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:
What you are doing, is not helping anyone. Regardless, you still have time to work a job AND troll the internet. Average Americans go to work every day. Why is it that you cannot do the same?
It’s helping millions, Sammy. There are not millions today who have been helped in a concrete sense. But there are thousands. And those thousands will become millions following the next price crash, when every web site on the internet will be opened to honest posting on the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.
We are watching a process play out over time. It’s easy to get frustrated that it is not playing out as fast as most of us would like to see it play out. We don’t have too much choice, you know? Things are what they are. We express our deepest beliefs re what we are as a society in our laws against financial fraud and in our posting rules prohibiting abusive tactics and so forth. I think it would be fair to say that a nation’s deepest beliefs will ultimately rule what can and what cannot be said re how stock investing works.
Is it even possible for the rational mind to imagine it playing out any other way? Given that we know how this is going to play out and that we know that things will be resolved in a positive and constructive and life-affirming way, do we really have any choice but to just hang in there and to continue giving this our best possible shot regardless of any abusiveness we happen to encounter from the Goons among us? I don’t see any other practical and realistic options. I am of course heartened by the thousands of ordinary investors and experts in this field who have expressed a desire that the entire internet be opened to honest posting, suggesting a belief on their end that they too see no possibility of a negative outcome in the long run.
Did the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau not advance the ball in a major way? That research showed that investors who are willing to adjust their stock allocations in response to big swings in stock prices can thereby reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. Not helpful? Huh? I connected with Wade after suffering YEARS of abuse from you Goons. Had I folded my cards the first time one of you threatened to kill my wife and children as my “punishment” for having “crossed” you, that research would not exist today.
It exists. It will be featured on the front page of the New York Times in the days following the next price crash. Millions will be helped. It sometimes takes a little courage to change the world for the better. That’s the price one pays. I have a funny feeling that we are going to see thousands stepping forward and showing a willingness to pay that price when they see the human misery that is likely going to follow from a deepening of the economic crisis.
We are a good people. We will get there. Can you try to have a little faith in us? Can we just agree to wait to see how things play out following the next price crash before jumping to any hasty and ill-advised conclusions that the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research is not in the process of helping MILLIONS to live richer (in every sense of the word) lives?
I am afraid that I am not buying what you are selling, my old friend.
That said, I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.
Hang in there. It gets better. A LOT better.
It takes time. But it will be worth it 500 times over. I am sure.
Rob
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