Set forth below is the text of a comment posted at this blog by one of the Buy-and-Hold Goons in response to my suggestion that Jack Bogle contact Robert Shiller to seek clarification of Shiller’s beliefs re whether investors need to exercise price discipline when buying stocks:
We need to get Shiller to address these matters. You cannot do the subject complete justice and I cannot do the subject complete justice. We need Shiller to address the subject head-on in a clear and complete and firm statement. If you really believe that Shiller thinks that long-term timing does not work, you should feel comfortable encouraging him to address the matter.
You Goons have contact with Mel Linduaer and Mel Lindauer has contact with John Bogle. If you asked nicely, Lindauer would be willing to ask Bogle nicely to ask Shiller nicely whether he believes that long-term timing works or not. And Shiller is a nice man. Shiller would agree to the request if Bogle put it to him in a nice manner. So we have the means by working together to get a FINAL answer to this perplexing question.
The key is that you need to be open to hearing what Shiller really thinks. He may issue a statement agreeing with me rather than with you and Bogle. So you are taking a risk going ahead with this suggestion to contact Lindauer. I encourage you to do it. If Shiller says “this Rob Bennett fellow is a fool, I do not AT ALL believe in long-term timing, I think thus guy is dangerous,” I will write a column here reporting on what he said and putting that statement in the headline.
Working together, we could learn something important. Working together, we could advance the ball in an important way for lots of people. If you are game, I am certainly game.
Bogle and Shiller have made their positions clear. There is nothing more that needs to be said.
Anonymous says
You wrote this 7 months ago:
“I am debating not even going to FinCon16 in September because I may want to devote my time and energies in this new direction. I have not made a decision but I expect to do so within the next few weeks. Regardless of which way I go with the FinCon decision, I more and more expect to be moving toward directing more of my efforts at political sites and at social media sites.”
You did not go to FinCon, presumably because you devoted all your time and energies in this new direction. When can we expect to see Rob Bennett 2.0 on all the major political and social media sites?
Anonymous says
Rob,
It looks like you have things turned around. The part in italics is what you said and the part in plain text is what the other person said.
Rob says
The part in italics is what you said and the part in plain text is what the other person said.
That’s correct but that’s the way it is supposed to be for this one. Please look at the introductory line that I wrote. I don’t say that this is a comment that I wrote but that it is a comment that one of you Goons wrote. So the language in italic is my language that prompted the Goon comment and the comment itself (in regular type) is the Goon comment.
I can see how is would be a bit confusing because all of the others that I can recall were done the other way (with the Goon language in italic). But there is a reason why I did it the other way on this occasion. The news is the Goon statement. So that needs to be the focus in this particular case.
Rob
Rob says
You did not go to FinCon, presumably because you devoted all your time and energies in this new direction. When can we expect to see Rob Bennett 2.0 on all the major political and social media sites?
I believe that there will come a day when you will see the story of the 15-year cover-up of the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies on all the major political and social media sites. But I wouldn’t dare to say how soon that will happen. Given the history, my guess today is that we are not going to see that happen until we see another price crash that shakes people up. I of course entertain hopes that it will happen sooner because it would be better for me and for the entire country and even for you Goons for us to see it happen sooner. But I don’t put the odds of our seeing that little dream of mine come true at better than 50/50. I put the odds at a good bit less than 50/50.
I didn’t elect not to attend FinCon2016 because I didn’t have sufficient time and energies to do that as well as to get involved with political sites. I elected not to attend because I think we need to see groundwork done before people at FinCon will be open to the message. The purpose of contacting political sites is to lay that groundwork. So the two things are indeed connected. But it is more that I have come to a conclusion that one needs to be done before the other than that there is not enough time and energy available for both.
I sent one article to a non-investing site about one month ago. That article was not accepted. I would describe that submission as a test case. My goal once I get started on the new path will be to submit one article to a non-investing site each week until one gets accepted and attracts some attention. When the publicity ball gets rolling a bit (probably after the next crash, but perhaps sooner), I will pick up the pace to where I am submitting several articles each week. But until I see some forward movement, my expectation is that I will push myself to submit only one per week.
I am trying to get a few things out of the way before I submit the second one. The main thing is that I want to develop a list of sites that I will be submitting to. I have notes re this that I have been keeping for a few years. Every now and again, I see an article on the internet that makes me think “this would be a good site to submit something to.” I have not followed through in the past. Now I am going to start doing that. I would like to have a list of a good number of sites first. I expect to get to work on putting together the list next week. For this week, I have a few administrative things that I want to catch up on. But my guess is that I will put together the list next week and then send out the second item the following week.
I hope that helps a tiny bit, my good friend.
Rob