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:
“the e-mails in which he expresses his fears of you Goons are posted at my web site.”
Not true, as you well know. http://arichlife.passionsaving…
“I wouldn’t lose my job even if people did complain about me, and as far as I know, no one ever did email or call my employer. My research has not been impacted by any alleged threats, and it is really insulting and disgusting all of the times you’ve suggested otherwise.”
“You will just spin my comment as proof that I’m really afraid to speak truthfully. You will do this all in a very long series of comments which may approach 10,000 words in total. But it’s all so tiring and implausible. Please don’t spend your day doing this. Go play with your kids. It’s time to move on.”
But of course, it’s never time to move on.
Wade said those words. You are quoting him accurately.
But of course he said those words AFTER being threatened. You are quoting words from a hostage video. He offered very different sorts of words on numerous occasions PRIOR to the time when you threatened him with career destruction if he continued to say publicly what he really believes about safe withdrawal rates.
I have a category for “Wade Pfau” at my blog. There are lots of entries listed under that category. Interested parties can read as many of them as they like to learn the full realities for themselves. You quoted from one above. Please note that I did not fail to include that one in the mix. Things Wade said after the threats were made are indeed part of the story. Wade is not the only person in this field who has been intimidated. LOTS of people in this field have been intimidated, some in direct ways like Wade and many others in indirect ways (such as by seeing what happens to people like Wade and me when they express their sincere beliefs re safe withdrawal rates and other important investing topics.
Things Wade said before the threats were made are ALSO an important part of the story. Interested parties need to read both sorts of comments. And then they need to reflect on how far out of the norms of our society this sort of thing is. Why are people who work in this field AFRAID to say what they believe about Buy-and-Hold?
They are afraid because Shiller’s 1981 finding that valuations affect long-term returns DISCREDITED the Buy-and-Hold strategy and yet advocates of the strategy to his day continue to claim that it is a research-backed strategy. Those people have a responsibility to let people know that there are two schools of thought as to how stock investing works, not one. Every investor alive should know that, if it is Shiller who is right and not Fama, that Buy-and-Hold is very dangerous stuff.
I had not thought that through at one point in time. Wade had not thought that through at one point in time. Lots of others have not thought it through even today. We all need to be thinking this through. If Shiller is right, Buy-and-Hold is dangerous. If people really believe in Buy-and-Hold (millions of good and smart people do), they need to continue to advocate it. But there is no excuse for those people not to let investors know that there is another school of thought and that the lead advocate of that other school of thought has been awarded a Nobel prize for his work in this field.
No one should ever feel afraid that his career will be damaged in even a tiny way because he shares his true beliefs re how stock investing works. All of us, Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers alike, should be making it our top priority to insure that the days when something like what we saw happen with Wade Pfau can never, ever, ever happen again.
Those are my sincere thoughts re this terribly important matter, in any event.
Rob
Long Time Hoco-Researcher says
Liar. Here’s an old email to me in which Wade explains your hoax about his “academic career being threatened by anonymous internet posters” to an unfortunate fellow who bit on your 30k email jihad you waged against him in an effort to impugn his integrity and besmirch his good name. The only person who threatened Wade was Rob “hocus” Bennett.
“Dear Vivek,
I understand that Rob Bennett has sucked you into his drama. I’m Wade
Pfau, the academic researcher who has allegedly been threatened. In
writing about your tweet at his blog today, Rob even wrote, “(A number
of Buy-and-Holders threatened to send defamatory e-mails to Wade’s
employer in an effort to get him fired from his job for the “crime” of
having published research showing the dangers of Buy-and-Hold
investing strategies and several big names in the field [including
Vanguard Founder John Bogle] failed to take action against those
advancing the threats, thereby implicitly encouraging them [I have
sent Bogle four e-mails asking for his help with the matter])”
I can assure you that this is all part of Rob’s vast mythology in
which he seeks to make himself into a super hero fighting the evils of
Wall Street. It isn’t true. Rob magnified a very minor situation by
10,000x. The entire story he developed is based on the one minor
comment found here at the start of this discussion board thread:
http://boards.fool.com/hocus-gets-college-prof-to-question-swr-studies-29265775.aspx?sort=whole
“I hope this doesn’t ruin that guy’s chances for tenure.”
That’s it. He imagined all of the subsequent details.
At any rate, I did indeed publish the studies which Rob claims I am
afraid to publish. There is no issue. The main study is this one:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09603107.2011.648317
Rob lives in an imaginary world of death threats and threatened
academic researchers and so on, as you would discover if you waste
time reading what he writes. Just thought I’d let you know, straight
from the horse’s mouth.
Best wishes, Wade”
Rob says
In ordinary circumstances, I would not post this comment, Long Time. Since you are a Goon, there is obviously a good chance that Wade never sent this e-mail and that you just made it up. If that’s the case, I shouldn’t post the comment.
However, the full reality here is that Wade has cooperated with you Goons on several occasions. I don’t personally believe that the chances that your report is accurate are zero. That’s a shocking statement. But it is the behavior that we have all seen from Wade in the days following the threats that were made against him that makes it seem at least somewhat possible that your report is an accurate one. So I believe that your comment should be posted and added to the record that your jury will review when your trial date arrives.
As always, I wish you all good things.
Rob
Anonymous says
I this article, Wade discussed two options or investing during retirement.
https://retirementresearcher.com/makes-sense-retirees-total-return-income-portfolio/
Both options are variations of buy and hold. There is no mention of VII. Why is that, Rob?
Rob says
He’s afraid.
Wade LOVES Valuation-Informed Indexing. He studied it in great depth. He found that everything I have said over the past 15 years check out. Wade believes that Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future. He told me that he expected that he would be awarded a Nobel prize for the peer-reviewed research that he co-authored with me. And he was of course right to expect that. That research paper is the most important one published in this field in the last three decades.
Then you Goons threatened to get him fired from his job if he continued doing honest work. Even then he stood up to Lindauer for a time. But when he saw that Bogle was not going to do anything about Lindauer’s insane abusiveness, he got scared that Bogle and his Wall Street Con Man pals really would destroy his career if he continued doing honest work. He made a decision that he had to do what was necessary to be able to feed his family.
All that goes away on the day your prison sentence is announced, Anonymous. I am 100 percent certain that Wade will return to doing honest work once he sees that the laws of the United States are being applied in the investing advice field just as they are in all other fields of hunan endeavor. So will Bernstein. So will Swedroe. So will Burns. So will Bogle. So will thousands and thousands of others.
The laws against financial fraud are good laws. We need them. They were enacted for good reasons. People need access to honest and accurate reports re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.
My sincere take.
Rob
Anonymous says
Says Rob: “Then you Goons threatened to get him fired from his job if he continued doing honest work.”
Says Wade: “Rob lives in an imaginary world of death threats and threatened academic researchers”
So we have a direct conflict. Who has more credibility?
Rob says
My message has been consistent for 15 years.
Wade said one thing over and over and over and over again in the days when he believed that it was safe to do honest work in this field and then began saying the opposite on the day that you Goons threatened to send defamatory e-mails to his employer in an effort to get him fired from his job and when he noted that Jack Bogle was 100 percent fine with that.
Your jury will get to see both sorts of Wade Pfau comments, Anonymous. That’s how our system works.
I certainly wish you the best of luck with it.
Rob
Rob says
A second answer:
I think that it would be fair to say that, in the days following the next price crash, I will have more credibility in the eyes of millions of middle-class workers.
But we will all have to watch the drama play out in front of us to know for certain.
My best and warmest wishes to you, Goon friend.
Rob