Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“The only thing that should be banned are violations of the published posting rules.”
Well then, it is easy to see why you have been banned from boards. Take Bogleheads, for example. It bans conspiracy theories.
We’ll have to wait and see how things play out, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.
Rob
Anonymous says
http://svrn.co/blog/2017/5/14/waiting-for-the-market-to-crash-is-a-terrible-strategy
“In my experience, investors sitting on a lot of cash are usually worried about equity valuations or the economy, and tell themselves and others that they’re going to buy gobs of stock after a crash. The strategy sounds prudent and has commonsense appeal—everyone knows that one should be fearful when others are greedy, greedy when others are fearful. But historically waiting for the market to fall has been an abysmal strategy, far worse than buying and holding in both absolute and risk-adjusted terms.”
Warning: This article contains annoying numbers and charts.
Rob says
This is precisely the question that Wade Pfau and I addressed in the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with him. And our research came to precisely the opposite conclusion! Gee, I wonder how that happened.
It happened because we tested a timing strategy that both common sense and the entire historical record tells us will always work. We didn’t do crazy things like try to guess when prices would crash. There is now 52 years of peer-reviewed research showing that short-time timing doesn’t work. I have a funny feeling that the Buy-and-Holders could prepare 10,000 more studies of that question and show once again that short-term timing never works.
Or they could turn to the question that Shiller put on the table with the publication of his “revolutionary” (his word) 1981 research findings. If valuations affect long-term returns, then LONG-TERM timing must always work and must dramatically lower risk while also dramatically increasing returns. That’s the question that Wade and I addressed and of course we found that long-term timing (price discipline) ALWAYS works, that there has never in the history of stock investing been a single exception.
And Bogle’s Goon Squad responded by threatening to send defamatory e-mails to Wade’s employer in an effort to get him fired from his job unless he agreed to stop publishing and promoting honest research revealing the dangers of the Buy-and-Hold “strategy.” Gee, I wonder why.
We will see how it all plays out following the next price crash, Anonyous. I have a funny hunch that I already know what is going to happen. But I am not God. I could be wrong. So we are just going to have to wait and see.
I naturally wish you all the best of luck with it in any event, my good friend.
Rob
Anonymous says
“It happened because we tested a timing strategy that both common sense and the entire historical record tells us will always work.”
A strategy that you won’t or can’t explain.
Didn’t even read the article, did you? You claim your #1 purpose in life is to promote discussion of these issues, but your knee-jerk reaction is to reject any data that challenges your beliefs.
Rob says
There is no data that challenges my beliefs, Anonymous. 100 percent of the data supports Valuation-Informed Indexing, 0 percent of the data supports Buy-and-Hold.
I wish it weren’t so. If 10 percent of the data supported Buy-and-Hold, we could have fun arguing our different positions and you could learn from me and I could learn from you. But when 0 percent of the data supports your position, you are in a tough spot. That’s why we see death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. You ain’t got nothing else.
I didn’t do that to you, Anonymous. It was Jack Bogle who did that to you. He should have come clean when Shiller published his “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) research. And, if Bogle was suffering too much from cognitive dissonance to do so, those who love him should have helped him out by asking him to address Shiller’s research and explain what changes he believed needed to be made to the Buy-and-Hold strategy to bring it up to date with the new research. You have a beef with everyone who failed to do that. You have no beef with me. I have done that.
Buy-and-Hold was a mistake. It was based on research that was published in 1965 and then discredited in 1981. When your strategy is discredited, you need to update it. Or else you need to stop claiming that the now-discredited strategy is supported by the peer-reviewed research. Once peer-reviewed research is published showing that there is precisely zero chance that a strategy could ever work for even a single long-term investor, claims that that strategy is supported by the peer-reviewed research become a lie.
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, my long-time Goon friend.
Rob
Anonymous says
“There is no data that challenges my beliefs”
You could have saved everyone an awful lot of time if you would have opened with that.
Anonymous says
Rob,
If you had to name the top 10 investing thought leaders today, who would be on that list and how would you rank them?
Rob says
You could have saved everyone an awful lot of time if you would have opened with that.
Bogle could have saved everyone an awful lot of time if he would have acknowledged on the day that peer-reviewed research was published showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single investor that he had made a mistake in earlier years.
Rob
Rob says
If you had to name the top 10 investing thought leaders today, who would be on that list and how would you rank them?
1) Robert Shiller (Nobel prize winner despite having failed to take his meds for over three decades now)
2) Jack Bogle (it was Bogle’s book that revealed to me the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies, making possible the post that kicked off The Great SWR Debate)
3) John Walter Russell (no longer with us in person but the many powerful insights explored at his web site remain available to all open to an amazing learning experience)
4) Warren Buffett (Buffett and Bogle go together like chocolate and peanut butter — the dreamy result is a concoction going by the name of “Valuation-Informed Indexing”)
5) Rob Arnott (this guy has balls — there’s precious few in this field that one can say that about — balls matter)
6) Jeremy Siegel (I do not agree with many of his conclusions but I see great power in his approach of focusing on analysis of the historical return data, an approach that he has popularized more than anyone else around)
7) Bill Bernstein (Chapter Two of his book “The Four Pillars of Investing” is the best concise explanation of why Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future that I have discovered)
8) Andrew Smithers (brave, smart, patient, kind — all of the big human virtues bundled together in one wonderful human being — can he be real?)
9) Wade Pfau (someday gonna see that this fellow is awarded the Nobel prize that he has very much earned with his fine research despite the “confusion” of recent years)
10) That fellow with 340 columns at the Value Walk site on this crazy Valuation-Informed Indexing concept that we all keep hearing about from time to time while we try so hard to force the idea out of our consciousness, I can’t quite recall his name, I think I have blocked it out because he makes me so freakin’ angry that I just want to reach through the computer screen and strangle the guy’s neck)
Humble Rob
Long Time Hoco Researcher says
I can’t quite recall his name
I can. He’s the narcissistic, passive-aggressive, mentally ill internet troll and Habitual Liar Rob Hocus No Step 2 Bennett. He has this fantasy that he’s discovered the only true way to invest. And he imagines that a bit of academic doodling producing a single study he falsely claims to have “co-authored” proves his Little Precious Lucky Seven is vastly superior to the tried-and-true strategy of buy-hold-rebalance. It doesn’t. But that hardly matters to someone who was into alternative facts before alternative facts were cool.
Rob says
Yeah, yeah.
Rob
Anonymous says
Just recently you ranked yourself equal to Bogle. How did you drop so far? Lose an argument with some no-name? Well, most of the guys are headed to prison so you’ll climb back up.
Anonymous says
You are so modest to have ranked yourself to the lowly position of #10 since are are considered to be miles beyond Bogle.
Anonymous says
“There is no data that challenges my beliefs, Anonymous”
So you deny math. And a good discussion is one where you talk and everyone else shuts the hell up.
Narcissist actually sounds too mild. More like delusions of godhood. If you had been in charge of the Salem witch trials the whole town would have wiped out.
Rob says
Just recently you ranked yourself equal to Bogle. How did you drop so far? Lose an argument with some no-name? Well, most of the guys are headed to prison so you’ll climb back up.
People can decide for themselves where they want to place people, Anonymous. I say that Bogle is a giant. I personally place him second only to Shiller. I have played the lead role in arguing for 15 years that every site on the internet should permit honest posting on the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research. That’s no small thing. That’s a big deal. But I certainly don’t claim to have any training in the field. People need to decide for themselves how to rank someone who has played that sort of role.
Or they can just not worry about ranking and focus on learning as much as they can about this important subject matter by listening to everyone who has something of value to say about it. That’s the way that I would advise people to play it.
My best wishes.
Rob
Rob says
You are so modest to have ranked yourself to the lowly position of #10 since are are considered to be miles beyond Bogle.
I am the most humble person who ever lived, Anonymous. Everybody know it too.
Oops!
Rob
Anonymous says
“I have played the lead role in arguing for 15 years that every site on the internet should permit honest posting on the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research. ”
Should every site be open to honest posting related to buy, hold and rebalance?
Rob says
“There is no data that challenges my beliefs, Anonymous”
So you deny math. And a good discussion is one where you talk and everyone else shuts the hell up.
Narcissist actually sounds too mild. More like delusions of godhood. If you had been in charge of the Salem witch trials the whole town would have wiped out.
The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows that Valuation-Informed Indexing has beaten Buy-and-Hold on a risk-adjusted basis for 145 years running, Anonymous.
I love hearing from Buy-and-Holders who disagree with me in a spirited way. That doesn’t change the fact that I sincerely believe that 100 percent of the evidence supports Valuation-Informed Indexing and that I have a responsibility always to report that accurately rather than to say things I don’t believe to appease you Goons.
And I don’t love hearing death threats or demands for unjustified board bannings or tens of thousands of acts of defamation or threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. That sort of thing reflects poorly on my Goon friends who engage in it and will in all likelihood result in their going to prison in the days following the next price crash. Yucko, you know? I din’t build the Motley Fool board into the #1 board at the site for the purpose of getting a good percentage of my friends thrown into prison cells somewhere down the line. I wish that Motley Fool would have given Greney the boot when he advanced his first death threat. That would have been a better outcome for every single person involved, in my assessment.
My best and warmest wishes yo you and yours.
Rob
Rob says
Should every site be open to honest posting related to buy, hold and rebalance?
Of course.
That’s how our system works.
Rob
Anonymous says
“I sincerely believe that 100 percent of the evidence supports Valuation-Informed Indexing”
Because you refuse to even listen to other evidence, let alone consider it. You seem to think that your pig-headed stubbornness is somehow a virtue, despite the pitiful state it’s left you in.
Rob says
Death threats are not evidence, Anonymous. Nor are demands for unjustified board bannings. Nor are tens of thousands of acts of defamation. Nor are threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs.
If Buy-and-Holders had evidence, they would present evidence. When they engage in this other stuff, they are making a statement that they realize they don’t possess evidence. No one who would thought that there was evidence supporting his position would engage in any of this other stuff.
If I saw a Valuation-Informed Indexers engage in any of that smelly stuff, I would speak out in opposition to it in two seconds. I wouldn’t want people to associate that stuff with the VII cause. But Bogle makes no effort whatsoever to disassociate himself from you Goons. What the f?
Why do you think that is, Anonymous?
It’s because Bogle has given up. He has come to the conclusion that there is zero chance that Buy-and-Hold will prevail in a public debate conducted pursuant to the laws of the United States and pursuant to the published rules of every site at which I have ever posted.
On the day that Bogle gave up, he should have given a public speech saying just that. This other way of playing it is foolish and irresponsible, and, yes, criminal.
There is no possible excuse for the behavior we have seen. There are explanations of it. There are explanations of everything that happens in the world. It is my job to come up with the explanations. But there is no possible excuse.
Buy-and-Hold failed intellectually in 1981 and we all should have begun the transition at that time. Delaying it has hurt us all. Further delays hurt us ever more seriously.
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.
Rob