would dictate that you revisit the process that led you to this very strange conclusion.
Robisadouche says
But you have control as to whether or not you respond like a fool. A goon can’t decide how you are going to respond.
Secondly, site owners can ban anyone they want. You delete posts all the time and that is a form of banning people.
Third, financial fraud requires facts and related charges. Your position of fraud, prison and lawsuits has no basis of supporting facts. It is merely you opinion based on your hopes for revenge. Merely stating it doesn’t make it true. It just supports the view that you are a fool.
Curious says
In other words, you’re saying that some guy whose claim to fame, as you’ve said, is that you post words on the internet better understands Nobel prize winning research than the author of said studies.
Does that not, at least in the abstract, strike you as very odd?
Rob says
And so you’re saying that you understand the implications of Shiller’s research far better than he himself does.
Yes, I think that may indeed be the case, Curious.
Perhaps a dose of humility, thought and intellectual honesty would dictate that you revisit the process that led you to this very strange conclusion.
The man has said the things the man has said, Curious. I cannot change the realities.
Rob
Rob says
You delete posts all the time and that is a form of banning people.
No, it isn’t. I have never banned one person from participating here. There are people who have threatened to kill my wife and children who I permit to post here. And I welcome them warmly when they do.
I would never dream of banning someone as part of an effort to cover up errors I made in a retirement study. My expectation that something like that could happen is roughly equal to my expectation that tomorrow morning I will be able to flap my arms and fly up to the moon.
Rob
Rob says
Does that not, at least in the abstract, strike you as very odd?
Yes, it’s an exceedingly odd reality, Curious. I’m afraid that I am going to have to give you that one.
Rob
Trebor Martin says
Rob
I am curious how you would respond to this article entitled “Forget the 4% Rule” in which Wade is interviewed. He doesn’t seem fearful and is speaking his mind. I realize you probably will delete this as it flies in the face of the elaborately constructed fantasy world in which you live
http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/26/retirement/retirement-income.moneymag/
My hope is that you will see the light and get the mental help you need. I am afraid I must move on . I see no good coming from continuing to follow you.
Best of luck
Trebor
Rob says
Here are some things that Wade would be talking about in the article if he were not afraid to speak honestly re these matters:
1) Why did it take 10 years for the Wall Street Journal to write about the errors in the Old School studies? I put up my famous post pointing out the errors on the morning of May 13, 2002.
2) Why did the people who devised the methodology for the Old School studies fail to include a valuations adjustment in the first place? What were they thinking?
3) Why were the errors not discovered long before May 13, 2002? There are lots of smart people who work in this field. No one ever checked?
4) Why did investors respond the way they did when the errors were discovered? Many investors supported Greaney when he refused to correct his study. Why? It was their retirement money at stake, was it not?
5) Why did other big names who discovered the error in the studies not use their discovery to promote themselves? Bill Bernstein wrote about the error in his book “The Four Pillars of Investing.” Why didn’t he go on interviews to talk about the error and thereby give his book the publicity it needed to become a best-seller?
6) Why didn’t reports of the errors in the studies go viral? They affect millions of retirees and aspiring retirees.
7) Why didn’t reports of the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the studies go viral? This is the biggest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States, is it not?
8) Why didn’t hundreds of bloggers pick up on this? Bloggers want to help their readers and become successful, do they not?
9) Why didn’t the big names in this field and the big institutions (Vanguard, Morningstar, Index Universe, etc.) all contribute funds to get the word out once the errors were discovered as a way of showing the millions of middle-class people whose lives were destroyed by the error that the industry wanted to do all it could to help alleviate the human suffering that they caused?
10) Why has no one yet gone to prison over this?
11) How did Wade learn about the error?
12) How long was it from the time that Wade learned about the error until he first went public with a demand that it be corrected?
13) When Wade contacted the authors of the Trinity study demanding a correction, what was their reaction?
14) Does discovery of the failure to include a valuations adjustment in the Old School retirement studies suggest that the Buy-and-Holders might have produced studies in other areas which also do not include valuations adjustments?
15) Have all the studies been corrected as of today?
16) Have all the people who relied on the studies to plan retirements been compensated for their losses?
17) Is there anyone in the field still pretending that the studies are not in error and yet also still pretending to be an “expert” in investing analysis?
18) Did Wade himself ever fall for the claims in the discredited studies?
19) What has the industry done to insure that nothing like this ever happens again.? Has the peer-review process been reformed?
20) Do people who work in this field feel better about themselves now that they have come clean re the errors in the studies?
21) Are there New School studies that include valuations adjustments to which we could point our readers?
22) How different are the New School numbers from the Old School numbers?
23) Can Wade estimate how many millions of people will suffer failed retirements as a result of the 12-year cover-up?
24) Is Wade able to think of any earlier act of financial fraud that comes close to matching this one?
25) Does Wade not find this entire situation exceedingly odd? Does he think this is all the result of corruption or does he think that cognitive dissonance played a role?
26) Is it only Buy-and-Holders who are responsible for what has happened or could it be that even those who have grave doubts about the legitimacy of the Buy-and-Hold strategy have held back from expressing their sincere views for a long time because they realize how much it would upset those who believe in Buy-and-Hold to learn what the peer-reviewed academic research really says?
27) Wade once said that it would have been nice if the research behind the discredited studies had been corrected when the errors were discovered but that “that’s not how things work” in the investing field during the Buy-and-Hold Era. Does he still believe that today or has he come to regret that statement as he has learned about the millions of failed retirements and the prison sentences for those who have covered up the errors for 12 years now?
28) Does Wade see a need for a national debate on whether Fama or Shiller (twoNobel prize winners who say opposite things about how stock investing works) is right?
29) What are Wade’s true feelings about Rob Bennett? He praised him to the skies during the 16 months that he worked with him. Then, when the Greaney Goons (with the implicit support of John Bogle and other Wall Street Con Men) threatened to destroy his career, his public statements changed dramatically overnight. Why?
30) Other academic researchers and investment advisors have expressed a desire to be able to express their honest views on a wide variety of investing topics. Does Wade think this should be permitted or should the Buy-and-Hold Mafia be permitted to continue to corrupt all work done in the field of investing analysis because coming clean would undermine support for the long-discredted Buy-and-Hold strategy that has made all the Big Shots in this field so much money over the 33 years since the error in its foundational belief was discovered?
Wade seems very, very, very, very, very afraid to my eyes, Trebor.
So do you.
My best wishes to both Wade and you and the millions of middle-class people whose lives are in the process of being destroyed. I care about all of you and will continue doing all I can to help ALL of you out (NOT just Wade and you and NOT just the millions of middle-class people whose lives have been destroyed).
Rob
Robisadouchebag says
The one afraid is you, Rob. Wade said you are wrong on SWRs, which blows a hole in your whole diatribe.
Rob says
I am afraid I must move on . I see no good coming from continuing to follow you.
Best of luck in your travels, Trebor.
We’ll miss you (kinda, sorta).
Rob
Rob says
Wade said you are wrong on SWRs, which blows a hole in your whole diatribe.
The fact that he did so only after a gun was pointed to his head blows a hole in the claim that Buy-and-Hold is supported by the academic research.
If Buy-and-Hold were a legitimate strategy, no one would feel a need to point a gun at anyone else’s head.
I wish you well.
Rob
Robisadouchebag says
And no one hasointed a gun at anyone else’s head. You have been asked for direct evidence, to which you have failed.
Rob says
Here are some of Wade’s words that the jury deciding your case will be looking at, Douche:
1) “If you read Rob Bennett’s stuff carefully, I think he did provide an important contribution in terms of describing a way for PE10 to guide asset allocation for long-term conservative investors. I also think he was right on the issue of safe withdrawal rates.”
2) “I am also extremely grateful to Rob Bennett for motivating this topic and contributing his experience and encouragement.”
3) “You deserve much of the credit as the whole idea of Valuation-Informed Indexing belongs to you.”
4) “I definitely need to cite some of your work as the founder of Valuation-Informed Indexing, as I have not found anyone else who can lay claim to that. Shiller pointed out the predictive power of PE10 but never discussed how to incorporate it into asset allocation, as far as I know.”
5) ”Any data mining that I am doing is in favor of buy-and-hold, not in favor of market timing.”
6) “The findings for “market timing” are so robust anyway, that it hardly matters how we do it.”
7) “What you see in the top part of the graph for each year is the amount of wealth accumulated after 30 years for someone following Buy-and-Hold against someone following Valuation-Informed Indexing….Valuation-Informed Indexing provides more wealth for 102 of the 110 rolling 30-year periods, while Buy-and-Hold did better in 8 of the periods.”
8) “I will take steps in my final paper to test a wide variety of assumptions about asset allocation, valuation-based decision rules, whether the period is 10, 20, 30, or 40 years, lump-sum vs. dollar-cost averaging, and so on, and to show that the results are quite robust to changes in any of these assumptions.”
9) “On a risk-adjusted basis, market-timing strategies provide comparable returns as a 100 percent stocks Buy-and-Hold strategy but with substantially less risk. Meanwhile, market timing provides comparable risks and the same average asset allocation as a 50/50 fixed allocation strategy, but with much higher returns.”
10) ”If everyone increased exposure after a market fall and vice versa, then this would dampen out the big swings in the market aggregates, and we might get shallower boom/bust cycles.”
11) “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing Works!”
12) “I wrote up the programs to test your Valuation-Informed Indexing strategies against Buy-and-Hold, and I must say that the results look very promising…. I am quite excited about the findings so far. As you say in the podcast, Valuation-Informed Indexing should beat Buy-and-Hold about 90 percent of the time, and I am getting results that support this for various strategies.”
13) ”It makes complete sense to have an equity allocation that is in some way flexible. Having a completely inelastic demand for equities is a bit bonkers; no-one acts that way with life’s other important commodities.”
14) “I have been toying with the idea of sending the paper to the Journal of Finance, which is the most prestigious journal in academic finance.”
15) “Now that I am accounting for risk, I am even more amazed by how well Valuation-Informed Indexing works.”
16) “My idea is to show many different tables with results over the whole period for returns and risks. Valuation-Informed Indexing always provides more returns for often less risk.”
17) “No matter what I try, Valuation-Informed Indexing will still perform better in 85-95% of cases for 30 years.”
18) “The traditional approach to retirement planning (as described on pages 10 and 11 of The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning, for example) is counterproductive and possibly damaging.”
19) “Retirees now frequently base their retirement decisions on the portfolio success rates found in research such as the Trinity study…. This is not the information that current and prospective retirees need for making their withdrawal rate decisions.”
20) ”Though I was only trying to do an Old School safe-withdrawal-rate study, all that I ended up doing was showing in a different way what you had been saying all along: the safe withdrawal rate changes with valuations.”
21) “Valuations are the driving factor. ”
22) “Naturally, I am finding that Valuation-Informed Indexing can allow you to reach a wealth target with a lower savings rate, use a higher withdrawal rate, and also have a lower “safe” savings rate, than a fixed allocation.”
23) ”I think I should stay publicly quiet for a while, as I really don’t want anyone sending messages about any topics to officials at my university.”
24) “I don’t want them [the Goons] working behind the scenes to derail me.”
25) “I did warn the editor of the Journal of Financial Planning that they may receive some ‘hate mail‘ after I mentioned your name in the safe savings rate paper.”
My best wishes.
Rob
Robisadouchebag says
Where does he said, “hey Rob, you are right on SWRs? He doesn’t. In fact he says not only do you not understand SWRs, there are more important factors than SWRs. This was said in what he THOUGHT was arivate email to you.
Rob says
That one will win over a jury comprised of people who have just lost most of their life savings in the second price crash caused by the endless repetition of Buy-and-Hold lies in less than 10 years.
I am so totally sure, Douche.
I naturally wish you the best of luck with it.
Rob
Robisadouchebag says
Rob,
I know you like to delete posts that point out your errors. Do you have the guts to post this? Here is the real reason that millions of Americans will have poor retirement outcomes:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/our-next-big-crisis-will-be-a-retirement-crisis-2014-03-03?link=mw_story_kiosk
They haven’t saved enough and most have little to no stock.
This is what Wade meant when he told you that not only do you not understand the SWR issue, but there are more important factors.
It doesn’t matter if you want to assume 2%, 4% or even 10%, when you don’t have even enough to matter regardless of the scenario.
Rob says
There are people who have saved enough and those people are entitled to honest accounts, Douche.
Even those who have not saved enough are better served by honest accounts than by dishonest ones.
I will continue posting honestly re the safe-withdrawal-rater matter and re many other critically important investment-related topics.
I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors.
Rob
Robisadouchebag says
So, we know that the biggest factor of failed retirement will be low or no savings. Why do you give it little to no attention versus any other topic, despite the fact that it is by far the largest factor?
Why do you delete comments about how Wade said you had your answer on SWRs within 82 minutes of asking your question? Why do you delete Wade’s comments about where you are wrong on SWRs? These are clearly on topic.
Rob says
Any act of deception re this matter aids the 12-year cover-up, which is the biggest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States, Douche.
I find little appeal in the idea of going to prison with you.
I naturally wish you all good things.
Rob