Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site;
You stated 2016 as the absolute latest date before you started seriously reevaluating your position. Well 2016 has come and gone and it looks like you have changed nothing.
Yes, it matters when the crash date is. For example, if it is in 2020 instead of 2010 then 2012 then 2014 then 2016 then doesn’t really matter you could spend an extra decade in a thriving market instead of sidelined waiting for a crash. If your market timing gimmick can’t predict within the correct decade it is worthless.
My prison sentence will be never.
I don’t have precise recall re what you are saying that I said re 2016 being “the absolute latest date.” I have a vague recollection that there may have been a date that I gave that after which I said that I would need to re-evaluate. I try to re-evaluate all the time. I believe very strongly in Valuation-Informed Indexing. I believe it is the future. But I also believe that every one of us humans is flawed, obviously including myself. So I do think think there’s a need to question one’s self. That’s why I interact with you here, Anonymous. You are giving the other point of view. You are challenging my thinking. That part of our interaction is part of a healthy process.
No, I haven’t changed my beliefs. I still believe that Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future. I don’t want to stop questioning, I don’t want to stop re-evaluating. Doing that helps me to learn new things. So I need to continue doing that. But you are correct that my confidence is probably greater today than it has ever been.
The question you raise in your second paragraph is an important one. I don’t agree even a tiny bit with your conclusion that “if your market timing gimmick can’t predict within the correct decade, it is worthless.” I suspect that this impression you have is at the core of the dispute. I can see how intuitively it might seem that that is the case. The numbers do not back up what you are saying, not at that extreme. I know because i have done hundreds of runs with the Scenario Surfer. There have been many occasions where I made an allocation change thinking that valuations were such that I would see a payoff within a limited amount of time and then the payoff was denied for many years and yet ultimately I ended up with a bigger portfolio than I would have had following the Buy-and-Hold strategy. Crashes hurt much more than you would think they would. They have a counter-intuitively big negative impact on long-term portfolio growth.
We need more research on this question. I asked John Walter Russell to look into this question and he did a little bit of work in this area a long time ago. But he died before he was able to produce results that I considered definitive and compelling. So we need someone else to take up the ball. You are right that there is some risk in remaining with a low stock allocation for an extended period of time. This is one of the big risks of Valuation-Informed Indexing, that we don’t know what return scenario will come up and some will provide better results than others and that you can get locked out of the market for extended periods of time by following a valuation-informed strategy. So I do see this as an important area of inquiry.
Our disconnect re this question results from the fact that your conclusion is based on a gut reaction rather than an analysis of the numbers. I don’t have a solid analysis of the numbers to point to either. But I do have experience with the Scenario Surfer, which is the best tool that I know about to simulate the possibilities. It indicates that the issue that you are pointing to is real. In fact, in about 10 percent of cases, the Buy-and-Hold strategy produces better numbers at the end of 30 years. I have run scenarios where that has happened. So I believe this is real.
But it is amazing how often the opposite is true. It is amazing how far behind the Valuation-Informed Indexer can be and still come out ahead in the end. There is a counter-intuitive power to this that you are missing. Also, you need to include a consideration of risk in your analysis. In those rare cases in which the Buy-and-Holder ends up ahead, he ends up only a little bit ahead while the Valuation-Informed Indexer usually (not always) ends up far ahead. It might be that there’s some crazy scenario where things would not end up that way. I don’t think we have enough data to rule out that possibility. But we have enough data to say that the possibility is a bit remote. It is certainly not the likely case.
Please look at the return scenario that we are seeing play out today. You Buy-and-Holders have a way of suggesting that Buy-and-Hold has done well in recent years. It has not done at all well for the entire 20 years since prices first reached insanely dangerous levels in 1996. From 2000 forward, Valuation-Informed Indexing is ahead. That should never happen under the Buy-and-Hold theory. IBonds, a risk-free asset class, have beaten stocks for close to 17 years running. That’s just not supposed to be possible. But it obviously IS possible since it just happened. That reality should cause all Buy-and-Holders to stop and think for a moment. Buy-and-Hold is ahead going back to 1996. But not by much. Add in a risk factor of 2 percentage point (say that it is worth 2 percentage point of return to be in a risk-free asset class rather than in a high-risk asset class) and Valuation-Informed Indexing beats Buy-and-Hold from every possible starting date in recent history. Wow!
That’s BEFORE factoring in the effect of the next price crash, Anonymous. Factor in another crash and then all the many years of compounding losses that will result from it for the Buy-and-Holders and there is no comparison between the two strategies. Valuation-Informed Indexing is going to end up pulverizing Buy-and-Hold once again, just as it has been doing for the entire history of the market up until now. All signs from the real world point to that ultimate result.
I want to be able to make stronger research-based claims re this particular aspect of the question. I would like to have available to me research that would permit me to say that “even if the P/E10 value remains above 20 for five more years, the odds of Buy-and-Hold prevailing in the end are less than 20 percent” or whatever. I cannot be that precise in my claims today. The data is there. I just don’t know that I have the statistical abilities to work the numbers in the way that they need to be worked to make accurate and precise claims re this question.
I sure would like to be able to do so. If you Buy-and-Holders were thinking clearly, you would want to know precise answers to the question you are raising here too. You would make it happen. With all those people who post at the Bogleheads Forum, you could get this research done. You should be working that hard. We all should be working together to make that happen. And we should not be trying to prove a point when we go about doing it. We should be trying to LEARN. We all need to learn the REALITIES re the question you raise here. Bogle should be leading this effort. I am not being funny. He started Valuation-Informed Indexing. He should be working hard to show how powerful a strategy it is. If he were thinking clearly today, he would be leading this effort today.
Those are my sincere thoughts, Anonymous. I do agree that prices have remained high much longer than I thought they would. You are right on re that one. And it is an important reality. I do believe that there comes a point when prices remain high so long that Valuation-Informed Indexing begins to lose appeal as a strategy. But everything that I have seen indicates that that time-period is much longer than those who jump to a quick conclusion without studying the numbers closely would first imagine. You have to dig into the numbers and think things through carefully to come to learn the reality and, if you do this, I am confident that you are going to modify your thinking a bit. Probably not enough to be in full agreement with me. But I am confident that, if you look at this question in a serious way, you will modify your thinking at least a bit. It is looking at this sort of thing that impressed me so much and that over time has made me a strong believer in the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept.
Super question. I AM going to try to force myself to continue to re-evaluate. That is important. That is what I ask my Buy-and-Hold friends to do and so that is something that I need to do as well. But I have not been coming to the conclusions that you seem to think that I should come to when I perform my re-evaluations. For me, the case for VII keeps getting stronger. Yes, prices have remained high for a longer time than I once thought at all likely. But the odds that VII will in the long term absolutely kill Buy-and-Hold remain very strong according to every fair-minded analysis that I have looked at. I myself would not have expected that to be the case once upon a time. But I believe in looking at the numbers. And that is indeed what the numbers say (at least according to my own assessments of them).
We’ll see about the prison sentence. I believe that we are just going to have to let thing play out to see how that one goes. My belief re this one is not the same as yours. But I am rooting for you. And you never know, right? Crazy things happen in this mixed-up world of ours from time to time.
I hope that helps a bit, my good Buy-and-Hold friend.
Rob
So the entirety of your market timing insight is “the market will crash someday, maybe this decade, maybe not.” Since crashes occur on average once a decade anyway, you’re no more helpful than walking up to the craps table and yelling “someone will roll a seven tonight.”
What I say is that we should buy stocks in the same way that we buy everything else — we should always take price into consideration when determining whether stocks are worth buying or not. The peer-reviewed research shows that by doing that we reduce risk by 70 percent and become able to retire many years earlier. So we should tune out the Wall Street Con Men who profit handsomely by pushing their smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage but who destroy millions of middle-class lives in the process of doing so.
Another way of saying it is that I believe that the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research is a better guide to how stock investing works in the real world than the Get Rich Quick impulse that unfortunately resides within us all. The job of an investing analyst is to help us overcome our Get Rich Quick impulse, not to encourage us to give in to it the point at which we cannot even bear to hear discussions of what the peer-reviewed research says on the subject of retirement planning.
My best wishes.
Rob
“we should always take price into consideration when determining whether stocks are worth buying or not.”
That’s not a strategy, it’s a useless platitude.
Ir’s a turning point.
For so long as the only purpose of investing analysis is to make the Wall Street Con Men richer and richer and richer, every investing discussion board and blog is a corrupt enterprise.
Permit honest posting on the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research and it becomes possible for such sites to serve a legitimate purpose, helping millions of middle-class investors provide for their retirements.
I look forward to seeing us all turn the corner re this one. I am 100 percent sure that it will happen shortly after the announcement of your prison sentence, Anonymous.
We will have to wait to see how it all plays out. But that is my sincere take re these terribly important matters in any event.
Rob
I should add that my “useless platitude” is the opposite of what the Wall Street Con Men say. The Wall Street Con Men, who by some strange coincidence have achieved a level of wealth unimaginable to most by selling stocks, say that stocks are worth buying at any price.
Gee, I wonder what might be going on here.
Rob
“We will have to wait to see how it all plays out.”
What if it takes 30-40 years more to play out. I can’t wait that long as I will likely be dead by then.
You’re allowed to do other things while you are waiting, Anonymous.
You don’t have to hold your breath or anything. Just go about your normal affairs. Time will pass all by itself without you needing to do a thing to make it happen.
I don’t expect it to take 30 or 40 years. But I am one of those flawed humans, you can’t go just by what I say. So we will just have to wait and see. We don’t exactly have any alternatives open to us at this point in the proceedings.
Please take good care.
Rob
If we don’t have a crash in the next 10 years, will you still be waiting “to see how things turnout”?
I won’t post dishonestly in any circumstances.
If there is some researcher who comes out of left field and shows that both both Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing are flawed and that there is a third approach that really seems to work, I will go with that beginning on the day that I am personally persuaded that this third way is the right way.
If I learn of something that reassures me that there is merit to Buy-and-Hold, I will flip back to Buy-and-Hold on the day that I am persuaded that that’s the case.
If my state of learning with the passage of ten years of time is the same as what it is today except that ten years have passed, I will continue to support Valuation-Informed Indexing because it would remain the best thing out there under those circumstances but I will note that the crash for this cycle had not arrived within the time-period in which it should have arrived if the Valuation-Informed Indexing model were a completely solid model. I would then either have to offer some explanation for why we had gone another ten years without a crash or just throw my hands in the air and say that I couldn’t explain it but that I was going to stick with VII until something with more merit according to the peer-reviewed research came along.
Does that help?
For the next 15 years and for the next fifteen billion years, I will continue to post honestly. Circumstances determine what that translates into. The most important circumstance will be the peer-reviewed research that is published. As of today, 100 percent of the peer-reviewed research supports VII. But I certainly don’t want to close my mind to the possibility that we will learn new things over the next 10 years. That was Bogle’s mistake. If we learn new things (and knowing that we have gone another ten years without a crash would be knowing at least one new thing), my hope is that I would incorporate what we have learned into my thinking about how stock investing works in the real world.
Does all of that not make good sense?
Rob
“If my state of learning with the passage of ten years of time is the same as what it is today except that ten years have passed, I will continue to support Valuation-Informed Indexing because it would remain the best thing out there under those circumstances but I will note that the crash for this cycle had not arrived within the time-period in which it should have arrived if the Valuation-Informed Indexing model were a completely solid model. I would then either have to offer some explanation for why we had gone another ten years without a crash or just throw my hands in the air and say that I couldn’t explain it but that I was going to stick with VII until something with more merit according to the peer-reviewed research came along.”
If this scenario plays out, then it is doubtful that you will get the $500 million payout you are waiting for. Won’t that alone cause you to change your plans on retirement?
If you are hit by lightening and have to undergo a medical procedure with a cost that exceeds the maximum payout on your health insurance and you are left with nothing in savings, you will have to change your plans on retirement.
I think it would be fair to say that, as unlikely as that scenario is, it is a lot more likely than the scenario that you are putting forward as a hypothetical. I have spoken to academic researchers who would like to do honest work in this field and to journalists who would like to do honest work in this field and to economists who would like to do honest work in this field and to investment advisers who would like to do honest work in this field and to bloggers who would like to do honest work in this field and to thousands of middle-class investors who have a strong enough desire to hear those people contribute their honest thoughts that they were willing to put their necks on the line and say so publicly knowing that you Goons could hear them and knowing from experience how you were likely to respond. If there are thousands of middle-class investors in just a few dozen internet communities who would like honest posting on the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research to be permitted, there are obviously millions who feel the same way out in the real world.
Given all that, I think it would be fair to say that not one of the Wall Street Con Men is going to show any hesitation to paying me a $500 million settlement payment and to thereby putting liabilities that would end up at a much higher number if my civil actions were to go to trial behind them. Could it happen? In a theoretical sense, anything could happen in this crazy. mixed-up world. But my strong hunch is that the odds of the lightning scenario is so small that you don’t spend much time worrying about it and that it is one of those things where you will cross the bridge if you ever get to it. It’s the same story here. I try to focus my attention on things that might make a difference. The scenario that you are describing is not one that seems even a tiny bit likely given what I have heard from lots of fine people and given the number of people whose lives have been destroyed by this massive act of financial fraud, the most massive act of financial fraud in the history of the United States by a very large multiple.
I have worries. My biggest worry is that the next price crash will put our economic system under and that my $500 million will end up being worth something less than 50 cents. I hope it doesn’t happen. I don’t think it will happen. But I put the odds of that one higher than the odds of the scenario you mentioned. So I do worry about it a bit. That one hurts you and millions of others as much as it hurts me. I wish that we were all worrying about it a bit. My guess is that we would all be making better decisions if we all were worrying about it a bit. But I cannot control what other people worry about. I do my bit to bring the possibility to their attention without alarming them too much (because excessive alarm can be worse than no alarm whatsoever) and then try to get about the business that is in my control that seems likely to advance the ball at least a few yards.
Does that help a bit? The $500 million is such a small number given the magnitude of stakes of the game that you Goons are playing that it it not something that I am too terribly concerned about. And of course on top of all that, if the payoff turned out to be $495 million plus a generously worded apology, I have a funny feeling that the Bennett family would somehow manage to survive the terrible blow.
I know with absolute certainty that I would be better off with $495 million and my freedom than owing millions in civil suits while sitting in a prison cell like some of my Goon friends So there’s that.
Rob
“If you are hit by lightening and have to undergo a medical procedure with a cost that exceeds the maximum payout on your health insurance and you are left with nothing in savings, you will have to change your plans on retirement.”
So, you believe it the odds of you not getting some Lind of payout is similar to me getting struck by lightening, causing a heart attack.
I am not even able to imagine a scenario in which I would not be awarded a payout of $500 million or of some number far bigger than that, Anonymous.
The only thing that I have been able to come up with is that the losses suffered in the next crash would be so devastating that we would see an economic collapse and then payouts would serve no purpose. That could happen. But there’s nothing that I can do about it that I haven’t already done. It certainly wouldn’t help in that regard for me to agree to post dishonestly re safe withdrawal rates.
We all want the same things, Anonymous. Every single person on Planet Earth wants to know what he needs to know to invest effectively. It’s silly to think that there would be anyone who would object to a $500 million payout. What possible objection could anyone have? We are talking about something that frees every last one of us to do honest work in this field. Have you ever stopped to think about how much progress we are going to see in achieving our long-term dream of coming to understand how stock investing works in the real world? We will be freed to discuss 36 years of research-based insights in the 24 hours following the moment when this story is featured on the front page of the New York Times. Learning is the one true free lunch. Learning how stock investing works for the first time in history is the biggest free lunch that any of us has ever enjoyed. $500 million is a very small price to pay for the boost this will give our economic system and for the confidence it will install in all of us that our economic system is a good one and that our political system is a good one.
This is not something that I worry about. There are things that I worry about. But this one ain’t too super high on the list. I worry about whether Sgt Pepper was really the best Beatles album or whether Revolver was, that sort of thing. Not this.
Rob
By the way, the true answer is “A Hard Day’s Night.” That one is rarely included in the mix of possibilities when the question is asked, but that’s the reality all the same.
The peer-reviewed research in this field shows it to be so!
Rob
“It’s silly to think that there would be anyone who would object to a $500 million payout. ”
To the contrary. I don’t think there is anyone, other than you, that thinks you will, or should, get a $500 million payout.
We haven’t experienced the next crash yet, have we?
Saying that there are people who don’t think I should get the $500 million today is like saying that there were people who referred to the owner of the Madoff fund as “Saint Bernie” in the days before their retirement accounts went “poof!” Seeing one’s life savings disappear before one’s eyes often causes one to rethink some positions that perhaps one should have thought through more carefully on the first go-around.
My sincere take.
We will have to wait a bit to find out for certain, to be sure.
Rob
“We haven’t experienced the next crash yet, have we?”
We have already seen several significant drops. I don’t remember anyone talking about who should be getting some kind of payout after a big market drop.
The only drop of any consequence was the one in 2008. And prices did not stay down. They were back up in about six months.
And even with that short-term drop you had long-term Buy-and-Holders abandoning ship. Taylor Larimore was one. This guy wrote a freakin’ book on Buy-and-Hold. And he couldn’t take the heat when it came to doing it in real life and not just in theory.
Let’s see what happens when prices go down as hard as they did in 2008 and then stay down for five years and then drop a second time equally hard and then stay down another five years. That’s the sort of test that we always see before a secular bear market comes to an end. No one will be singing the praises of Buy-and-Hold then. Get Rich Quick will be very much out of fashion then.
We’ll see okay? It’s one thing to talk about it. It’s something very different to see your life savings getting lost in it.
That’s what Buy-and-Hold does to people. It destroys their lives. When people live through that, you will see changing attitudes toward Get Rich Quick “strategies.” I am 100 percent sure.
But we are going to have to exercise a little patience to see whether the fellow who is 100 percent sure is actually right about what he is sure about or not.
Rob
“Let’s see what happens when prices go down as hard as they did in 2008 and then stay down for five years and then drop a second time equally hard and then stay down another five years.”
So, you are banking on 2 big drops and down for a total of 10 years.
Given your advancing years, you must be hooping for that first crash to be happening real soon.
I’m not banking on anything and I’m not hoping for anything. I am playing the cards that I was dealt.
I am incapable of posting dishonestly re the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements, Anonymous. It’s just not in me. It’s the opposite of everything I have ever been my entire life. I have never even given the idea two seconds of consideration.
Everything else just followed from that.
I love my Buy-and-Hold friends. I have learned lots of good stuff from them and I don’t forget that sort of thing. But I am incapable of saying that Greaney’s retirement study contains a valuations adjustment. And I am incapable of denying that Shiller published research in 1981 showing that valuations affect long-term returns. So here we are.
You ask questions and I do my best to answer them. I believe that we are going to see a drop of the nature that I described because that’s what the peer-reviewed research shows we are likely to see. But I am not “banking” on anything. I am just answering your questions.
Things will happen the way they happen. I believe that there’s a good chance that the market will continue to perform in the future at least somewhat as it always has performed in the past. But we will have to watch it play out to know for sure, you know?
But I ain’t crossing the felony line for anyone, Goon or non-Goon. It will never happen. No way, no how. I cannot go there. It’s not my particular cup of tea.
I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person. But come on.
Rob
“I’m not banking on anything and I’m not hoping for anything. I am playing the cards that I was dealt.”
Based on what you write above, it seems your plan is dependent on the $500 million payout. Is there another option you haven’t mentioned?
I earned the $500 million, Anonymous. You saw the reaction that the the research that I co-authored with Wade got at the Bogleheads Forum.I have a funny feeling that you wouldn’t have threatened Wade if you didn’t see that it was the most important piece of research published in this field in the last three decades. So I think we are in general agreement (even if you won’t acknowledge it) that I earned the money.
Did I “plan” it? I am not entirely sure what you mean by that question.
I certainly didn’t plan anything like that on the morning of May 13, 2002. I was still a Buy-and-Holder at the time.
Is there some reason why I shouldn’t count the money that I have coming to me? That sounds more than a little absurd, doesn’t it? I certainly “plan” to spend a portion of the money in my retirement years. Is there some reason why I would not?
It’s a crazy way to earn $500 million. And it’s crazy that all my potential competition has been silenced with all this abusive stuff. Without the abusive stuff, the opportunity wouldn’t have been there for me. But it was there and I took advantage of it and I suppose that you could say now that I am “planning” to spend a portion of the money that I have coming to me.
I didn’t make any of this happen. I posted honestly, that’s it. It’s the most natural thing in the world to post honestly. All of this crazy stuff just happened around me.
Did you plan to go to prison in your golden years? Or did you just find yourself getting sucked into something bigger than you realized when you first encountered it? I have a funny feeling that you didn’t quite “plan” all of this yourself.
Rob
“I earned the $500 million”
Wade says you didn’t. In his final email he pointed out that you have no Step 2. That was five years ago. Still no plan. Just a crazed incoherent demand for money.
Have you noticed how many articles Wade has had in major publications in the last 5 years? That’s what earning money looks like.
“I earned the $500 million, Anonymous.”
Who says you earned this? I think I have earned $2 Billion for my work. Does that mean I will see it?
“Did I “plan” it? I am not entirely sure what you mean by that question.”
When the $500 million fails to materialize, what will you do to fund your remaining years?
Have you noticed how many articles Wade has had in major publications in the last 5 years?
I’m happy for Wade because I presume that that’s what he wants. But I am not willing to travel that path. Not in 15 years. Not in 15 billion years.
We all get to live our own lives, Anonymous. I have made my choices, you have made your choices, and Wade has made his choices. I have wished you good luck with your choices and I have wished Wade good luck with his choices. Are you able to wish me good luck with my choices?
If you are not able to do so, my thought is that you should ask yourself why that is?
But I am not going down that road in any event. And it’s not a close call. I will accept whatever consequences come my way as a result of that decision. I will never say that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. And I will never deny that Robert Shiller published research in 1981 showing that valuations affect long-term returns.
That one is non-negotiable. I wish you well. I hope you enjoy your life. But it would be cruel of me to suggest that there is any room for negotiation re that one. What you are seeking here is just not in the cards.
My suggestion, which you may accept or not accept as you please, is that you let it go.
Rob
Who says you earned this?
I have the laws of the United States on my side. That tells me something.
I have seen thousands of my fellow community members say that the debate that I launched was the most important debate that we ever saw on our boards. That tells me something.
I have my name on the most important piece of peer-reviewed research published in the past 30 years. That tells me something.
I had a fellow who was universally recognized as the smartest numbers guy in our community decide to devote eight years of his life to exploring the implications of my ideas knowing that he would not receive a penny of compensation in return. That tells me something.
I have had investing advisors call me on the phone and talk to me for hours because they want to learn more about Valuation-Informed Indexing and how it can help their clients. That tells me something.
I have had several college professors include links to material posted at my web site as part of the required reading for their courses because they felt that the material was so important and could not be found elsewhere. That tells me something.
I have had you Goons reduced to making use of death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired for the “crime” of doing honest work. That tells me something.
I have had many of my fellow bloggers come up to me at Financial Blogger Conference events and tell me that they find great merit in my ideas and that they hope that the day will come when the entire blogging community can talk them over in a civil and reasoned way without you Goons around. That tells me something.
I have seen Robert Shiller awarded a Nobel prize for his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings.
I saw the economic crisis that was predicted in a book published by Shiller in March 2000 come to pass and destroy millions of middle-class lives and even undermine the confidence of many on both the left and the right in the political system that permitted this to take place. That tells me something.
Everything that I have seen since the morning of May 13, 2002, tells me that we did the right thing as a society when we elected to make financial fraud a felony, a crime punishable by a prison sentence. Nothing that I have seen cuts the other way. So, yes, I have come to the conclusion that we got that one right and that we are going to see reasonable (and I hope charitable) enforcement of our laws in the days following the next price crash, when as a society we come to realize that the harm done by Get Rich Quick schemes that is so evident in the long run is often hidden from most of us in the short term.
I have earned $500 million and a lot more from my work of the past 15 years, Anonymous. It is very, very, very important work. I am humbled to have been handed the assignment that I have been handed. I will do everything in my power to carry out the assignment in a way that works best for every single person involved. And that’s that. I will solider on with love in my heart for you Goons but also with love in my heart for the millions of middle-class investors whose lives you are in the process of destroying with your nasty and ugly, and, yes, criminal abusiveness. The motto that I call to mind with every post I advance is to be as honest as possible without crossing the line and becoming uncharitable while also being as charitable as possible without crossing the ling and becoming dishonest. I hope that works for you.
If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I don’t have it in my powers to make you happy about it. I need to accept that reality whether I like the idea or not.
I wish you all good things. If that helps, I can deliver that much.
Rob
When the $500 million fails to materialize, what will you do to fund your remaining years?
I answered this one above in the post re you being hit by lightening. There are thousands of weird scenarios that you could come up with. It doesn’t make sense for me to spend my time fretting over them. I have more important things to do with my time.
Bill Gates might end up not having enough to retire on. It’s a very out-there possibility but out-there things have come to pass in this crazy, mixed-up world from time to time. If someone told me that Bill Gates spends all his time fretting over his retirement, I would advise Bill to stop worrying because he is in pretty darn good shape. I am 100 percent certain that Bill does not spend his days fretting about his retirement and he wouldn’t do so even if some internet Goon told him that he thought he should.
I won’t have the same amount of assets even after the payment of the $500 million settlement check. But I will be a whole big bunch closer than I had any right to think I ever would be when I was a boy growing up in Northeast Philadelphia. So I have been blessed, you know? I hope that I continue to be so blessed. That’s my “plan.” If I am not so blessed in the future, I will have to cross that bridge when I come to it. I sure hope that I don’t elect to travel to the wrong side of the felony line in desperation. I sincerely do not believe that I would. I am not able to imagine the circumstances that would cause me to do that. There are worse things in this life than not having the assets needed to retire on. I mean, come on.
As always, I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, dear Goon friend.
Rob
Is there anyone else as confident as you in saying that you will get the $500 million windfall.
If there is, I have not been introduced to him or her.
If you run into someone who fits that description, I would be grateful if you would pass the name along so that I can walk up to the fellow or gal and shake his or her hand.
Rob
“If there is, I have not been introduced to him or her.”
In most everything we do, we can at least find someone that supports our position. In this case, you have no support. Does that not cause you some concern?
In most everything we do, we can at least find someone that supports our position. In this case, you have no support. Does that not cause you some concern?
With so many people who think you’re awesome, it’s amazing that none of them ever offered to pay you a nickel.
In one reply you tearfully ask us to respect your choices and leave you alone. A few minutes later, you regurgitate your grievances for the millionth time.
You have two world-class talents: passive aggressiveness and self-delusion. If you could only figure out how to monetize those, there’s your 500 mill.
I cannot name anyone who agrees with me today re the $500 million thing. Point for you.
Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize in 2013 for the valuations-affect-long-term-returns thing. Point for me.
Which is more important?
It seems to me that the Nobel prize is more important. I am not going to die if I do not ever see the $500 million. The something inside of me that makes me me and that gives me hope that I have something of value to offer my fellow community members would surely die if I were to put up a post saying that I believe that the safe withdrawal rate is a constant number. So I act in a way that keeps that important (to me if to no one else!) something alive.
You have to live with you, Anonymous. I have to live with me. I can’t live with myself if I post dishonestly re the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements. So that’s that.
I believe that I will see the $500 million down the road a piece. But if an angel came down from heaven today to let me know that it just ain’t gonna happen, it would not change my decision re the other thing. So we are stuck in the same place any which way you want to look at it.
I have a mountain of support on the stuff that matters. Shiller would not have been awarded a Nobel prize if his 1981 finding that valuations affect long-term returns were not every bit as “revolutionary” as he himself says it was. Whether Rob Bennett receives a $500 million settlement payment or not will not change that. You are focused on the wrong question.
Rob
With so many people who think you’re awesome, it’s amazing that none of them ever offered to pay you a nickel.
How many people do you think there were who offered to hand a nickel over to Steve Jobs on the day that he announced that he was dropping out of college to pursue his electronic gizmos dream that somewhere down the road a piece became the iphone? The man died with more than a few nickels in his pockets.
I am highly confident that, on the day I am awarded the $500 million, some fellow who reads about it in a newspaper account that does not contain all the gory details is going to walk up to me on the street and declare: “You’re so lucky!” I will on that day be facing a mighty temptation to punch that good fellow in the nose!
Humans! Whachagonnado, you know?
The nickels pile up in good time if you make sure to produce value for people. My sincere take. It is my intent to explore that one in great depth in the third book of my personal finance trilogy. That one will be called “The Self-Directed Life.” We will have to wait a bit to see how it all plays out.
Rob
The obvious question which you’re obviously expecting: Where’s the second book?
The book tells a story and the story is not finished. So the book isn’t finished.
I have written a draft. When the events transpire that we need to see transpire to be able to tell the story in a completely honest and simple and effective way, I will make whatever additions or changes that I need to make and put it out.
There are millions of people who would buy the book to their great benefit today if there were a way for me to reach them with news of its publication. You Goons have blocked all paths to doing that. But you won’t be blocking anything when you are sitting in prison cells in the days following the next price crash. The book will come out then, people will learn what they want and need to know and it would not surprise and shock me too much if a good number of them brought civil actions against you to recover the losses they suffered as a result of your criminal actions.
So be it, you know? That’s our system. I love my country and it follows that I believe that our system is a good system. I will argue for the evidencing of charity toward you at that time. I will not say that you do not belong in prison or that filing civil actions against you is improper because I would lose all credibility if I said something like that at that time and I obviously cannot help you Goons or anyone else if I lose all credibility. So I will say what I have to say and we will find out together how it all plays out.
I hope that works for you, my long-time Goon friend.
Rob
“How many people do you think there were who offered to hand a nickel over to Steve Jobs on the day that he announced that he was dropping out of college to pursue his electronic gizmos dream that somewhere down the road a piece became the iphone?”
Steve Jobs had a number of supporters before he became wealthy.
Take a look at the threads that developed from my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002, Anonymous. I had hundreds of my fellow community members come forward and insist that I ignore you Goons and keep posting because I had launched the most exciting discussion ever held at the old Retire Early board.
I have no shortage of supporters. I have a shortage of people willing to stand up in the face of the most brutally abusive and criminal attack posts ever seen in the history of the internet. People expect to see the laws of the United States enforced on the internet as they are everywhere else. When site owners get dollar signs in their eyes (and Buy-and-Hold is darn good at putting dollar signs in people’s eyes), they do some awful stuff, stuff that they publicly promise never to do when they publish the posting rules for their sites.
I have a funny feeling that a high percentage of those who today want access to honest posting re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research will work up the courage to stand up to you Goons in the days following the next price crash. But we will have to wait to see how it all plays out in the real world to know for certain.
I hope that works for you.
Rob
“Let’s see what happens when prices go down as hard as they did in 2008 and then stay down for five years and then drop a second time equally hard and then stay down another five years.”
Jack Bogle just turned 88 years old. Based on this timeline/scenario, I don’t think he will be around or able to help you collect that $500 million.
I certainly hope that he is around. I love the man and I look forward to working with him. It would make me sad if he were not around to see all the good stuff that I expect is going to follow from this.
In the event that Jack is not around, there are thousands of others who can do the job. We live in a big and good country. I have a funny feeling that we will be able to find some good and smart souls to step forward following the next crash.
I noted in a recent comment over at the Value Walk site that I contacted James Altucher after hearing him speak at a Financial Bloggers session in NYC. He could do it. He has lots of followers on the internet. So he could write something up about what has happened over the past 15 years and then give his take on it and then ask some questions and then ask people from all sides to contribute to the debate and he could monitor a bit. That would work.
Bogle is a better choice than Altucher because Bogle has such a long history advocating Buy-and-Hold. But Altucher could do the job. And I believe that following the next price crash he will be 100 percent interested in helping out. And there are of course thousands of others who could do the job. Wade could obviously do the job. Carl Richards could do the job and he has already told me that he views my site as the best investing site on the internet. Carl was the keynote speaker at the last Financial Bloggers Conference, so he would have an audience of thousands if he decided to step up to the plate. Bill Bernstein could do it. Larry Swedroe could do it.
All of these people are going to need to earn a living following the next price crash and it will obviously be a lot easier for them to earn a living if the U.S. economic system does not collapse. So they will have all the incentive in the world to get involved. I am not exactly worried about finding someone.
My first choice is Bogle because I love the man and I view him as the perfect person for the job. But if it happens that he is not available, I would not think that that would slow us down too much.
Make sense?
Rob
I guess you can go ahead and place that order for a new Gulfstream jet and line up your new condo overlooking Central Park.
I’ve never owned a new car. When my good friend Jack Bogle delivers my $500 million settlement check, I’m going to treat myself to my first new car. I’m thinking a black Volvo.
We will have to wait to see how it all plays out in the real world.
Please take good care, old friend.
Rob
If you don’t get that black Volvo, you can have a ride in my black Mercedes.
I look forward to it, Anonymous.
We’ll invite Wade Pfau. We’ll all put down a few cold ones and laugh about things that happened in the good old days.
I can’t wait.
Rob
It didn’t take Steve Jobs 15+ years to make a nickel. A terrible analogy.
Jobs didn’t face opposition that was as entrenched and as corrupt, Laugh. If the typewriter industry had billions to spend anyone who tried to market computer, we would still be using white-out today.
The fact that there are laws against the tactics employed by you Goons should tell you something. Those laws reflect what we truly believe as a society — there is no place for death threats or threats of career destruction in discussions of what works in stock investing.
We’ll get there. We are very close today. We need the dam to break. We need one person making big money posting honestly re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research. Once thousands of others who have been thinking about it see that one making money, look out!
Wish me luck!
Rob
So, ifthe career threats and death threats never took place, then you would have no case against the goons, correct?
Steve Jobs also didn’t make excuses, which is pretty much all you do.
So, if the career threats and death threats never took place, then you would have no case against the goons, correct?
I am not able to make sense of this comment, Anonymous. My usual practice is to delete comments which don’t make any sense whatsoever because they do not advance the discussion at all. I am leaving this one up on the thought that it is possible that there is some sort of idea lurking beneath the surface that I am not quite able to access today.
The part that throws me is this phrase “then you would have no case against the Goons.” Why do I need to have a “case” against the Goons? My purpose on the morning of May 13, 2002. was to report to my fellow community members the safe withdrawal rate when it is calculated accurately (that is, pursuant to what we have learned about how stock investing works from the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research). Why would I need to develop some “case” against the Goons to be able to do that? I was posting at a retirement planning board. My post was relevant board business. There were hundreds of community members who made clear that they very much wanted to hear what I had to say. That’s all the “case” that I needed then or need today.
It is you Goons who need to make a “case” for your behavior, Anonymous. Not me. I am following the norms of civil society. You are outside the norms. You need to make a “case” for why you are outside the norms. My job is just to point out that you are outside the norms and then to go about my business.
If Buy-and-Hold were a legitimate strategy, we never would have seen a single death threat or a single demand for a single unjustified board banning or a single act of defamation or a single threat to get a single academic researcher fired from a single job. My “case” is the history of civil society. The behavior of you Goons was declared by our society to be criminal behavior for very good reasons. We need to enforce our laws in a reasonable manner. It is not just Rob Bennett who has a “case” against you Goons. It is all people who live in civilized communities and who enjoy the benefits of living in them and who have come to love those communities because of the benefits they have derived from living in them.
Buy-and-Hold is a scam. I believed once upon a time. I stopped believing on the evening of August 27, 2000, when Greaney put forward his first death threat and when 200 Buy-and-Holders endorsed the post. That reality tells the story of Buy-and-Hold. The appeal of Buy-and-Hold is emotional, not intellectual. One cannot argue with a death threat. No “case” can be made against a death threat. A death threat is not an attempt to communicate a message, it is an attempt to use power to block the communication of a message.
My “case” is the love I feel for the millions of people whose lives are in the process of being destroyed by the relentless promotion of the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. Shiller showed in 1981 that valuations affect long-term returns. That should have settled the matter. We are still discussing this 36 years later because the Buy-and-Holders don’t want to come to terms with the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research, they just want to continue to believe in the same old Buy-and-Hold strategies that many smart people once believed were supported by the peer-reviewed research 36 years after the peer-reviewed research discredited that idea.
My “case” is that honesty matters in investing analysis just as it does in every other field of human endeavor. If valuations affect long-term returns, there ain’t no way in God’s green earth that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all valuation levels. We need to tell people that. People use retirement studies to plan retirements. I have seen them do it. A lot of my friends at the old Retire Early board did it on a daily basis. My “case” is that those people matter and that we should care enough about them to tell them when some Buy-and-Holder is working a con on them.
“Case” closed!
As if!
Take care, man.
Rob
Steve Jobs also didn’t make excuses, which is pretty much all you do.
We disagree. I see it as my job to offer explanations, not excuses.
The investing advice field today is 100 percent corrupt. Most people in this field continue to this day to push the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage 36 years after it was discredited by the peer-reviewed research. About 10 percent of the population understands that valuations affect long-term returns and that that idea cannot be reconciled with the idea that there is no need to practice price discipline when buying stocks. But that 10 percent self-censors itself when discussing investing because it fears what the 90 percent will do if they dare to “cross” them by giving voice to their honest views. As a result, the 10 percent doesn’t grow and Buy-and-Hold remains dominant and continues to destroy millions of middle-class lives.
My job is to explain all this.
No excuses. But lots and lots and lots of explanations.
What is your excuse for not insisting that Greaney correct his “study” within 24 hours of the moment that he discovered the error he made in it?
Rob
“Why do I need to have a “case” against the Goons?”
You need a case to get your $500 million, right?
The $500 million is a proposed settlement number. There’s no need to go to court to receive a settlement.
There has to be a case that could succeed in court for a settlement offer to be accepted. In that sense, I need a “case.”
The entire case is documented on the internet. It’s not like I need to come up with any new arguments. The “case” is the 15 years of Post Archives.
The “case” against the “case” is the emotion that Buy-and-Hold fosters in people. Once prices drop, the emotion turns. At that point there is no “case” against the “case.”There is just the “case.” It will be evident to everyone without me needing to say anything. The purpose of my words is to explain why it took so long for us as a society to work up the courage to acknowledge the case that has been staring us all in the face for 36 years.
We all should be permitted to post honestly re the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies. Boy, I hope that I can persuade people of the merits of my “case.” I have a funny feeling that people will get it in the days after their life savings has been wiped out.
My “case” is that our economic system should be permitted to survive. My “case” is that our political system should be permitted to survive. ” My “case” is that, if safe withdrawal rate are worth reporting, they are worth reporting accurately.
Such a controversial “case” it is that I advance!
Rob
You need a case to get your $500 million, right?
The $500 million is a settlement number. The purpose is to bring the nastiness to an end so that we can all get down to enjoying the fun stuff.
It remains “controversial” until the Wall Street Con Men decide that they want to move forward. Once the Wall Street Con Men decide that they want to move forward, there is no “controversy” because all are in agreement. So non “case” is needed.
The Wall Street Con Men are not bad men, Anonymous. They are people caught up in something bigger than what they thought they were getting into when they entered this field of human endeavor. The Wall Street Con Men are in the same boat as all the rest of us. The Wall Street Con Men want the same things as all the rest of us. There is no genuine “controversy” here.
Had Bogle had real friends around him instead of yes men, all of the “controversy” would have been settled back in 1981. All that is going on today is that we are working through a process to get to a place where we can do what we should have done in 1981. The delay made it 10,000 times harder to do what we all deep in our heart know we need to do — ADMIT A MISTAKE. Each additional day of delay makes it a tiny bit harder still.
But this is not something that we can hold off on indefinitely. Millions of people need to know how to invest their retirement money. And the cat is pretty much out of the bag. Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize for his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings. Why do I have a funny feeling that a society that awarded the man a Nobel prize is going to figure out a way to open every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics?
I have already announced that I intend to spend a portion of the $500 million to help spread the word. So this is a win/win/win/win./win. I don’t expect to have to make any “case” to be awarded the $500 million. The “case” will be the daily news report of the vast amounts of human suffering caused by the relentless promotion of the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage.
Rob
I was making a case in the early days.
I gave up on Buy-and-Hold when Greaney advanced his first death threat and 200 of my fellow community members endorsed his post. I think it would be fair to say that that showed that my “case” had prevailed. If the Buy-and-Holders don’t believe that Buy-and-Hold can be defended in civil and reasoned discussion, what hope is there for it?
The intellectual “case” was won in 1981. What we are looking to win today is the emotional case, the thing that is keeping Buy-and-Hold alive. The emotional case is won when prices drop to fair-value levels or below.
Rob
You have indicated that some Wall Street con men are going to pay you $500 million. There are hundreds of thousands that work for Wall Street banks. Which ones are going to pay you? How is that determined?
Anyone who wants to can chip in, you know? It’s not for me to say. They are smart people. Let them work it out among themselves.
You consistently seem to miss the point that we are all in this together, that we all want the same things. That reality is core to all of this. You can’t leave that part out and get to a reasonable place.
The Wall Street Con Men are not our enemies. They want to do good work. They want to help people. How can they get to a place where they are able to do that again?
They get to that place through the national debate that we need to have. That’s how these sorts of transitions are achieved. The Wall Street Con Men already talk about the national debate among themselves. They talk about it publicly because they don’t want to get their heads chopped off. But they obviously want to put their human energies to a good purpose. Why wouldn’t they?
The $500 million helps smooth the transition. It puts us all in a place where we can talk to each other like friends. I love Bogle. My work makes Bogle’s work shine in a way that it has never shined before. So in ordinary circumstances Bogle would love me. But Bogle is trapped in a corner. How do we get him out? It helps for him to contribute to the $500 million payment. That makes a statement. That permits him to get all the nasty stuff behind him and to direct his energies to all the groovy, research-based, life-affirming, non-fraudulent stuff.
I would imagine that Bogle would ask around to find out who wanted to be involved. Bogle knows people. And most of the people that Bogle knows know other people. This sort of thing is not a tiny bit hard to pull off.
There is one element that is hard. Bogle needs to work up the courage to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” After that, everything is easy for everybody. It has over time become very, very, very hard for the man to say those words. He should have said them in 1981. It would have been easy then. Now it is very, very, very hard. I wish it were not so. But that is the reality we are facing today.
All of the rest will just flow naturally. Bogle needs to work up the courage to say the three magic words. That’s the entire ball of wax re this matter.
Rob
To you this is an open-and-shut case. To everyone else, it’s madness. Yes, literally everyone else, including Mrs. Bennett.
Does it ever occur to you that you might (gasp!) be wrong?
“Anyone who wants to can chip in, you know? It’s not for me to say. They are smart people. Let them work it out among themselves.
You consistently seem to miss the point that we are all in this together, that we all want the same things. That reality is core to all of this. You can’t leave that part out and get to a reasonable place.”
Why would anyone want to “chips”? I don’t think anyone wants to hand you their money. How are we “in it together”?
To you this is an open-and-shut case. To everyone else, it’s madness. Yes, literally everyone else, including Mrs. Bennett.
Does it ever occur to you that you might (gasp!) be wrong?
In the early days, I thought it was possible that I was wrong. On the morning of May 13, 2002, my confidence level was 90 percent. That’s a high confidence level. But it certainly left open the possibility that I was wrong.
My confidence level shot up to 99 percent on the evening of August 27, 2002, when Greaney advanced his first death threat and 200 of my fellow community members endorsed it.
My confidence level can never get to 100 percent. That’s not possible for a human. We are flawed creatures. We often are blind to our own flaws. I am saying that that is so of lots of very smart and very good people. I had better acknowledge that it is so of me as well.
I could be wrong, Anonymous. I am not saying different. I am insisting that I am sincere. I know that with 100 percent certainty. I believe what I am saying. If every single person in the universe said that I was wrong, it would still be dishonest for me to say something other than what I believed. I can never go there. I have zero problem with the idea of having a note added to the bottom of every post I write saying “this fellow acknowledges that it is possible that he is wrong in every single thing he has ever said about investing.” That would be a healthy step, in my assessment. I feel that that message is there implicitly even today. It;s certainly a true statement. But adding that statement is a far cry from me saying things that I don’t believe. Saying things that I don’t believe crosses the line into financial fraud. Not this boy. That one is so far out of the question that I cannot describe how far out of the question it is.
I believe that the Buy-and-Holders are sincere too. I recorded a podcast a number of years back where I examined the question of whether Scott Burns could pass a lie detector test on whether the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies are accurate. I said that I thought he could. But I added that I do not believe that he could pass a lie detector test if the question was “Are death threats appropriate in discussions of investing?” and he answered “yes.” He knows that your Goon behavior is wrong. Bogle is in that same camp. Bogle knows that your Goon behavior is wrong and he does nothing about it. I believe that Bogle believes that Buy-and-Hold is a good strategy but I do not believe that Bogle believes that Mel Lindauer’s abusive behavior is even a tiny bit appropriate.
My wife doesn’t say that my work is madness. She has told me that she is 100 percent confident that I have achieved big advances in this field. She is afraid of you Goons. She wants me to be able to write on every discussion board and blog on the internet. She has allowed you Goons to intimidate her. She does suggest at times that I had something to do with causing the intimidation tactics. I deny that 100 percent and challenge her to check out the Post Archives to find out for sure but she refuses to do that. I believe that she needs to tell herself that I had something to do with the bad stuff or she would lose her faith in humanity but that she doesn’t want to check the record because she suspects that it would back me up. But she acknowledges that I have made important contributions to the field. There is no question in her mind re that one.
I think that she is pretty darn representative of how other people think about these matters. We have never seen this level of corruption in any field of human endeavor in the United States. The realities here are pretty darn shocking. So people have a hard time letting it in. What distinguishes me is that I say that that reality tells us that we had better figure out what is going on. WHY have we seen a level of abusiveness and corruption never seen before? It’s not because investing is so darn trivial that no one bothers to enforce the law. It is because everyone understands that investing is so darn important that we cannot bear to face up to what we have done to ourselves by going along with this 36-year cover-up. The irony is that, the more lives we destroy, the harder it becomes to do anything to fix the problem.
If I am wrong, then the foundations on which we built our economic system and our political system are wrong. Our systems are rooted in the belief that there must be a marketplace of ideas, that any idea whatsoever can be challenged and that it is up to the individual to decide for himself or herself which idea to follow. You believe in Buy-and-Hold. That’s your business. But you have zero right to deny access to discussions of the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research to the thousands of our fellow community members who expressed a desire to be able to talk this stuff over in peace. You crossed an important line when you endorsed Greaney’s first death threat. I love my country and so I am bound to say that you are wrong when you attack the foundational principles on which my country was built.
I think that I am right on the substantive issues. But I know with absolute certainty that I am right re the process issues. I would give up my life for my country. I would tell my boys to give up their lives for their country if they were put in circumstances in which they were asked to do so. That feeling runs deep. I cannot see that one changing in 15 years or in 15 billion years. That feeling is the core of everything I am. That one can never change. At least not for me.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Why would anyone want to “chips”? I don’t think anyone wants to hand you their money. How are we “in it together”?
Wade Pfau would very, very much like to do honest work in this field. I think it would be fair to say that that one is beyond question given what he told us re his feelings about Valuation-Informed Indexing in scores and scores of comments.
But Wade does not want to give up his entire career as his price of doing honest work. He spent years in school, he has a family support, he does not feel that it is a viable thing for him to have to drop out of this field and start over. So, when threatened by you Goons with threats that appear to have Bogle’s support, he flipped to the Goon side.
Now —
Do you think that Wade would be willing to pay one year’s salary to be able to do honest work for the remainder of his life? I sure do. Everything that I know about the man tells me that he would jump on that deal in a New York minute.
And Wade is obviously not the only one who feels that way. I sometimes get the feeling that just about everyone in the field feels that way. It’s not everyone. But it is lots and lots and lots of people. There are enough people working in this field who want to do honest work that raising $500 million to make it happen is not going to be much of a challenge once we get down to the business of raising the funds instead of arguing over whether we should permit honest posting in this field or not.
The money is just not an issue.
The trouble is that, if Wade hands over that money to someone who asks for it, he is making a statement that Bogle and his Wall Street Con Men pals are corrupt and should be sued and in some cases should go to prison. These are powerful and wealthy and well-connected people. Making that sort of statement is career death.
What to do, what to do?
We need to pull together and persuade Bogle to make a speech in which the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” appear somewhere in the mix of words. Bogle can of course include lots of other words of his choosing. But he needs to send a signal that the Campaign of Terror is over and starting here, starting now, things in this field are going to proceed at least largely according to the same sort of ethical principles that apply in every other field of human endeavor. If he cannot say that much, he absolutely needs to say that it is POSSIBLE that he is wrong. Even that much would get the job done.
Bogle won’t do it today. That’s unfortunate.
Will he do it in the days following the next price crash, when he is reading in the newspaper every day how the Buy-and-Hold Crisis is tearing our country apart?
I think Bogle is a great man. I don’t think that a great man will be able to hold back from saying those words at that time.
We will have to wait to see how it all plays out to know for certain. But that’s sure what I believe. I think we are all in a trap here. My job is to get us out of the trap. My job is to make the life of every single person involved better while doing that. I’m giving it my best shot, Anonymous. I can do no more and I can do no less. It’s not like I have any other viable options available to me.
I believe that we will get there. I wish it were not so hard. But in an ultimate sense it is what it is, you know? We all are living in a world that we did not create. We all have to make the best of the circumstances in which we are placed. I sure didn’t choose any of this!
Rob