Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
You miss the point.
What if your interpretation of the data and its implications–which you admit is at odds with everyone including Shiller himself–is flawed?
What if you are wrong? Is that not possible?
I’ve said that it is possible hundreds of times. You know that. Why do you play dumb re something like this?
Nothing that I have said is at odds with Shiller. Everything that I have ever written re stock investing follows from Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings of 1981. Every single word.
Shiller doesn’t spell things out the way I do. I agree with that much. I spell things out in much greater detail and with much more clarity and depth. I say things that Shiller has never said publicly. But everything that I say follows from what Shiller showed with his research. It’s just a question of proceeding down the logic chain step by step by step by step.
You should be asking why Shiller doesn’t proceed down the logic chain the way I do? Why doesn’t Shiller publicly discuss the implications of his research? Why is there not one word in Shiller’s book addressing the question of what investors should do with their money given his revolutionary findings? That’s odd. People buy investing books to learn what to do with their money. Why does Shiller address every question BUT the most important one of all?
And why don’t people like you ask him that question?
You don’t ask him because you want to remain in your fantasyland where Buy-and-Hold works. It would cause you pain if Shiller were to speak clearly and honestly to the question of what investors should do with their money as a result of his “revolutionary” findings of 1981.
Shiller doesn’t address these questions because he understands that it would hurt you and because he understands that you would attack him the same way you attack me if he did so and, like all the other humans, he prefers not to be attacked so viciously.
Shiller is doing the right thing for Shiller. Is he doing the right thing for you? Is he doing the right thing for Bogle? Is he doing the right thing for Pfau? Is he doing the right thing for his profession? Is he doing the right thing for his country?
You know what I think, Curious. I think we have to violate the crazy Social Taboo that has been holding us back for 35 years now. We now know how stock investing works. That’s wonderful. That’s a huge advance. But it is an advance that is doing us little practical good because, while we now know intellectually how stock investing works, we don’t talk about what we know and as a result we don’t know it with enough clarity and confidence to take much advantage of what we know.
I want to take full advantage of what we have learned from the past 35 years of peer-reviewed research. I want to leave Buy-and-Hold in the dust and move on to something a lot better. That’s where you and I differ. That’s why we are working at cross purposes. You want to protect Buy-and-Hold from effective challenges and I want to blow Buy-and-Hold up and move on to something better, the something that would have become the dominant investing model way back in 1981 had only there never been a Buy-and-Hold. If we didn’t have these rich and powerful Wall Street Con Men protecting this Get Rich Quick approach, we all would have become Valuation-Informed Indexers a long time ago.
Say that I am wrong. Is there any harm that could possibly come of it? I sure cannot see what that might be. If I am wrong, there are thousands and thousands of Buy-and-Holders happy to point out any flaws in my arguments. So my ideas will never catch on if I am wrong. The reality is quite to the contrary. If I am wrong, that will come out and the showing that I am wrong will make people more confident in Buy-and-Hold. If I am wrong and the Buy-and-Holders are right, opening every investing discussion board and blog to honest posting will prove to be a plus for Buy-and-Hold. Which is a good thing presuming that I am wrong and the Buy-and-Holders are right.
The only thing that could possibly justify a ban is that the Buy-and-Holders worry that I might be right and that Valuation-Informed Indexing might prevail in the marketplace of ideas. That possibility represents a threat to the pocketbooks of the Wall Street Con Men and a threat to the pride of you Goons. You hate me with a burning hate not because you think that I might be wrong but because you have seen how many people are drawn to what I say until you Goons step in and destroy the reasoned conversations that people want to have with injections of insane abusiveness.
I will win in time. Because we live in a great country with great laws and great people and both common sense and 35 years of peer-reviewed research support me and nothing but threats of violence and career destruction support Buy-and-Hold. Buy-and-Hold is hanging on by a thread in the year 2016. Buy-and-Hold is going down. The sooner it goes down, the fewer lives you will have destroyed and the shorter will be your prison sentence. So we all benefit by letting the millions of middle-class people who need to know about the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research learn what they need to learn.
I wish that everyone were speaking out today, Curious. Shiller, sure. But not just Shiller. Everyone. The answer is not for me to stop speaking out. The answer is for Shiller and all the others to join me.
My take.
Rob
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