Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:
No, it is YOU that has the disagreement. Bogle and Shiller have said not to time the market. YOU created the story. The words don’t line up, so then you say they are lying, it it is still all part of your story. You keep trying to blame everyone else, experts, goons (also made up by you), media, etc. Why? Because you need to find someone to blame for your failed retirement plan and to avoid the public embarrassment that has gone along with it.
Let’s see how it all plays out following the next price crash, Sammy.
It’s one thing to know that there is 35 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there is zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for even a single long-term investor. It’s something else to look into the eyes of the millions of people whose lives you have destroyed with your relentless promotion of the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind and not feel humbled by the experience.
Jack Bogle is a good man. He is going to come around. Robert Shiller is a good man. He is going to come around. The other Wall Street Con Men are good men. They are going to come around. God help me for saying so, but I believe that there is good buried somewhere deep even in you Goons. You are going to come around.
When we are all working together, we are going to be grateful that there were some among us who were not willing to go along with the con and who instead directed their energies to exploring and developing the new research-based ideas re how stock investing works in the real world. I know that I started feeling a whole big bunch better about myself when I got off the Buy-and-Hold train and embraced the idea of doing honest work in this field.
That shouldn’t be such a controversial choice. In other fields of human endeavor, it is common for people to do honest work and it is common for others not only to tolerate that but actually to encourage it. I believe we are going to see the rules that govern human behavior in every field of human endeavor apply to the stock investing field as well following the next price crash and the worsening of the economic crisis that may well come with it.
We’ll see, you know? I certainly will be rooting for all good things to happen for you regardless of how this stuff works out. I believe that as a nation we are working through a process. I believe that the good news here is 50 times more good than the ugly stuff that we have seen for 14 years now is ugly. We all just need to hang in there and have faith in our fellow humans and let all the good stuff play out before us.
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters in any event, old friend.
Rob
Anonymous says
Uh oh. Those evil buy, hold and rebalance goons are controlling the media. Here is another one of their evil articles promoting a get rich quick scheme on the CBS website:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-rebalance-your-mutual-fund-portfolio/
Rob says
Casual evil is the worst kind of evil.
But when Bogle comes around, all the rest will come around too. I am sure.
Take good care, man.
Rob
Anonymous says
If Bogle hasn’t changed his mind by now, what makes you think he will. We have had many drops followed by recoveries.
Rob says
Not since 1981 we haven’t. Prior to 1981, Bogle had a perfectly good reason for not knowing how important it is to exercise price discipline when buying stocks — the peer-reviewed research showing how essential it is to do this did not exist.
A secular bull market began forming in 1981. We have not yet reached the end of that bull market. We reached the peak of it in early 2000 and valuations have been on a gradual ride down ever since. But we are still at insanely high prices today. So Bogle has not yet seen with his own eyes (he of course has access to the same historical data as everyone else) the human misery that inevitably follows from the heavy promotion of Buy-and-Hold “strategies.”
When he sees with his own eyes what his investing “ideas” have done to millions of people, he will change his mind. Everything we know about the man tells us that. So we will all be able to in one day tap into the benefits of 35 years of peer-reviewed research.
You Goons focus on the negative side of this story. I do not. I think it would be fair to say that the good news here is 50 times more good than the bad news here is bad. 100 years from now, few will be looking back and saying “oh, how terrible it was that the Goons continued their cover-up for 14 years.” People will be saying “how wonderful it is that the humans of that day were able to work together to combine the power of Bogle’s pre-1981 insights with the power of Shiller’s post-1981 insights to make life so much better for each and every one of us.”
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event, Anonymous. We will have to wait to see how things go following the next price crash to find out for sure. I naturally wish you the best of luck with it.
Rob
Anonymous says
So you have been waiting since 1981 for your big crash. What a brilliant plan.
Rob says
I haven’t been waiting since 1981 for a crash, Anonymous.
If your emotions were under sufficient control to permit your brain to work properly, you would know that from what is written above and on thousands and thousands of earlier occasions.
It’s not that you do not have a working brain. In ordinary circumstances, your brain works just fine.
Why doesn’t it work in these circumstances?
It’s the Get Rich Quick thing. It hurts to be taken in by a Get Rich Quick scheme. We saw the same sort of emotionalism with all of the Bernie Madoff investors. People hate to admit that they were taken. And so they go nuts trying to pretend that peer-reviewed research doesn’t say what it obviously says.
I feel for you. I don’t like to see anybody in pain.
But I would not feel good making a buck off of your pain.
I feel better telling the truth about these matters and letting the chips fall where they may.
You hate me with a burning hate because I elected on the morning of May 13, 2002, to tell the truth re safe withdrawal rates. So be it, you know? I have always been kind to you. I always will be kind to you. But I will not ever lie to you. I will continue to tell the truth re these matters. And I will just have to live with your hate and the consequences that follow from it.
The fact that Buy-and-Hold inspires such hate among a good percentage of those who follow it (and inspires tolerance of hate in a much larger number) tells me that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage. My aim is to bury the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things. It is important work. Once we have buried Buy-and-Hold 30 feet in the ground, we can all get about the business of learning what the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research (the most important 35 years of peer-reviewed research in the history of investing analysis) has to teach us.
Hate is not the answer. Love is the answer. That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.
Rob