Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Why throw in the prison story? Everyone thinks you are a bit nutty when you make claims of your importance and getting $500 million. The prison stuff just makes you look like an insane lunatic.
I mention the prison thing because I see it as a critical element of the story at this point in the proceedings.
I believe that, if Greaney had it to do over, he would play it differently. I don’t believe that he would say he agrees with me. But he would look for some less aggressive way to express his disagreement than threatening to kill my wife and children. And Bogle would play things differently if he had to do it over and Lindauer would play things differently and all of you Goons would play things differently.
For a long time I thought that would ultimately prove to be the answer — the Buy-and-Holders would eventually come to conclude that they should take a softer line and then everything would work out fine. Those who had an interest in Valuation-Informed Indexing would be permitted to learn what they wanted to learn and those who preferred Buy-and-Hold would tune out what those interested in Valuation-Informed Indexing were saying amongst themselves.
I stopped believing that that could ever happen when you Goons threatened to destroy Wade Pfau’s career if he continued doing honest research. That’s so far over the line that it is not possible for me even to describe how far over the line it is. When that happened, I was forced to try to think through what possible motivation could account for such behavior.
The only thing that I could come up with is, that since your Campaign of Terror had already caused an economic crisis, you Goons had come to the conclusion that you could never agree to any compromise whatsoever, that things had already gone so far that you would be going to prison if even a single web site ever permitted honest posting and so you might as well just do completely crazy stuff on the “in for a dime, in for a dollar” theory. So there is no longer any possibility of things being worked out in a positive manner.
Only the announcement of prison sentences can end the nasty side of this. When prison sentences are announced, all of the many people who long to do honest work in this field but worry what you Goons will do to their careers if they “cross” you will be freed to help the rest of us out once they hear about your prison sentences. The announcement of prison sentences brings all the ugly side of these discussions to an end and thereby permits all of the wonderful stuff to blossom.
Does all of that not make good sense?
Rob
We just had a meeting with the senior goon leaders. We now see the errors of our ways and plead for mercy so that you don’t throw us all in prison. What more can we do for you, Rob?
We will see how things play out following the next price crash, Commander.
I will put in a good word for you. I have offered to do that on many occasions and I intend to follow through on that promise. I am not Superman. There are limits to what I can do for you. But what I can do I will do. The rest is up to the people of the United States.
I naturally wish you the best of luck with all your future life endeavors, my good friend.
Rob
“I mention the prison thing because I see it as a critical element of the story at this point in the proceedings.”
There is no story. There are no proceedings. And most of all, there is no “prison thing”. These are only lame excuses for years of sloth.
I’ll change my mind when just one person (not named Rob Bennett) says I’m wrong.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, Anonymous.
Please take good care, my old friend.
Rob
“I’ll change my mind when just one person (not named Rob Bennett) says I’m wrong.”
Rob,
You do have thousands that say you are right, so you should be able to find just one person to back you up on this as a way of shutting this down, right?
We have not had thousands say that I am right. We have had thousands say that they would like to see honest posting permitted at every investing discussion board and blog on the internet. That’s not quite the same thing.
I wouldn’t have said that I was right about the things that I say today if I had been asked on the morning of May 13, 2002. People learn by talking things over. I have had the benefit of 15 years of talking this stuff over with lots of different people coming at it from lots of different perspectives. Had you Goons not invaded our boards, all of those thousands would have enjoyed that same benefit and there would be no problem today. But you did what you did. So we will have to wait until the next price crash, when concern over our nation’s economic future will cause enough of those of us who love our country to unite to take action against you.
I won’t put forward one person who backs me up following the next price crash. I will put forward thousands.
And it will be the members of your jury who will determine the length of your prison sentence. That one is not my call.
I hope that works for you, my long-time Goon friend.
Rob
But isn’t there just one person out there that says you are right?
Not in the face of the most brutally abusive Campaign of Terror in the history of the internet conducted as part of the most sweeping act of financial fraud in the history of the United States, led by wealthy and powerful Wall Street Con Men like Jack Bogle.
But the people of the United States will prevail, Commander. I am 100 percent certain.
I am afraid that we will have to wait until the next price crash to see our laws against financial fraud enforced. But we will get there. It’s a process. We have come a long, long way.
I hope that works for you.
Rob
But people can support you anonymously so that they won’t be threatened by the goons, right?
They can.
I have had site owners write me and tell me that they love my stuff, that they view my site as the most important investing site on the internet, but then say that they need to ban me because their readers have been misled by the Wall Street Con Men and have their retirements riding on Buy-and-Hold and that they get upset when they learn what the peer-reviewed research really says. This is the biggest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States. There is nothing else even in a remotely close second place. If you added every earlier act of financial fraud together, the combination wouldn’t come close to matching what we have seen with the Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
That’s why I am so opposed to the idea of adding my name to this felony. Going to prison is not on my bucket list.
I have a funny feeling that we won’t have any problem getting lots of people to come forward following the next price crash. So it all works out in the end. Not in the way that I wanted and not in the way that you Goons wanted and not in the way that the millions of middle-class investors wanted. But the bottom line is that we live in a great country and all signs are that we will be pulling out of this crisis following the damage we will see done to millions of middle-class investors during the next price crash.
I hope that works for you.
Rob
“I have a funny feeling”
You’ve had lots of funny feelings over the years. Have any ever come true?
The correct answer is No, and therefore the correct conclusion would be to stop relying on funny feelings. Correct, that is, for anyone not named Rob Bennett.
I experienced a funny feeling on the morning of May 13, 2002, that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site might not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins, Anonymous.
Would you say that the evidence of the past 15 years points to a conclusion that that funny feeling was on point or that it was not?
Rob
The evidence is that Greaney is living a comfy retirement. You are not. Greaney is not obsessing over stuff that happened 15 years ago. You are. So that funny feeling in 2002 was worse than wrong. It was a personal disaster.
“I experienced a funny feeling on the morning of May 13, 2002, that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site might not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins, Anonymous.
Would you say that the evidence of the past 15 years points to a conclusion that that funny feeling was on point or that it was not?”
Based on what Wade Pfau said, no your funny feeling was not on point.
Based on what Wade Pfau said, no your funny feeling was not on point.
Okay, Anonymous.
Please take good care.
Rob
The evidence is that Greaney is living a comfy retirement. You are not.
I wouldn’t feel even a tiny bit comfortable knowing that I had a prison sentence in my future and that lots of my friends also had prison sentences in their future. So I am 100 percent relieved that I played it the way that I played it.
I consider John a friend. So if he really feels comfortable (I have my doubts), then I am happy for him.
But it is not for me.
And it is not even remotely a close call.
I am going to continue playing it the way I have played it for 15 years now. I am 100 percent sure that things are going to work out well for every last one of us.
But we will have to wait to see what happens following the next price crash to know for certain.
I certainly don’t know it all. I obviously could be wrong. So we will just have to wait to see how it all plays out.
Rob
Does John consider you to be his friend? How about Wade, Jack and Mel?
I consider all of these people friends because I have learned important things from them.
I am confident that John and Mel do not consider me a friend.
I am certain that Wade does consider me a friend. He is pained that he chose his career over his friendship with me. But he had two small children to support and he felt that he had no choice given the circumstances in which he was placed.
I don’t know Jack Bogle well enough to be sure of his feelings. My guess is that they are close to Wade’s, that he thinks of me as a friend but that he feels that circumstances do not permit him to acknowledge that friendship today.
Rob
Who has caused more harm, Jack or John?
That’s a good question, Anonymous.
John Greaney has obviously engaged in behavior that is more shocking. Jack Bogle has never advanced death threats or any of that sort of thing.
But Jack Bogle has far more influence on the world because of his reputation. There wouldn’t be a John Greaney if Jack Bogle had come clean in 1981 or at any time between 1981 and 2002. Greaney was embarrassed for his friends to see that he got an important number wrong in his study. He feels that all he did was to use the same methodology that had been used by lots of big shots — So why should be be called out on it? That’s not a legitimate argument. We all are responsible for our own work. You can’t say “oh, these Trinity guys got it wrong, so it is okay for me to get it wrong.” But Greaney does indeed have a gripe with Bogle and with the others who failed to speak up for all those years on the conflict between the core Buy-and-Hold assumption and Shiller’s findings.
I think that I would have to say that Jack Bogle has done more harm.
I don’t think that Jack Bogle intended any of this to happen. I think that, if you had told him all this was going to happen back when he was starting out, he would have been horrified. I think that in 1981 he suffered cognitive dissonance. He just told himself “this cannot be so.” Valuations were so low at that time that I think he persuaded himself that no harm would come from not speaking up for a time.
Then, when valuations got entirely out of hand and the danger of not speaking up became very grave, the thought was that it would be too embarrassing to speak out given how long the cover-up had already continued. Now it just keeps getting worse and worse. The economic crisis made it all the more important that people come clean and all the more difficult to do so. It can never get easier. It just gets harder and harder and harder. But who wants to acknowledge having caused the second biggest economic crisis in U.S. history?
We all share a bit of the blame, in my assessment. We live in communities. There are lots of people who claim to be Jack Bogle’s friends. Why didn’t any of them go to him and implore him to come clean? What kind of friendship is it when you are not there for the object of your friendship when he needs you?
The Get Rich Quick urge resides within all of us. We all played a part in this. Greaney did serious damage. But it is my view that Jack Bogle bears a larger share of the blame because he is in a position of greater responsibility. His words count for more. With great power comes great responsibility.
My take.
Rob
Do you think John, Mel, Jack and Wade are all scared that they are going to prison?
They are all ashamed of their behavior.
I don’t think they permit themselves to think about the consequences of their actions. They are ashamed and they want the cover-up to continue and they convince themselves that, as long as all who are involved in the cover-up stick together, it can continue forever.
It cannot. There are economic consequences that follow from keeping millions of middle-class investors from knowing what they need to know to invest effectively. Those consequences will force things out into the open.
They fear that. But they block themselves from understanding clearly what they fear. They “know” that prison is a risk and yet they do not permit themselves to think about it enough to truly “know” it.
The question that you are asking does not have a simple “yes” or “no” answer. If they thought it through, they would know. They stop themselves from thinking it through. But how do they “know” not to think it through? They know how long the cover-up has been going on, they know what Shiller said in his book, they know that Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize, they know there is an economic crisis. They know enough.
Does that help?
Do you think that Bernie Madoff knew precisely where he would end up? If he had, he wouldn’t have done what he did. He lied to himself just as he lied to others. He persuaded himself that he was helping people and that he would never be caught.
Humans lie when they find themselves in tight spots. Then, they lie to cover up the earlier lies. The deceptions grow bigger and bigger over time. Eventually they grow so big that the people who told them cannot recognize their no-longer-little lies as the ones they started so long ago.
John, Mel, Jack and Wade all know that they have done wrong. They also know that they have also done good things. They rationalize the bad things by focusing on the good things. The bad things have grown so big that they feel overwhelmed. They feel that the answer is to ignore the bad things and hope that they will go away.
I don’t think the bad things will go away as the result of being ignored. The bad things need to be faced and overcome. We all should have helped these four cope with the bad things when they first became aware of them. Now it is harder. But not as hard as it will be later. The easiest time to deal with them is the earliest time possible to deal with them. As of today, the earliest time possible to deal with them is today.
The four are obviously scared or they would behave differently. They are scared of a lot of things. I don’t think that prison is the first thing that jumps into their minds when they allow themselves briefly to feel their fears. But when they focus on the question long enough to gain some clarity about it, a fear of prison is one of the fears that begins to take form before their eyes. Then they distract themselves again.
I don’t think they sit around all day thinking about prison. But, yes, it is a thought that is “out there” for them and that they are fighting. That’s sad. They should be enjoying the advances that we have all achieved over the past 36 years, not worrying even in a vague, foggy way about prison possibilities. We have taken a 100 percent positive thing and turned it into something negative.
I hope that helps a bit.
Rob
“They are all ashamed of their behavior.”
How do you know this? Do you read minds?
I observe behavior.
People don’t put forward death threats when they believe that there is peer-reviewed research supporting what they are saying. Have you ever seen a Valuation-Informed Indexer put forward a death threat? It has never happened. We really have peer-reviewed research on our side. So we feel that it is beneath us to engage in such behavior.
The Buy-and-Holders really do believe in Buy-and-Hold to the extent that they follow the strategy themselves. The fact that they follow the strategy is legitimate evidence that they believe in it. But they lack confidence. It defies common sense to think that there could be a market where it is not necessary to practice price discipline. So every Buy-and-Holder has doubts about the merit of his strategy. Those doubts evidence themselves in defensiveness. The Buy-and-Holders lash out when they are questioned because they cannot bear to hear challenges to a strategy in which they are desperately trying to maintain a belief.
Just ask yourself generally why people make threats of violence. Are there any cases where it is not done out of weakness? People make threats of violence when they are desperate, when they feel that acceptable means of making their point will not work. I cannot think of any exceptions to that rule. You don’t need to be able to read minds to know that the Buy-and-Holders feel shame re their behavior.
This is the sort of thing that should be talked about on investing boards and blogs on a daily basis. The core idea of Buy-and-Hold is that investing is a rational behavior. Because the Buy-and-Hold paradigm today reigns supreme, almost all discussion relates in some way to rational behavior. Investing is treated as if it were a science. We see numbers and graphics and arguments with logic chains and all this sort of thing. This stuff is impressive. This stuff takes a lot of people in. It took me in for a long time.
But that stuff misses a big part of the story. We don’t talk about the fury that the Buy-and-Holders feel when their ideas are challenged. That’s a critical part of the story. That’s emotion, not logic. That shouldn’t be there if Fama is right that investing is a 100 percent rational endeavor. That’s the sort of thing that you should only see if Shiller is right that investing is largely an emotional endeavor. We see behavior on our boards and blogs on a daily basis that supports Shiller’s research and people do not comment on it. They are blind to it because of their desperate need to believe in Buy-and-Hold because their retirements are riding on its legitimacy.
All of this stuff is tangled together. This is what makes it so difficult to achieve the progress that deep in our hearts we all want to achieve. The Buy-and-Holders want to be able to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent just as much as the Valuation-Informed Indexers want to. Why the heck wouldn’t they? But to acknowledge the research showing the merit of Valuation-Informed Indexing would be to acknowledge the cover-up. The Buy-and-Holders cannot bear to acknowledge having been part of a cover-up. Cover-ups are not rational and the Buy-and-Holders like to think of themselves as perfectly rational creatures. They are trapped in webs spun by the contradictions of their own flawed logical premises.
Look at the hate you spew in every post you advance here, Anonymous. That’s shame talking. I didn’t do anything to bring that out in you, it was there before I came on the scene. All that I did on the morning of May 13, 2002, was to ask a question. I didn’t even say “valuations should be counted.” I said: “SHOULD valuations be counted?” I asked a question and lots of community members responded very positively to the question. That’s what you want to see on a discussion board. That’s how you launch a learning experience for everyone.
The Buy-and-Holders responded with rage. Why? It’s not because there is something wrong with asking that question. It’s because the question is a good one. The Buy-and-Holders were smart enough to see that the question was a good one and they felt anger at themselves for not having explored it at an earlier time when they could have saved themselves years of travel down the wrong investing path. So they exploded. They weren’t really angry at me, they were angry at themselves. They directed their anger at me because they were too afraid to examine their own mistakes. They ACTED as if they were angry at me. That’s what shame makes us do. When we feel ashamed, we strike out at friends who happen to say things that make us uncomfortable because we fear that their questions are going to expose our secrets.
All of this needs to get out. Not to hurt the Buy-and-Holders. That’s how you always frame it. You always suggest that Rob is out to get the Buy-and-Holders because he points out bad stuff that they have done. The reality is just the opposite. I see the Buy-and-Holders as my friends. I admire the work that they have done, I feel that they are trying to do the same thing that I am trying to do — develop more effective investing strategies. So I say things aimed at helping my Buy-and-Hold friends get out of the trap in which they find themselves caught.
My problem is that the Buy-and-Holders were in the trap for a long time before I even came on the scene. Greaney knew perfectly well that his study did not contain a valuations adjustment long before the morning of May 13, 2002. That’s why he lashed out. Lots of community members were fascinated by the question. They had never considered it before and getting the safe withdrawal rate right was important to them. So they loved the discussion that they saw developing. But Greaney understood that the discussion would lead to criticism of his study if it continued. So he lashed out. And the ones who had enjoyed the discussion stopped asking for it. They wanted to have a discussion but they did not care nearly as strongly about having it as Greaney and his friends felt about blocking it. For the people who wanted to have the discussion, exploring the realities was a nice idea. For the people who felt shame about the cover-up, it was a matter of life and death to stop it from going forward.
This is the reality of investing analysis in the year 2017. The Buy-and-Holders are good and smart people. But because they are flawed humans like all the rest of us, they made a mistake a good number of years back that put them on the wrong track. In normal circumstances, it would be no biggie. In normal circumstances, someone would point out the error, they would say “sorry about that” and we would all move on. But in this case the thing discovered was truly “revolutionary.” Shiller’s 1981 findings turn everything we once thought we knew about stock investing on its head. The hardest mistakes to acknowledge are the really big ones because they cause the greatest feelings of shame.
The Buy-and-Holders could not bear to admit this particular mistake and so the negative effects of it have been compounding and compounding for decades now. Now the shame is so great that we cannot even get people to point out that death threats should not be permitted on investing discussion boards. The hate on the part of the Buy-and-Holders toward the idea of permitting honest discussion is so great that we cannot cope with it. So most of us just throw our hands up and say “oh, it will work out somehow.”
Will it?
That’s not an evidence-based statement. The one time we got to a P/E10 of 33 we experienced a Great Depression. This time we got to 44. This is a serious matter. We f’d up big time.
But of course the good news here is 50 times more good than the bad news here is bad. If we could have the discussion, the Buy-and-Holders would no longer feel shame because all of the good stuff they genuinely were trying to achieve would suddenly become a reality if they could only retrace their steps, admit their one mistake, and then begin moving forward again. But how the heck do we get them do that? How do we get them to admit the mistake when we cannot even have a civil conversation about the evidence showing that they made a mistake?
Every negative interaction we have had for 15 years now is the product of the shame you feel, Anonymous. There is no other possible explanation for the behavior we have seen on your part. If you are 100 percent sure that I am wrong about investing, that’s fine. If that’s how you felt, you would permit me to speak wherever I wanted to speak, confident that the discussion that followed would once again show to interested observers the merit of Buy-and-Hold..
But you don’t feel the confidence in your investing strategy needed for you to be able to tolerate honest and civil discussion of its merits. Your behavior shows that you lack confidence, that you follow the strategy but that you are ashamed of yourself for not having questioned its core premise long before I ever came on the scene. You ask yourself: “What made me get on this track, why oh why did I do it?”
I cannot change your past. You bring it with you to every conversation between us. All that I can do is to reassure you that civil discussion of the peer-reviewed research can never hurt you, that the only reason why you perceive a threat in things that I say is that you were holding and suppressing doubts about the Buy-and-Hold project before I ever came on the scene. My job is to get those doubts out into the open, to have every investor on the planet exploring those doubts so that they can all make informed choices as to whether to continue down the Buy-and-Hold path or to make a mid-course correction given what the peer-reviewed research of the past 36 years tells us about the true realities of stock investing.
I see shame in every thread in which you and your Goon friends participate, Anonymous. You are blind to it because you cannot bear to look at it, it is too painful. You see me as a threat but I am trying to help. I am trying to build up that voice of common sense within you that tells you “I really should be willing to listen to the other side of the story, what possible harm could it do?” That’s how discussions are handled in this country in every field of human endeavor other than stock investing. That’s what I believe would work best in the investing advice field as well.
Rob
So John, Mel, Jack and Wade all made death threats?
I don’t know where you got that one, Anonymous.
Mel Lindauer and John Greaney advanced death threats.
Jack Bogle endorsed Lindauer’s behavior. People who spoke out about Lindauer’s behavior were afraid of what would happen to their careers if Bogle turned against them. So they silenced themselves. Bogle has a responsibility to speak out in OPPOSITION to the Mel Lindauers of the world when he discovers them posting at a site that bears his name. Bogle has failed to meet this responsibility. Bogle has EMPOWERED Lindauer. By doing so Bogle has done more harm than Lindauer himself. Lindauer is just a particularly nasty internet troll. If Bogle honored his responsibilities as a leading figure in this field, the Lindauer problem would have been solved a long time ago.
Wade Pfau DID speak out against Lindauer and Greaney on several occasions. But when he saw how brutally abusive the Lindauerheads and the Greaney Goons are and saw also that Bogle was not going to do anything about the problem, he flipped. Wade longs to do honest work. But he feels that this is too big for him to overcome on his own; he is waiting to see others take action before sticking his neck out again.
Buy-and-Hold was discredited by the peer-reviewed research in this field 36 years ago. It was possible to keep the cover-up going until the internet became popular. With the arrival of the internet, it became impossible to keep it going without having Goons like you patrol the sites where posters might engage in honest posting. I believe that we will see good people unite to overcome you Goons in the days following the next price crash. But we will of course have to wait and see how things actually play out to know for sure.
My best wishes to you and yours, my long-time Goon friend.
Rob
“I don’t know where you got that one, Anonymous.”
Read the second line of your last response.
The second line of the post that I believe is the one that you are referring to states : “Have you ever seen a Valuation-Informed Indexer put forward a death threat?” How does that translate into: “So John, Mel, Jack and Wade all made death threats?,” which is the statement that prompted me to write: “I don’t know where you got that one, Anonymous”?
Mel Lindauer and John Greaney have advanced death threats. Jack Bogle and Wade Pfau have not. But Bogle and Pfau did not speak up when they saw Lindauer and Greaney and the members of their respective Goon Squads advancing death threats. Why not?
When people in positions of responsibility fail to speak up re insanely abusive behavior it creates an environment of intimidation that affects every person who participates in community discussions. If it were not for that environment of intimidation, we would have over the past three decades had thousands and thousands of good and smart people warning us all of the dangers of Buy-and-Hold and we wouldn’t be living through an economic crisis today.
So the entire thing is a scam. If an idea cannot survive without regular, heavy doses of intimidation tactics being employed to keep smart people quiet, that thing is a con, a scam, a fraud. No?
Buy-and-Hold wasn’t a scam prior to 1981. It was once a real thing. But it has been 36 years now since Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings. And we are still discussing this stuff. Huh? What the h?
Millions of people have been hurt in very serious ways, Anonymous. It’s not a joke. This is serious business.
My sincere take.
Rob
No, that is the third line, plus you need to follow the conversation as such:
You said “They are all ashamed of their behavior.”
which was responded to as follows: “How do you know this? Do you read minds?”
and then you said “I observe behavior. People don’t put forward death threats when they believe that there is peer-reviewed research supporting what they are saying.”
It’s the third line.
The second line –“People don’t put forward death threats when they believe that there is peer-reviewed research supporting what they are saying” — doesn’t translate into what you said either. Jack Bogle and Wade Pfau did not personally put forward death threats. But Wade Pfau would be doing honest research work today if he did not see others putting forward death threats and also see Jack Bogle not speaking up about it. So Wade’s behavior has certainly been influenced by the death threats put forward by others.
And Bogle’s behavior has been influenced too. Bogle would be speaking up in opposition to your death threats in the same way that I have if he didn’t think that you Goons would lose your minds if he responded to your death threats in a responsible way. Bogle knows that he created a monster when he failed to come clean in 1981. Bogle rationalized not coming clean in 1981 because he never imagined that valuations would ever again rise to fair-value levels (remember, valuations were at one-half fair value in 1981). Then, when we got to fair-value levels, he rationalized not speaking up on grounds that valuations would probably not go too much higher and thus no real harm would be done. Then, when we got to two times fair value, he rationalized that that was the highest we had ever gone and that surely valuations would soon begin heading downward even if he failed to speak up. Then, when we got to three times fair value, he rationalized that coming clean re what the peer-reviewed research shows would have caused an economic crisis and who wants an economic crisis?
It’s always something, you know?
Get Rich Quick schemes are addictive, Anonymous. Do you think that Bernie Madoff knew on the day he created a fake fund where it was going to lead? I doubt it very much. If he knew he was going to end up in prison, he would have pursued a different way of turning a buck. He got into the Get Rich Quick stuff because he saw that it was an easy way to turn a buck and then things got out of hand. I am sure that that’s what happened with Bogle. He did not intend to cause an economic crisis. In fact, I am highly confident that he tells himself to this day that Buy-and-Hold was not the primary cause of the economic crisis. But here we are, you know?
Do you think he will continue to get away with promoting Buy-and-Hold as a research-based strategy following the next price crash, when the economic crisis caused by Buy-and-Hold will have destroyed many more lives than it has thus far? Somehow, I have my doubts.
All the humans are prone to rationalizations. The biggest reason why I was once a proud Buy-and-Holder myself is that I heard that it was rooted in the findings of the peer-reviewed research and I believed that rooting a strategy in the peer-reviewed research was a great way to avoid all the rationalizing that has been killing stock market investors every since the first market was formed. I think it would be fair to say that the joke was on me re that one! Rooting Buy-and-Hold in the peer-reviewed research WOULD be a great way to avoid rationalizations if only there really were peer-reviewed research supporting the idea that it is not necessary for investors to exercise price discipline when buying stocks. As we know from what Wade Pfau told us when he researched this question with great care, there is precisely zero peer-reviewed research supporting that core Buy-and-Hold claim.
It’s a lie. And it has been for 36 years now. The last 36 years of peer-reviewed research show just the opposite of what the Buy-and-Holders claim it shows. The last 36 years of peer-reviewed research show that stock investors must ALWAYS practice price discipline when buying stocks, not that there is some mystical, magical world where it might work out okay for them to fail to practice it. Science is funny how it often tells you things other than what you expected it to tell you or what you wanted it to tell you, isn’t it?
I don’t see what point you are making in the part of your comment where you go through the statements that you made and my responses to them. Yes, I said that I know that the Buy-and-Holders are ashamed of their behavior not by reading minds but by watching behavior. I suppose that you are suggesting that because I used “People don’t put forward death threats” as one example of the abusive behavior we have seen from Buy-and-Holders that I was saying that every Buy-and-Holder has personally put forward death threats. I obviously don’t believe that.
But TOLERATING death threats put forward by others comes pretty darn close to putting forward death threats yourself, does it not? It’s in the same general neighborhood. It certainly is not behavior that we see commonly evidence itself in any field of human endeavor other than in the investing analysis field. Why do we only see this behavior in this one field? Why is it that every board at which I have ever posted has rules prohibiting the intimidation tactics employed by you Goons and yet not at one of them has those rules been enforced?
It’s because every Buy-and-Holder is ashamed. Every Buy-and-Holder possesses common sense and common sense rules out the possibility that it could ever be a good idea to fail to exercise price discipline when buying something. And yet the “experts” (in marketing perhaps) say that it is of critical that investors not exercise price discipline when buying stocks. Huh? Mel Lindauer actually went so far as to say that it would be “dangerous” for people to use the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research as guidance re this question. What the h? And Bogle permits his name to be used at a discussion board at which Lindauer participates on a daily basis. Um — That makes good sense, Anonymous.
Again — it is a serious life setback to suffer a failed retirement. This is not a big joke. Not to the millions of middle-class investors whose lives are in the process of being destroyed.
My sincere take.
Rob