Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
what are the other “critically important investment topics” that you believe are also not being honestly discussed on the internet. You must have an extensive list.
We should permit honest posting on every issue.
Shiller’s findings were “revolutionary” (his word). They go to the fundamentals of our understanding of how stock investing works. So there are hundreds of issues that need to be explored. I have written hundreds of columns at the Value Walk site and at the Death By 1,000 Papercuts site and at the Out of Your Rut site. Those columns identify hundreds of issues. I am uncovering new ones all the time.
The research shows that 80 percent of investing success comes down to getting your stock allocation right. Following a Buy-and-Hold strategy insures that your allocation will be wrong 65 percent of the time. If you choose an allocation that makes sense when valuations are low, your allocation will be wildly wrong at times when valuations are moderate or high. And so on. If getting your allocation right is 80 percent of the game, we should be directing 80 percent of our energies to learning how and when to change our stock allocations to keep our risk profiles constant. But that is one of the questions that we have prohibited on grounds that it makes the Buy-and-Holders feel bad for people to learn what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research in this field says about what works in stock investing.
We should be talking about risk management in honest ways. We should be talking about retirement planning in honest ways. We should be talking about EVERYTHING in honest ways.
Why the heck not? What’s the freakin’ downside?
It makes the Buy-and-Holders feel bad for people to learn what the research says. That’s the downside.
You know what? People are going to come to the realization that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage following the next price crash in any event. If it is going to come out sooner or later, is it not better just to let it come out now? People are going to be madder to learn about the cover-up following the next crash than they would be to learn about it today (or — better yet — 12 years ago!).
We permit honest posting on every other possible subject matter. What makes it so important than stock investing be treated differently?
The entire question is nuts. There is no legitimate controversy here. Honest posting on the dangers of Buy-and-Hold should OBVIOUSLY be permitted. It’s all upside. It is not even possible for the rational human mind to imagine any possible downside.
I mean no personal offense, but you are asking a stupid question. Only someone trying to “defend” Buy-and-Hold could even think there is a legitimate controversy here.
To block honest posting is to engage in financial fraud, which is a felony under the laws of the United States. Prison time. That’s what we are talking about here. That’s what the “defense” of Buy-and-Hold has come to in the Year 2014, 33 years after the peer-reviewed academic research was published showing that there is precisely zero chance that it could ever work for even a single long-term investor.
Rob
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