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:
Rob,
It is really sad to see you spending so much time making up stories and living in a fantasy, all to avoid working a job. You would think that reality would finally hit home after your financial plan turned out to be a disaster. After 15 years of unemployment, don’t you think it is time to get a job?
I think it is important that every single person who talks about stock investing in any capacity feel 100 percent free to state his or her sincere views exactly as he or she feels them, Sammy. I think that when we get to the point where everyone is doing that, we are going to see a huge advance in our collective understanding of how stock investing works in a very short amount of time. We have 36 years of peer-reviewed research to talk about that we have been holding back from exploring in an in-depth way out of deference to the hurt feelings of our Buy-and-Hold friends. When we get over that, we are going to make amazing strides.
And please don’t think that our Buy-and-Hold friends will not be every bit as excited about the advances as will be those of us who have come to feel grave doubts re the Buy-and-Hold project. Our Buy-and-Hold friends started out trying to do good and they in fact have done a great deal of good. When they are exposed on a regular basis to clear and firm and bold descriptions of the other side of the story, a lot of them are going to flip. Once they flip, they are going to be grateful for the learning experience that informed them. I flipped, so I know how it feels. I wouldn’t go back today to a belief in Buy-and-Hold for all the money in the world (unless it was the result of being PERSUADED that there is merit to Buy-and-Hold, not just the result of never having heard about a superior strategy).
I see this as a win/win/win/win/win. I am not even able to imagine any possible downside. You don’t see it that way today. I get it. 100 percent. But I am also 100 percent confident that you will get it when you make it to the other side. And that will happen only as the result of a learning experience that you very much want to avoid today. I think of myself as your friend, Sammy. You don’t think of me as a friend. But it is my sincere belief that we are friends and that we should be doing what we can to help each other out and that I should be acting on that core reality to the best of my ability.
Anyway, we will see how it all plays out following the crash. If I am proven wrong, then I am proven wrong. I think we have a tiger by the tale here. I think there was good reason why Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize. I know that there are tens of thousands of smart and good people who have important things to say re these matters who have thus far held back from saying them for fear of offending the Buy-and-Holders and I want to hear what they have to say. I believe strongly that on some level of consciousness you do too, you are just too afraid to open that door at this moment in time.
I wish you the best. Despite your nastiness, you have helped me to learn on many occasions. I am grateful. Anyone who helps me to learn is my friend for life. My entire life story tells me that I am right to feel that way. So I am going to go with that.
Rob
“I think there was good reason why Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize.”
Shiller is back in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/business/in-long-run-theres-no-such-thing-as-an-einstein-investor.html
Juicy excerpts:
“without deep expertise, it makes little sense to veer much from a simple market portfolio — one that seeks to match the overall performance of the market, and not beat it.”
“No single strategy is likely to beat the market forever.”
VII is a single strategy. You say it always always ALWAYS beats the market. Shiller says you’re wrong.
That article is 100 percent in tune with Valuation-Informed Indexing, Anonymous.
The point of the article — that you can’t beat the market — is one that I associate much more with Bogle than with Shiller. This is why I list these two men as the two top investment advisers of all time. The two most important principles of successful long-term investing are: (1) you can’t beat the market; and (2) valuations always matter. Bogle has done the most to promote the first point and Shiller has done the most to promote the second point. Combine the two points and you have Valuation-Informed Indexing, the first true research-backed model for understanding how stock investing works.
It’s not the Valuation-Informed Indexers who are trying to beat the market. That’s the Buy-and-Holders. Valuations have been affecting long-term returns for 145 years now. Shiller did not publish his “revolutionary” (his word) peer-reviewed research showing this until 1981. But the data used in that research stretched as far back as we have good records for U.S. stock returns. The reality that Shiller was pointing to has been a reality since the first stock market was opened for business. Valuations have ALWAYS affected long-term stock returns.
The Buy-and-Holders are seeking to beat the market by pretending that through some magical, mystical process it is all going to turn out differently for them than it has turned out for every investor who ever walked the planet before them. Is there a one in 250 billion chance that it is all going to turn out different this time? Sure, there is always a one in 250 billion chance. But risking your life savings on a one in 250 billion chance is not investing, it is gambling. I mean, come on.
I agree that “no single strategy is likely to beat the market forever.” I believe that today’s Valuation-Informed Indexers will beat today’s Buy-and-Holders. That’s because the Ban on Honest Posting has created an artificial environment. When the Buy-and-Holders became so emotional about their “strategy,” they denied themselves the information they need to act in their own best interests in the investing realm. Naturally, there is a financial penalty associated with that. Markets have always imposed financial penalties on irrational behavior.
But that behavior will not survive the next price crash. As the penalty is imposed and the Buy-and-Holders experience in real life the pain that is only in their imaginations today and that drives their abusive behavior, they will work up the courage to have the discussions about the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research that they need to have to come to understand what they could have come to understand 36 years ago. Then they will be able to accept the average annual market return of 6.5 percent real that the Valuation-Informed Indexers already accept today.
The Buy-and-Holders are not today emotionally capable of accepting the market return. But there is a mountain of evidence that they would be THRILLED to accept the market return if only they could have the discussions they need to have to make the transition from what we all knew about how stock investing works in 1980 and what those of us who can bear to look at the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research are happy to know today. We are working our way through a process of learning and growth, Anonymous. Accepting the market does not mean the same thing today as it meant in 1980. Today part of what it means to accept the market (rather than to try to beat it) is to accept that valuations affect long-term returns.
Shiller says: “It makes little sense to veer much from a simple market portfolio — one that seeks to match the overall performance of the market and not beat it.” You suggest that you agree with that statement. If you agree, why do you not divide the number on your portfolio statement by two to determine the value of your retirement portfolio today? The P/E10 value is at two times fair value, is it not? Does it not follow that you need to divide by two to identify the true value of your portfolio? The market produced that P/E10 value. You are rejecting what the market has done, living in a fantasy world where the market has done something different than what it has done. You are not accepting the market, but trying to beat it.
When you brag about how much money you have made with your investing strategy, is that not evidence that you are trying to beat the market? I don’t do that. I calculate the return that I have made and I accept it. I am not tied up in it emotionally. I don’t have to brag because it is not important to my self-esteem for me to believe that I am smarter than everyone else when it comes to investing. I am just using the stock market as a tool to provide for my retirement, it’s not personal. For you it is very personal. I get the feeling from you that, if your investing strategy did not make you feel smarter than everyone else, it wouldn’t be worth following. I get the feeling from you that 90 percent of the game is these feelings of superiority that you get from following a Buy-and-Hold strategy and that the actual returns you receive are a relatively small matter. I don’t think that’s healthy. I just want to do what I need to do to finance my retirement and then turn my attention to more interesting matters.
The question here is: “What is a ‘simple market portfolio’?” Is a simple market portfolio one where the risk profile jumps wildly up and down over time? Or is a simple market portfolio one in which the risk profile remains constant, one in which the investors misses out on the irrational exuberance “enjoyed” by the Buy-and-Holder but then also misses out on the irrational depression experienced when his beat-the-market strategy fails and leaves his retirement hopes in ashes, just as Get Rich Quick approaches have done to so many other investors over the history of the market? Thinking that you are going to be the first investor so smart that he can beat the market is a long-term recipe for ruin, Anonymous. The market is bigger than you. The market eats those so arrogant that they think that they will be the first to beat it for lunch.
It’s not research-based strategies that are seeking to beat the market, Anonymous. It is Get Rich Quick strategies that are seeking to beat the market. You can easily see whether it is Valuation-Informed Indexers or Buy-and-Holders who are seeking to beat the market by noting which group is more emotional in the comments that it makes on discussion boards and blogs when these sorts of issues come up in discussion.
Valuation-Informed Indexing is Buy-and-Hold with the Beat-the-Market element removed. That’s why it has less immediate marketing appeal. It is that Beat-the-Market element that makes Buy-and-Hold such an easy sell; we all have a Get Rich Quick urge residing within us and strategies with strong appeal to that urge are going to make lots of money for their advocates in the short term. But as Shiller (and Bogle long before him!) argues, Beat the Market/Get Rich Quick is always a loser in the long run. Buy-and-Hold is what sells, but Valuation-Informed Indexing is what works.
These are my sincere thoughts re these terribly important matters, in any event.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.
Rob
“match the overall performance of the market and not beat it”
is the exact definition of buy-and-hold. It is the exact opposite of all market timing strategies.
As you well know.
No. Buy-and-Holders CLAIM that their strategy is not aiming to beat the market. That’s why I once found appeal in Buy-and-Hold. That’s why I became a Buy-and-Holder myself.
But this claim is fallacious. The P/E10 value is produced by the market. The Buy-and-Holders do not take the P/E10 value into consideration in any of their calculations. If they did, they would divide their portfolio values by two when prices are where they are today. The Buy-and-Holders IGNORE a key component of the market’s message.
If in Year One, the P/E10 is at fair value, all investors know the true value of their portfolios and are able to invest effectively and rationally. Now, say that prices are pushed up to two times fair value in Year Two. The Valuation-Informed Indexers continue to invest effectively and rationally. Their portfolio statements provide a number two times what they provided one year earlier. But the P/E10 value tells them to divide by two. So they are still using accurate numbers.
The Buy-and-Holders only listen to one part of what the market is saying. They listen to the price increase. They change all of their plans because of the phony change in that number. But they tune out the part of the market’s message where the market says that they need to divide by two to know the true value of their portfolios. They do this so that they can take a false comfort in the phony price message. They are trying to beat the market by using phony numbers to fool themselves re where they stand.
Why are the Buy-and-Holders not happy with a return of 6.5 percent real if they are not trying to beat the market? If the nominal market price goes up 30 percent in one year, the real gain is 6.5 percent real and the rest is cotton-candy nothingness, right? Why do the Buy-and-Holders count the cotton-candy nothingness as if it were real? They want to beat the market and refusing to do the calculations properly permits them to do so (at least in their own minds).
This is why we have crashes, Anonymous. There is no economic explanation for crashes. Crashes are emotional events. We have crashes when Buy-and-Holders realize that their phony numbers are not rooted in anything real, that they are the product of exercises in self-deception. The stock crash phenomenon is similar to what you see when a spouse who has been cheated on for years finally gets a clue about realities that his or her friends have known about for many years. He or she always “knew” what was going on but lied to himself or herself until the point when it became impossible to maintain the fantasy belief. At that point, the illusion “crashes.”
If you are not trying to beat the market, why do you refuse to adjust your portfolio value for the amount of overvaluation that applies today? Why do you not divide by two? The market produced that P/E10 value. Do you think you know better than the market what the P/E10 value should be?
We are as a people working through a transition in which we become self-aware of our stock investing illusions and thereby become able to rein them in so that they cannot do as much damage to us. That’s why Shiller’s 1981 findings were so “revolutionary” (his word). That’s why the man was awarded a Nobel prize for his work.
P/E10 is produced by the market. It is not something outside the market. Anyone who ignores P/E10 when doing stock-related calculations cannot claim to accept the market. Buy-and-Holders ignore an important part of what the market has produced.
Buy-and-Holders count the numbers that support their illusions and then refuse to count the ones that do not. That’s trying to beat the market, not acceptance of the market’s verdict re how much money you have to retire on. Buy-and-Hold is an exercise in self-delusion for so long as it ignores the effect of valuations on long-term returns. No Buy-and-Holder has ever been able to explain why he ignores valuations. He does so because it is by ignoring valuations that he is able to delude himself into believing that he has done the impossible, he has beaten the market in a convincing way, he has done what has never been done before. Yeah, sure he has.
All investors who claim to be able to beat the market have some rationalization that they put forward as their “proof” that they were the first in history to develop this amazing power. The Buy-and-Holders are no different than any of the others in this respect. Buy-and-Hold just happens to be the Get Rich Quick strategy that is most popular at this point in time (because it has been pushed so relentlessly by the Wall Street Con Men, who just happen by sheer coincidence to have become multi-millionaires by doing so).
Valuation-Informed Indexers ACCEPT that the economic realities permit an annual return of 6.5 percent real, nothing more and nothing less. We don’t have to delude ourselves that there are years when our portfolio values increase by 20 percent or 30 percent or 40 percent because we know that the 6.5 percent real return is enough to finance our retirements JUST FINE. We don’t feel a need to beat the market, just to match it. And we know that accepting the delusions that the Buy-and-Holders accept to permit us to fool ourselves into thinking that we are beating the market makes effective financial planning impossible and that we are far better off just not going there.
If you are not trying to beat the market, why do discussions of the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research cause you such intense emotional pain, Anonymous? All of your abusive posting is rooted in your intense emotional need to keep the illusion that you and you alone have figured out the way to beat the market. I am seeking to disabuse you of this foolish and dangerous illusion by pointing you to the 36 years of peer-reviewed research showing that a belief that valuations do not affect long-term returns is a fantasy.
I don’t need to beat the market for my plan to work. A 6.5 percent annual real return works JUST FINE for me.
Rob
“We don’t feel a need to beat the market, just to match it.”
You could have done that 20 years ago by buying an index fund, and saved yourself several million words of typing.
If PE10 is everything, why didn’t its father mention it in that article? Why is he now giving the exact same advice as Buffett, Bogle, and all the Bogleheads? It’s almost as if he was embarrassed by PE1o.
Face it Rob. Shiller is a buy-and-holder. The war is over.
I couldn’t do that 20 years ago because stocks were not available for sale at a reasonable price. I would prefer that stocks ALWAYS be available at reasonable prices. If we opened up the internet to honest posting on the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research, we would be there. But we do not today live in a world where honest posting on the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research is widely tolerated. The reality is what it is whether I approve of it or not.
Shiller should have mentioned P/E10 in the article. I am 100 percent with you re that one, Anonymous. All of the points he makes are legitimate. There is nothing wrong with the words that he put forward. But it is weird for him to put those accurate words forward without also including a discussion of the valuation-related aspects of the question. I think you are right on re that observation.
I cannot see into his mind. I can speculate as to what is going on. But I cannot say with certainty.
I don’t know if I would go quite so far as to say that Shiller is giving the exact same advice as Bogle. But I agree with you that what he is saying sounds close to what Bogle is saying. He is certainly not doing much to highlight his differences with Bogle. I can see how someone who read only that article could think he has no major differences with Bogle. I have lots in common with Bogle but I don’t think that anyone would say that about me. I highlight the differences, Shiller does not. That’s a perfectly fair assessment, in my view.
I don’t think that Shiller is embarrassed by P/E10. I think that he doesn’t want to be slammed and he has learned from bitter experience over the years that being too clear in one’s statements re what the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research shows leads to one being slammed pretty darn hard. I think your statement that “it’s almost as if he was embarrassed by P/E10” is a fair one. The behavior is exceedingly odd. I don’t think that deep down he really is embarrassed of his life’s work. But I think it is fair to say that at times he gives that impression. It’s a strange way for someone who truly is the creator of the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept to spread the word re his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings. If it is all so revolutionary, why doesn’t he tell us more about the revolutionary how-to aspects of the question from his perspective?
I don’t think that Shiller is a Buy-and-Holder and I don’t think that the war is over. I obviously believe something quite to the contrary. But I cannot say that I fault you too much for saying this. I have won every battle we have fought on the content side and you have won every battle that we have fought on the process side. It’s a pretty darn big victory for you to be able to point to Shiller statements of this sort while also pointing out the absence of Shiller statements saying that what Bogle is saying is wrong and dangerous. If I were you, I would be pointing this out. I don’t quite agree with you. But I don’t think you are engaging in much distortion re this particular point.
If you really cared about your own long-term investing success, you would want to pin both Shiller and Bogle down to a far greater extent than they have allowed themselves to be pinned down thus far. That’s my comeback. Shiller is offering you a certain measure of happy talk. Are you going to let him get away with it? If you were thinking clearly, you would be holding his feet to the fire. You don’t do that. That tells me that you are worried that, if you tried to hold his feet to the fire, you would hear things that you very much do not want to hear.
So your position is ultimately a weak one. You have a temporary strength that you can use to get people like Shiller and Bogle to issue public statements that keep the fantasy going. Okay. But what do you do for an encore, you know? If the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research points to something real, prices are going to collapse and a lot of people are going to be angry about what happened to their retirement portfolios. People are going to be asking hard questions in those days and looking for real answers to them. Happy talk is not going to close the sale in those days. I have a mountain of real answers to offer them. I got off the happy talk road a long time ago.
It all comes down to whether people develop a desire to know the realities or not. If they do, I win. If they don’t, you win. That’s the bottom line, The desire is not intense enough today to overcome your abusiveness. But what about tomorrow? Will a price crash bring about a change? I believe that it will. I cannot see into the future. But I don’t feel comfortable being one more person generating a lot of happy talk. So I guess that I will just continue to walk this path that I have been on for the past 15 years.
I believe that Shiller will be singing a clearer and bolder tune in the days following the next price crash. But I cannot prove it. We will have to wait to see how things play out.
A few years back I talked these matters over with my priest. I supplied him with a summation of events and he asked me: “Have you considered contacting Shiller and asking for his help?” It’s a fair question, no? That’s pretty much the same point that you are getting at here, no? Shiller is the guy with the Nobel prize. One would think that he would be doing everything in his power to spread the word re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research. But the reality is that he has never said “The Buy-and-Hold retirement studies get the numbers wildly wrong” or “Bogle’s investing advice is dangerous” or “It was the promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies for decades after the peer-reviewed research showed that there is precisely zero chance that they could ever work in the real world that served as the primary cause of the economic crisis.” It hurts the cause that that is so.
I obviously would like to hear Shiller say all those things. What do you want me to do about it? I cannot force the man to say those things any more than I can force Bogle to say the things that I would like to hear Bogle say. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing without the contributions of Shiller and Bogle. So I obviously need to be supremely grateful to both of them. And I just have to accept that neither of them sees fit today to offer all the help that I would like to see them both offer. It’s not like I can do anything about it anyway, you know?
It wouldn’t surprise me to see Shiller publish a sequel to his Irrational Exuberance book in the days following the next price crash in which he reports on all the how-to implications of his research that he has held back commenting on through this day. I have no inside knowledge. But it would not surprise me to learn that he has already written the sequel and is just waiting for a time to publish it when he believes that the follow-up work will generate a good reception.
I want to read the sequel now, you know? I don’t want to wait. When it comes to learning what I need to do to invest my retirement money effectively, I am an impatient sort of fellow!
Rob
“If you really cared about your own long-term investing success, you would want to pin both Shiller and Bogle down to a far greater extent than they have allowed themselves to be pinned down thus far. That’s my comeback. Shiller is offering you a certain measure of happy talk. Are you going to let him get away with it? If you were thinking clearly, you would be holding his feet to the fire. You don’t do that. That tells me that you are worried that, if you tried to hold his feet to the fire, you would hear things that you very much do not want to hear”
You seem to be the only one concerned about this, so why aren’t you confronting both of them instead of just filling up the internet.
I have contacted both Bogle and Shiller, Anonymous. I wouldn’t say that I “confronted” them. I played it the same way with them that I have played it with Mel Lindauer and John Greaney and everyone else. I didn’t “confront” Greaney on the morning of May 13, 2002, I just pointed out that his retirement study did not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applied on the day the retirement began and hundreds of my fellow community members said that the discussion that followed was the most exciting and thought-provoking one that they had ever seen in this field and then Greaney threatened to kill anyone who participated in the discussion and we were all off to the races.
I am not even a tiny bit confrontational by nature. As one of my fellow community members once noted, I was universally viewed as a teddy-bear-type poster in the days prior to May 13, 2002. So I am never in 15 billion years going to “confront” my good friends Jack Bogle or Robert Shiller. But I would be 100 percent happy to share a stage with either one of them and ask them the questions that I believe they need to be asked for us all to learn as much as possible about how stock investing works in the real world. I would call that putting them on the hot seat, not confronting them. I view it as the ultimate compliment to put someone on the hot seat. It means that I view their ideas as important enough to justify me going to the trouble to do that. It’s the ultimate show of respect for me to do that, in my assessment.
I have tried to do that. My efforts have not thus far produced good fruit. I fully intend to try again in the days following the next price crash. What else can I give you?
You are in different circumstances. You Goons have not engaged in such efforts in the past. If you Goons wanted to put Bogle or Shiller on the hot seat, you are in a position where I am 100 percent sure that you could get it done. Bogle is not going to ignore a request by his Goon Squad to respond to some questions. And, if you persuaded Bogle to make a request of Shiller, as you could, Shiller would be responsive too. So you can get something done today that I cannot.
You of course are free not to get that something done. I don’t think you will act. I am just saying that I would like you to and that I think it would be in your own self-interest to do so. I believe that we are all in the same boat, that deep down we all want to know how stock investing works in the real world. I believe that, if you were capable of thinking clearly re these matters, you would have put both Bogle and Shiller on the hot seat a long time ago. And, if you did it properly, they would have enjoyed the experience and taught us all important things while also learning important things themselves. So we would all be in better circumstances than the circumstances we find ourselves in today. A true free lunch!
Learning experiences are amazing, Anonymous. This is my sincere belief.
I wish you well.
Rob
“You are in different circumstances. You Goons have not engaged in such efforts in the past. If you Goons wanted to put Bogle or Shiller on the hot seat, you are in a position where I am 100 percent sure that you could get it done. Bogle is not going to ignore a request by his Goon Squad to respond to some questions.”
But no one else sees a problem, so why would we feel the need to reach out to either Bogle or Shiller?
If you didn’t see a problem, you wouldn’t be posting here every day, Goonie.
You see a problem. You just see the problems that develop from coming clean (going to prison) as being more threatening than the problems that develop from continuing the cover-up (extending the length of the prison term). Following the next price crash, your prison term will be announced and so your fear of it being announced will disappear. At that point, your primary concern will be doing what you can to lessen the length of the prison term. You will be coming at things from a different perspective.
Please let me know if there is ever a time when I can help out in some way.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
By your logic, you are worried about VII and getting your $500 million as you are posting on this on a regular basi. If you were confident in your position, you wouldn’t need to keep repeating it.
I’m not the one bringing this stuff up, Goonie. You Goons bring it up every day. You cannot stop.
If you Goons stopped posting, I would still write my column. I would still write about VII. But it would be pure substance stuff. I don’t do that because I “worry” about it. I do it because I think that it’s an amazing opportunity to write about the first true research-based strategy at a time when there is so little competition.
The only reason why I write about the prison stuff is because someone needs to explain to people why it has taken us 36 years to complete the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. This matter affects every citizen of this country. The continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold was the primary cause of the economic crisis. Everyone who lives in this country needs to understand what is going on. So I do what I can to explain what has been going on and what is going on. The prison sentence aspect of the question is part of a story that very much needs to be told.
But I can let it be. It’s okay by me if you stop posting here and we will wait until after the crash to get back to the prison stuff. I will continue to write the column in the interim and focus on substance stuff with that. And we will just wait to see how it plays out.
The difference is that on the surface you have been victorious. I have been banned at every major investing site on the internet. You have not. So you should be able to walk away and feel good about what has gone down. But you can’t let it go. The reason why I don’t let it go is obvious. I believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing and so I am going to continue writing about it. You believe in Buy-and-Hold and so I would expect you to continue writing about BH. You have no problem doing that. That is permitted everywhere, right? So why bother coming here? There’s nothing here for you.
If you really believe that things are as they appear to be today, that is. But you don’t believe that. You know that Madoff is in prison and you know that you did all the things that you did and you are fearful that the emotions will turn when prices fall and you really will go to prison. I didn’t do that to you, you did that to you. And of course all of the site owners who put turning a buck over following their own site posting rules helped to do that to you. You are screwed but not because of anything that I did.
The only explanation of your behavior is that you are more afraid than you pretend to be. It’s all part of the bull market experience. Bull markets are Liar’s Markets. Lies hurt people. You stood too close to the fire and you got hurt. I didn’t want to see it happen and I did everything in my power to stop it from happening. But it wasn’t in my power to help you in the way that I wanted to help you.
It is entirely consistent with my position for me to respond to your questions. I want people to understand the emotional side of stock investing and all your stuff is emotional in the extreme. So I am pointing to realities that we will all be talking about once VII becomes the dominant model for understanding how stock investing works. You are not behaving in a manner that is consistent with your professed belief that nothing is going to change following the next price crash. If you truly believed that you have prevailed, you could walk away and enjoy the victory.
The story is not over until we see whether another price crash affects investor emotions and thereby gives us the courage we need to stand up to you Goons and thereby open up the entire internet to honest posting on the past 36 years of peer-reviewed research.
Rob
You keep bring up VII and your war on buy and hold as you are not confident with your strategy and what you have said. You also bring up your $500 million settlement because you are not confident in your retirement plan.
If I were 100 percent confident in VII, would continue writing about it. Your logic does not hold.
The difference is that you believe in BH and you have the entire internet at which to write about it. If I had thousands of places to write about VII, I wouldn’t be talking with you, okay?
I talk with you because I want to open the entire internet to honest posting and to do that I need to show people how emotional Buy-and-Holders are. So talking with you serves a purpose.
For me, these conversations serve a purpose. For you, they do not. Unless you are worried about upcoming prison sentences. That’s the only thing that could possibly explain your continued participation here.
Rob
Uh oh, Rob. Janet Yellen says that we won’t see a crisis again, so that means we won’t get the crash you want. Therefore, you won’t get your $500 million.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/27/yellen-banks-very-much-stronger-another-financial-crisis-not-likely-in-our-lifetime.html
The fact that she says we won’t see it will make the reaction worse in the event that we do see it, Goonie.
I think we are going to have to wait to see how things play out.
I wish you all good things.
Rob