Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site:
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
A losing month for the market in July. I fully expect to see your picture on the cover of the New York Times shortly Rob.
I much look forward to the day on which the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau is featured on the front page of the New York Times, Anonymous. Research that shows us all how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent will help millions of people in a very big way.
I obviously have zero chance of ever being featured on the front page of the New York Times because of what happens in a single week or a single month or a single year. I am 100 percent with my many Buy-and-Hold friends re the dangers of short-term timing. As you have known perfectly well going back to Day One.
The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers did amazing work until they got too full of themselves to acknowledge mistakes. I didn’t do that to them. I have been urging them to take a different path for 12 years now.
Those who are not capable of acknowledging a mistake have no place in the investing advice field. It doesn’t matter how smart or experienced they are. If you lack the ability to acknowledge a mistake, you can do too much danger and as a society we just have to insist that you find some other way to make a living. And, yes, that very much applies to my good friend Jack Bogle.
I wish you (and all of my many Buy-and-Hold friends, including Old Saint Jack) all the best that this life has to offer.
Rob
Dear Mr. Bennett,
I know you are exceptionally busy so I will keep this as concise as possible.
(As well, if there is a better place to post this message please let me know and I will; I tried the “Contact” page but to no avail.)
Recently I have been doing research and reading about the stock market and different investment strategies, and happened upon your website, which is great! However, there is one thing which really puzzles me — the constant over-use of pre-index fund era stock returns (S&P500). I am hoping you can answer my questions in regards to this matter.
1. If no index fund was available prior to 1977 (S&P) and 1998 (Dow), why does the financial industry use data prior to those dates to to try and prove the index fund theory? Why not just use the 37 years of existing and actual index fund data? Individual stocks and mutual funds don’t back-test to times before their existence. Dividend strategies don’t back-test to times before dividends. Kind of like postulating what the United States would have been like in the year 350 A.D.
2. As above, since no index fund was available, would an investor trying to actually replicate the index face costs so massive (continual commissions, taxes, etc.) that it would render the exercise useless? How did investors invest in the market prior to funds? Individual stock picks, mutual funds…???
3. Why does the financial industry not have any widely publicized data on actual and real pre-index fund stock market returns? There must be some way of mining and extrapolating this data from various sources (e.g. tax records, mutual fund sales/returns, etc).
I notice you are not overly convinced by Mr. Siegel’s work; for the above questions, neither am I; but do my questions contain any validity or am I simply over-reacting to semantics?
Thank you for your time, effort, and thoughts.
Your questions are valid and important ones, Cannuck. Thanks for not giving up when you had trouble with the “Contact” page (I will be sure to fix whatever the problem is there). I will give a shot at responding. But please understand that I do not view myself as an investing “expert.” I am a journalist who figured out how to post his words on the internet and all this crazy stuff happened to me when I put up posts exploring the implications of Robert Shiller’s work and I just do the best I can to figure out and explain to others what is going on.
It wouldn’t work terribly well to use only 37 years of data. You need more data than that to generate statistically significant results.
I don’t see why it should matter what it would have cost to invest in indexes in earlier years. What you are trying to learn from research is how the market works. It may be that strategies calling for the use of index funds were not practical in earlier days. But they are practical today. Once you learn what works from looking at the past, you can take those principles and apply them in today’s world, a world in which buying an index fund is easy and cheap.
If I properly understand your third question, it is a very, very important one. None of the research available to us today is based on the real returns experienced by real people. To obtain those sorts of results, you need to look at individual portfolios. It’s obviously harder to obtain that sort of data because people don’t just turn in their portfolio information. But we had discussions re this matter at the Motley Fool board a good number of years back and there were posters who said that there is one entity that has such data and that uses it for limited purposes. I don’t know what the obstacles are to making that data more widely available but it would be a wonderful advance if more researchers could gain access to it (my understanding is that a very limited number of researchers have been granted limited access to it thus far — I do not know any details).
That’s really the data we need. Data that does not report things on a portfolio by portfolio basis does not tell the full story. Say that a fund goes up 100 percent in Year One and then goes down by 50 percent in Year Two. Do investors in that fund break even? Not necessarily. They break even if they held the fund the entire time. But if very few investors held the fund through most of the year in which it was going up by 100 percent and then many investors purchased the fund because of all the reports in the media about how wonderful it was doing, those investors experienced LOSSES, perhaps big losses.
It’s very important that more researchers begin studying things in the proper way. To be fair to the researchers, the data they need is not today available. It’s obviously not possible to do research on data that is not available to you. But I would like to see more of a push to obtain access to this type of data. The issue you are bringing up here (if I properly understand the point you were making) is a big deal.
You are right to say that I am not entirely convinced by Jeremy Siegel’s work. I hope you understand that I love his book (“Stocks for the Long Run”) and that I have great respect for his work and have learned a great deal about stock investing by reading his book.
The way that I try to explain these surface contradictions in my appraisals of the people who work in this field is that we are today in the primitive stages of our ever-growing understanding of how stock investing works. People like Siegel (and of course Bogle and Shiller and many others) have made huge contributions for which we all should be grateful. But we simply are not yet far enough along in the learning process for it to be entirely safe for us to place a great deal of confidence in their findings. We need to be bouncing around ideas and to avoid locking in to any one strategy as the final answer.
Please understand that this goes for Valuation-Informed Indexing as much as it goes for Buy-and-Hold. I love Valuation-Informed Indexing. I believe it has great potential. But who am I? I never went to Investing School. I never managed a big fund. I am some guy who figured out how to post his words to the internet. Valuation-Informed Indexing makes all the sense in the world to me. But it could be that next week some fellow is going to publish peer-reviewed research showing that it can never work for a single ilong-term investor, as happened with Buy-and-Hold with the publication of Shiller’s findings in 1981. We don’t know what is going to hit next. So we need to try to remember that ALL findings in this field are tentative and that we should all work very hard not to become too dogmatic about those that appeal the strongest to us.
I’d like to add a further note on this theme. Why is it that we humans have thus far not followed this good advice that I have advanced here of avoiding dogmatism re investing strategies? It is not that we are bad or stupid. It is a combination of two realities that face every human with money to invest and a desire to be able to retire at a reasonable age: (1) we have no choice but to invest our money using SOME strategy; and (2) we will not know whether our choice was the right one or not for many years into the future, when it may be too late to reverse course and still meet our retirement goals.
This isn’t the case in many other areas in which research is done to enhance the lives of humans. There is research being done today on cancer. It may be that we will achieve breakthroughs and that ten years from today no one will be employing the radiation treatments often employed today. That research affects in a direct way only a small segment of the population. So the researchers are free to go about their business without exciting or upsetting too many people. It’s not like that in the investing field. Every middle-class person has to invest to prepare for retirement. So findings that suggest that the popular way of going about things is wrong upset large numbers of people.
And those people are not going to get a second chance. They need to be sure that they are following the right strategies. In one sense, that should make people more flexible. If you are not sure, you should listen to a variety of points of view.But it is not always so easy! If you know that you only get one chance to get it right, that can cause worry to set in and worry can make a person dogmatic. I believe that that is the most common cause of dogmatism. When people are worried about getting something wrong, they steel their minds against taking in information bits suggesting that they are wrong. I believe that this is the cause of a good bit of religious fundamentalism (I am a Christian but I acknowledge that there have been times when religious fundamentalism was a problem and I like to think that I at least make a small effort to try to understand why).
My point here is that Jeremy Siegel has done great work. We should all be grateful to him for the insights he has provided us. But he is WRONG, gosh darn it! So we need to be careful. We need to tell him when we think he got something wrong and then LISTEN to what he says in response to determine whether it is really Siegel who got something wrong or whether perhaps his critics did. If Siegel does not respond to our inquiries, then we need to try again. We need to be polite and warm and loving and respectful because he deserves that because of the good work he has done. But we also need to be firm and determined and insistent because we know that in an ultimate sense Siegel wants to get it right and we have to be sure as his friend that we manage to break through any defenses that for a time have blocked him from engaging in the explorations that he needs to engage in to do so.
I hope that all makes some sense and perhaps adds to your understanding of these issues a tiny bit, Canuck. I hope we will all hear from you again, my new friend.
Rob
Wow, Rob!
That was a far greater and swifter response that I ever expected!
Thanks for being attentive to the common people! 🙂
Another thought I had about the Buy-and-Hold strategy which I’ve never seen addressed is the issue of income and life-span. Let me explain:
Using the 30-year return shows terrific returns but it also shows two things — it shows the rate of return on the money put into the market during the first year ONLY, as well, if you start young like most everyone tells you to do, that money most likely is not a lot because you are just entering the workforce.
Also well established stats show employmnet earning peaks. The average worker only has ~10 years of income/wage growth before hitting peak earnings before steadily declining (unless you are in the top quintile):
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5aAsxFJOeMw/Rjio3IocJrI/AAAAAAAAAOI/OeCipcSbyqs/s1600-h/2005-distribution-total-income-by-age.JPG
During your life-time, if you start early enough (most don’t), you only have ~30 30-year periods, but perhaps only 1/3rd of those years will experience peak contributions. What happens if stocks are expensive during that 10-year span? As well, after those 30-year periods end (say around age ~55), if you are still investing, your portfolio now experiences ONLY <30-year periods, which contain much more volatility. So as you progress toward your retirement, the returns on subsequent investments have a greater chance of lower returns.
I'm just starting out here, so if my logic is junk, please bear with me!
That’s a super question, Canuck.
I have a few things I need to do around the house before I can respond. I expect that I will be able to get to it by the end of the day.
Rob
I’ve noticed your comments about errors in Old School Safe Withdrawal Rates. Can you tell me what those errors are and how they should be fixed along with the calculations, so that I can examine in might if my portfolio.
I think your logic is right-on, Canuck.
What matters to the investor is what happens over the course of his investing lifetime. Rarely do you see things addressed that way in the literature in this field.
The problem in this field is that there is a TON of money to be made. So marketing considerations are given first priority. That makes it tough for those of us who want to discuss real stuff. If we do so, we make the marketing-oriented folks look bad because they are costing people so much money. They move in to destroy us and to teach anyone else thinking of addressing this stuff in real ways a lesson as to the consequences of doing so.
Some will say that that sounds paranoid. I would have said so myself once upon a time. I know better today. 90 percent of the investing advice you hear is marketing-oriented garbage. I used to work on Capitol Hill. Our elected representatives are people of high integrity compared to the people most often cited as “experts” in the investing advice field. It’s bad news.
Anyway, it is essential to look at things in the manner you suggest. Entire books could be written exploring all the angles to the basic question you have raised here. And yet this fundamental issue is almost never discussed. I say we get started doing it right here and now!
Do you understand the safe-withdrawal-rate concept? The SWR is the highest annual withdrawal that an investor can take from his retirement portfolio in each year of retirement with virtual certainty that the portfolio will survive 30 years. The SWR varies wildly depending on the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. The lowest SWR we have seen is the 1.6 percent SWR that applied in January 2000. The highest we have seen is the 9.0 percent SWR that applied in January 1982. Lower the 1.6 number down to 1.5 to make the math easy and you see that the SWR was SIX TIMES HIGHER in 1982 than it was in 2000.
That’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Say that you wanted to live on $50,000 per year in retirement. In 1982, you needed to save about $550,000 to pull that off. In 2000, you needed to save over 3 million!
Can it be?
We’re talking math here.
If that what the math says, that’s what the math says.
So why don’t the “experts” tell us this stuff?
The thing that they are experts in is marketing. They make their money selling stocks. So they have been known to “forget” from time to time what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field says.
Now let’s talk strategy.
Say that you had 1.5 million in savings in 2000 and wanted to be able to live on $50,000 per year in retirement. Could you retire at that time?
You sure couldn’t retire if your portfolio was in stocks. The SWR was 1.6 percent. That means that you could safely pull out $24,000 per year. Not even close to your goal.
But what if you moved your money to Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS)? TIPS were paying a guaranteed 4 percent real at the time. You could safely take out $60,000 per year! You meet your goal with no problem whatsoever!
How many of the experts in this field were telling people to move their money from stocks to TIPS in 2000? Not many. In fact, if you check, I believe that the few who told investors the truth saw their careers destroyed or hindered because they were making the Buy-and-Hold advocates “look bad.”
Valuations is the most important consideration in any investing strategy. It is not a close call. Valuations is 80 percent of the game. Stocks are such a great asset class that, if you consider valuations, it is almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which you would not do well in the long run. But valuations are so important that, if you do not consider valuations, it is almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which you would do well. Valuations is pretty much the entire ballgame for the typical middle-class investor.
If you haven’t spent some time doing runs with the Investor’s Scenario Surfer, you should. This calculator lets you choose a new stock allocation every year for a typical (according to how stocks have performed for 140 years) 30-year run. At the end of 30 years, it compares your final portfolio amount for portfolios that followed Buy-and-Hold strategies of 80 percent stocks, 50 percent stocks, and 20 percent stocks. I beat all three Buy-and-Hold portfolios about 90 percent of the time I use the calculator. There have been occasions when I have ended up with portfolio sizes of DOUBLE any of the Buy-and-Hold portfolios. I usually only need to change my stock allocation a handful of times over the 30 years to obtain these results.
Here’s a link to the calculator:
http://www.passionsaving.com/portfolio-allocation.html
It’s very easy to work. But many people have told me that they do not find it at all intuitive. I think this is because their heads are so filled with the Buy-and-Hold garbage that they cannot relate to something so simple and real and good. If you have problems working it, please just put up a comment on the latest blog entry here and I will be happy to talk you through it. It’s an amazing tool. I believe that every investor on the planet should be using it.
I did not answer your question in a direct way. I sort of danced around it. I guess what I would say is that your instincts are 100 percent on the mark. You need to think about what is going to happen over the course of an investing lifetime. The purpose of the Scenario Surfer is to help you do that. If you use the calculator a few times and gain a sense of how all this works, perhaps we can circle back and try to develop sensible strategies to deal with the particular concerns that you are raising in your question.
All of these issues can be handled. The key is getting straight on the basic principles of how stock investing works. That’s not at all hard to do today. We are living in the best time in history to be a stock investor. We know more intellectually than any generation of investors that has come before us. Our problem is that there is so much money to be made in this field promoting BAD investing strategies that the “experts” pushing the garbage cannot afford to leave any room for honest people to tell their friends and neighbors and co-workers what really works.
If you have questions or reactions, please shoot back. It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to talk this stuff over with a non-Goon for a change. You don’t know how happy your posts make me feel!
Rob
If you don’t think that I answered your question, please let me know and I will make an effort to zero in on precisely what you asked.
I took a more general approach in my response because I think it is important to be clear on the underlying principles before tackling the specifics and my experience has been that most investors are not at all clear on the fundamental principles (through no fault of their own, to be sure — the “experts” very much do not want this stuff getting out).
Rob
I’ve noticed your comments about errors in Old School Safe Withdrawal Rates. Can you tell me what those errors are and how they should be fixed along with the calculations, so that I can examine in might if my portfolio.
Welcome to the site, Jasper. I am grateful to you for taking a look.
The Old School SWR studies do not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. This is the most important factor. It is impossible to get the numbers anywhere even close to accurate if this adjustment is not included.
Here’s a link to The Retirement Risk Evaluator, a New School SWR calculator that I co-developed with John Walter Russell:
http://www.passionsaving.com/retirement-calculator.html
The Risk Evaluator is the only accurate SWR calculator available today, so far as I know.
There are a number of articles linked to at the bottom of the calculator page. Those will provide more background.
Please don’t think that it is only me who says the numbers in the Old School SWR studies are wildly wrong. The Wall Street Journal has published an article saying that. So has Smart Money magazine. So has the Economist.
But to this day not one of the Old School SWR studies has been corrected! Some funny joke, huh? I have beeb banned at 15 different sites that promote Buy-and-Hold strategies because I am the person who discovered the errors in the Old School studies (this was nearly 10 years before the Wall Street Journal published its article on the errors) and because I have been arguing for 12 years now that the studies should have been corrected within 24 hours of the time the errors in them became public knowledge (this was the morning of May 13, 2002!).
There are millions of people who will be suffering failed retirements in days to come because the errors in these studies have not been corrected for 12 years now. We are looking at one of the biggest social catastrophes in the history of our nation — we are going to be seeing millions of people too old to earn a living being thrown in the streets because the Big Shots who developed these discredited studies have not been willing to acknowledge their mistake for over a decade since it was brought to their attention.
Holy moly! I get worked up again each time I spend a few moments thinking about it!
I hope that helps a bit, Jasper. Please visit again.
Rob
Rob, serious question here: do you think you’re obsessing about this topic?
I agree with the idea that you believe in: buy and hold isn’t the best way to invest.
Seriously, though, you must’ve thought to yourself, at least a few times…..that “perhaps I could broaden the range of topics beyond the one idea I talk about daily….that buy and hold is not the best way to invest.”
?
My primary message is not: “Buy-and-Hold is not the best way to invest.”
My primary message is: “Honest posting should be permitted on every discussion board and blog on the internet so that we can all discover together whether Buy-and-Hold is the best way to invest.”
Do you see the difference?
If we permit honest posting, we will have thousands of good and smart people helping us to learn the best way to invest. We can’t possibly go wrong with all that help.
For so long as the Ban on Honest Posting remains in place, we are at the mercy of the Wall Street Con Men. It’s all about making a buck and there is no place in this field for people of personal integrity.
I didn’t write about investing for the first three years in which I posted at Motley Fool. I was very popular. I was doing good and important work and I was happy about it. I have never been “obsessed” about investing issues. I could pretty much take or leave discussions of investing, all else being equal.
But all else is NOT equal. My “obsession” began on the evening of August 27, 2002, when Greaney threatened to kill my wife and children if I continued to “cross” him by posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates. And when 200 of my fellow community members endorsed his post.
That ain’t right, James.
Those people are in pain.
They need our help.
The people who promote Buy-and-Hold are also in pain. I have great respect for these people. I have learned wonderful things from them and I care about them. I want them doing good, clean, honest work again. I know that deep in their hearts they want that for themselves too. I don’t have any doubt about it.
Buy-and-Hold is not just a bad investing strategy today. It is a threat to the survival of our free-market economic system. It is also a threat to the survival of our political system. You saw the reaction to the economic crisis (caused by the continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies for 33 years after the peer-reviewed research in this field showed that there is precisely zero chance that Buy-and-Hold can ever work for a single investor) on both the left (the Occupy Wall Street Movement) and the right (the Tea Party Movement). We are likely going to see something ten times worse following the next price crash, a price crash that will put us in the Second Great Depression if we don’t open the internet to honest posting soon after it unfolds.
I love my country, James. I want my two boys to be able to grow up in the same sort of country that I grew up in. One with our economic system. One with our political system.
I have a funny feeling that I am not the only one who wants that.
I have a funny feeling that you want that.
To get it, we need to be able to stand up to the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads when they push their smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. I understand that you (and lots of others) are afraid. But there is no other way.
I am afraid too. I am just like you.
Do you want to know the difference?
The difference is that I am even more afraid of what happens to us all if we continue to duck this problem.
I do this not just for me. I do it for you. And I do it for my boys. And I do it for the Goons. And I do it for the Wall Street Con Men. And I do it for the millions of middle-class investors whose lives are in the process of being destroyed.
I wish someone else would do it, you know? It’s not the most fun job in the world. If someone else would step forward, that would make me very happy.
Do you see someone else stepping forward?
Someone needs to do this job. No one else has stepped forward. So I continue to give it my best shot. I can do no more and I can do no less.
None of the other good stuff that we all enjoy continues to exist unless we set this right. We all want to see it set right. But someone has to get the ball rolling in the right direction for good things to happen. It seems that somehow the Fates or God or Evolution assigned me to that job. Blame them, you know?
I love my country.
That’s the bottom line here, James.
That’s the reason for the “obsession.”
I wish you all good things.
Rob
Rob,
For what it’s worth, and obviously not on the scale of what you have accomplished and achieved, but on the all-things-money blog I have frequented for the last couple of years, and debated against common stock market mantras, there have been several calls for me to be banned or my comments ‘moderated’ simply because I rally against what’s popular and the feel-good cheerleading.
A bit of background, I was a buy-and-holder until 2008/09. That shock woke me up and I said “There *HAS* to be a better way of investing and growing wealth!” The quest was on…
Funny thing is, I bring reams of data and research to the table — even if I have interpreted it in error, the data is still presented so anyone can see for themselves and correct me, make their own ascertains, etc. The nay-sayers almost always bring nothing to the table — no data, no research, no facts, not even an angry commentary, just name calling and requests for banning/moderation (and some of these people are financial industry “professionals”!). Brainwashed and fearful.
Discovering your work has been enlightening for me; it’s given clarity to my own ideas. Most people out there are all about self-preservation, even if it means shutting down the “truth”. Few people are about true discovery at any cost. I’m still playing catch-up with the large volume of work you’ve produced (and the reviews), but it seems to me that your theory is just as valid, if not more so, than what’s popular right now. Even if it’s not 100% perfect 100% of the time (what human function is?!), it definitely furthers the scope of investment knowledge.
Don’t worry, obsession on its own may not be good, but coupled with a higher goal can produce significant results. Aren’t we all super happy Mr. Edison was a highly obsessed S.O.B.? 😉
Canuck:
You are hitting on all the important points.
I hope you will continue posting here. It would be great if you posted on a daily basis. If there is anything that I can do to make that happen, please let me know. I will take what I can get. If you can only post once per week or whatever, that’s of course fine. Or if you choose not to do so at all, I will understand. It is boring to have only me and the other Goons posting here.
But please let me explain why in time I believe that we could make it less boring and why you could play a HUGE role making life better for MILLIONS of people if you spent some time here.
All that you say about how you have been treated is 100 percent in line with what I have seen at HUNDREDS of places. It is too sad.
It is very important that all understand that the people who have improperly called for you (and so many others) to be banned are IN GREAT PAIN. They are not bad people. They are not dumb people. They are hurting people.
Why are they hurting so much?
Because this stuff matters so much. They want to be able to retire someday. And they all have common sense. They know on some level of consciousness that it is pure nonsense to believe that price discipline doesn’t matter when buying stocks. The idea makes precisely zero sense. It is absurd. And of course we now have 140 years of historical return data CONFIRMING what our common sense tells us. There is zero chance that Buy-and-Hold can ever work for a single long-term investor. Zero. And all the Buy-and-Holders know it!
They do. I have been watching this stuff very carefully for 12 years now and I am 100 percent sure of this. The Buy-and-Holders know that Buy-and-Hold can never work. They get that loud and clear.
There is an obvious puzzle attached to what I am saying. The Buy-and-Holders follow Buy-and-Hold strategies. It’s not that they say one thing and do something else. No. They practice what they preach. The Buy-and-Holders BELIEVE in Buy-and-Hold. They believe enough to risk their retirement money on it.
Wait.
I am contradicting myself.
I first said that the Buy-and-Holders do NOT believe in Buy-and-Hold. Then I said that they DO believe It cannot possibly be both! Either I am a liar or I am nuts. It’s not only the Goons who say that. I am proving it with my own self-contradictory comments. No?
No.
Humans are capable of believing in two completely opposite things at the same time. This is actually a common phenomenon.
Say that you have a friend who is an alcoholic. He is in the process of destroying his life. His wife has left him. She took the kids. She took the house. His health is failing. His boss is close to firing him. It’s a bad scene. So you have lunch with him and tell him that he has a problem and that he needs to do something about it.
He starts screaming at you and banging the table. He has no freakin’ problem! He is just fine! He doesn’t need your friendship and he will axe you in two seconds if you ever again suggest that he has a problem. Get the hell out of his life!
That settles it. He doesn’t have a problem. He should know, right? He is closest to the situation. And he has told you clearly that he doesn’t have a problem. What else do you need to know?
He SAYS that he doesn’t have a problem. That’s the addiction talking. The very reason why he gets so upset is that he of course knows very well that he has a big problem. Suffering an addiction doesn’t make someone a moron. He knows with 100 percent certainty that he has a big problem. And he also swears on a stack of Bibles that he does not have a problem. Why? Because he cannot face it. He is hurting. Denying the problem gives him a little temporary emotional relief. That’s why he continue to deny the obvious. The obvious is too darn painful a reality for him to face.
That’s where the Buy-and-Holders are today, Canuck.
They kicked you off the blog not because you broke any rules or because you didn’t present enough evidence or because they have so much evidence supporting their views. They kicked you off the blog for precisely the opposite reason. You have ALL the evidence. They have ZERO evidence. And that’s a panful place to be. That hurts. They kicked you off the blog to make the hurting stop. You were posting real stuff and that stuff makes a Buy-and-Holder suffer incredible amounts of psychic pain.
I once had a poster who summed this up perfectly (and in a comical way). I was getting all kinds of static at this board. People were demanding that I be banned. And this guy stepped forward and said (I am paraphrasing): “Rob is probably the politest and warmest and most gentle person I have ever come to know. And he irritates me to no end!”
The guy couldn’t stand me. Not because I am a meanie. Not because I am dumb. He couldn’t stand me because he tried to tell himself that he followed research-based strategies and the strategy that he was following (Buy-and-Hold) was the farthest thing from a research-based strategy ever developed by the human mind. He couldn’t ignore what I was saying because it was so obviously true. And yet he couldn’t bear to hear me say it because, if he heard it, he had to make changes and, if he was going to make changes, he first had to acknowledge that he had made a mistake at an earlier time, and acknowledging that he had made a mistake about how he invested his retirement money was just too painful a reality to bear.
This is what is going on.
I don’t mean just with the Goons and with the people who demanded that you banned from that board. This is what is going on with Jack Bogle. And all the others. This is what is going on with every Buy-and-Holder out there.
All of them really do believe in Buy-and-Hold on one level of consciousness. And all of them really do follow Buy-and-Hold strategies themselves. And all of them lack confidence in the strategy they are following. And all of them suffer great pain as a result when they hear anyone discuss true research-based strategies.
That’s the underlying dynamic here. The implications are HUGE. And most of them are positive. The positive stuff here outweighs the negative by a factor of 50 to 1. People get hung up on the Goon stuff and we all need to get past that and get on to enjoying the benefits of the good stuff, which is so positive that most people cannot even imagine how positive it is.
I am going to stop here for this post. But I will post a follow-up or two that explores where I think this is going and why I believe that you have a HUGE opportunity to do good for MILLIONS of people if you care to take advantage of it.
Rob
A lot of people think that I am pretty darn harsh in my assessments of the Buy-and-Holders. I say that there is zero chance that Buy-and-Hold can ever work for a single long-term investor. I say that the relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies was the primary cause of the economic crisis. I say that a good number of the Goons will be sent to prison following the next price crash. I say that Old Saint Jack himself is at risk of being found guilty of financial fraud. And on and on and on. You get the idea.
I stand by all those statements.I don’t make statements like that lightly. It took me years to understand what is going on here well enough to understand that statements like that MUST be said if we are to overcome this economic crisis. Once I saw clearly that that was the case, I started saying things like that and without apology.
Those statements are NOT truly negative statements. On the surface they obviously are. But when you acquire a deep knowledge of what is going on here, you come to see that those statements have a positive side to them. I am going to try to explain to you what I mean because you seem to have at least some willingness to learn the full reality here and this aspect of things is very, very, very important.
The Buy-and-Holders are good people. The Buy-and-Holders are smart people. Eugene Fama DESERVES the Nobel Prize he was awarded last year. Jack Bogle is properly viewed as a hero to millions of middle-class investors. He is a giant. He is the second most important figure in the investing advice field. The Goons who terrorize this board on a daily basis have helped me appreciate about a dozen different, important insights. They teach me new stuff all the time.
Huh?
I thought I said that they threatened to kill my wife and children. Now I am saying that they teach me stuff all the time. That makes no sense. That cannot be. That’s crazy.
It is a little on the crazy side. But it is so all the same. To really understand why you were banned at that board, you need to go all the way back to Adam Smith. Adam friggin’ Smith! That’s colonial days! Adam Smith was a very smart guy who got one thing terribly wrong. And his mistake was copied by hundreds of thousands of economists through the years. And now, about two Centuries later, the false idea that Adam Smith has put in millions of minds had led to you, Canuck, being improperly banned from an internet discussion board. That’s really what happened.
Adam Smith is the guy who is credited with putting forward this idea that humans act in their self-interest when making money decisions. Our entire economic system is built on that idea. And it is wrong. It is not so! That’s why we are in an economic crisis today. We need to fix that error. And all the schools teach that error in all the textbooks. That’s why it is so hard to get it fixed.
The most likely annualized 10-year return on the purchase of an index fund in 2000 was a negative 1 percent real. That’s just math. You do a regression analysis on the 140 years of return data available to us and that’s the number you get. TIPS were paying 4 percent real at the time. So you gained 5 percentage points of return by switching from stocks to TIPS. Not for one year. For 10 years running. That’s a total differential of 50 percent of the initial portfolio value. Increasing your portfolio value by 50 percent lets you retire years sooner, even decades sooner. It’s investor heaven!
So why didn’t millions of investors make the switch?
And why didn’t thousands of experts tell them to do so? Experts want to become famous, right? Showing people how to retire years or even decades sooner would certainly do the trick. So why didn’t we have experts falling over each other to spill the beans back in 2000?
It’s that darn Adam Smith fellow who messed everything up!
Smith taught that we are all rational people making rational choices re our money. That was always wrong. We are PARTLY rational people but we are also largely emotional people. It didn’t matter so much for many years that the economists got this wrong because most people don’t pay all that much attention to what economists say. They say silly stuff all the time. But so long as it doesn’t hurt people, who really cares? They make up silly stories in their ivory towers and the world keeps on turning just as before. No biggie.
That was all so UNTIL EUGENE FAMA TOOK SMITH”S IDEAS AND APPLIED THEM TO HIS THEORY ABOUT HOW THE STOCK MAKRET WORKS.
That’s what Fama did. That’s what Buy-and-Hold is. Buy-and-Hold is the theory of how the market works that is rooted in the idea that investors are RATIONAL actors. They are NOT. But Buy-and-Hold PRETENDS (with no evidence whatsoever — there has never been a single study supporting the Buy-and-Hold concept and this reality can be checked by anyone who cares to know for sure) that they are. And, unlike the Rational Man theory of economics, when people invest their retirement money pursuant to this “idea,” real stuff happens. Real bad stuff.
Fama took Smith’s idea and gave it application in the real world. And the losses that inevitably followed have already been large enough to bring on the biggest economic crisis in U.S. history. And we have another 65 percent price crash on the upcoming agenda! Flawed ideas applied in the real world can have really, really, really bad consequences for millions of people.
Okay.
I said that this stuff has a positive side to it.
The positive side is that at least the Buy-and-Holders were trying to make stock investing a scientific enterprise! No one had ever done that before. Prior to Fama, most investing advice was guesswork. That’s not so today. Today there are studies. The studies get all the numbers wrong. That’s unfortunate. But now that we all accept the idea (first advanced by our Buy-andf-Hold friends!) that investing analysis should be rooted in peer-reviewed research, what is to stop us from permitting HONEST AND ACCURATE research, research that corrects the errors made by the Buy-and-Holders and that thereby helps millions of middle-class people to invest far, far, far more effectively than they ever have before.
I am the co-author (with Wade Pfau — Wade holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton) of peer-reviewed research showing investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. Not bad for a fellow who never went to investing school and never managed a big fund and whose only expertise in this field is that he figured out how to get his words posted to the internet!
If I had shown people how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 10 percent, I would be the toast of the town. Everyone would love me to death. The Buy-and-Holders hate me with a burning passion because showing people how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent makes them “look bad.”
But so what, you know?
Are they going to be able to keep people from learning about that research after the next price crash? Somehow I doubt it. That research is going to get written up on the front page of The New York Times someday and then we are going to see the biggest Learning Experience ever achieved in this field. Everything is going to be turned upside down. And in a very, very, very positive way.
The Buy-and-Holders are good people. They WANT to do good.
They are in pain because they messed up in the creation of their first-draft effort at a research-based investing strategy.
We need to overcome the Goons. The sooner we do so, the shorter their prison sentences will be. So that’s a win/win/win/win/win.
Once we overcome the Goons, we are all going to some amazing places. Places where it is possible for us all to retire many years earlier and places where investing in stocks is no more risky than investing in Certificates of Deposit.
What I am saying here is not opinion. It is all research-based. It is freakin’ math!
How is it possible?
That’s the one that trips everybody up. No one ever points to any flaw in the Logic Chain I use. What people do is ASSUME that my claims are not good ones because they are so darn grand (so people call them “grandiose”).
How is it possible?
It’s possible because we are overturning that darn Adam Smith guy. We are keeping his good stuff, which is very good indeed. But we are adding a behavioral finance element to it so that the entire thing works for the first time in history. That’s no small change. That is the missing piece, the mistake that has been making stock investing unnecessarily risky for hundreds of years now, the piece that has caused four of the four economic crises suffering in the United States since 1870.
Remember, the Buy-and-Holders are good people. So the Buy-and-Holders want this.
We have no opposition. We cannot lose!
Our only opposition is a temporary force. It is that voice within the Buy-and-Holders that says: “I cannot acknowledge having made a mistake, it is too, too terrible a reality!”
All that shows is that the Buy-and-Holders deep in their hearts want to get it right.
Which is a good thing.
The Buy-and-Holders are going to be switching sides in the not-too-distant future.
I am going to take a break to cool off a bit. Then I will be back with some exploration of the question of HOW we are going to make the Buy-and-Holders flip.
Rob
You made an important point when you noted that you used to be a Buy-and-Holder, Canuck. That’s true of me as well. It was also true of John Walter Russell (John is the co-developer of four of the calculators at the site). It was also true of Wade Pfau (Wade is an academic researcher who has a Ph.D. in Economics who co-authored with me the peer-reviewed research that shows investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent (by abandoning Buy-and-Hold strategies).
The same point is demonstrated again and again and again. There is nothing dumb about Buy-and-Hold. Millions of smart and good people believe in Buy-and-Hold. Buy-and-Hold was once a legitimate thing. There once really was research that seemed to support it. The vast majority of people who believe in Buy-and-Hold are NOT Goons.
Our nation’s problem is that the peer-reviewed research has shown for 33 years that there is zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor. Yet very few know this! Most people believe that Buy-and-Hold is a real thing to this day.
Our political system is set up to make this sort of national tragedy impossible. We have free speech. So people who see the holes in the Buy-and-Hold claims are free to tell people about them. The investing field is a money field. People could in ordinary circumstances make millions or even billions of dollars telling people about new strategies that reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. Why haven’t we seen many people make the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing?
There are three reasons.
One, there is a lot of money to be made with Buy-and-Hold. The secret to marketing is forming an emotional connection with your customer. Buy-and-Hold is pure emotion; it misleads people into believing that their phony and temporary bull-market gains are real and of course people love hearing that even though it destroys their hopes for a decent retirement in the end. The $12 trillion of phony gains created out of thin air during the bull market was essentially $12 trillion worth of marketing money used to promote this Get Rich Quick scheme. You can buy a lot of supporters with $12 trillion in marketing money.
Two, there are a lot of reputations that have been built through the promotion of Buy-and-Hold. The way you succeed in this field is by getting Big Shots to put in a good word for you. Most of the Big Shots are Big Shots because they backed Buy-and-Hold during the insane bull market and tricked (not intentionally — but still…) millions of investors into thinking that the gains being produced by the strategy they were following were real. These people are aware of Shiller’s research. But they have a huge personal stake in doing everything in their power to keep millions of middle-class investors from learning about its implications. Human nature being what it is, they keep it zipped. And they make it clear to others in the field that it would be in their best interests to keep it zipped as well. The sad reality is that most people in this field are out for themselves first, second, third and fourth and, if that means that their customers and their readers suffer failed retirements, that’s a price that just has to be paid as part of an arrangement that makes them multi-millionaires themselves.
Three, the Goons will stop at nothing to destroy the reputations and businesses of anyone who dares to “cross” them by telling people about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research really says.
Most people believe in Buy-and-Hold. But most people are open to hearing the other side of the story too. In fact, most people very, very much like the idea of being able to hear the other side of the story.
Here is a link to an article I wrote years ago pulling quotes from 101 comments from posters expressing a desire that honest posting be permitted:
http://www.passionsaving.com/investing-discussion-boards.html
THAT’S how most people feel about this stuff.
Most people believe in Buy-and-Hold because that’s all they have ever heard about. Most people are open to hearing about research-based strategies. But they are not going to buy into them in one day or two days or two months or perhaps even two years. Changing the strategy you use to achieve your retirement goals is a big deal. People want to be sure before they abandon Buy-and-Hold. They need to hear about the research-based stuff on a daily basis. They need to be able to ask questions. They need to be able to express concerns. They need to ponder things and come back and explore things from multiple angles. This process of exploration is not taking place and that’s why we are in such a terrible jam.
The reason why it is not taking place is not that people are dumb or not interested in learning. The reason it is not taking place is because not enough of those of us who understand that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage have the courage to stand up to the Goons and insist that they obey the laws that this nation has adopted to protect us from their ugly, abusive tactics.
Shiller doesn’t like to talk about that. He has faced a LOT of abuse because he has put forward the research that shows that Buy-and-Hold can never work. But he tries to limit the abuse by not speaking clearly and firmly and boldly about the insane abusiveness of the Buy-and-Hold Goons. And until Shiller and a good number of others start doing that, it is very hard for us to move forward. Lots of people have good insights. But they don’t get shared. If you are not going to share what you know, the society you live in doesn’t realize much in the way of benefits from what you know.
So that sort of thing has to stop.
The Get Rich Quickers have zero problem speaking up about what they believe and sticking up for each other. Those of us who believe in research-based strategies are exceedingly tentative in most of our claims and statements. We see academic researchers threatened and we hesitate to call it financial fraud. We see people refuse to correct errors in retirement studies for 12 years and we worry that it might be too “extreme” to note that they are going to end up in prison cells following the next price crash.
People see this. People see the cowardice (that’s what it is, isn’t it?) of the Valuation-Informed Indexers and they hold back from joining the cause or from expressing full support for it or whatever. I don’t play this game. I offer zero apologies for being the person to discover the errors in the Old School SWR studies. I offer zero apologies for being the co-author of peer-reviewed research that shows million of middle-class people how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 80 percent. I am proud of those contributions, which have served a huge positive purpose.
I hope to come up with plenty more breakthroughs of that nature. And I want to encourage lots of others to do so. I give the Goons the back of my hand. We adopted laws to protect ourselves from them because they are a destructive force. They have chosen to walk a path that leads to prison terms. I am happy to try to help them out. But I fail to see how it would be a life-affirming act for me to agree to commit felonies and end up in prison with them. My efforts are directed at getting their prison sentences reduced a bit, not at adding one for myself.
We need to see an attitude change. That’s the point here. We need to stop asking permission to post honestly and start demanding and insisting that our right to do so be respected — and no backtalk!
We need to change the incentives and disincentives that apply for those giving investing advice. Today there are huge rewards for those who push the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. We need to see that penalties apply for those putting their own interests above the interests of their clients and readers. And we need to see that huge positive incentives apply for those who call out the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads on their b.s. The more rewards people experience for posting honestly about investing issues, the more honest posting on investing issues we will see. We want to draw people of high integrity back to the investing advice field.
People have been telling me for 12 years that they want a place where they feel safe expressing their sincere thoughts. It amazes me that no such place exists on the internet today. We need to create such a place.
I am going to start a discussion board at this site when I have 10 people who have agreed to post at least once per day at that board. When newcomers to the site see that board and listen in to the discussions and see how wonderful and real and positive and life-affirming they are, they will join in and then spread the word to their friends and neighbors and co-workers. And the 10 posters will quickly become 100 and the 100 will become 1,000 and the 1,000 will become 10,000 and so on and so on. We have a winner here. We just need to make people feel safe for the flower to be able to bloom.
I’m am inviting you to become The Second Poster at that board, Canuck.
There are no hard feelings if you say no. I will 100 percent understand.
But if you say “yes,” that answer will make it that much easier for me to attract Poster #3. And a positive response from Poster #3 will make it that much easier to attract Poster #4.
That’s how it is done. Every great idea starts with one person and then grows and grows and grows and grows. The growth of this great idea has been hindered by the Goons. But the trick of all bullies is to make people feel intimidated and thereby to gain a power over people that they have not won through legitimate means. The Goons have been cutting off the heads of good people one by one for 10 years now. Once we have a board with 10 regular posters in place, that can never happen again. Then people who are attacked will have a place to turn to for protection.
Then the idea will grow and grow and grow and grow.
We are in the process of changing history in a very big and very positive way.
Rob
Hi Rob,
A quick one as I’m tight on time today.
To further detail why I think the way I do, kind of comes down to two…abstract ideals, for lack of better terminology.
1) After the 2008 Crisis got me thinking that there has to be a better way to invest, I started doing a lot of financial research (on the internet, of course!). Didn’t matter the source, I read it; if it seemed reasonable I filed it, unreasonable, filed in the circular bin. I’ve found an exceptionally small (dismally small?) amount of really solid and intelligent personal finance agendas out there. The rest are mere regurgitation, especially in the face of cart-upsetting facts.
The thing which disturbed me the most is that most of them were all saying the same thing, and the ones pandering to new and young investors were saying it the loudest. What got me was that these newbies weren’t even being honest or even all the information out there so they could at least formulate conclusions of their own. I guess you could say I want to stand up for the non-educated so they get a fair shot at utilizing their money in a fair manner.
2) Which leads to the second “driver”. It isn’t only my money I have invested. I’ve inherited money from two grandparents and a parent. When I did so I accepted the transfer of wealth with utmost sincerity and seriousness (there’s reasons why generation wealth in N.America does not last). This was wealth created by the lives of three people, I surely wasn’t going to disrespect that immense amount of labour capital simply by throwing it all into stocks without question. The people on the “sell” side don’t care about the human(e) part of the equation, but they sure care about the dollars.
People work so very hard for their money, usually for 40-50 years and usually at jobs they don’t particularly enjoy. They need to have the respect of the financial industry to be given, at the very least, access to all information as it pertains to investing.
One of my most endearing opponents (as I am his) is a mutual fund salesman who operates his own financial planning company. His concrete mantra is for his clients to stay 100% invested 100% in mutual funds at all times. That is, spend all your money on his mutual funds and nothing else — and keep it there — forever (how else is he supposed to collect his management fee?). I have a few other issues with him and his business “theories”, but this a major one.
I think I’ve pulled a ‘Rob’ here and thrown open the flood gates! lol Reigning it in….
I’d love to contribute to your new discussion board when it’s up and running. A couple of concerns, i) I’m not exactly sure how much in terms of quality etc. I can contribute above and beyond personal anecdotes and limited research. Being nothing but a repetitive ‘Chatty Cathy” can kill a board; ii) I’m not anywhere near up to speed on the whole VII theory et al so my contributions may be exceptionally limited in scope, which brings me to the final concern; iii) how can a discussion board expound on what VII is past what it is? Every investment theory has a set degree of parameters past which you are into other things. What can you see discussion board contributors posting that you haven’t already done so in your extensive articles?
Finally, whew!, can you provide me a link(s) to the “peer-reviewed research in this field showed that there is precisely zero chance that Buy-and-Hold can ever work for a single investor” ?
Gotta run for now but I’ll be back! Have a great week and thanks!
Super post, Canuck. I relate to everything you say here.
Shiller published his research showing that valuations affect long-term returns in 1981. If valuations affect long-term returns, the risk of stock investing increases each time valuations increase. Buy-and-Holders recommend staying at the same stock allocation at all times. That means that your risk profile is usually wrong. You are in most circumstances taking on either more risk or less risk than is appropriate for an investor in your circumstances. Getting your risk profile wrong is ALWAYS going to hurt you. It can NEVER be a plus.
Say that a 60 percent stock allocation is right for you when valuations are at moderate levels. If you stay at 60 percent stocks when valuations are high, you are hurting yourself — your stock allocation is wildly off the mark. Your stock allocation is also wildly off the mark when valuations are low — again you are hurting yourself.
The stock allocation you choose is the most important factor determining whether you will be successful in the long term. If you are willing to adjust your stock allocation as conditions change, it’s pretty easy to insure good long-term results. But if you refuse to change your stock allocation (that is, if you practice Buy-and-Hold), you insure that your stock allocation will be wrong two-thirds of the time.
If you choose a stock allocation that is right for you when prices are moderate, you have the wrong allocation two thirds of the time (when prices are low or high). If you choose a stock allocation that is right for you when prices are high, you have the wrong allocation when prices are low or moderate. If you choose a stock allocation that is right for you when prices are low, you have the wrong allocation when prices are moderate or high.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to get your allocation right if you follow a Buy-and-Hold strategy. Because the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research shows that risk is VARIABLE. If risk is variable, you MUST change your allocation in response to big changes in valuations.
Here is the research paper that I prepared with Wade Pfau:
http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/wp-content/uploads/MPRA_paper_35006.pdf
Please look at Table 1 on Page 18.
Look at the Maximum Drawdown section. The Maximum Drawdown is a good measure of risk. It is the greatest loss you ever could suffer following the strategy you employ. The Maximum Drawdown for Buy-and-Holders is 61 percent. For Valuation-Informed Indexers, it is 21 percent. That’s a reduction of about two-thirds. That’s huge! I am not saying this to brag and there are of course hundreds of good and smart people who played a role in helping me and Wade to produce this study, but that is the most important finding in the history of personal finance.
We now know how to reduce investing risk by close to 70 percent. That’s like learning how to cure cancer.
I had several long-time Buy-and-Holders tell me when that study came out that they were so impressed with that finding that they were considering changing strategies for the first time in their lives.
The response of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia was to threaten to send defamatory e-mails to Wade’s employer in an effort to get him fired from his job. Wade is financially responsible for two small children. He agreed to stop doing honest research if the Goons would let him keep his job.
Jack Bogle knows about this. He is okay with what the Goons did. Bill Bernstein knows. He is okay with what the Goons did. Larry Swedroe knows. He is okay with what the Goons did. Rick Ferri knows. He is okay with what the Goons did. The Buy-and-Hold Mafia cannot afford to see this research written up on the front page of the New York Times. The day that it is will be the day Buy-and-Hold dies in a practical sense (Buy-and-Hold died intellectually in 1981, when Shiller publisher his research showing that valuations affect long-term returns).
I wrote to the 30,000 names at the Social Science Research Network site to let them know about this. A good number wrote me back saying that they agree that this is corruption but that they do not feel that they can do anything about it given the brutally abusive practices of the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads. None of us can effectively stand up to the Buy-and-Hold Mafia on our own; we need to unite and insist on enforcement of the U.S. laws against financial fraud to have any chance at bringing these powerful and wealthy and corrupt individuals to justice. If this isn’t the greatest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States, I’d hate to know what is. I think it would be fair to say that this is 500 times worse than anything that Bernie Madoff ever did and Bernie Madoff lives in a prison cell today. I think it would be fair to say that Bernie Madoff is Mother Teresa compared to some of the “individuals” we have seen put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney (and my good friend Jack Bogle).
Here’s a list of comments that Wade made about me and about Valuation-Informed Indexing during the 16 months that we were working together:
http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2014/02/20/what-a-difference-a-threat-to-get-the-father-of-two-small-children-fired-from-his-job-has-on-an-investing-discussion-eh-long-live-buy-and-hold-its-science-with-a-marketing-twist/
There is zero chance that Buy-and-Hold can ever work for a single investor because it is built on a false premise. Prior to 1981, people believed that stock investing risk was STABLE. If stock investing risk was stable, Buy-and-Hold would be the ideal strategy.
What happened is that many powerful people built careers pushing the Buy-and-Hold concept BEFORE we learned from the research that it can never work. Then, when we learned this in 1981, they were embarrassed. They didn’t want to acknowledge the error. They felt that it would hurt their careers. So they ignored Shiller’s findings. And they put pressure on lots of others to not say anything about Shiler’s findings either.
Now we are 33 years down the road and the penalty of ignoring Shiller’s findings has become clear — millions of failed retirements and an economic crisis that may well eventually become the Second Great Depression. The people who didn’t want people to learn these realities back in 1981 really, really, really don’t want them to learn these realities today.
Most of them would like to come clean. There is tons of evidence that they have consciences and would love to find some way to get the word out. But how the heck do you get the word out without lots of people being sent to prison for the greatest act of financial fraud in U.S. history? The Goons don’t like it when I talk about the prison sentences. But my aim is to REDUCE the prison sentences. We can only reduce them by getting the word out and by bringing the economic crisis to an end. Each day that the cover-up continues, we cause more financial ruin and thereby INCREASE the length of the prison sentences of those who have participated in this massive act of financial fraud.
It’s a mess!
But the core reality here is very, very, very positive. We now know how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. This is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. My aim is to get all the nasty stuff behind us and then just concentrate on all the wonderful insights that we have mined over the past 33 years and have not been able to benefit from because we have had to keep it zipped to keep from hurting the feelings of the Buy-and-Holders.
Thank for asking. That was a super question.
Rob
I’m not worried about the quality of your contributions. Personal anecdotes are gold. People relate to personal anecdotes. This stuff doesn’t have to be complicated. The Wall Street Con Men try to make it sound complicated because that’s a good way to make a sale — intimidate people with big words and they feel that they need to listen to the “guru.” Yuck! People need to understand what they are doing to stick with a plan for the long term. We need simple, plain talk.
There’s no rule here that you need to understand or endorse Valuation-Informed Indexing. I love to hear from Buy-and-Holders so long as they adhere to basic rules of human civility. They keep me honest. And they teach me things that I otherwise might miss. Buy-and-Holders are very welcomed here. And of course followers of all other strategies are welcomed. And people who have no loyalties to any strategies and who just prefer to ask questions or to ponder possibilities are warmly welcomed. So that is not an issue either.
There are THOUSANDS of things we can talk about at the board.
You are correct in your suggestion that, once you describe the strategy, there is not much more to be said about what works from one way of looking at things. The strategy can be summed up in two words — Price Matters. That’s pretty much it. It’s common sense. All the peer-reviewed research shows that this is so. So what else is there to say beyond those two words?
Have you ever gone to Edmunds.com before buying a car? They provide information about the fair price of the car so that you can negotiate more effectively. I see this site as being the Edmunds.com of personal finance. In a perfect world, we could just tell people “Price Matters” and that would be the end of it. In the fallen world we live in, things tend to get a bit more complicated than that. The Buy-and-Holders have come up with THOUSANDS of tricks to take people’s eyes off the ball and to cause them to ignore the “Price Matters” injunction. We should be trying to describe the tricks for people so that they are not taken in by them. That’s a big job given how the Wall Street Con Men operate today!
Thanks for your post. We will see how things go. I much relate to the words you posted above re how this is not just about money. People spend much of their lives saving the money they need to finance a retirement and people in this field should show some respect for that reality. I hope that, as we explore things more deeply over time, we will come to think of each other as friends.
Please take good care until you have some time free to pay us another visit, Canuck.
Rob
Hi again, Rob,
I tried again to message you privately via your contact page, still not working. So this.
I’ve been reading and reading for the last few days to see if I am at ease with all of “this”.
Not sure I am, and I will explain why (this is going to be Rob-rambly!)
I came to have knowledge about you and VII via ‘The Big Picture’, which I frequent and have a good amount of respect. Ritholtz and yourself (and your respective blogs) are almost polar opposites in terms of reaching people and holding an audience. I thought I was in for a treat when I stumbled upon VII which lead to your site; unfortunately all I got was barraged by 99/100 things not VII. And it is very unfortunate.
If you truly want the financial industry to take note of VII and it’s value, then it is absolutely essential to display a highly professional conduct. Forget all the past slings and arrows, and certainly don’t put them on display. What’s done is done. The unfortunate (there’s that word again) truth is that not a lot of people care; even less when it’s just another random internet blogger; and even less will stand with you (in terms of the personal issues). Maybe that’s just it — it’s personal, it’s for YOU to deal with. And, a massive life lesson — Life is NOT Fair! Never has been, never will be.
You put VII (& SWR) out there, good for you, job done. Doesn’t mean that the world is ready for VII, and you certainly can’t force it. Perhaps after the next jumbo crash the system will adopt VII willingly and wide-spread. Take heart, no one believed Einstein based on publication alone, his theories had to be proven correct (they were). The VII theory is based on 30-year periods. You published your findings ~10 years ago. You’ve got to wait another 20 years to be proven correct. Sucks, but life’s not fair, remember.
One thing you could do is start your own investment firm. Hire one dealer etc. who utilizes ONLY VII. Publicly report your returns. Even better, if you are personally utilizing VII with your own portfolio then publish your returns. Let other people see that it works (or does not work) in reality. Ian Gordon at longwavegroup.com is a great example of all the above (his schtick is precious metals and he walks his talk, through thick and thin). Browne’s Permanent Portfolio is another great example: maximum of 25% stocks, with less risk and <1% difference in long-term returns.
It has to start with YOU, not trying to convince other people that it's right, that YOU are right.
Buddha spent six years trying to attain enlightenment before succeeding, what can you expect from people who are not even trying?!
The second part of why I am uneasy with being a contributor to this site is my own personal economic and financial "theories", if you will. As stated previously, after the '08 Crisis I though 'there has to be a better way to invest and grow/preserve wealth other than the stock market'. To that in a minute.
The Crisis was a great vehicle for blowing the doors off the hinges and letting everyone see what lay in the den of thieves. Unfortunately, even though it's now all public knowledge, nothing is being done about any of it. Sending Maddoff to jail was a joke. The trillion dollar LIBOR and FX markets are still being manipulated. Business as usual. Thanks to various blogs and very intelligent and principled people such as Karl Denninger (market-ticker.org), I came out the other end with a new way of thinking.
I no longer have faith or trust in public equity markets as a viable mechanism.
I still very strongly believe in companies and business as the driver of the economy, but the stock market has nothing to do with that and has become a complete sham. I no longer play in the stock market. This being said, because VII relies on investment in the stock market, I cannot wholly endorse the theory, nor any stock market theory going forward — except possibly shorting. With so much market distortion, how can anyone determine a true price? You can't. So even utilizing VII is buying into false prices.
My new outlook has led me to a career change working in the private equity sector. As I said, I believe in companies, but not the market. How did the economy function and how was wealth created before people could reasonably invest in stocks? Production and ownership; the stock market is neither.
Again, it would cause both professional and personal conflict of interest telling people to invest in private equity while trying to sell them on the virtues of VII. I've also found great liberation in the works of Michael Dever (www.brandywine.com) in regards to investing/trading "return drivers" instead of assets-as-base — that is, invest in the market/asset which will provide the best return for any given driver (eg. interest rates, war, housing collapse, frontier markets, etc.). My investing mantra is now "Opportunist" rather than being tied to any given strategy or market. (and to those Buy-and-Holders who think holding an S&P index fund is being diversified…you couldn't be more wrong.)
For VII to succeed:
Focus and professionalism.
Measurable and real-time records.
I'll probably hang-out for a while still, there are some interesting tidbits on here (and Wade is gold).
Wish you well in your future endeavors.
Canuck:
My e-mail address is: hocusreports@Verizon.net
My telephone number is: 540-751-0685
My mailing address is: 160 Hatcher Avenue, Purcellville, VA 20132
Please feel free to contact me through any means at any time. That goes for any of the other humans on this planet with an interest in learning about this stuff. It does NOT go for the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney. When Buy-and-Holders threaten to kill my wife and children if I continue to “cross” them, I call the cops. The Purcellville Police Department and the special Virginia office on internet crimes already have a file open re this matter.
Rob
Thanks for your good wishes, Canuck. We are in full agreement that Wade is gold (although I obviously believe that he is guilty of the crime of financial fraud and may or may not be spending time in a prison cell as a result).
I LOVE Barry Ritholtz’s work. I had my biggest traffic day here in the site’s history when he linked at this site to my article explaining “Why Buy-and-Hold Investing Can Never Work.” That’s not the only reason I love his work, but it didn’t hurt! Anyway, Barry is a great guy, as is Wade. We certainly have that much in common.
I obviously don’t agree with your views on the equity markets. I think I would say that we are at opposite extremes re that one. I believe that we are on the verge of making the equity markets far more wonderful than they have ever been in the past. I believe that we are on the threshold of the biggest economic advance in our history because of what we have learned over the past 33 years re how equity markets really work and because of how that will allow all of us to live far richer (in every sense of the word) lives than we have ever lived in the past.
Please feel free to share your thoughts here re the dangers of the equity markets, if you ever care to do so. Those thoughts are welcomed here even though I do not share them. Perhaps you will be able to convince me a bit over time. However. I am certainly not in any way, shape or form in that camp today. I think that needs to be said.
I half agree and half disagree re your comment about how investing in the S&P 500 does not achieve true diversification. I don’t believe that the S&P by itself supplies diversification. One needs to have an investment in some non-stock asset class (like TIPS or IBonds) as well. But I believe that the S&P provides a good bit of diversification re the stock portion of one’s portfolio.
The “Opportunist” stuff runs my fur the wrong way. That’s not to say that it may not be just the right thing for you and for some others. But all of my work is aimed at helping the typical middle-class investor. I think the typical middle-class investor needs to keep it simple. So I don’t encourage people to go looking for special opportunities. My view is that the best thing for most people is to keep it simple and safe and smart enough, to focus on the long term, and to Stay the Course rather than to look to jump in on new “opportunities” (I don’t intend for the quote marks to serve as any sort of personal dig — I put the word in quotes because I don’t think that the typical investor [including me!] is capable of uncovering these opportunities on a consistent enough basis to make them pay off).
We’re all searching for something better. That’ true even of the Goons (although they would probably not be willing to acknowledge it). Our life histories and differing skill sets have led us to some very similar places while also leading us to some very different places. I certainly would like the opportunity to learn from you. So I hope that you will be open to participating here at least on occasion. But I also of course understand if you feel that in an overall sense the stuff that I am putting forward here is not really your particular cup of tea in a good number of respects.
I’ll respond to your comments re “professionalism” in a follow-up comment.
Rob
I say that my good friend Jack Bogle may end up spending the last years of his life in a prison cell. You say that that sort of comment is “unprofessional.”
I don’t agree.
I think it is MORE professional to point out that reality than it would be to ignore that reality. I believe that it is those who are holding back from pointing out that my good friend Jack Bogle may end up spending the last years of his life in a prison cell who are behaving in an unprofessional manner. THAT REALITY IS A BIG PART OF THE STORY THAT NEEDS TO BE TOLD HERE.
I love Jack Bogle, Canuck. If you have spent any time at all reviewing the materials here, you know that. I rank him as the second most important investing advisor of all time. I say that he is a Hero to the Middle Class. I describe him as a giant. I credit him as the person who taught me about the errors in the Old School retirement studies. I openly acknowledge that there would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing today but for the amazing contributions of my good friend in earlier days.
And yet when I wrote this wonderful man to tell him about the abusive tactics of the Lindauerheads and the Greaney Goons, he took no action.
Huh?
Come again?
People need to know what is going on here to know how to invest their retirement money. People need to see the pieces of the puzzle fit together if they are going to make sense of this stuff.
I have seen MILLIONS of posts over the first 12 years of our discussions, Canuck. My favorite one of all time was from a poster at the Bogleheads Forum named “Janie.” She told me that she thought that everything I said about stock investing made perfect sense. But she wasn’t going to adopt the Valuation-Informed Indexing strategy for herself. Why? It made perfect sense to her but she didn’t see the big-name advisors like Jack Bogle promoting it on a daily basis. This was her retirement money we were talking about. If she was going to invest her retirement money in this way, she needed to see the endorsement of big names like Bogle and Bernstein and Swedroe and Burns and on and on and on.
That makes sense, doesn’t it?
I need to be able to explain to the Janies of the world why the giants are not endorsing the strategy shown to be superior by 33 years of peer-reviwed academic research (based on 140 years of historical return data). That’s the job.
The story is that Bogle should have stepped forward and acknowledged in 1981 that Shiller’s research shows that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor. Jack didn’t do that. And 33 years have now passed. So Jack really, really, really, really, really doesn’t want word getting out today re what the peer-reviewed research in this field says. So now Jack is permitting the sorts of individuals who have posted in “defense” of Mel Limduaer and John Greaney to participate at web sites with Jack’s name on them. He is trapped in a web of 33 years of lie. And he cannot find a way out of the trap.
That’s news, Canuck. That’s very, very, very, very important news.
My good friend Barry Ritholtz should be telling that story at his web site. Barry does great work. But he does not tell that story, at least not in the way that it needs to be told for us to turn this thing around. I do that. I offer no apologies. It’s a story that needs to be told and I tell it. That’s the job.
You say that people don’t care. I don’t think that that is precisely correct. But it is kinda, sorta correct. People must care to some extent or else why we would have as a society ever enacted laws against financial fraud in the first place? Those laws didn’t write themselves. People had to care for them to work up the energy it took to get those laws enacted. So it is not a true statement to say that we do not care.
But it IS true that the financial fraud stuff makes us all very, very, very uncomfortable.
We would prefer to talk about substance. We don’t like the thought of seeing our friends thrown into prison cells. We don’t want the Goons coming after us and so we keep it zipped. We don’t want to see our careers destroyed, so we go easy on references to the how of the 12-year cover-up.
All of that is very, very, very much so.
But how are we ever going to change things if we don’t as a society come clean re the ugly side of all this?
And how are we ever going to come clean if some poor soul doesn’t go to the trouble of telling the story JUST AS IT HAPPENED.
I didn’t ask for this job. Canuck. If someone wants to take it off my hands, I will be 100 percent happy to hand it over. If you can persuade Barry to write about the Campaign of Terror at his site, I won’t need to write about it here anymore and nothing would make me happier.
But someone has to tell this story.
You say that Wade is “gold.” That’s so. Well, we shouldn’t be threatening to destroy his career when he helps us all by publishing honest research, should we?
We all have to make decisions as to what sort of behavior we demand of ourselves. Wade is my friend. He asked to work with me and we worked together for 16 months. We traded hundreds of e-mails. We became friends. The 16 months that Wade spent working with me on the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept were the happiest 16 months of his life. He saw himself winning a Nobel Prize as a result of the research we worked on together. That wasn’t empty talk. Wade DESERVES a Nobel prize for that research. It is the most important research published in this field in the past 30 years. It should be written up on the front page of the New York Times. The day that the Bennett/Pfau research is featured on the front page of the New York Times is the day that this entire nation will be able to give a sigh of relief that we have finally worked up the courage to begin addressing the true cause of our economic crisis and is the day that that economic crisis is finally on its way to expiration.
That’s not how the Buy-and-Holders feel about our friend Wade. They threatened to get him fired from his job. They have shown over the past 12 years that they are powerful and ruthless people. Wade knew that they were willing to destroy him if that is what it took to keep their smelly Get Rich Quick investing strategy alive another day, another week, another month, another year. Wade has financial responsibility for two small children. He didn’t want to sell out his friends and his profession and his country and his consience. But he felt that he had no choice given what Bogle and Company would do to him if he stood behind his powerfully liberating and honest and peer-reviewed research. So he flipped to the Goon side. He regrets it to this day. You can see it in his face, Canuck.
No man who has done so much good should ever be humiliated in that way.
I cannot sleep at night with my conscience knowing that I have contributed to such a thing.
If you can, you can. I cannot.
I will continue to post honestly re safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics. That one’s non-negotiable.
Your posts have been super. You have raised a good number of compelling points in only a small number of posts. I hope that you will continue to take time out of your days to help us all out on occasion in the future.
And I naturally wish you the best of luck with whatever investing strategies you elect to follow.
Take care, man.
Rob
I had one other point that I wanted to make.
I certainly agree that we cannot force anything. I never in a million years would try to force anything on anyone. It is 100 percent contrary to my nature.
But is it forcing something to point out that those who post in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney will in all likelihood be going to prison following the next price crash?
A lot of the Goons are friends of mine from an earlier day. Are you saying that I have no obligation to try to do what I can to get their prison sentences reduced a bit? If I fail to speak up, can I from that point forward continue to call the Goons my “friends”?
I sure don’t think so.
I am not forcing anyone to do anything. I am trying to help people out by reminding them that the United States has laws in place making their behavior a felony and that people who commit felonies often find themselves in prison after their crimes are uncovered and publicized.
It’s not a question of force, it is a question of charity.
That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter, in any event.
Rob
Perhaps after the next jumbo crash the system will adopt VII willingly and wide-spread.
I believe that that’s what we will see happen following the next crash, Canuck.
But getting the word out re VII is not going to solve all of our problems.
We are going to have to put our country back together.
We have known intellectually what works for 33 years now. The Buy-and-Holders have engaged in brutally abusive tactics to keep millions of middle-class people from learning what works. They have committed numerous FELONIES in the course of doing so.
What do you think is going to happen to our political system when millions of people find out what has been done to them?
If you care about the Buy-and-Holders and their investing project (I do — intensely), you want this to come out in the best way possible for them.
If you care about the future of this country, you don’t just want people to learn about VII. You want our economic system and our political system to remain in place so that we all can take advantage of our good fortune in being the luckiest generation of investors ever to walk Planet Earth.
Does all of that not make good sense to you?
It sure does to me.
Rob
I thought I was in for a treat when I stumbled upon VII which lead to your site; unfortunately all I got was barraged by 99/100 things not VII.
You are wrong in thinking that reports on the death threats and on the demands for unjustified board bannings and on the tens of thousands of acts of defamation and on the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs are not reports helping to explain how VII works, Canuck.
What’s the difference between Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing?
There’s only one difference.
Buy-and-Holders don’t like the idea that investors make emotional decisions. They address this concern by ignoring all the emotional stuff that upsets them so much. Valuation-Informed Indexers also don’t like the idea that investors make emotional decisions. We address this concern by facing it, by developing tools to help us know when emotion has gotten out of control and how to bring it back under control.
That’s it. That’s the only difference.
The death threats and all the rest are evidence of emotionalism, no?
All of this stuff is what you get when you ignore emotion rather than face it and cope with it.
It is their emotionalism that the Buy-and-Holders need to overcome to become effective investors. You are telling me not to talk about the thing that needs to change for the Buy-and-Holders to be able to reduce risk by 70 percent.
Goonishness is emotionalism.
Emotionalism is investing risk.
You reduce investing risk by overcoming emotionalism or goonishness.
The Goonishness of the Buy-and-Holders IS THE STORY.
It is because for 33 years we have as a society avoided taking this one on that we are in an economic crisis today.
To overcome risk, you need to be able to talk about what causes risk. Buy-and-Hold is what causes risk. Emotionalism is what causes risk. Goonishness is what causes risk.
If Buy-and-Hold were a legitimate thing, Greaney would never have threatened to kill my wife and children because I pointed out the error in his retirement study. It is because he is in pain that he reacted in the way he did. We should be trying to help him with his pain, not ignoring it.
Rob
re: “We are in full agreement that Wade is gold (although I obviously believe that he is guilty of the crime of financial fraud…”
You being a lawyer, and me not being a lawyer, could you please article the actual crimes you believe Wade to be guilty of?
And if he is, then why do you not press charges?
If you believe in your heart of hearts that this “financial fraud” is so heinous and destructive, being a lawyer, why not instigate a class action lawsuit on behalf of all investors over the last 33 years against the financial industry and government?
As you demonstrate through various postings, there are people and firms in the financial industry which have and do utilize VII et al, even though they may not call it as such. So the information is definitely out there, the public does have access to it, the professionals are conducting business with it. Let it grow…
Besides that, perhaps you are not the singular person to “discover” VII. As your blogged financial industry professionals have stated, they too have utilize “VII” for years. So who’s to say that many people haven’t figured this out already, they just haven’t felt the need to publish and press as you have; they just got on with it.
The future will be interesting…
The crime is financial fraud, Canuck.
I have a law degree. But I did not work for my law degree for the purpose of practicing law. I worked for it to enhance my skills as a journalist. I have zero interest in bringing any class action suits.
I can imagine class-action suits being brought by others following the next price crash. I guess that’s part of our system, so I guess that’s fine. But I sure don’t see how it helps anyone for the damages to be greater than they would be if we all just came clean today. That makes more sense for about 5,000 different reasons. I mean, come on.
There are other people who understand that Buy-and-Hold can never work in the real world. I would say that that’s about 10 percent of the population. I of course want to see it grow. Is there some reason I shouldn’t get involved in HELPING it to grow? I sure am not able to imagine any.
I agree with you only in part when you say that the information is out there. There is good information available to people who search hard enough for it. But the good information reaches only a tiny percentage of the population. I was a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. So was John Walter Russell. So was Wade Pfau. We all became confirmed Valuation-Informed Indexers once we were exposed to the peer-reviewed research of the past 33 years. Why do you think we didn’t know about this far superior strategy long, long before we became aware of it? Wade had a freakin’ Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton and he didn’t know about it!
There’s some sort of funny business going on, Canuck. I can just tell.
There are some who know who keep it zipped because they know that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia will destroy their careers if they tell. I don’t want the Buy-and-Hold Mafia destroying people’s careers because they tell us all about a better way to invest. I want THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of people sharing all they know! Why the heck wouldn’t I? It’s a win/win/win/win/win.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, Canuck.
My good friend Jack Bogle would LOVE it if we could open the entire internet to honest posting. That would let him off the hook. He would see his ideas helping millions of people (Valuation-Informed Indexing is obviously rooted in Bogle’s ideas except for the one that has been found to be in error). Why the heck wouldn’t he want that?
And of course the same if so for my good friend Bill Bernstein.
And for my good friend Wade Pfau.
And for my good friend Scott Burns.
And on and on and on and on.
None of these people dares to speak up in plain and simple and firm and frank and bold language because they know that their careers will be destroyed if they do.
But what if a number of the Goons were sent to prison and news of that went viral on the internet (as it obviously would)?
That would bring an end to all the nasty stuff, no?
And bring on the greatest period of economic growth ever seen in U.S. history.
And insure the shortest possible prison sentences for those who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney.
Are you able to imagine any possible downside?
I sure am not.
Yes, I believe that the future will be interesting. I only hope that we all work together to insure that it is the good kind of interesting that we have coming up ahead rather than the bad kind of interesting.
Can we all agree on at least that much, my new kinda sorta ethically compromised friend?
Rob