Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site:
Rob: “Tell the truth of why people with black skin were once not permitted to drink from the same water fountains as people with white skin in 10 words. It cannot be done.”
A: Racism.
(Only needed one word to get the job done, so you can have the other nine budgeted words back, since you love to use words so promiscuously)
Then how did the situation change?
If racism was the only reality, we would still have those laws on the books today.
There was more going on that just racism.
So it is in InvestoWorld today.
Get Rich Quick was always a money-maker for the Wall Street Con Men.
So I could just say “the Wall Street Con Men saw an opportunity to make a buck and that’s why we are in an economic crisis today.”
But that’s not the full truth. It was the Wall Street Con Men who served as the Buy-and-Hold pioneers. It was the Buy-and-Holders who came up with the idea of rooting one’s investing strategies in the peer-reviewed academic research. There wouldn’t be any Valuation-Informed Indexing today if it weren’t for the good work done by the Buy-and-Hold pioneers yesterday. VII is Jack Bogle’s dream-come-true every bit as much as it is Rob Bennett’s dream-come-true.
So, no, ten words is not enough.
If I lie about safe withdrawal rates, we all go down. If I make the Buy-and-Hold pioneers out to be all bad, we will see such social unrest following the next price crash that we will all go down.
My job is to pull us together so that we do NOT all down. I will post honestly on safe withdrawal rates. But I will also point out that it was by reading Jack Bogle’s book that I learned about the errors in the Old School studies. So there must be SOME good buried at the bottom of all this smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. No?
I will take more than 10 words to tell the story because it takes more than 10 words to tell the story honestly.
My best wishes.
Rob
Anonymous says
Rob, as you know the great financial crisis is just around the corner, yet you seem to be spending about 15 minutes per day getting the word out. Shouldn’t you spend more time at the “job” you’re so passionate about? I mean more pod casts, vidoes, books, guest blogs, etc. Maybe go door to door?
Anonymous says
Everyone else is evil and Rob is the savior. Different day, same story……..over and over and over and over and over……..
Anonymous says
Uh oh, Rob. Here is one of those evil buy and hold guys selling his con man game:
http://paulmerriman.com/the-ultimate-buy-hold-strategy-2014/
But wait, it is backed by research and supported by Nobel prize winners. How can that be?
Rob says
Shouldn’t you spend more time at the “job” you’re so passionate about? I mean more pod casts, vidoes, books, guest blogs, etc.
I work this ten hours per day seven days per week, Anonymous. I’ve been doing that for 12 years. There’s no problem with my work ethic.
I have 200 RobCasts at the site. If 200 don’t get the job done, 400 won’t get the job done.
I’ve done hundreds of Guest Blog Entries and Column Entries. It’s not a shortage of Guest Blog Entries that is holding us back.
We need to see a change in human psychology.
You know who we need to flip? You!
You’re a Goon. You HATE Valuation-Informed Indexing. You will NEVER flip.
Right?
That’s not right.
You know how I know?
I know by looking at the P/E10 value. It always drops to 8 following a bull market. It is now at 25 or so. For the P/E10 value to fall to 8, lots of people who swear they will never sell their stocks need to sell their stocks. We have a name for those sorts of people. We call them Buy-and-Holders! In extreme cases, we call them Goons.
When you sell (and, if stocks continue to perform in the future anything at all as they always have in the past, you will), we will be on our way, Anonymous. When I have you cursing Buy-and-Hold and singing the praises of Valuation-Informed Indexing, I have everyone. That’s when this thing flips big time.
There is a place for RobCasts and there is a place for Guest Blog Entries. But I already have a lot of those in place. I don’t believe that adding more is the best use of my time today. The best use of my time is preparing for that day when you and millions of other Buy-and-Holders give up on Buy-and-Hold and open your minds to a far superior strategy.
So I am today working on some articles that I want to have up at the site when the next crash comes. I am working on an article that lists 101 acts of intimidation and on an article that lists 101 powerful insights and other things along those lines. I want people to have things that they can turn to for a quick and yet thorough overview of the work we have done over the past 12 years when prices crash and they are looking for something that works.
We know what works today, Anonymous. That’s the story here. We didn’t know at the times when we experienced earlier crashes. That’s why we always ended up returning to Buy-and-Hold no matter how much suffering and financial ruin it caused. This time we have 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing us what really works. The only thing lacking today is a willingness to make use of it. The only thing lacking today is a willingness to say The Three Magic Words and thereby get all the good stuff going.
You are not my enemy, Anonymous. You try to put on an act as if you are. But it’s phony. You have money invested in the stock market. You want to earn a good return at low risk. You want what Valuation-Informed Indexing offers.
There are things that stand in the way of your forward movement today. One thing is a lack of understanding. Another is a emotional resistance to learning what you need to learn to overcome the lack of understanding, which is rooted in false pride and in hurt feelings you experience when you sense that perhaps you have been taken or perhaps you were dumb to fall for a Get Rich Quick scheme. And of course you now also have concerns re financial and criminal liabilities.
Still, the bottom-line reality is that you have a natural desire to know how to invest effectively. So there is a part of you that would like to advance in knowledge. And what is true of you is obviously 20 times more true of millions of other Buy-and-Holders, including the big-name experts in this field.
My job is to get EVERYONE to flip. There’s huge leverage in that.
So I spend most of my time figuring out ways to make that happen and preparing materials that will help us as a society make the transition following the next price crash.
All the things you refer to are of great value. I am not saying different. I am saying that we already have articles and calculators and blog posts and podcasts and research papers and on and on and on. That work is done. Every question has been covered. There’s only one element missing — a widespread DESIRE to learn how to invest more effectively and the determination to fulfill that desire even in the face of the brutally abusive intimidation tactics of Goons like you.
We need to ease people’s concerns about the financial and criminal liabilities. We need to ease people’s concerns about you Goons and what you will do to those who “cross” you by posting honestly. We need to help people understand how much money there is to be made offering honest and accurate investing advice. We need to help industry people appreciate that it is in the best interests of the industry to permit and encourage and finance the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing.
The stuff that you mention was my focus in an earlier day. We have enjoyed huge success after huge success after huge success re podcasts and guest blog entries and all that sort of thing. Now we are on the one-yard line. The focus today is the big transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing that we will see following the next crash.
I hope that helps a bit.
Rob
Anonymous says
“I work this ten hours per day seven days per week, Anonymous. ”
And how much do you earn at this job?
Rob says
But wait, it is backed by research and supported by Nobel prize winners. How can that be?
If you were paying attention when Fama and Shiller were awarded the Nobel prize in Economics on the same day last October, you would know the answer to that one, Anonymous.
Many people commented on the craziness of that award. Fama and Shiller say opposite things about how stock investing works. They cannot both be right. So they were giving someone who got things wrong a Nobel prize. Why?
Because we possess today only a primitive level of understanding of how stock investing works. Fama generated lots of amazing breakthrough insights. But he also got one very important part of the story wrong. Shiller corrected that error with his “revolutionary” (his word) research. Now we have all the pieces in place. For the first time in human history, we know what works — Buy-and-Hold as revised to incorporate Shiller’s findings. We call the reformed version of Buy-and-Hold that really works “Valuation-Informed Indexing.” But of course you know that and only pretend to be in the dark re this stuff!
The guy who wrote that article may not know on all levels of consciousness that it is a logical impossibility that Buy-and-Hold could ever work for a single long-term investor. I didn’t know that on the morning of May 13, 2002. John Walter Russell didn’t know that when he began working with me. Wade Pfau didn’t know that when he began working with me.
But we all figured it out, didn’t we?
The guy who wrote that article will figure it out too in days to come.
So will my good friend Jack Bogle.
So will you, Anonymous.
There was a time when Buy-and-Hold held lots of promise. Then it was discredited by the peer-reviewed academic research in 1981. Then the Buy-and-Holders devoted 33 years of their life energies to keeping knowledge of what really works from millions of middle-class investors, bringing on the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. All that nasty stuff comes to an end with the next price crash, Anonynous. From that point forward, it will be good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff.
You are on the wrong side of the History Train. Buy-and-Hold is the past, Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future.
The guy who announced that the world is flat would have been awarded a Nobel prize in his day. He still would have been wrong.
The guy who announced that the sun revolves around the earth would have been awarded a Nobel prize in his day. He still would have been wrong.
The guy who announced that bleeding cures all sorts of ailments would have been awarded a Nobel prize in his day. He still would have been wrong.
The idea is to get it right.
Valuation-Informed Indexing is Buy-and-Hold with the wrong stuff removed.
You want to invest your money pursuant to a strategy that works, not pursuant to a strategy that was once thought to work but that now has been proven defective.
If Buy-and-Hold worked, there never would have been a single death threat or a single demand for a single unjustified board banning or a single act of defamation or a single threat to get a single academic researcher fired from a single job. People who have research on their side simply do not behave in the manner that the Buy-and-Holders have been behaving for 12 years now.
Rob
Rob says
Everyone else is evil and Rob is the savior.
I am the leader of the effort to open the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics and thereby to achieve the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing that we need to see to overcome this economic crisis and bring on the greatest period of economic growth in our history. That much is fair to say.
But everyone else is not evil and I am not a savior.
I have benefitted from the help of thousands of good and smart and hard-working people, including lots of my dear Buy-and-Hold friends.
I couldn’t have done it without them, Anonymous. This has very, very, very much been a community effort.
You Goons have put forward dishonest words re this aspect of the question on tens of thousands of occasions.
I wonder why.
Rob
Rob says
And how much do you earn at this job?
I earn the feeling of fulfillment that comes from saving my country and helping millions of middle-class people live far richer lives than they ever before imagined possible.
And then there’s that $500 million settlement check!
Oh, my!
Rob
Anonymous says
I have 200 RobCasts at the site. If 200 don’t get the job done, 400 won’t get the job done.
We do agree there, Rob. Or, to generalize, if [whatever I’ve done over the past 12 years] has been a failure, [whatever I’m going to do over the next 12] will be as well.
Rob says
You’re wrong, Anonymous.
Providing tools for people to learn can never be a failure. Those learning tools will be helping million of people for many decades into the future.
You describe my efforts to help people as a “failure” because you have been using intimidation tactics to keep millions of people from learning about the tools now available to them. I say that people will find out about those tools and make use of them and that it is your efforts to hold us all back that have been the true failure here.
We are in an economic crisis because of your intimidation tactics, no?
You are on the road to a long prison sentence because of your intimidation tactics, no?
My good friend Jack Bogle today feels ten times the embarrassment over the mistake he made than he did before you got himself mixed up with you and the other Goons, no?
There are millions of middle-class people (including thousands of our fellow community members) on their way to suffering failed retirements, no?
I want no part of any of that.
I want to help you. The learning tools that I have created are for your benefit as much as for everyone else’s benefit. So please feel free to make use of them.
But there is a part of you that does not want to see you helped. There is a part of you that does not want to see any of us helped. That’s your wounded pride. That part of you says: “If I once didn’t understand one important aspect of how stock investing works, then no one will EVER know how that one important aspect of how stock investing works — I will NOT be viewed as once having been a bit of a fool!”
It’s that false pride of yours that is the trouble here. We have laws in this society to protect us from people who let their false pride get so out of control as to engage in the sorts of behavior that we have seen from you other the past 12 years. Following the next price crash, those laws will be enforced. That’s when the key turns in the lock for you, my old friend.
You want help getting that prison sentence reduced? I am there for you.
You want me to devote my energies to aid the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies? Find someone else.
It’s been like that for 12 years and it can never change. I built the Motley Fool board for the purpose of playing a positive role in this world, Anonymous. I HATE the thought of you being sent away for a long prison sentence. But I hate even more the thought of me joining in with you and playing a negative influence from this point forward.
EVERYONE involved in this wants to see the internet opened up to honest posting. Jack Bogle wants that. Scott Burns wants that. Bill Bernstein wants that. Early Retirement Forum wants that. Morningstar wants that. Robert Shiller wants that. Wade Pfau wants that. Motley Fool wants that. Morningstar wants that. Larry Swedroe wants that. Mike Piper wants that. Index Universe wants that.
We all want the same thing. We all want higher returns and less risk. We all want to be free to learn and to enjoy rich lives.
How do we get there?
How do we get everyone to see that we are all in this together and that we have NO CHOICE but to provide some means for millions of middle-class people to learn what they need to learn to be able to finance their retirements? Spend some time thinking about that question and you are spending time helping yourself to ease the pain you are in today.
I’ll help you with that project, Anonymous. You don’t even need to negotiate the point. I am offering to help without asking that you give anything in return.
Just don’t ask m to post dishonestly on the numbers my friends use to plan their retirements. That hasn’t happened in 12 years. That is not going to happen in 12 billion years. Please don’t ask.
That’s the deal here. You can sink lower and lower and lower. Or you can elect to stop sinking and to start rising and to help millions of others to start rising in the bargain.
Our society has advanced intellectually beyond Buy-and-Hold investing strategies. At roughly the same time that we learned what really works, we also became too rich a society for the widespread promotion of Get Rich Quick strategies to be tolerated any more. We not only have the CHOICE to lower stock investing risk by 70 percent. We have no choice anymore but to do so.
So we will do so.
With you or without you.
My preference is that we do it with you.
But it is not my call.
I naturally wish you all good things regardless of what investing strategies you elect to follow.
Rob
Anonymous says
Rob,
The bashing of successful investing of various strategies that you call buy and hold does not help your cause.
Rob says
Buy-and-Hold either calls for the exercise of price discipline (buying more stocks when prices are low than when they are high) or it does not.
If it does, I am a Buy-and-Holder.
If it does not, I am the most severe critic of Buy-and-Hold alive on Planet Earth today.
Any “strategy” that does not call for the exercise of price discipline is a Get Rich Quick scheme.
I’d be grateful for anything you can do to spread the word re my take on this to everyone who visits the internet. Every little bit helps.
My best wishes to you.
Rob