Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
“But she doesn’t agree with my strategy for dealing with the problem.”
Your wife is a wise woman. I just hope she doesn’t expect you to change.
I half agree with what you are saying here and I half do not, Evidence.
I am not generally a non-yielding person AT ALL. When it comes to things like what movie to go see or what restaurant to eat at, I ALWAYS am the one who defers to the other person. It is a very rare thing for me to demand to have my way. People who know me would not describe me as stubborn. That reality would suggest that I would be very open to change if my wife suggested a different way of proceeding.
The other reality is that there is a pattern in my life that has only appeared on a small number of occasions but that I do think evidences itself in behavior that mystifies a lot of people. The most dramatic case was when my parents wanted me to go to a Catholic high school and I wanted to go to the public high school. They pressured me into agreeing to go to the Catholic high school for one year by saying that they would not oppose my decision to go the public high school after that year. Then they pressured me again and I agreed to go a second year. And then a third year. And then I was adamant and we had a World-War-III style battle over the thing. Temple University ended up agreeing to take me in without me attending my senior year and everyone was happy. My father told me after that happened that he wasn’t worried about me giving in to peer pressure to take drugs because I was “like steel” when I set my mind to something.
There are a small number of cases where something similar has happened. So I think the proper way to describe me would be to say that I am non-stubborn in general but very stubborn when certain conditions apply that make the issue at hand appear in my mind to be one of great consequence.
In the high school matter, the issue in play on the surface was that I wanted to grow my hair long and that wasn’t permitted in the Catholic school. When the issue is described that way, I come off sounding like an idiot. My parents loved me and wanted the best for me. I never had any doubt of that. So why make such a fuss because I couldn’t grow my hair long for a few more years?
The deeper reality is that I felt a need to separate myself from my parents and assert my independence. All young people have to do that, it is not healthy if they never take steps to make that break. So there actually were good reasons for me to take so firm a stand. If I had it to do over, I would play it differently. I think I behaved immaturely. I had good reason — I was immature! But I do possess an understanding of why I did what I did. I have an understanding of what my parents did too. I wouldn’t want to see my boys repeat my behavior if similar circumstances evidenced themselves. But I don’t beat myself up for what I did. I am at peace about it even though I see things from a different perspective today.
I have reasons for why I feel that I need to stand firm re the investing matter. You know those reasons. And my wife does too. To me those reasons seem very, very, very compelling. To you they do not. I would characterize my wife as being somewhere in the middle of the two extreme positions. She sees my reasons as being more compelling than you do but less compelling than I do.
You are saying that she should accept that I will never change. Yes and no. The principle that is at stake will always be compelling to me. It is impossible for me to imagine circumstances in which that would change. To that extent, I agree with your statement.
But my experience (both in the high school situation and in others) is that matters of this nature are sometimes resolved as the result of unexpected developments. In the high school matter, everyone was happy when Temple accepted me under their early admissions program. My parents did not say “Oh, you still cannot grow your hair long” and I didn’t say “Oh, I still want to rebel in some way and not go along with a solution that makes you happy.” So everything worked out. The sticking point (that I needed to have some say over the length of my hair and that the Catholic school that my parents approved of did not permit this at the time) was removed.
It is my expectation that some development of that nature will come along to bring on a resolution of the investing conflict. Oh Lord, let it be soon!
I don’t know what that resolution will be.
But you can guess at the sorts of possibilities that I envision by reading my posts here.
I love the Buy-and-Holders. They are heroes to me. I think they made a mistake in taking such a hard line and I think that a lot of them regret that mistake today. I believe that there someday will be circumstances that will cause them to ease up just a notch and that then they will see me evidence my love for them and wish that we had worked the matter out a long time ago. I cannot give details because I cannot foresee the details. But it is my belief that something along those lines will happen one of these days.
Something similar will probably happen with my wife. She is not against me and I of course am not against her. We have different sets of life experiences and so we come at the matter from different perspectives. There will come a day when one of us will try out an idea that all along we thought would not work and we will find that it will work. We are not enemies any more than you Goons and I are enemies. So it does not make sense to rule out the possibility of a resolution that brings something close to complete satisfaction to both parties.
People don’t always communicate effectively. People get their backs up and cut off certain lines of inquiry. Then circumstances change a bit and they open themselves to new possibilities and great things are achieved with everybody involved feeling good about it. That’s what I think will happen here.
Neither side will win and neither side will lose. BOTH sides will win.
This is what I believe. I hope what I am saying here makes at least a small bit of sense to you.
I extend my best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Anonymous says
Your inability to tame your self-love of hearing/seeing your own words, and instead create a PROPER brief descriptive ‘headline’ or “title” for an article speaks volumes about your mental incapacity, Rob. It’s just one tiny thing, but like a tell-tale tassel in the wind for a sailor, it is enormously informative for those paying attention.
Rob says
It’s not self-love, Anonymous.
Yes, the headlines are long in the items that items that I post to the blog under the category of “Goon Conversations.”
The reason why they are long is that they explore micro-issues. In ordinary circumstances, there might be an item that would have a headline of “Old-School Retirement Studies Fail to Include Valuation Adjustments.” That’s shocking. All you need are those few words to convey a shocking truth that every investor on the planet needs to know about. So, in that ordinary sort of case, all that you need is a headline of short length to convey the information that needs to be conveyed.
Those are not the circumstances that apply in the investing realm today. I have posted articles at a good number of sites containing short headlines conveying that message. Those articles should have been picked up by every investing site on the internet. They should have been featured on the front page of the next day’s New York Times.
It didn’t happen.
If it had happened in the way that it should happen if things were proceeding as normal, there would be no need for these blog entries that report on our Goon Conversations and that contain such long headlines. The circumstances that apply here are not in the slightest way normal. We are dealing with a very strange phenomenon, a massive case of cognitive dissonance that has affected pretty much all of us (including Rob Bennett up until the evening of August 27, 2002).
What has happened here is that as a society we got off track in our quest to come to understand how stock investing works in the real world. The Buy-and-Holders did amazing work building the foundation of a model to help us all out. The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers are heroes to the middle-class. They got one thing wrong. They didn’t understand the effect of valuations at the time they were building their model. Shiller added that missing piece in 1981. But by that time the Buy-and-Holders had been describing their mistaken view of how things work for 16 years and had a hard time accepting that they had gotten such a critical piece of the puzzle wrong. So they went into cover-up mode. The bull market caused people to be happy with Buy-and-Hold and so there was little motivation to develop a new model until the economic crisis that began in 2008 scared people. And then the Federal Reserve stepped in and pumped up stock prices again so that even today there is limited interest in finding out what truly works.
It’s not just that people like to believe that the Pretend Gains created by high stock prices are real. It’s that the people who work in this field have been telling the false story of how things work that they feel that they will be sued or perhaps even imprisoned if they come clean now. And the investors whose lives have been destroyed become angry when they hear how they have been tricked for so long. That makes it even harder for the “experts” to come clean. So we are living in a time when deception and intimidation have become commonplace in the investing advice world.
It is my job to tell that story.
Part of the job is to expose the corruption that had permitted this massive cover-up to remain in place for so long. Part of the job is to describe the pressures that caused so many generally good and smart people either to participate in the cover-up or at the minimum tolerate it. I post these Goon Conversation blog entries to help people come to a full understanding of what happened. We need to understand the Goon mind, which is really just a cartoon version of the Get Rich Quick mindset that we all carry within us. It is by coming to an understanding of what happened that we will come to peace with what has happened. These Goon Conversation blog entries are going to help me get your prison sentence reduced a bit, Anonymous. This is important work.
But there are now so many of these Goon Conversation blog entries in the Post Archives that the new ones deal with extreme micro-issues. All of the basic, general stuff was addressed years ago. I don’t want to hold back on posting these items because as a society we very much need to come to a full understanding of what drives you Goons and no one else is doing this kind of work. So I have to post the items. But it is not possible to sum up in a few words the point made in the items that are going up today, which are examining minute details of the story rather than addressing general matters which could more easily be summed up with a small number of words.
So the headlines are a lot longer than those you see at other sites.
As the idea of looking at investor emotion becomes more commonplace, people’s understanding of what is going on will become sharper and fuller and it will become possible to get by with shorter headlines. We are not there today. These are the pioneer days. This is the future of investing analysis. But we are very much in the early days of coming to an understanding of what it means to use peer-reviewed research (ALL of the peer-reviewed research, including that published in the past 34 years) to guide one’s investing strategies.
That’s my sincere take re this matter, in any event.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, my long-time Goon pal.
Rob
stagnation says
“It is my job to tell that story.”
You’ve told the story. Over and over and over. And you’ll waste the next 13 years retelling that same story. Maybe 13 more after that. Truly sad.
Rob says
I will continue telling the story.
I believe that the reaction will be different following the next price crash. I think that will be so even among you Goons.
But we will have to wait and see, you know? I do not have a crystal ball that I can use to prove the point to your satisfaction.
I don’t think it is sad at all. I think it is wonderful. I see this as a win/win/win for every single person involved.
I think that this shows that our system works. Not always immediately. But in time things always seem to end up in a pretty good place under our system of government. That’s pretty darn cool. I believe in our system and I am humbled to be playing a big role in seeing to it that things work out well for everyone in the end re this particular matter.
Hang in there, my good friend.
Rob
laugh says
So, if after the next price crash if you are still ‘succeeding’ as much as you are ‘succeeding’ now I suppose that would be the end of the line for your great ‘success’?
Rob says
If there is no change in people’s reactions following the next crash, I would need to engage in some rethinking. That much is fair.
I don’t think that that would cause me to endorse Buy-and-Hold. To endorse Buy-and-Hold, I feel that I would need to see peer-reviewed research showing either that there are circumstances in which price discipline (long-term timing) might not work or circumstances in which price discipline might not be required for those seeking to keep their risk profiles roughly constant.
I can’t say today precisely how I would respond to a crash that didn’t change people’s willingness to permit discussion of the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. That strikes me as a very far-out scenario. But I do think that the playing out of that scenario would require some rethinking on my part.
I hope that helps a bit, Laugh.
Rob