Set forth below is the text of an e-mail sent to me by Ken Evoy, owner of the SiteSell web hosting company, on April 16, 2014:
Hi Rob,
I think you’d be perfect for this! How much time could you spend on it? If this happens, we can talk more about it at the time.
You emailed 30,000 people on SSRN?! Individually? Wow!
Re the academic, Wade sounds like he’d fill the bill. It’s Momentum-based, pushed in interesting directions. If he’s interested in getting involved, please let me know. If not, don’t waste time contacting anyone else, not until/if I feel we have a product.
And re the rest of your letter, we’re on pretty much the same page. I can see several possible ways to enable folks to get better-than-passive returns without having to do what I’m doing (and that’s IF this works).
This part of it, very few could do it well. But we can turn what works into simplified models that pretty much guarantees they get similar results without forcing folks to do exactly the same thing with the same EFTS.
Anyway, it’s still hazy. My first priority is to wrap up Phase 1 of this research and put a model into play. I have a former fund manager who’ll sanity-test it. If Wade is interested at that time, so much the better.
Or if he wants to communicate with me before then, we could talk any time during the next few weeks.
No need to go further than that for now. We’d only turn this into a product when we’re sure that we’re doing something that works and is better than anything else out there. For that, I need third party verification.
All the best,
Ken
Anonymous says
Darn it. It looks like Ken was all but signed up. If only Wade would have fell in line instead of turning into a goon. Those millions would be flowing in right now and you would be giving yet another keynote address at FinCon.
Rob says
Darn it indeed!
Curse you, you dastardly Goons!
Rob
Anonymous says
Easy enough. Just get a few other experts from the list of supporters you have listed on your website.
Rob says
We’ll get there, Anonymous.
When I win one time, the people of the United States win forever. When you Goons lose one time, Buy-and-Hold loses forever.
Patience is a virtue. Please just try to hang in there a bit longer.
Rob
Anonymous says
How much longer do we all have to hang in there?
Rob says
You tell me, Anonymous.
If you followed the rules of the boards and blogs to which you post, you never would have had to hang in there for a single day. Those who wanted to follow Buy-and-Hold would be following Buy-and-Hold and those who wanted to follow Valuation-Informed Indexing would be following Valuation-Informed Indexing. All would be right with the world. That’s the American way.
You were not happy with that arrangement. You engaged in a mountain of abusive stuff. Eventually, you crossed the Felony Line. Now you are on your way to a prison term.
I am not on my way to a prison term, Anonymous. So I think it would be fair to say that I have a very different perspective on all this. I intend to wait for as long as it takes for us all to get to the place where we all deep in our hearts want to be, the place where the same standards of integrity that apply in all field other than the investing advice field also apply in the investing advice field. That certainly works for me and for the vast majority of middle-class Americans. I will wait until that day. That’s what it is all about for me.
You will wait until your prison term is announced and men come to place you in handcuffs. I would be very surprised if anything else brought you around, given what we have seen over the past 14 years.
There’s never going to be any research supporting Buy-and-Hold. It is a fantasy Get Rich Quick scheme. How could there ever be research supporting such garbage. Give me a break.
Buy-and-Hold survives because it exploits the Get Rich Quick urge residing within each and every one of us. Investors love Get Rich Quick approaches so long as they think they are paying off for them. They HATE them once they have been revealed to be Get Rich Quick approaches. Look at what happened with the Bernie Madoff investors. They don’t call him “Saint Bernie” anymore.
There won’t be anything holding people back following the next crash. They will demand your imprisonment. That’s what I think.
It won’t be me demanding your imprisonment. I have no powers to put you in prison and I have no desire to acquire such powers. So you are worried about the wrong guy. You should be worried about the millions of people whose lives you are in the process of destroying. I’m trying to help out, I’m trying to get your prison sentence REDUCED. Not with much hope of success at this point, I acknowledge that. But there’s will always be a tiny ray of hope until the crash takes place. So I soldier on all the same.
I am going to hang in there for as long as it takes. My guess is that you will hang in there until they take you away in handcuffs. I don’t have any insider knowledge. That’s the only way that I can imagine that things will play out. If there’s anything to the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research (I obviously believe that there is indeed a lot to it), those who blocked millions of people from learning about it will be going to prison following the next crash. That follows, does it not?
I could be wrong. Okay? I acknowledge that I don’t know everything and that I could be wrong. You asked me how long we all have to hang in there and I told you. I told you what I believe is going to bring about a change, nothing more and nothing less.
And, yes, I wish you the best that this life has to offer a person whether you end up spending the latter days of that life in a prison cell or not. I don’t control that aspect of the question. I can believe that you are going to end up in a prison cell and still wish you all good things, no? I certainly hope that that is permitted. I sure don’t see any reason why it would not be.
Hang in there. old friend. FOR HOWEVER LONG IT TAKES FOR OUR NATION OF PEOPLE TO WORK THROUGH THIS DIFFICULT PROCESS THAT HAS US A BIT HUNG UP AT THE CURRENT MOMENT IN TIME.
Rob