Set forth below is the text of an e-mail from Jackie (owner of the The Debt Stuff blog) to me dated October 14, 2014, followed by my response:
Some of my (unasked for) thoughts:
– I think you could really benefit from an editor to make sure you aren’t focusing on the past but instead are getting your actual message across
– I think a simpler tone (like what I posted from your emails vs. the tone of what you originally sent me) is more readable
– Shorter paragraphs are more scanable.
– Shorter comment responses make you look helpful vs. over-doing it (Most people don’t respond to comments with multiple paragraphs; that gets overwhelming)
As a side note, your message reminded me a little of what http://dropdeadmoney.com/ talks about.
Jackie:
Your comments are 100 percent welcomed. I will also pledge to read yours over again several times and to try to let the message get past my protective radar.
The last comment (re overdoing it) is the one that hits home the most.
I once wrote a guest blog at Miranda Marquit’s blog that told a story about me that I think is funny today only because I have distance from it. Basically, I had a crush on a girl when I was in my 20s and it was clear that she liked me but it was also clear that she didn’t want to get more involved and it was driving me crazy for a long time. Eventually, she broke down and told me that I was “too intense.” I never would have come up with that one because in my mind intense is the best thing that a person can be!
I wrote only about saving strategies for several years and I was universally loved. I was the same person! It’s just that then I was being intense about a different subject, one that did not upset people. The name of my book about saving is “Passion Saving.” I don’t think that’s an accident. When people used to praise me, the common thread was that “he’s passionate about the subject.”
I care deeply about helping people. I saved like a crazy man for nine years because I couldn’t bear to do work that I did not love, no matter how much money I made doing it. It’s not my intent here to brag. I am saying that it is my nature to be intense. In some circumstances people love that trait and in some circumstances people hate it.
I am not sure that I am capable of being non-intense. There are circumstances in which one needs to pull in the reins to be effective, and, if that’s the way it is here, I need to work harder at doing that. But it really is something deep in my nature that drives that behavior. I don’t know how effective I can be if I deny my nature.
It may well be that the intensity has hurt me in many cases. I think there is a good bit of evidence that that is indeed so. But the other side of the story is that it has led me to good places on other occasions. I really do have my name on peer-reviewed research that I believe will be featured on the front page of the New York Times one day. That’s a pretty darn amazing reality given that I never studied investing in school. That happened because Wade Pfau contacted me because of my posts at the Bogleheads Forum. It didn’t bother Wade that I was banned for writing those posts. He saw merit in them and wanted to perform research that would show whether I was right or not.
I am hearing. I know that I am offering some pushback. But I am also at least TRYING to listen. We all have a hard time listening to messages that say we have long been doing something wrong in an important way.
I AM intense. There is no question that that is a reality. I am friendly and polite and warm. But I am intense and determined. And there is no question whatsoever but that that turns a good number of people off in my discussions with them. It makes the Goons go positively mad. But it causes at least some unease on the part of lots of people who are not at all goonish in their behavior.
I would be happy to rein it in if I believed that that would bring good results for everyone. But it amazes me that Shiller’s research has been out there for 33 years now and very few people have explored the implications of it in any great depth. I didn’t know that when this started. When the Goons started attacking me, I looked around for friendly sites and found that there was not at that time one site on the internet exploring the implications of Shiller’s ideas in depth (now my site is the one site that does that).
Think about Wade Pfau, the researcher who contacted me to work with him. He told me that he was learning new things from me on an almost daily basis. And he has a Ph.D. in Economics! It should not have been possible for someone like me to teach Wade anything. But I taught him lots of very important things, according to what he told me in the hundreds of e-mails we exchanged.
I see that as evidence that my intensity can be a positive in some circumstances. I could have folded up when the Goons attacked me and I never would have learned these things myself. I didn’t. I dug and dug and dug and dug. And I learned and learned and learned and learned. That’s what gives my work value, in my assessment. That’s the good side of my intensity.
The bad side of it is that it may turn some people off. I need to deal with that if that really is so (and I think there is a good bit of evidence that you are right on this point). I am not dismissing what you are saying. I am struggling with the puzzle of how to be intense when that is a good thing to be and to be more reserved when that is the better thing. The intense person is inclined to see the good in intensity and not the bad, even though seeing only the good may hurt him in some ways.
It’s very hard for me to write short responses. When I detect that someone has an interest in the ideas, I want to share EVERYTHING. Sometimes I write an absurdly long response and people complain about it and they don’t realize that I cut it in half before posting it because I didn’t want to upset people by going on too long. That really happens! There was one woman at Motley Fool who put up a thread about me that she called “Death by Verbosity.” So you are pointing to something real. I acknowledge that.
My challenge is to retain the good that comes from caring deeply without scaring people or turning them off. It’s my problem, not yours. I am grateful to you for trying to help. I am not agreeing 100 percent because I feel that I see good that comes from the intensity too. I don’t feel that I can apologize for caring so much. But my ultimate goal is to get the message out and, if you point me in a direction that makes me more effective in getting the message out, you are doing me a big favor.
Thanks for trying to break through my super-strong defenses!
Rob
Anonymous says
It doesn’t matter who or what you think you are. What is important is what people see you as. Perception is everything.
Rob says
Perceptions change with changes in valuation levels, Anonymous. People who thought Buy-and-Hold was groovy in early 1929 didn’t think it was so hot in late 1929.
But we’ll have to wait to see how things play out this time to know for sure.
Rob
Anonymous says
Perceptions of you and VII didn’t change after 2008/2009. What makes you think another drop will be any different?
Rob says
I’ve answered this one numerous times now, Anonymous.
Perceptions DID change in early 2009. Check out the threads at the Bogleheads Forum that appeared at the time and you can see this for yourself. There were posters there calling Mel Linduaer and Taylor Larimore liars at that time. That NEVER happened in earlier days. There was a big change in the board dynamic as a result of the drop to a P/E10 value of 13, which was as low as it got.
The drop to 13 only remained in place for a few months. And then prices shot up to levels that caused the anger to dissipate.
Bear markets don’t end when the P/E10 level drops to 13 for a few months and then returns to insanely high levels. Bear markets end when prices drop to 8 or lower and then remain there for YEARS. That’s where we are headed (assuming that stocks continue to perform in the future at least somewhat as they always have in the past).
I am not saying that the entire world is going to turn on you in one day following the next crash. But we will see the sort of shift that we saw in early 2009 multiplied by 10. After a month or two we will see a few posters calling out you Goons for your b.s. Then the number doing that will grow. Then there will be an avalanche. Once something is written up in the big papers, the thing will spin out of control.
I don’t want to see it spin out of control. I do not advocate this, I OPPOSE it. But I am not going to be able to stop the change of perceptions that we will see following the crash any more than I am able today to reverse the perceptions at a time when at least some of the worst aspects of the crash can still be avoided. I am not Superman. I will be doing all that I can to help you. But the full truth here is that there is only so much that I will be able to do.
If we survive the deepening of the economic crisis, people like Bogle are going to then support the idea of a national debate on these questions so that we can get to the bottom of things. Then we will all see a huge advance in our understanding of how stock investing works. So at least we will never have to live through something like this again.
We are all in this together. I stand to lose as much as you Goons if we go into the Second Great Depression and you Goons of course stand to lose as much as me if that happens. This is bigger than any of us. It is in fact bigger than ALL of us put together. It’s bigger than all investors. It affects all PEOPLE who live in developed economies, not just investors in the stock markets of those countries.
If we make it, we will live richer lives than we ever before imagined possible. And we will all be grateful re what we have learned. Which is of course as it should be.
If we don’t make it, I’m going to cry. What else can I do?
I’m not going to sit around today worrying about what happens if we don’t make it. That won’t help. It’s a huge waste of energy, in my assessment.
I would rather do what I can to avoid the outcome that would make me cry if it comes about. So that’s my focus for now.
I hope that helps a tiny bit.
Rob
Anonymous says
I don’t see the threads calling Taylor and Mel liars. Can you provide a link?
Rob says
I am not going to find the link for you, Anonymous. I mentioned it at the time either in a blog post or on a podcast, possibly both.
If you want to find it, you’ll find it. Or you could ask Larimore and Lindauer. They would tell you in private.
If the Bogleheads Forum permitted honest posting, you could just ask there. But of course that is out for obvious reasons. But you can ask privately and find out what you need to know (as if you didn’t know already!).
Anyway, it will all come out in the court proceedings and in the many news articles we will see re these matters once legal actions (both civil and criminal) are filed against you. I WILL go to the trouble to track down the link for the benefit of the reporters writing those articles and for the benefit of the people serving on the juries in those cases.
I naturally wish you the best of luck with it (while also wishing the millions of middle-class investors whose lives are in the process of being destroyed the best of luck with it as well).
Also, I have plans to prepare an article for posting sometime in 2017 that will offer a listing of the 101 most important acts of financial fraud. That article will provide the link to the Bogleheads Forum thread that you are seeking. In the event that the thread has been doctored (Surprise! Surprise!), I have a copy of the complete thread in my files, so I will be able to provide the words that appeared before the thread was doctored. And the lawyers will be able to recapture the original thread when the various trials are held. The members of your jury will of course be free to reach the obvious conclusions re what doctoring of the threads signifies re the state of mind of those who performed the doctoring.
Rob