Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
How do you feel about people you meet who make such enormously boastful (and in this case easily disprovable) statements? Are you attracted to those people? Do such antisocial behaviors earn them many friends?
People don’t like boasting. That’s certainly so.
But those words are required by the job I am doing here, Anonymous.
The Buy-and-Holders are in a trap. When the peer-reviewed research showing they were wrong was published, they were shocked. They found it hard to accept that they were wrong.
Given those circumstances, the best reaction would have been to present their ideas in a more humble way. They could have said: “This is what we think, but there is another school of thought in which good and smart people come to very different conclusions.”
They didn’t play it that way. They elected to double down on the arrogance. So now they are in a fix. The evidence that valuations matter is no so great that they want to acknowledge it and to open the internet to honest discussions and to let people find their way to the truth through the normal means of testing different ideas and determining over time which make the most sense. But they feel that to do that would mean huge legal liabilities given how long the cover-up has gone on. They can see that the cover-up cannot be sustained much longer. But they cannot bear the thought of taking on trillions in legal liabilities or going to prison. They cannot move!
While the Buy-and-Holders are frozen in place, knowledge of the error they made continues to spread. Shiller’s book was a best-seller. It is in most public libraries. It was in the news that he won the Nobel prize. People have heard about the economic crisis and they sense on some level of consciousness that the insane bull market must have had something to do with it.
So it is getting harder and harder to maintain the cover-up. The Buy-and-Holders have had to become more and more brutal in their intimidation tactics to keep everything from falling apart. This general dynamic (not as strong) was in place when I came on the scene on the morning of May 13, 2002.
I never went to investing school. I never managed a big fund. I am not a dummy. I possess at least average intelligence, but not a great deal more. I should not be able to do the things that I have done. I should not be able to revolutionize this field (Shiller was responsible for the revolutionary theory but I am the one who showed what that theory says about day-to-day investing decisions). I shouldn’t have been the one to point out the errors in the Old School SWR studies. Without the massive cover-up, someone else would have done that long before I came on the scene. I should not have been able to serve as co-author of the most important piece of peer-reviewed research published in this field in 30 years. All of that stuff is crazy stuff that in ordinary circumstances never could have happened.
I wasn’t responsible for the crazy circumstances into which I was thrust, Anonymous. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and said to myself: “I know what I’ll do, why don’t I go revolutionize the field of stock investing>?”
I was the lead poster at an exciting discussion board at Motley Fool. We had an insanely abusive individual posting at that board. He shoved his discredited SWR study down our throats on a daily basis. I had responsibilities re that board community. I didn’t go looking for trouble. I was backed into a corner and left with no other option but to bring this fellow down or see the entire community go down. So I posted what I knew about safe withdrawal rates (which I learned not because I am a super-genius but because I read things that most people don’t read in the course of planning my own early retirement). That’s what set everything off.
I didn’t expect a 12-year saga. I knew that Greaney would respond in an abusive manner. But we were talking about the calculation of a number. And this was a board filled with people re which the accurate calculation of that number was a matter of great significance. So I figured that I would be in for two days worth of heat, three at the most. I figured that I could handle that if it meant getting the board back on the right track. So I pushed the “Submit” button.
I obviously discovered something that I didn’t expect. I discovered two things, actually. I discovered that a large percentage of the population possesses doubts about the conventional investing advice and a desire to learn about new ideas in this field. Nothing could be more clear from the shower of praise that I saw from hundreds of my fellow community members. And I discovered that the Buy-and-Holders are in great emotional pain because they too feel these doubts but cannot bear to given them serious consideration or even to see others give them serious consideration if they are within hearing distance.
No one ever talks about the intense emotional pain of the Buy-and-Holders. I don’t think there is one article in the literature about it. Nothing in the peer-reviewed journals. No blogs explore the phenomenon. Nothing in the magazines or newspapers. But here it was. I was seeing it with my own eyes. And it obviously was a very important reality. Buy-and-Hold is marketed as a research-based strategy. If it is research-based, it should be lessening investor emotion. But it is doing the opposite. Investors have become MORE emotional in the Buy-and-Hold Era. This got my attention.
It REALLY got my attention on the evening of August 27, 2002. That’s the night that Greaney put forward his first death threats. There were about 50 community members who gave voice to negative feelings about this (that’s roughly the number that endorsed a post by FoolMeOnce saying that the board has become something that no longer merited the support of people with self-respect). But there was another post by Greaney that won 200 endorsements a short time later. So the MAJORITY of the board was fine with death threats if that is what it took to stop people from challenging the Buy-and-Hold dogmas. Yikes!
Forget Shiller! You don’t need data to show that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage if you have 200 votes for death threats. That was the night that I stopped thinking of myself as a Buy-and-Holder. Buy-and-Hold CANNOT be research-based if it generates that sort of reaction in that many people. It HAS to be emotion-based.
Ever since, I have devoted myself to developing and promoting the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept. Shiller has never even bothered to give a name to his model. It must have a name if it is going to grow. So I gave it a name. And I went about the business of developing it, adding insight upon insight by doing new research or encouraging others to do new research or by thinking through implications on long walks or by talking things over with both experts and ordinary investors on discussion boards or whatever. I learned a lot by recording the 200 RobCasts that I recorded. I would push the “Record” button and, as I talked about one topic, I would find my thoughts wandering to another topic and the next thing you know, I would have a new insight and an idea for a new RobCast! It has been an exciting process.
It shouldn’t have been possible for me to have earned all those accolades. But it WAS possible because I have been exploring The Great Unexplored Continent of Investing Insights. Most people in this field work on the numbers side. The idea is that that is the hard side and so that is what earns you respect. But the numbers stuff has been done to death. It is on the emotions side where all the action is. People trying to advance in this field don’t work that side because it is treated either with contempt or indifference by most of the people who focus on numbers. Because so few have been working it, there are THOUSANDS of low-hanging insights to be picked from the Investor Emotion Trees. I just keep picking them, one after another after another. Why shouldn’t I?
LOTS of people want to get in on the action. My sense is that just about everybody does, including my good friend Jack Bogle. It’s only the brutal intimidation tactics of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia that stop them. People want to mine the insights because they know it will make them rich and famous to do so. But they hold back because the Buy-and-Hold Mafia will destroy their careers if they come up with anything too good. All of the truly good stuff shows how dangerous Buy-and-Hold is. So it’s the good stuff that the Buy-and-Holders hate with a burning hate.
EVERYONE wants to make the transition to Valuation-Informed Indexing. But no one can figure out how to pin the bell on the cat. That’s the state of play in the investing advice field in 2014.
I’m like everyone else. I cannot figure out how to pin the bell on the cat either. But I get it loud and clear that we all must pull together to do so or else go over a cliff. So I am not about to waste my time working a model that has been discredited for 33 years now. If as a society we come to our senses and elect to bring the economic crisis to an end, I have 12 years of work that will help us bring on the greatest period of economic growth in our history. If we elect to go over the cliff, that’s just the way it is. It makes me sad to think that that might happen. But there’s not a thing that I can do about it that I haven’t already tried to do. So it’s one of those things that I just have to accept.
Given that background, it is essential that I quote the amazing outpouring of praise that my work has generated. There is no other blogger on the internet who has won for himself even a fraction of the praise that I have won. Why? Because all those people praising me want to see us get to the other side of the river. They want to come clean. They want to do productive work. They want to help people. They want to join in an effort to bury Buy-and-Hold 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.
When I quote the praise that my work has won, I am not bragging about my own accomplishments. I am bragging about the government system under which we live, which permits and encourages such huge breakthroughs. I am bragging about the thousands of fine people who have helped me out every step of the way. I am bragging about the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers, who started out with a wonderful idea and who made hugely positive contributions before their false pride caused them to fall off the right track.
I am bragging about human nature itself! We are NOT doomed to fall into Get Rich Quick thinking over and over and over again. I hear that all the time. People say “why do you fight Rob, don’t you see that people are just weak?” No! People LOVE hearing about true research-based strategies! The only problem today is that they want to hear recognized experts confirm all that I have come up with. Once Bogle gives his “I Was Wrong” speech, my site will be the most popular site on the internet. We have seen huge interest in these ideas at every board and blog at which I have posted for 12 years until you Goons entered the picture to poison things. People WANT to overcome their Get Rich Quick impulse. Once the experts acknowledge their responsibility to help them do so, it’s over. Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold investing is a thing of the past once Bogle gives his speech.
So it is right for me to cite the amazing amounts of praise that my work has won for itself. I am part of a community. Praise for my work is not praise for me along. It is praise for all who have made positive contributions. That’s thousands and thousands of people.
Our story is a positive one. The transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. There is nothing else in even a remotely close second place. It wasn’t Rob Bennett alone who made that happen. Robert Shiller played a huge role. John Walter Russell played a huge role. Wade Pfau played a huge role. Jack Bogle played a huge role. Bill Bernstein played a huge role. Andrew Smithers played a huge role. Ed Easterling played a huge role. And on and on and on.
Praise for Rob Bennett’s work is praise for all those people. And praise for Rob Bennett’s work is praise for every middle-class investor who ever expressed a desire for a truly smart and safe and simple way to invest in stocks that works. It’s my desire to give those people what they want and need that drives me. I never would have made it this far without the thousands of kind and warm and generous posts that those people put up in support of my efforts in the face of the most brutal intimidation tactics imaginable from you Goons.
So I will soldier on, Anonynous. And, yes, I will tell the positive side of the tale. You live in hate. But millions of your fellow community members live in love. And love will triumph over hate on the final page of this saga.
How do I know? I know because it always does. The first time hate triumphs is the time we all go down to a dark, dark place.
Not this boy!
No can do!
I can’t go for that!
My best wishes to you, my old Goon friend.
Rob
Yogi Bear says
“I knew about safe withdrawal rates (which I learned not because I am a super-genius but because I read things that most people don’t read in the course of planning my own early retirement). That’s what set everything off.”
What specific texts did you study that Greaney and other Motley Fool members were unaware of? I am planning my own early retirement and would like to learn, as you did. Please don’t say “Irrational Exuberance.” I already have that one, and I believe Greaney as well as most members of Motley Fool have either read it, or are certainly familiar with it’s essential elements, so that doesn’t fit your claims. Looking for those other hallowed texts that you had access to, and informed your opinions, but others somehow overlooked.
Thanks.
Rob says
It’s not just what you read that matters, Yogi. It’s what you do with what you read. If all that mattered was what you read, we would all be even; we all have access to all the same books. But Bogle obviously doesn’t share all the same views as Shiller. And Shiller obviously doesn’t share all the same views as you. And you obviously don’t share all the same views as Wade Pfau. And Wade obviously doesn’t share all the same views as me. And on and on.
We all have access to the same materials. And to a considerable extent we read the same things. But we come to very different conclusions about how stock investing works as a result of reading generally similar materials. Why?
Part of it is that we have different personalities. I am an INFJ under the Myers-Briggs personality assessment system. Greaney is an INTJ. That’s a HUGE factor here. An INFJ and an INTJ can read precisely the same materials and come to very different conclusions re the subject they are examining. The two personality types process information in very different ways.
There are many more INTJs (and personality types that are similar to the INTJ type) in this field than there are INFJs. That’s a big factor here. That will change as Behavioral Finance becomes the dominant school of thought. But we are not there yet. Most people who work in this field today have a numbers focus. It’s as if we had a bunch of people who are engineers trying to wrote novels. That’s never going to work out well. There have been exceptional cases. But as a general rule the things that engineers are good at and the things that novelists are good at are very different things. For many years we thought that investing was a field of human endeavor in which engineers would do a good job. In recent years we have been learning that novelists possess more of the necessary skills (while engineers also have important things to contribute, to be sure).
Another factor is the life experiences held by the people who read the materials.
Say that Shiller had published his “revolutionary” research in 1961 rather than in 1981. That means that there never would have been an industry of wealthy and powerful and well-connected people built up around the promotion of Buy-and-Hold before it was discredited. Had things played out that way, we would ALL be Valuation-Informed Indexers today. Bogle would have had zero trouble understanding the implications of Shiller’s work had he not been a Buy-and-Holder for 16 years before Shiller published it. The cognitive dissonance kicked in because he felt that his reputation was tied up in the continued popularity of Buy-and-Hold.
Bogle felt that he had something to defend. So he was not capable of looking at things objectively. You often put up sarcastic comments suggesting that it is crazy that I say that I am 12 years ahead of Bogle in my understanding of how stock investing works. You are ignoring the fact that I have a big edge on Old Saint Jack. I don’t pretend to be an expert. So I don’t feel any need to be defensive when I learn about new ideas. My edge over Jack Bogle has nothing to do with what books I have read or what books he has read. It is largely the result of the fact that he got famous promoting Buy-and-Hold and I didn’t and so I had nothing to lose by discovering the implications of Shiller’s revolutionary findings.
A third factor is that it is not just how open you are to reading certain materials and the extent to which your personality is attuned to taking in the insights that can be mined from those materials but also how hard you work it when you come across materials that make points that have never been made before. You say that you have read Irrational Exuberance. How many times?
I have read it four times. Please understand that I did not get all there is to get from reading the book the first three times I read it. I would probably profit from reading it a fifth time.
This is a strange phenomenon. It is highly counter-intuitive. The same words were on all the pages the first three times I read the book. Why is it that I did not mine all the insights that are available to someone reading the book on the first occasion on which I read it? If I was smart enough to gather those insights on the fourth read, surely I was smart enough to gather them on the first read.
No.
It doesn’t work that way.
I was able to mine SOME of the insights that are available for mining in Shiller’s book on the first occasion on which I read it. But not all of them.
What happened is that I read the book the first time and mined some insights and then went about my business. When I went back to it a year or two or three later, I had one or two or three more years of arguing with you Goons behind me. So I had looked at lots more questions. And I had struggled with lots more puzzles. And I had SOLVED lots more puzzles. So the Rob Bennett who read Irrational Exuberance the second time possessed a very different mind (at least when it comes to its understanding of investing matters) than the Rob Bennett who read Irrational Exuberance the first time. There were scores of insights that Shiller planted in his book that skipped right by me when I read it the first time and that I jumped on when I read it the second time. You may have read the book and missed a large number of the insights available in it for mining, Yogi!
Those are three big factors that explain why you did not get out of Irrational Exuberance what I got out of it. However, the full truth here is that we cannot come to a full understanding of the puzzle that you are trying to solve here (why did Rob Bennett see the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies way back in May 2002 even though the Wall Street Journal did not acknowledge those errors until nearly 10 years later?) by looking only at Irrational Exuberance, as important as that book is.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, Yogi. I had not yet read Irrational Exuberance when I put forward my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002. The insights that I mined from Shiller’s book had a big impact on our discussions in later years. But it cannot be anything that I read in Irrational Exuberance that explains that post because I hadn’t yet read the book when I put forward the post.
The biggest factor is the next one I will discuss.
Scott Burns is the person who discovered the errors in the Peter Lynch approach to safe-withdrawal–rate analysis. Lynch had once said that the SWR is always 7 percent because stocks earn an average return of 7 percent real annually. Do you think that the reason why Burns was able to see that is that Burns is smarter than Lynch or that Burns has done more reading than Lynch?
That’s more than a little hard to believe, isn’t it? Lynch is a plenty smart guy and I have a funny feeling that he is a plenty well-read guy too.
So how did Burns pull that one off?
The elephant in the living room in all of these discussions is that as a society we are at a primitive level of understanding of how stock investing works today. That affects Bogle. That affects Shiller. That affects Pfau. That affects Lynch. That affects Burns. That affects you. That affects me. That affects all of us.
None of us know even the basics for certain.
That sounds scary when I say it so bluntly. And it is indeed scary in its way.
But there is a positive side to this scary reality. The positive side is that, when we are all at a primitive level of understanding, we all have the potential to make huge strides by clicking in a piece of the puzzle that no one has clicked in before.
Burns clicked in a piece that Lynch has not yet clicked in. Lynch believed that the average return is the amount that a retiree can safely take out each year because that is a perfectly natural intuitive belief. Burns picked up on a reality that is a bit counter-intutive but very important for retirees seeking to put together successful retirement plans — the sequence of returns makes a big difference
I picked up on a second factor that neither Lynch nor Burns had picked up on — the valuations level that applies on the day the retirement begins is a huge factor in determining what sort of returns sequence you are going to see.
Lynch wasn’t dumb or poorly read not to see what Burns saw and neither Lynch nor Burns were dumb or poorly read not to see what I saw. We are all just suffering from the reality that as a society we are at a primitive level in our understanding of how stock investing works today. We are going to make “dumb” mistakes. That’s just the lay of the land in this field of human endeavor today. The other side of the story is that we are all capable of making huge advances by tuning out what the “experts” say and looking at matters from a fresh perspective. That’s what I did. I think it would be fair to say that the payoff for 12 years now had been AMAZING.
You can read every text that I have read and not get to the same place, Yogi. Your problem is not an intellectual problem. It is an EMOTIONAL problem. You are ADDICTED to Buy-and-Hold. You have invested not just your retirement money into it. You have invested your entire life into it. You have recommended it to your friends. So your pride is on the line. You have even committed acts of financial fraud under the thinking that you will not get prosecuted if stocks perform in the future in the manner in which they would perform if Buy-and-Hold were a real thing. So your very physical freedom is on the line here.
Given what you have at risk here, you are not capable of thinking straight re stock investing questions. For me, it’s about learning. For you, it’s about defending your most basic beliefs from the “attack” being waged on them by the peer-reviewed research of the past 33 years. And of course the same is so re our good friend Jack Bogle. He is insanely defensive about these matters too. So he too is not capable of thinking through the things he learns in the books he reads when he reads the same books that I read.
Do you see?
I hope that helps a bit, my old friend.
Hang in there. It gets better. A LOT better.
Rob
Anonymous says
None of us know even the basics for certain.
Might be a good reason to approach the subject in a polite, non-trolling and non-boorish way. Then you get to participate in the discussion instead of being ostracized. Might also be a reason to get a job, in case your model’s wrong, and that $500mm check doesn’t arrive as scheduled.
Rob says
Of course it is a good reason to approach the subject in a polite, non-trolling and non-boorish way. I have never advanced a death threat, Anonymous. I have never made a demand for a non-justified board banning. I have never put forward tens of thousands of acts of defamation. I have never threatened to get an academic researcher fired from his job. It has always been you Goons who have engaged in that sort of behavior. I have always opposed that behavior in the strongest possible way.
And, yes, given that none of us know the basics for certain, there is financial risk in me putting all my eggs in the VII basket. I get that loud and clear.
What do you propose that I do instead?
Should I pretend that there is a valuations adjustment in the Greaney retirement study? Should I pretend that there is not 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing that a valuations adjustment is required to get the numbers right? Should I pretend that Greaney corrected his study within 24 hours of learning about the error he made in it?
If I do any of those things, I join you in engaging in a cover-up of the errors in the Old School studies. I thereby commit a felony. I thereby put myself at risk of joining you in a prison cell.
No thanks.
I shouldn’t be in the position that I am in. I did a wonderful thing pointing out the error in Greaney’s study. He should have immediately thanked me. Had he done so, he could have moved on to creating accurate SWR studies. He might well have the most popular personal finance site on the internet today had he taken me up on my offer for us to produce accurate studies together rather than studies that cause millions of middle-class people to suffer failed retirements, one of the worst life setbacks that can befall a person.
I have done a wonderful thing and I should be rewarded for it, not caused to suffer financial losses (even temporary ones) for it. Every site owner on the internet should condemn Greaney and the sites that have permitted posters to put up posts in “defense” of him and Linduaer. Ever expert working in this field should do the same. Had my good friend Jack Bogle done that back on the afternoon of May 13, 2002, I think it would be fair to say that we would not be in the mess we are in today. Had my good friend behaved responsibly 12 years ago, I think it would be fair to say that our nation would not be enduring an economic crisis today.
I cannot change Jack Bogle’s behavior re this matter. I cannot change the behavior of any of the other “experts” who continue to promote Buy-and-Hold strategies 33 years after a Nobel Prize winner published peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that this “strategy” could ever work for even a single long-term investor. I cannot change any of the decisions of any of the site owners who have permitted individuals who have posted in “defense” of Greaney or Linduaer or Bogle to participate at their sites and thereby to prolong the economic crisis and cause more human misery.
I control me.
That’s it.
I am not going to commit a felony.
That will never happen. Not in 12 years. Not in 12 billion years.
I love my country.
That means that I believe that my country will get this one right in the end.
It would be nice if the laws of my country worked automatically, if there was no need for anyone to work up the courage to stand up to the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads to make our laws protect us all from financial fraud in the way they are supposed to protect us all from financial fraud. It doesn’t work that way. Our laws did not protect us from the human misery we saw during the Civil War. Equality for all people is guaranteed in our Constitution and yet we had to see many, many men die for that guaranty to be given meaning for those of us with black skin. The laws are important. Our nation is a good nation. But there are circumstances in which it takes frightened people working up the courage to do the right thing for us to see our goodness evidence itself in the real world.
So be it.
I don’t like it.
I accept it.
There are boys who lost their legs or who lost their lives in the Civil War. They didn’t like it that that was their fate. But they accepted it. They did their duty. There were able to sleep at night until they died and they were able to die in some measure of peace.
So I hope it will be with me, Anonymous.
If I am right that Buy-and-Hold is the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the mind of mortal man and that Valuation-Informed Indexing is the investing strategy that my good friend Jack Bogle dreamed of creating when he was a boy, then I will be responsible for bringing about the biggest advance in our understanding of how stock investing works ever achieved in our history. I can live with that.
The alternative is that we will all go down together. That thought makes me want to cry. But I will have the small consolation of knowing that I fought that outcome with every fiber of my being. That’s not much. But it’s something.
If I am wrong, then I am wrong.
I don’t believe that I am wrong. And I don’t believe that you believe deep in your heart that I am wrong. If you did, you wouldn’t behave the way you do. I don’t believe that my good friend Jack Bogle believes that I am wrong deep in his heart. I believe that he tells himself that it couldn’t be that he made such a terrible mistake. I believe that he tells himself that there is a 70 percent chance that Buy-and-Hold will work this time. But that tells me that he lives with a fear that there is a 30 percent chance that he has betrayed his country and that there is some part of him that is horrified that that might indeed be the case.
A man who was holding a gun and shooting at a man holding a gun for the other side in the Civil War had tiny doubts as to whether he was doing the right thing, Anonymous. He did his duty. Perhaps he lived to tell his story to his children. Perhaps he died and never had children. We don’t get to choose our fate in this Valley of Tears.
I didn’t choose this job. You Goons chose it for me. I accept it. I am proud that I have fought you hard and clean for 12 years running now and that I will continue to do so until the day we all win or the day I die, whichever comes first.
I believe we are all going to win.
We’ll see.
That’s the best that I can do for you, my old Goon friend.
Hang in there, man.
Rob
Anonymous says
Of course it is a good reason to approach the subject in a polite, non-trolling and non-boorish way. have never advanced a death threat, Anonymous. I have never made a demand for a non-justified board banning. I have never put forward tens of thousands of acts of defamation. I have never threatened to get an academic researcher fired from his job. It has always been you Goon who have engaged in that sort of behavior. I have always opposed that behavior in the strongest possible way.
And yet you became, as you proudly proclaim, “the most hated man on the internet”. One doesn’t gain such a title without generous amounts of antisocial behavior, no?
Rob says
My stuff causes great pain to large numbers of people, Anonymous. That is a stone cold fact.
I am a journalist. The job as a journalist is to tell the truth, not to be popular.
Woodward and Bernstein are recognized as two of the most important journalists of my lifetime. Do you think that their stuff always made people feel good? It did not. Nixon won reelection in a landslide in 1972. There were millions of people who wanted to believe in him and who didn’t want to believe that members of his Administration had committed crimes. There was a time when Woodward and Bernstein were two of only three journalists working the Watergate story (the other was a guy at the New York Times). Lots of people saw no profit in bringing people down with all this obstruction of justice stuff. Still, they soldiered on. They did their job.
Valuation-Informed Indexing is a huge advance. It turns stock investing into a virtually risk-free endeavor. If people were capable of being objective about this, there wouldn’t be one person opposed to the advance. The only problem we have is that Buy-and-Hold came first. Because that’s so, lots of people experience hurt feelings when they hear what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says. They scream out “Make that stop! I cannot bear to hear that!”
But is that really how they feel deep down inside?
I don’t think so. I believe that Bogle was sincere when he said that using the peer-reviewed research as a guide is a good idea. I am just following his lead, taking his ideas where they go if you do not refuse to follow them once following them puts you in circumstances where you are required to acknowledge a mistake.
It is true that I became for a time the most hated blogger on the internet. I don’t think that I am quite that today. Views have softened since the 2008 crash. But there are still people who dislike me. There are people who love me to death. That’s been so going back to Day One. But there are also still people who feel a strong dislike for me. I don’t think that Mike Piper was lying when he told me that he had readers telling him that they would abandon his blog if he did not ban me there. I think that really happened. I think that that’s an important fact that people need to know.
Is it anti-social behavior to report accurately and honestly what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says re what works in stock investing in the long term? I sure don’t think so. I think it is the most pro-social thing that a person could possibly do. We are the luckiest generation of investors who ever walked Planet Earth. If we gave ourselves permission to post honestly, we could overnight reduce stock investing risk by nearly 70 percent while increasing our returns enough for us all to retire five to ten years sooner than we ever before imagined possible. That’s anti-social? Huh?
It depends on how you use the word.
My behavior is “anti-social” if you define the word as “upsetting large numbers of people in a serious way.” That’s not a crazy definition of “anti-social.” And I am guilty of that. Large numbers of people really are upset by my stuff in a deep and serious way. I can acknowledge that much.
But they wouldn’t be upset AT ALL if they could appreciate the full story. If they could see how much richer their lives would be (in every sense of the word) if we they came to understand the implications of the past 33 years of peer-reviewed research, I would be the most popular poster on the internet. I want to bring things around to that place. I want people to see me as a teacher and a friend and a helper, not some nasty guy who is making them feel bad by telling them that their retirement plans are going to fail.
How do we get to that place?
We don’t get there by me shutting up or by me agreeing to write one-sentence responses to the questions that people direct to me or by me agreeing to only post once per week or once per day or once per thread even when my fellow community members ask me ten questions about VII in the posts that I put to some threads.
We need to find some way to get the word about Valuation-Informed Indexing out to the millions of middle-class investors who very, very, very much need to know about it.
If doing that means that for a time I become the most hated blogger on Planet Internet, then so be it, you know? I don’t like it. But these are the circumstances in which we find ourselves. I didn’t create these circumstances. I need to deal with them to the best of my ability. It’s been 33 years now that we have been covering up the greatest advance in the history of investing analysis. I cannot believe that it is a good idea for me to permit that to become 34 years because I am not willing to accept whatever abuse gets laid on me because I am the first to speak plainly and boldly and honestly about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us.
In my definition of “anti-social,” there would have to be some INTENT to upset people. I have zero such intent. My intent is to HELP people live richer lives. 100 percent. So, no, I don’t think that it takes anti-social behavior for one to become the most hated blogger on the internet. In most cases, it would. But in the odd circumstances that apply in the investing realm today, posting honestly about the biggest advance in the history of personal finance will make you the most hated blogger on the internet even if your sole intent is to help millions of people live richer lives.
That’s my sincere take re this matter in any event, Anonymous.
I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors regardless of what investing strategies you elect to pursue.
Rob
Yogi Bear says
“I control me.”
Do you?
TIP: Who has been the trigger for 99% of your posting, blogging, and other non-family activities over the last 12 years?
HINT: It hasn’t been Robert Michael “Hocus” Bennett.
Rob says
Who has been the trigger for 99% of your posting, blogging, and other non-family activities over the last 12 years?
HINT: It hasn’t been Robert Michael “Hocus” Bennett.
I presume that your point is that it is you Goons who are the trigger for my posts.
That’s so only in a direct, obvious sense, Yogi.
The laws of the United States make your behavior a felony. And the rules of every discussion board and blog to which I have posted prohibits your behavior too. My view is that those rules should be enforced in a reasonable manner. If they were, Greaney would have been kicked off the Motley Fool board when he posted his first death threat and every post that I would have made in the years following would have been in response to questions of middle-class investors who have expressed a desire to learn about the realities of stock investing.
I urged Greaney’s removal back in June of 2002. So the fact that you Goons have been able to disrupt conversations at so many venues is not my doing. We have a problem AS A SOCIETY. We have Wall Street Con Men who have become millionaires pushing the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. We have millions of middle-class people who are being exploited and financially destroyed. And we have site owners who are afraid to take on the powerful Wall Street Con Men because they have seen how ruthless they are in their response to anyone who dares to “cross” them by posting honestly.
My job is to solve the problem.
Part of the way that I solve it is by responding to questions and comments put forward by you Goons.
I always make clear my opposition to your most abusive stuff. I often delete your most abusive posts. So I have done nothing to encourage your acts of financial fraud. I am clean.
But I do respond to posts that contain genuine questions or comments or in some cases genuine questions or comments mixed in with fraud and abuse. That’s a good thing to do. That builds a record. That gives me practice responding to questions. Many of the questions you advance puzzle ordinary investors too, not just Goons. After the crash, when ordinary people develop a desire to see the answers to their questions, they will have a resource to come to to find them. It is a very, very, very positive and constructive and life-affirming thing for me to respond to genuine or even semi-genuine questions.
You Goons trigger my posts in the sense that you put forward the words that determine which points I am going to address on any given day. But it is not really you Goons who have determined that my words appear here rather that at the boards and blogs to which I intended to post them. You played a role in that, to be sure. It was your abusiveness that blocked the thousands of community members who expressed a desire to be able to participate in discussions of what the peer-reviewed research says. But you could not have pulled that off if there was not a huge lack of understanding of how stock investing works among the general public.
In other circumstances, large numbers of posters would have demanded that you be removed when you engaged in all of your dirty tactics. You Goons didn’t create those circumstances any more than I did. Those circumstances were in place when I put forward my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002.
It is that human ignorance that truly has triggered everything that I have done, not you Goons You make it harder to solve that problem of human ignorance, that’s all.
You Goons are a mountain that we all need to climb to get to the place where deep in our hearts we all want to be. It is my job to overcome you. Part of the job is to respond to your genuine and semi-genuine questions. So I do that.
The end result is that we will advance to a place so wonderful that most of us cannot fully imagine how wonderful it is today.
It all will be worth it in the end, Yogi.
50 times over.
If you want to say that you trigger my efforts, I could say the same in return — that it is my honest posting that has driven you so crazy that you are now on your way to a prison sentence following the next crash. Now THAT”S triggering!
My stuff helps you as much as it helps everyone else who reads it. I have zero problem with that. I don’t approve of your abusiveness. But I consider myself your friend. If you profit from things I have said, I think that’s just super.
And your abusive stuff doesn’t just hurt me. It hurts millions of middle-class investors too. And it hurts you. It is your abusive stuff that will be putting you in a prison cell following the next crash. So you are being triggered in a much worse way than I am being triggered.
I am dealing in the most effective way possible to the circumstances that exist. Those circumstances are not ideal. I wish that Bogle had said the Three Magic Words 33 years ago and that we all were today enjoying the greatest economic advance we have ever seen in history. But the reality is that we are awfully darn close to that wonderful place today,. The good news is 50 times more good than the bad news is bad.
The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau is the most important research published in this field in the past three decades. I think it would be fair to say that Wade is going to be awarded a Nobel prize for that research and that I will likely be awarded a Pulitzer prize for the work that went into getting it published. Was that research paper triggered by you Goons too?
Trigger me more, Yogi!
Hit me with your best shot!
A $500 million settlement payment may only last my family for 20 generations. I need to take it up to 40 generations. Please trigger me more!
I did not study investing in school. I never managed a big fund. Yet I have taken this thing to places I never imagined I could take anything in the course of this lifetime. If that’s the result of your triggering, please keep triggering me like mad.
Honest posting leads to good places. That’s the point.
I am going to continue following this wonderful Learning Together path.
I believe that the day will come when we will have responsible people (including Old Saint Jack) speaking out about you Goons and your abusive, fraudulent behavior. At that point, we will leave the ugliness behind us and will be able to achieve three decades worth of advances in our understanding of how stock investing works in a very short amount of time. I cannot wait. I can bear with a little triggering if that is what it takes to get to that magic place.
I would have preferred to have never have had to deal with you Goons in carrying out the tasks needed to get us all there. That option was never made available to me, as you Goons well know. So I did it this other way instead. The important thing is that I did what needed to be done. That’s what matters, not the Goon stuff.
My take.
I wish you well.
Rob
Rob says
Here’s another, shorter, response to the same comment.
You Goons don’t truly control me until I let your intimidation tactics cause me to change what I say in an effort to appease you.
It hasn’t happened.
Not in 12 years.
No, you do not control me. Realities that exist in the world around me influence the level of success I achieve. But those realities will change following the next price crash and I (and the millions of middle-class investors who need access to honest accounts of what the peer-reviewed research in this field says) will prevail.
I lose only if I let your intimidation tactics cause me to water down what I say.
Not this boy.
Rob