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:
You spend all of your time giving your opinions on what you see as other people’s “mistakes”, but you have yet to spend one minute on your mistakes that led to your retirement and financial failure. When are you going to address that? Certainly, you don’t want people to follow your example.
I once believed in Buy-and-Hold, Sammy. So I know how it is for people struggling to figure things out today. Looking back, I had doubts about certain aspects of it. I silenced those. I didn’t want to focus on the doubts. It was easier and more comforting to continue to believe.
So we are as a society working through a process that in time will take us to all the wonderful stuff waiting on the other side. I certainly don’t say that most Buy-and-Holders behave as you do. That is certainly not the case. But most do tolerate the behavior that they see play out before them. That’s the real issue here. As a society we need to work up the courage to insist on the same standards of behavior that apply in all other fields. Once we do that, good things start to happen and over time we get to a very good place.
It’s happening gradually. That’s all I can tell you. Even your own comments have changed in certain ways. They are still not pleasant. They are still not life-affirming. But if people took the words of your posts from five years ago and compared them to the words of your posts today, they would be able to identify important differences in tone and content. There’s a softening of tone in evidence. And that’s true with all of us.
Those are my sincere thoughts. I wish you all good things. Deep down inside we all want the same things. We all want to know how stock investing really works. We all want our retirement plans to succeed. That unity of core purpose will eventually help us all to get to a very good place. I am 100 percent sure of that much.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Anonymous says
“Deep down inside we all want the same things. ”
No, we don’t want the same things.
Rob says
We do, Anonymous.
You are not able to see it at the moment because you are blinded by your pain and your shame and your rage. But deep down you Goons are vulnerable humans just like all the rest of us. I know because I have seen you post on topics other than Buy-and-Hold and your inner humanity comes shining through in those comments. We have all let you down by permitting you to travel so far off the deep end. You are of course responsible for your own acts. But we humans live in communities and we all have a responsibility to do what we can to pull those on the edge back to a safer place before they do too much damage to themselves and to others. We have failed you in that regard and I of course feel bad about that. You Goons have a positive role to play and I want to turn things in a different direction so that we all can benefit from your positive contributions once again.
We all want the same things deep down inside, my old friend. There is not 36 years of peer-reviewed research showing that. There are THOUSANDS of years of observations by good and smart people showing that. I am 100 percent sure at this point.
Please take good care. It gets better. A LOT better. We are working our way through a process and we have made great strides over the past 15 years. Ever so slowly. But ever so surely too.
Rob
Anonymous says
Wrong again.
Rob says
Okay.
Rob
Anonymous says
“That unity of core purpose will eventually help us all to get to a very good place. ”
By embracing VII, we will have unity, world peace, vast riches, a cure for cancer and mountains of other good stuff…..hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Rob says
The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance by a very big margin, Anonymous. Of that much I am certain. That’s not quite the equivalent of achieving world peace. But it’s no small thing.
If you do work in the personal finance field, as I do, you are not aiming to achieve world peace or a cure for cancer. You are aiming to help millions of middle-class people achieve safe retirements far sooner than had ever before been possible. Valuation-Informed Indexing pulls that off. So I offer no apologies for being the lead developer and the lead promoter of this amazing advance for 15 years now.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, my good friend.
Rob