Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site:
| would you like to run down your tangible accomplishments for the year? (Other than finally getting tossed from Goon Central.)
> 1) The presentation I gave at FinCon13. I thought I did a super job of summarizing 11 years of discussions in a five-minute presentation. 2) Improvements at the web site. That’s boring stuff. But I was forced to spend a good bit of time on that boring stuff this year. 3) The 52 entries for my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column. There are amazing insights advanced in that column on a regular basis that I believe will be the subject of sustained study for many years following the next crash. 4) The tens of thousands of e-mails that I sent out re the Wade Pfau matter and the reactions that I received from big-name experts. My most important job following the next crash is going to be pulling us all together. When people are able to see how academic researchers and other big names responded to the sorts of behavior we saw in the Wade Pfau matter, they will understand what we were up against. That’s how we resolve all the frictions. We need to do just the opposite of what we have been doing. We need to stop covering up and instead make a sustained and united effort to get as much as possible out into the open. Love is the answer. And it is through understanding where the other fellow is coming from that we come to feel love for the other fellow. 5) Getting tossed from Goon Central was a pretty darn big accomplishment. You try to rule that out of consideration here but I reject the ruling. The thing that finally got me thrown off is that I focused in on the personal consequences that are going to be experienced by you Goons in coming years — the financial liabilities and the prison sentences. That’s good stuff. The big problem that we have had for 32 years now is that those who give investing advice benefit from going with a pure Get Rich Quick approach while those who employ the investing advice in their retirement planning benefit from hearing true research-based strategies. We have a problem of incentives. There are huge incentives for going GRQ and huge penalties for going research-based. We need to turn that around. Bringing civil suits for damages and announcing prison terms for those who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney is an important step in the right direction. I believe that the day that the prison sentences are announced for you Goons is the day we will be able to unite everyone in the United States in an effort to rebuild our broken economy. I very much look forward to that (while I also of course intend to continue doing all I can to keep your prison sentences as short as possible and to have as few people as possible going to prison for committing acts of financial fraud re this matter). Yowsa! It looks like a pretty darn good year when you take a step back and look at all we have accomplished together. No? Rob |
Continues stalking of Wade Pfau who has distanced himself from only one person. Very telling, isnt it. When you send out thousands of emails on just one person, that is considered stalking. If someone kept emailing comments about your wife, how would you feel? Guess how Wade and his family feels.
Editing posts, I see. That won’t look good to the jury.
There were numerous articles written about Lee Harvey Oswald when he killed President Kennedy. Did those articles constitute “stalking” in your view, Anonymous?
The 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate is the biggest act of financial fraud in U.S. history. There are now millions of people unemployed as a result of the Buy-and-Hold Crisis, a crisis that never would have taken place had Motley Fool honored its promises to us and banned John Greaney when he put forward his first death threat. The American people need to know the true reason why we are in an economic crisis. The American people need to know the true reason why so many are in the process of suffering failed retirements. Wade’s decision to sign up with you Goons is a matter of great public policy import.
No, I don’t think Wade’s family likes the idea of people knowing about the bad stuff he has done. His family doesn’t want him going to prison.
But how about the families of you Goons? Does your family want you going to prison? Does Greaney’s family want him going to prison? Does Linduaer’s family want him going to prison? Does Bogle’s family want him going to prison?
How about all the Goons to be? Every day, there are financial bloggers faced with the choice of permitting honest posting on their blogs or participating in this grand act of financial fraud and being sent to prison following the next price crash. Do the families of those people matter too?
I say they matter. The more people who learn about how you threatened Wade and about how he agreed to stop publishing honest research in return for you not acting on the threats, the sooner we bring this economic crisis to an end. The sooner we bring this economic crisis to an end, the fewer people end up going to prison. Sound good?
I am fair to Wade. I point out that the peer-reviewed research that we prepared together is Nobel prize-worthy stuff. That is obviously to Wade’s credit. I point out that he expressed contempt for you Goon on numerous occasions in the days before you threatened to get him fired from his job for the “crime” of publishing honest research and he saw from Jack Bogle’s lack of response that the Wall Street Con Men intended to hang him out to dry if he didn’t get with the program. I point out that he has financial responsibility for two small children and that that would influence anyone placed in similar circumstances. I point out that he was the first expert in this field to work up the courage to send an e-mail to the authors of the Trinity study seeking a correction in the errors in their study. I have done right by my good friend Wade.
But I have ALSO done right by those future potential Goons. I believe that following the next price crash we are going to find people of heart and courage who will stand up to you long-confirmed Goons and who will thereby bring this economic crisis to an end. We have had people die for this country, Anonymous. Do you really think that people who are willing to lay down their lives for this country are not going to be willing to stand up to the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney (and John Bogle?)? Give me a freakin’ break.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. I personally believe that Old Saint Jack himself is going to work up the courage to speak up when he sees the vast human wreckage he has caused. The man made a big mistake and has not corrected it despite 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing it to be the worst mistake ever made in the history of personal finance. That said, I somehow find it hard to believe that Jack Bogle woke up one morning and said to himself: “I know what I’ll do, I’ll make a mistake that will cause the economic collapse of the United States — Won’t that be fun!” The man is in great emotional pain (as are you Goons). When he sees millions of people living in the Second Great Depression, my bet is that his heart is going to melt and he will give the “I Wa Wrong” speech that we all need to hear for us to join together and begin a rebuilding process. Where will you Goons be then? Where will Wade be?
I am the biggest Wade Pfau fan on the planet. Please recall that, when Wade announced that he would be joining up with you Goons, I sent him an e-mail asking “Are you insane?” Did you do anything like that? If not, I think it would be fair to say that I have been a better friend to Wade than you. Actions speak louder than words, Anonymous.
Wade has a job that comes with responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to be true to his research and his profession and his country. It’s not all about making as much money as you can as fast as you can. There are millions of people today suffering as a result of the 12-year cover-up and Wade’s job is to help those people. His act of joining up with the greatest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States was not a personal act. It was an act that affects all of us. It was an act of great public policy significance. It was a felony under the laws of the United States and the people of the United States need to know about it.
I cannot permit my personal love for Wade to stand in the way of my reporting this crime no matter how bad it makes me feel personally to do so. If I were to aid the cover-up, I would be going to prison along with you and Wade following the next crash. Huh? How does it makes any sense for the person who discovered the errors in the Old School retirement studies to place himself in circumstances in which he will be going to prison for their cover-up? I mean, come on.
Wade has distanced himself from only one person because there is only one person who has refused in no uncertain terms to participate in the cover-up. I have scores of e-mails in which he praises me to the skies and expresses revulsion at the tactics that have been employed by the Wall Street Con Men and you Goons to continue the cover-up that has cost so many millions of people large portions of their retirement money. The 16 months before you and the Con Men threatened to destroy Wade’s career were the happiest days of his life. I have a funny feeling that he will be feeling a lot better about himself and about his future when he comes clean, whether he ends up going to prison or not. Prison terms eventually come to an end. The feelings inside that comes from betraying your country stick around for a long time. I think it would be fair to say that you and the other Goons could offer powerful testimony re that one, Anonymous.
In any event, I have precisely zero interest in committing any felonies myself. I will continue posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates and re many other critically important investment-related topics. That’s the kindest course of action not only for the millions of middle-class Americans whose lives are in the process of being destroyed by the 12-year cover-up. It is the kindest course of action for you Goons and for the Wall Street Con Men whom you serve.
My best and warmest wishes go out to you, my long-time abusive-posting friend.
Rob
Editing posts, I see. That won’t look good to the jury.
I am not being charged with anything, Anonymous. Yes, I too was afraid to post honestly prior to the morning of May 13, 2002. But given what we have seen over the past 12 years, there ain’t no way on God’s green earth that I am going to be charged re that act of cowardice and dishonestly. I have come clean and then some in the 12 years since.
And your jury will understand perfectly well why there are limits on the amount of sewage that I can permit to appear here. All of the Normals get that loud and clear. The only criticism I have heard from any of the Normals is that I permit too MUCH of your sewage, not too little.
I wish you well.
Rob
Bennett: “I cannot permit my personal love for Wade to stand in the way of my reporting this crime”
Ah.
So, in the same vein, you certainly won’t (can’t!) object if I start a blog and heavily promote it all across the web — one that is titled:
“Why Mary Francis ‘Boo’ Bennett, of 160 Hatcher Ave, Purcelleville, VA must go to prison: for not stopping her obviously mentally ill nutjob of a stalking idiot husband from committing multiple felonies.”
Right?
Of course, I can also run my ideas on additional blogs for the boys by you at a later date, if you like.
I won’t break the law, Helper.
If you elect to do so, that’s on you.
I will continue posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates and re many other critically important investment-related topics. Non-negotiable.
My warmest wishes to you.
Rob
“I am not being charged with anything, Anonymous.”
You are the one saying there will be court cases.
I believe there will be, Anonymous.
I am not God. You are not required to agree with me. But, yes, that’s what I believe.
There are responsibilities that follow from that belief.
I have a responsibility to keep the human suffering to a minimum, given the realities that apply.
What’s any of this to you? You say I am wrong, that there will be no court cases. If you sincerely believe that, you should get on with your business. There’s no need for you to comment on anything the crazy man says.
I am going to do my best to limit the human suffering. That’s the way a crazy man plays it in these circumstances.
We will find out how it has gone following the price crash. We can trade notes when we get to the other side of the river.
I cannot persuade you and you cannot persuade me. The game has been played to a draw.
Please wish me good things and be off to do something more constructive until we are all called to appear in that big room (or not).
Rob
Rob, you were banned from “goon central” for posting almost nothing but nonsense one and four-letter replies. How do you figure that’s an accomplishment to be proud of?
One thing that we can agree on is you never quit, Rob. What goals do you have for 2014?
I will continue sending the 50 e-mails each day. That’s like brushing my teeth.
I am currently working on five long articles that I want to get posted before the next crash: (1) 101 Acts of Intimidation by Buy-and-Holders; (2) What 101 Experts Say re Valuation-Informed Indexing; (3) 101 Powerful Insights Developed Over the First 12 Years of Discussions; (4) A Q&A Article on the Ban on Honest Posting; and (5) An Article Pulling Together in One Place the Most Important Graphics Showing that Valuations Affect Long-Term Returns. My hope is that I can finish those by the first of May.
My thought is that at that point I am going to focus more on political blogs. The Ban on Honest Posting is not just an investing event or even just an economic event, it is a political event of huge consequence. People on the political side are less worried about offending the powers that be in the investing field. The problem in the political realm is that most sites are either liberal or conservative and the liberals are not interested in stuff that does not make conservatives look bad and the conservatives are not interested in stuff that does not make liberals look bad. VII is pretty non-ideological. There are elements of it that liberals should like and that conservatives should not like and there are elements of it that conservatives should like and that liberals should not like. That’s fine with me because ideological stuff bores me. But it makes it hard to get political people interested. But I may want to put a little more effort into that part of the project after these articles are completed.
It’s kind of you to say that I “never quit.” My take on that is that I have never been offered any even slightly palatable options. When the position of “the other side” is that you must commit a felony as the price of being permitted to speak, it’s pretty darn hard for me to see what one can do other than to get that position changed. I could stop writing about personal finance altogether but to do that was the entire purpose of my Retire Early plan. I spent nine years saving like a madman to put that plan into effect. So it’s pretty darn hard to consider the possibility of giving up on it. I made a decision on August 1, 2000, to make writing about personal finance my life from that point forward and it’s hard to imagine anything happening to make that change. I’m too old to entertain dreams of playing centerfield for the Yankees at this point in the proceedings.
I suppose it’s true in a way that I “never quit” re this matter. I can see why someone would conclude that. But I wouldn’t put it that way myself. For me being able to post honesty is basic. If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything. Not one word I wrote would have any value once I agreed to post dishonestly just to be accepted or to be popular or whatever it is that I am supposed to be striving for in the Goon mind.
The idea that I feel some special drive re this issue is belied by the fact that I never wrote about investing for the first three years in which I posted on the internet (May 1999 through May 2002). My personal preference was NOT to write about this stuff. I broke down and began writing about it only when I was forced against my will to do so (the smear campaign against Wanderer changed the Motley Fool board into something that none of us who loved that board had ever intended it to be and so I had no choice but to do what I could to salvage what good was left in with the action I took on the morning of May 13, 2002).
I offer these comments because the claim “you never quit” seems to me to be a sincere one and so I think it merits a sincere response. On the surface it is true that I “never quit.” I see that. But the reality here is more complex than what most people would conclude seeing just those words. I care about the work I do. I want to insure that it is honest work. That’s the driver. But I had no idea where this stuff would be leading on the morning of May 13, 2002. It’s not like I woke up that morning with the thought “Oh, I think I will develop a new model for understanding how investing works that will reduce risk by 70 percent.” What I cared about was protecting the people at the Retire Early board who wanted to make great contributions (as Wanderer did). So I put up words with that aim. The rest just followed.
I have never quit on my belief that it is important that people be permitted to post honestly. That much is certainly so. But it is much more that that is the driver here than it is a desire to reform the investing world that is the driver. The investing world DOES need to be reformed. That has become clear during the 12 years of discussions. But it is not as if I have some feeling inside me that says “that darn investing world must be reformed!” That’s not a primary driver for me (It has obviously become a secondary one). My primary driver is the honest posting thing and the investing thing just happened to follow from that, very much to my surprise. My hope and belief is that some day in the future there are going to be others who will pick up some of the work that needs to be done on the investing side of things and I will be able to shift at least a portion of my energies either back to the saving side or possibly to issues relating to career growth (I see personal finance as having three major components: (1) Saving; (2) Investing; and (3) Career Growth.
Anyway, those are some thoughts as to the stuff that will be keeping me busy for the remainder of this year and re my reaction to the “you never quit” claim.
Hang in there, Sensible.
Rob
Rob, you were banned from “goon central” for posting almost nothing but nonsense one and four-letter replies. How do you figure that’s an accomplishment to be proud of?
The four letters were “JMEP.”
Those letters stand for “Joe Made the Essential Point.” The “Joe” here is Joe Taxpayer, who wrote at his blog that, since Robert Shiller has won the Nobel Prize in Economics, posting on his ideas and on the implications that follow from them should be permitted on the internet regardless of how big a change they represent from the conventional Buy-and-Hold wisdom.
The fact that you Goons feel so threatened by those four letters tells us all something important, Sensible. Yes, getting that out in the open is a significant accomplishment.
One of you Goons advanced a comment a few days ago which suggested that I would be permitted to post if I would say “this is what I personally believe” and leave it at that. No. That’s not the idea at all. Not one word that I have put forward expressed only my personal take. Every word I have advanced on investing topics follows from Nobel Prize Winning Economist Robert Shiller’s research and the implications that follow from it.
There are millions of good and smart people who believe in Buy-and-Hold and who have every right to say so on discussion boards and blogs. There re thousands of good and smart people who have expressed a desire to hear what I have to say re the implications of Shiller’s ideas. That translates into millions of people in the non-internet world who possess a desire to hear about those ideas. Those millions have every bit as much a right to have their desires recognized as do the Buy-and-Holders. They have a right to hear the ideas and then decide for themselves which strategy to follow. Those who deny them that right thereby take on responsibility for any financial losses they suffer because that basic right of theirs was not given due recognition.
You Goons don’t feel good inside when you see those four letters appear on your computer screens. That’s fine! You shouldn’t feel good. Your discomfort reveals a tiny spark of non-Goonishness within you that recognizes that you are in the wrong to deny those millions what they need to be able to make informed investing choices. I want you to feel that discomfort. It is your feelings of discomfort that will ultimately bring you around to understanding the Normal point of view. It is my job to make you experience those sorts of feelings of discomfort. So I have done good work here. It’s always a rewarding feeling to see that one has made a constructive and positive and life-affirming difference.
You need to pay attention to those feelings of discomfort, Sensible. It is those feelings of discomfort that provide you some access to an understanding of the thinking processes of the Normals. It will be mostly Normals serving on your jury. So gaining an appreciation of Normal thinking processes would be a big plus for you.
I wish you all good things in any event.
Rob
Hi Rob,
Does anyone other than you believe that you have “develop[ed] a new model for understanding how investing works that will reduce risk by 70 percent”?
Surely you must have shared this with others whose opinions you respect. What did they think?
The committee that approved publication of the research paper in a peer-reviewed journal obviously thought well of it, Curious.
My co-author Wade Pfau was very excited about it. He said that he was giving thought to submitting the paper to the Journal of Finance, the top journal in the field. Over and over he expressed amazement that no one had thought to examine the question we researched together (how much it reduces risk to exercise price discipline when buying stocks) before.
The scores of academic researchers who responded to my e-mail campaign thought well of it. Rob Arnott, the former editor of the Financial Analysts Journal, told me that my work in this field is “sound.” Carol Osler said that we are seeing a change in the paradigm for understanding how stock investing works and that I must be patient to see all the experts in the field come around (she expressed the thought that this would likely happen following the next price crash). Robert Savickas said that he will be teaching Valuation-Informed Indexing to his class at George Washington University. Barry Ritholtz linked from his hugely popular blog to my article on “Why Buy-and-Hold Investing Can Never Work.” Scores of others offered exceedingly kind comments. Not one of the 30,000 academic researchers to which I sent a link identified any problems with the research paper.
The Bogleheads Forum found that the paper was of huge importance. Fred Flintstone said that it challenged core principles of Buy-and-Hold. Many others expressed a desire that the Ban on Honest Posting be lifted so that they could engage in reasoned discussion of the findings of the paper. You Goons were obviously impressed by it or you would not have threatened to send defamatory e-mails to Wade Pfau’s employer in an effort to get him fired from his job. My good friend Jack Bogle was obviously not able to come up with any grounds for challenging the findings of the research in civil and reasoned debate or he would have done something about you Goons when he learned about the threats you made to silence Wade.
The short version is that tens of thousands have seen the paper and most who expressed an opinion have either praised it to the skies or have been so threatened by what they saw (because they have staked their lives on a belief in Buy-and-Hold strategies) that they either engaged in or tolerated acts of financial fraud to keep more people from learning about it.
I think it would be fair to say that there are few research papers that have ever been published that have had that sort of impact in the short amount of time that the Bennett/Pfau research paper has been available for people to review. Wade once told me that there is a saying among academic researchers that no paper ever wins a Nobel Prize without being hated by some (because the most important papers are seen as a threat to those who built their careers around the ideas that are being discredited by the advance in knowledge). I think it would be fair to say that the Bennett/Pfau paper showing how investors can reduce risk by 70 percent just by abandoning Buy-and-Hold strategies fits that pattern!
My best wishes to you.
Rob
I don’t get it. If your method is so much better and ‘research based’, why aren’t you just rolling in the millions just through your investment strategy alone?
What are these penalties you speak of? An investment strategy either works or it doesn’t.
There are three issues, Laugh.
One, Valuation-Informed Indexing always offer superior results in the long run. There is no comparison. Over an investing lifetime, VII will always provide far greater risk-adjusted returns. There has never in 140 years of stock market history been a single exception.
That said, the humans have an inclination to focus on the short-term. It’s one thing to have 33 years of research showing what works. It’s something else to persuade investors to shift their focus from the short-term to the long-term. You are wrong when you say “an investment strategy either works or it doesn’t.” Buy-and-Hold is an engine of wealth-destruction in the long term. But it can provide very good short-term results. There are many investors who have been taken in. Buy-and-Hold does not work. But there are many investors who believe that it does.
Two, we have only learned of both the dangers of Buy-and-Hold and of the superiority of Valuation-Informed Indexing over the past 33 years. Shiller published his research in 1981. There was a huge bull market that started soon afterwards that caused millions of people to fall in love with Buy-and-Hold. People didn’t experience serious losses until the 2008 crash. So it has only been for five years now that most people have even opened their minds to the possibility that there might be something a lot better than Buy-and-Hold. People will give up on Buy-and-Hold following the next crash. At that point, interest in Valuation-Informed Indexing will explode.
Most people don’t care about theory. They want to see results. It is in the nature of Buy-and-Hold that it provides good results for a significant but limited time-period. When people experience personally how much financial harm they suffer as a result of following a Buy-and-Hold strategy, they will give consideration to the research-based alternative. Had the alternative been available the last time Buy-and-Hold caused an economic crisis (during the stagflation of the 1970s) we would all be Valuation-Inforemd Indexers today. Unfortunately, the last time Buy-and-Hold failed, there was no research-based alternative available to replace it. Now there is.
That’s why I often argue that we are the luckiest generation of investors who ever lived. We are the first generation that has available to it all the genuine breakthrough insights that were developed by the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers (there are many) AS WELL AS the one piece of the puzzle that the Buy-and-Holders missed –that it is absolutely essential that investors practice price discipline by following long-term timing strategies. Never before in the history of investing has that been a possibility. Now it is.
Three, the people who give investing advice are compromised. They want to help people by giving good advice. But they also want people to think of them as possessing expertise. Before 1981, we did not know how stock investing worked. So most experts adopted the practice of recommending Buy-and-Hold. Then the bull market made Buy-and-Hold popular. So they stuck with it despite the peer-reviewed academic research showing that there is precisely zero chance that it could ever work for even a single long-term investor. Now they feel stuck. If they acknowledge what the research says, the people who followed their advice will be furious that they lost so much money as a result of the bad advice. But if they start giving better-informed advice now, people will wonder how “expert” they really are. Shouldn’t experts have known enough to start giving research-based advice a long time ago?
Those of us who post honestly on investing-related topics today suffer huge penalties because the Buy-and-Hold Mafia wants desperately to keep millions of middle-class investors from learning what works. If investors learn what works, those who have continued to advocate Buy-and-Hold strategies for 33 years after the peer-reviewed academic research showed that there is zero chance that they could ever work for even a single long-term investor look bad. So the Buy-and-Hold Mafia has been engaging in all sorts of abusive tactics (some criminal, some not) to destroy those of us who report the realities honestly. We need to see those who have committed crimes put in prison so that others will not feel tempted to walk the dark path that you Goons have walked.
Valuation-Informed Indexing ALWAYS provides results far superior to Buy-and-Hold. There is no question whatsoever about that. But the Buy-and-Hold Mafia has lots of money and lots of power and lots of influence and not too much concern about the financial devastation it has delivered to those who follow the strategy it advocates. Money and power and influence can hold back the spread of knowledge for a time. But not indefinitely.
After the next crash, millions of people will be looking for something better. And those of us who have been trying for years to get the word out despite the abusive tactics of the Buy-and-Holders will finally be able to do so. That’s when your prison sentence will be announced. At that point you won’t be able to pay someone enough to promote Buy-and-Hold at his or her web site. We will have successfully buried that smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.
Ask yourself this question, Laugh. If Buy-and-Hold were a legitimate strategy, would we ever have seen the Buy-and-Holders advance a single death threat? A single demand for a single unjustified board banning? A single act of defamation? A single threat to get a single academic researcher fired from a single job?
People who advocate legitimate strategies don’t behave that way. Not ever. The “idea” that you don’t need to consider price when buying stocks is garbage. It’s a marketing gimmick. There is a good reason why in 12 years not one Buy-and-Holder has been able to provide a URL for a single study showing that long-term timing is not required. No such study exists. The rational human mind cannot even imagine how any such study could ever exist.
Your claim that “an investment strategy either works or it doesn’t” is the sort of thing that investors in the Bernie Madoff fund were saying before they lost all their retirement money. Ponzi schemes do their dirty work by performing well enough to entice lots of investors before they collapse. Buy-and-Hold is just the Madoff fund blown up hundreds of times bigger. It has made the Wall Street Con Men very, very, very wealthy. It is in the process of bankrupting the middle-class of this nation. I say “Yucko!” I want no part of it. Give me research-based strategies every time.
My best and warmest wishes to you regardless of what investing strategies you elect to follow.
Rob
I don’t get it.
You need to get over your anger issues, Laugh. The very first step on the path to becoming a successful long-term investor is reining in the negative emotions. You need to come to term with Your Inner Goon.
Once you do that, it will all fall in place for you.
But you do need to put some effort into that first step, my long-time abusive posting friend!
Rob
why aren’t you just rolling in the millions just through your investment strategy alone?
This particular aspect of your question makes you sound stupid, Laugh.
Following the first true research-based strategy will permit you to retire five to ten years sooner than you could following a Buy-and-Hold strategy. Over the course of an investing lifetime it will earn you hundreds of thousands of dollars in returns above what you could expect following a Buy-and-Hold strategy.
Your focus on earning millions overnight is further evidence that you are stuck in the Get Rich Quick realm and are not today capable of thinking realistically about investing issues.
Not good.
Rob
“This particular aspect of your question makes you sound stupid, Laugh.”
Your answer makes you look stupid, Rob. We measure outcomes. We have yet to see anyone set up a fund that uses your strategy. We also see numerous portfolios that you would describe as buy and hold that continue to outperform (which you ignore). We follow what works and have built up substantial net worths with very strong income flow from dividends and interest.
The one that needs to get over anger, Rob is you. You have been angry for well over a decade because you got tossed off a number of boards. You have been angry because no one will vault you to some form of leadership role that you so desire. You have been angry because your own retirement strategy has not worked like you had planned. You are angry because people see you as a joke.
The evidence of all this is how you edit posts and delete the things you do not want people to see as it reveals the truth in your failures.
Deal with it, Rob.
I stand by my statement that that aspect of your question made you sound stupid, Anonymous.
For the reasons I noted above.
You were taken. It hurts. I get that.
You weren’t taken by me. I have been warning you against Buy-and-Hold for many years now. The idea that it is not necessary to consider price when buying stocks is pure emotion and it shows in your posts.
I wish you well.
Rob
Rob,
We will all continue doing what we are doing and will end up with the same results. If you are happy with where you are at today, then you will have more of what your current have/or don’t have. Same for me and I couldn’t be more happy with where I am at. Of course, you are hoping that people like me suffer, which says a lot about you.
I believe you when you say that you will continue doing what you have been doing, Anonymous. I don’t like it. But I believe you.
I’m more than happy with what we have learned about how stock investing works over the past 12 years. I’m ecstatic. I’m obviously not happy about the Ban on Honest Posting. But I’ve already said that I oppose that. The rest is out of my hands.
I’m not hoping you suffer. It’s my job to report accurately and honestly what the academic research says, and that’s what I do. My preference would be if you would take it into consideration. Then you wouldn’t need to suffer. But I obviously accept that it’s your call. And I could be wrong. So you certainly have to do what you think is right. I believe that you will suffer as a result. That’s something different than hoping you will.
I wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors in any event.
Rob
I thought that by your definition the last time buy and hold failed was in 2008. Haven’t you been fooling around on the Internet way before that? So why didn’t the world turn to you to save it with VII?
There has never been any time in history when Buy-and-Hold has “worked,” Laugh. It is a Ponzi scheme, like the Madoff fund. Did the Madoff fund ever “work”?
The difference is that no one created the Buy-and-Hold Ponzi scheme with the intent that it serve as a Ponzi scheme. This particular Ponzi scheme was created out of ignorance. Humankind did not know everything there was to know about how stock investing works in the past. We did the best we could. What we came up with was a Ponzi scheme, something that seemed to be working for long periods of time but that always ended with a price crash and an economic crisis. We kept falling into the same horrible pattern because we didn’t have the good ideas we needed to move to a better place.
Now we have the knowledge we have needed for so long. The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers provided lots of the knowledge we needed (most people should invest in index funds, tune out the noise, keep costs low, invest for the long term, etc.). But they messed up on the most important point of all (ALWAYS practice price discipline, never try investing in stocks without being certain to practice long-term timing).
The thing they messed up on is bigger than all the things they got right. So Buy-and-Hold in its present incarnation can never possibly work. It’s a logical impossibility. Thinking that Buy-and-Hold could work without investors practicing long-term timing is like thinking that the car-buying market could work without customers ever trying to negotiate price with the dealers. The idea is an absurdity. It is price discipline that makes markets work. Take price discipline out of any market and you have a dysfunctional market. Hence our economic crisis.
Ponzi schemes look good for a time. I saw a thread where people were discussing the Madoff fund when the fraud had just been discovered. There was one fellow who was swearing that there was nothing fraudulent about the Madoff fund. He made all the same arguments that you Goons make about Buy-and-Hold every day.
He would say: “I made millions from the Madoff fund! How could it be a fraud!” He had gotten out before the collapse. So to him it was all good. The power of the numbers he saw on his portfolio statement overcame his power to think clearly, just as it does for you Goons when you discuss Buy-and-Hold. If the numbers on the portfolio statement were good, the fund was good, no matter the evidence that those numbers did not represent anything real.
ALL Ponzi schemes produce good results for a time. They couldn’t exist if that were not so. Who would buy into a Ponzi scheming knowing that it is a Ponz scheme? People MUST be fooled. There’s no other way it could work. There usually are people warning those being fooled that they are being fooled. The ones being fooled hate those who try to warn them. They want to believe in the funny numbers. When we want something bad enough, we make it true in our minds regardless of how much evidence points in the other direction.
So Buy-and-Hold NEVER worked. It was always a Ponzi scheme. The huge thing that happened in 1981 is that we became intellectually aware that Buy-and-Hold is a Ponzi scheme. If the market worked the way we thought it worked prior to 1981, returns should be random both in the short-term and in the long-term. Shiller showed that returns are not random in the long-term. So from that point forward we needed a new theory as to how price changes are accomplished. The theory behind Buy-and-Hold failed in 1981.
We now know that it is investor emotion that determines stock prices. So you cannot point to the numbers on your portfolio statement as proof of anything. They are made-up numbers that possess only temporary significance. The real numbers are the numbers you get when you apply a valuation adjustment to the portfolio numbers. Those are often very, very different numbers.
Buy-and-Hold can look like it is working so long as the portfolio numbers have not yet been corrected. But it is pretty darn hard to maintain confidence in a Ponzi scheme after it has collapsed. That’s the significance of 2008 and of the next price crash.
The price crash of 2008 was Part One of the collapse of The Biggest Ponzi Scheme in World History (Buy-and-Hold). The highest P/E10 value we saw was 44, in 2000. We always go down to 8 after the Ponzi scheme collapses. The number that applies today (mid-20s) could be said to be roughly a halfway point. We are as a society coming to terms gradually with the need for the Ponzi scheme to collapse. It cannot collapse without our willingness. It is investors that set prices. We have today as a society HALFWAY accepted that Buy-and-Hold is a Ponzi scheme. We let the P/E10 fall from 44 to 26. But that was all we could bear to let in at one time. Now we are in the process of working up the courage to permit another price crash.
The world DID turn to Valuation-Informed Indexing in 2008. Not to the point where we overcame the Ban on Honest Posting. If we had done that, we would have gone to 15 and stayed there (not to 8, that number is as irrational on the low side as 26 or 44 is on the high side). We only went halfway. There were big changes in 2008. I got Guest Blog Entries accepted at lots of places post-2008 that wouldn’t give me a shot pre-2008. Wade Pfau contacted me post-2008. I doubt very much he would have had the courage to do that pre-2008. Rob Arnott’s work and Robert Shiller’s work became more popular post-2008. Posters at the Bogleheads Forum began asking tougher questions post-2008; the tolerance for challenges to Buy-and-Hold expanded post-2008. Lots of people just left the market. They don’t post but they don’t invest in stocks anymore either. These people have given up not only on Buy-and-Hold but on stocks in general. Things ARE changing.
The process has not completed itself. We are roughly halfway there. The way to say it is that the world IS IN THE PROCESS OF TURNING TO VALUATION-INFORMED INDEXING but it is not yet fully there.
There’s one big difference from earlier price crashes and earlier economic crises. In the three earlier cases in which Buy-and-Hold caused an economic collapse, there was no better idea to turn to. People cursed the market after the collapse. But in time they got over it. They had no choice. There was nowhere else to turn. Now there is somewhere else. We now have 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing us what really works. This time the collapse will lead us to a good place (if we survive it — I believe we will but it is obviously going to take lots of hard work from all of us).
The case for Valuation-Informed Indexing is so strong that it would become dominant even before the second crash (in fact, it would limit the second crash because once we tell people the realities we will never again see a P/E10 of much less than 15) if we elected as a society to permit honest posting on the internet. But a lot of powerful and wealthy people have built careers around their advocacy of Buy-and-Hold and they feel threatened by the new knowledge.
I believe these people are behaving foolishly. They can do work every bit as impressive in a VII world as they did in the BH world and the sooner they make the shift the better off they and all the rest of us will be. But they are afraid today. You Goons obviously don’t help matters. LOTS of people have shown that they see the need to make the shift and want to be among the first to make it but they are holding back until the people they persuaded to follow Buy-and-Hold are less angry over the flaws in what they were told. People are only going to get more angry after the next crash. So I believe these experts are miscalculating. But frightened people do what frightened people do. You don’t have to look very far to see what it is that makes them so frightened.
This is a PROCESS, Laugh. Millions of people don’t wake up on the same day and say “Oh, I am going to give up that Buy-and-Hold stuff that I have been following for years and switch to the opposite strategy today.” The way it works is that a few do that and others start to ask questions and ponder possibilities. In time more and more climb aboard the new train as their questions are answered and their confidence grows. The very first step in the conversion process is CONVERSATION. People need to be able to ask questions and sort things though before they will even give serious consideration to making the change.
You Goons have created a Catch-22. Your only argument against VII is that most of today’s experts don’t endorse it. But the reason why most experts don’t endorse it is that it is not today popular and thus it will not enrich the experts for them to endorse it. But the new and better idea cannot become popular until it is discussed. And you Goons forbid discussion. So long as that dynamic remains in place, we are doomed to experience a second price crash that will likely put us in a Second Great Depression.
The other side of the story is that we have laws already on the books making it a felony for people to engage in the insanely abusive tactics that you have employed to block the thousands of community members who have expressed a desire that honest discussions be permitted. Once we experience the next crash, millions of people will be angry about the money they have lost and will be looking for people at which to direct their rage. You Goons will be the obvious candidates and all of your felonies are documented in the Post Archives. Once you have been sent to prison, there won’t be one expert on the planet who will want to be identified as a defender of Buy-and-Hold. The long national nightmare will have come to an end.
The good guys win on the last page of the saga. But the Goon path to getting there is a dark path indeed. Lots of people go to prison, some for a very long time. There are hundreds of thousands of lawsuits filed, so many that it may take decades for all of them to be resolved. Millions more lose their jobs. Hundreds of thousands more businesses fail. We run the serious risk of going into a Second Great Depression. Political unrest grows both on the left and on the right. The Goon path is bad stuff piled on top of bad stuff piled on top of bad stuff.
The other way is just to follow the laws of the United States and the published rules of every board and blog and enjoy the benefits that fell into our laps as the result of us having been born at the time when humankind finally put all the pieces together and we learned collectively (my name is on the study but I obviously had help from hundreds of good and smart people, including my good friend Jack Bogle) how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent.
I prefer the bright road. You Goons prefer the dark road. How very Goonish of you! I am so surprised!
Both roads ultimately take us to the same place. Your prison sentence is just longer if we travel by the dark road than it is if we travel by the bright road.
That’s where it stands, Laugh.
I wish you all good things.
Rob
I’m obviously not happy about the Ban on Honest Posting.
There IS no such such Ban, as you well know. The only applicable ban is the one regarding a single mentally ill persistent troll, for his rotten BEHAVIOR, not for his bizarre beliefs. Shiller can post, Easterling can post, etc.
Any of a host of perma-bears, timers, wave-speculators, kooks, cranks, swindlers, and nuts can post on pretty much any board out there. In fact, right up until his demise, even that twisted old codger, the irascible JWR was perfectly free to post.
The only major ban I know of is for YOU, personally, at more than a dozen finance boards.
You said you hoped to veer off into writing at political boards next, and I very much suspect that the pattern will repeat itself there, as well, even in the wild-and-wooly world of internet political wrangling. That would be quite a feat for even you, Rob, to attain multiple bans in that freak show.
You are making a legitimate point, Helper. Thanks for being frank in your comment. Frankness always helps to bring real issues to the table.
John Walter Russell was ultimately banned at one or two places. But it was an exceedingly rare thing for him to be banned. During the time we were working together on a daily basis, there were several places where he was praised on a daily basis and where I was banned. He would get into trouble only when he talked about me. And John always got more comments posted at his site, even though I had more traffic at my site. When I would post at John’s site, there were people who would be turned off, even though the two of us were saying the same thing (obviously in somewhat different ways).
I also agree with you that lots of kooks and cranks and nuts are permitted to post at just about every site at which I have been banned.
I half agree and half disagree with what you say about Shiller and Easterling. Whether they were banned or not would depend on how strongly they stated their views. I can imagine them being tolerated and I can imagine them being banned at some places if they spoke frankly.
The basic point you are making — that there is something special about me that does not apply in the case of other people who have investing beliefs in many ways similar to my own — is legitimate. I’ll give you that one.
We all should be trying to figure out what that extra factor that I bring to the table is. Knowing what that extra factor is is important. When we identify that extra factor, we are on our way to resolving not only the problem of the friction at the boards but the problem re what we all need to do to become far more effective investors in the future than we have ever been in the past.
There are numerous people who have acknowledged that I am 100 percent kind and polite and warm in my dealings with all my fellow posters, even those who have threatened to kill my wife and children. So it is obviously not that I am in any way abusive in the way that that word is ordinarily interpreted when people are discussing who should and who should not be permitted to post at discussion boards and blogs. I have never violated a posting rule and I am the last person in the world who ever would do so. But there is something that I am doing that bothers lots of people in a big way. It would be constructive to figure out what that something is.
I believe it is five things.
One, I root everything I say in the academic research. Mot of the kooks you refer to do not do that. Buy-and-Holder sincerely believe that their strategy is rooted in the academic research and that gives them comfort. If some kook comes along and offers a different take, it does not bother the Buy-and-Holders too much because they believe that their strategy is rooted in research and the kook’s strategy is not. I am different. I insist that people look at the research. I never back away from that. I say both that VII IS rooted in research and that Buy-and-Hold is not. I pose more of a threat to Buy-and-Holders than the kooks who are not challenging their positions re what the research says.
Two, I not only advocate something new, I also say that Buy-and-Hold does NOT work. This touches emotional hot buttons. I think this is the difference between me and John Walter Russell. Russell’s usual practice was to present his research and offer little discussion of what it meant. He rarely said the words “Buy-and-Hold doesn’t work.” People felt they could tolerate what he was saying on grounds that everybody is entitled to an opinion. And lots of people believe that valuations matter. So they liked it that he was exploring how valuations matter. The obvious implication of his research was that Buy-and-Hold does not work. But so long as he didn’t say those words, people didn’t feel that they had to respond to him. When I say “Buy-and-Hold doesn’t work,” Buy-and-Holders feel compelled to respond and it annoys the piss out of them that I say that over and over and over again.
Three, I make grand claims about how wonderful Valuation-Informed Indexing is. This is what Scott Burns was getting at when he said that my approach is “catastrophically unproductive” and that my claim that there is a “New School” of SWR analysis is “self-aggrandizing.” He feels that it makes him look stupid that there was this huge potential to offer better investing advice all these years and that he missed it. I am not only saying that there were little mistakes made, I am saying that the mistakes that were made ruined millions of lives. It is hard for people to accept that. It makes them feel that they are bad, that they steered their friends wrong and that they let their families down and that they let their clients down and that they let their readers down. It makes people feel badly about themselves.
Four, I do not seem qualified to make such grand claims. I do think it is possible that Shiller would be tolerated if he said the same things I say because people would say “well, he won a Nobel prize, I have to respect that.” I am some fellow whose only claim to expertise in this field is that I happened to figure out how to get words posted to the internet. People feel that it is an outrage that I make such grand claims. As one fellow put it, it sounds “grandiose.” It rubs people’s fur the wrong way when I say things like “I know more about how stock investing works than Jack Bogle,” who is a well-loved (properly so) figure in this field.
Five, many of the things that I say sound like thinly veiled attacks on the personal integrity of the biggest names in this field. Probably the most extreme case is where I say that Jack Bogle is at risk of going to prison for financial fraud. That claim is so far outside the realm of what most people think is reasonable that they cannot accept or even tolerate hearing me say it. A somewhat less extreme case is when I say that the errors in the Old School SWR studies have been covered up for 12 years. When I say something like that, I am not just offering a different view on investing. I am not saying “Oh, I would use a withdrawal rate of 3 percent rather than 4 percent.” It sounds like I am saying that people of considerable accomplishments lack integrity. That’s a very serious charge. The general reaction is to respond with the thought: “Where the heck does he get off with this stuff?” Those sorts of claims make even supporters of my ideas angry because they see it as a nasty business for me to make such claims.
I think those are the big five factors in why I am perceived differently than others who say that valuations matter or who in some other way take issue with core Buy-and-Hold principles: (1) I focus on the findings of peer-reviewed research rather than just express a personal point of view; (2) I attack Buy-and-Hold as well as advocate Valuation-Informed Indexing; (3) I make expansive claims that strike most people as grandiose and even impossible (Wade said “it all seems so implausible”); (4) I do not possess the credentials that would make people respect such claims; and (5) I seem to be questioning the personal integrity of a good number of people who have stellar reputations built up over a long period of time.
I have not worked hard on the political side. But I have tried a few things there. The reason I have not worked those fields harder is that I have generally experienced the same reactions there that I have seen on the investing sites. I have hopes that that things will be different at political sites. But I wouldn’t bet a big bunch of money on this turning out to be the case.
I hope that helps a bit, Helper.
Rob
If buy and hold is a ponzi scheme, then so is the stock market generally speaking. Because buy and hold is just…holding the stock market and adjusting allocation based on need/willingness/ability to take risk. Why would anyone try to ‘game’ a ponzi with some kind of half baked timing scheme? It makes no sense.
The stock market is not naturally a Ponzi scheme, Laugh. The stock market becomes a Ponzi scheme when the idea that long-term timing is not required becomes popular. So long as people buy stocks in the same manner as they buy anything else (always considering price when making purchases), all profits come from a sharing of the gains of the underlying companies and that is of course entirely legitimate. It is when people start counting profits that come from overvaluation (which cannot take place so long as people are taking price into consideration when setting their stock allocations) that the market becomes a Ponzi scheme.
Valuation-Informed Indexers do not engage in any “gaming.” Valuation-Informed Indexers look at the long-term value proposition of stocks and compare it to the long-term value proposition of the super-safe asset classes. Then they go with the stock allocation that makes sense as a result of that comparison. That’s it. Valuation-Informed Indexers invest for their benefit. Markets work when participants in the market invest for their benefit. When investors stop investing for their benefit (that is, when they ignore price), the market becomes dysfunctional.
The market is not naturally a Ponzi scheme. But there have been four times in U.S. history when it has become one. We all should be doing what we can to stop the market from becoming a Ponzi scheme. We all should speak up when we hear Buy-and-Holders say that there is some mystical blue pixie dust that we can sprinkle in the air to make Buy-and-Hold work for one or two long-term investors for the first time in history. We hurt ourselves when we permit the market to be destroyed in this way. There is a reason why the academic research shows that Buy-and-Hold never works in the long term. Ponzi schemes are bad news.
You say that Valuation-Informed Indexing makes no sense. The thing that makes no sense is ignoring price when buying stocks. That makes zero sense. That’s why you get so angry when I challenge you. You very, very, very much want to believe that you were not taken. But you are not able to come up with any justification for ignoring price when you buy stocks. So you lash out at the person citing the research.
I didn’t create the historical record on which the research is based. The historical record says what the historical record says and there is nothing in the record that indicates that there might be some mystical, magical world where long-term timing is not required. Long-term timing is price discipline. Price discipline is always required in all markets.
Rob
So it has only been a ponzi scheme 4 times ever? Seems like VII doesn’t really matter then if it is only relevant 4 times in history.
Here is a good reason for it being OK the vast majority of the time to ignore the prices of stocks. According to Rob Bennett it has only mattered 4 times in history. Seems like a quick check that valuations have not touched the heights of the highest 4 times in history and we are all set. No need for a complicated ambiguous and poorly defined set of tactics from Robb-O’s blog.
Do you equate ‘never works’ with ‘didn’t work 4 times in history’? That is a pretty big misrepresentation if you ask me!
The four times (since 1870, which is as far back as we have records) that stocks became sufficiently overpriced to become a Ponzi scheme were in the early 1900s, in the late 1920s, in the mid-1960s and in the late 1990s. The typical investing lifetime is about 60 years (most of us don’t have money to invest until we reach out mid-20s and we die in our mid-80s). There have never been a 60-year time-period in which the Buy-and-Hold “idea” (that it is not necessary to exercise price discipline when buying stocks) has not caused at least one price crash and one economic crisis.
To live through one price crash and one economic crisis is devastating. That one crash will subtract so much wealth from your portfolio that you will never be able to recover from it. Please don’t forget that you miss out on the compounding returns on all the lost dollars for decades to come. Valuation-Informed Indexers get all the benefits from stocks that Buy-and-Holders get when stocks are not priced for a crash. But they miss out on the devastating losses. That allows them to build much bigger portfolios in far shorter periods of time.
Buy-and-Hold never works. It always greatly increases risk while greatly reducing returns. The part that is fooling you is that the feedback mechanism is not immediate. If you have a bigger number on your portfolio statement than a Valuation-Informed Indexer five years after you adopt a Buy-and-Hold strategy, you count that as a sign that Buy-and-Hold is “working.” I am looking at the lifetime return. When you measure things over the course of an investing lifetime, Buy-and-Hold has never yet worked for a single investor on a single occasion.
It’s a question of short-term versus long-term. Buy-and-Hold can work very well indeed in the short-term. Buy-and-Hold is ALWAYS an unmitigated disaster in the long term. There has never been a single exception. It is logically impossible that there ever could be one.Buy-and-Hold causes crashes and crashes wipe out investor wealth.
The gains you get in a bull market are being borrowed from the future. When the time comes to pay off the debt, you have years of low or negative returns. Say that you go 20 years without a positive return. That’s devastating. You only have 40 years of investing to build your retirement account to what you want it to be. You have just lost half of that time! Following a Buy-and-Hold investing strategy is like living large on credit card debt. It seems really cool to move all the money from the future into the present. But then the future turns up and you have no means to support that lifestyle!
It’s a con. It’s a Ponzi scheme. It’s a marketing gimmick. It makes the people selling stocks very rich indeed. Who wouldn’t want to persuade his customers that the thing he is selling is worth buying at any price? But there has never been a person who followed a Buy-and-Hold strategy who did better than he would have done as a Valuation-Informed Indexing if you measure what happens over the course of an investing lifetime.
Taking on added risk doesn’t help you, it hurts you. Reducing your return and giving up hundreds of thousands of dollars in compounding returns doesn’t help you, it hurts you. Becoming so caught up in pride that you cannot bear to accept what 33 years of peer-reviewed research shows beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever doesn’t help you, it hurts you.
Buy-and-Hold is for losers, Laugh. I am not saying that you need to be a loser for your entire life. I am saying that we all make mistakes and you made a big one when you fell for the marketing pitch of the Wall Street Con Men. The peer-reviewed research doesn’t earn a commission by tricking you. The peer-reviewed research doesn’t lose its job if it is honest. The peer-reviewed research is not afraid to tell you the truth. You need to spend less time listening to the fancy promises of the Wall Street Con Men and more time examining the peer-reviewed research in this field.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Buy-and-Hold never works. When you measure things over the course of an investing lifetime, Buy-and-Hold has never yet worked for a single investor on a single occasion.
Do you honestly believe that if you repeat a ridiculous falsehood enough times, that it somehow becomes true?
The research paper that I co-authored was published in a peer-reviewed journal, Helper. Do you honestly think that you know better than the people who served on that peer-review committee?
Refusing to exercise price discipline when buying stocks ALWAYS increases risk dramatically while also decreasing the long-term return dramatically. There has never in 140 years of stock market history been a single exception.
Shiller provides access to the 140 years of historical data at this site. The data is there for you or any other Buy-and-Holder to look at. It says the same thing to every investor who looks at it with an open mind.
Buy-and-Hold was a mistake. The mistake should have been corrected when it was first discovered. It shouldn’t take 33 years to correct a mistake of such consequence.
Rob
Still does not make any sense to me. If that 1 crash per life time happens when an investor is young it doesn’t matter because they don’t have much invested. If it happens at the end it doesn’t matter as much because, well, it is the end AND that investor should not have a ton of stocks anyway. If it happens in the middle there is still plenty of time to recover, and the market typically recovers quickly.
If you supported the right of the thousands of people who have expressed a desire to learn more about Valuation-Informed Indexing, I could respect that answer, Laugh. I could say “well, that fellow has a different point of view. Maybe he’s right and maybe I am right, but I certainly feel okay about being friends with him.”
That’s not the situation that applies.
I cannot respect your demand that honest posting be banned at every board and blog at which you post.
I can care about you as a person. But I cannot respect a strategy that makes people behave in that way.
I can wish you luck with the strategy you choose. But, when I see that sort of behavior, I am obliged by my friendship with all these people who have expressed a desire to hear both sides to let them know that it is ONLY the advocates of Buy-and-Hold who behave in the manner in which you have behaved.
I wish you all good things.
Rob