Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Most people just go to the grocery and buy whatever is there. So it sounds like you fully support buy and hold.
When the price of milk increases, people complain.
When the price of stocks increases, people cheer.
That’s the problem, Laugh. It’s an emotional thing.
People can be educated to complain about increases in stock prices just as they complain about increase in milk prices. But those of us who want to help out are prohibited from doing so because it makes the Buy-and-Holders feel bad for people to learn the realities.
That has to change. If our economic system is going to survive, we need to find a way to provide access to honest and accurate posting about scores of critically important investment-related topics. We are on our way. We are as a society working our way through a process that gets us there and that liberates us all from the Get Rich Quick thinking that is at the core of the Buy-and-Hold project.
I am doing my part. I love my country. So I am doing my part.
You Goons desperately want to stop me. So you are doing all you can to hold me back.
The people of the United States will decide the matter. As one of you Goons put it not too long ago, the community will have its say. But you Goons make it sound as if the community decisions that resulted in bans on honest posting are final decisions. They are not. Communities are permitted to rethink matters after the members of the community lose most of their retirement savings. That’s certainly what happened with the community that celebrated the owner of the Madoff Fund as “Saint Bernie.” You don’t hear anyone referring to him as “Saint Bernie” today while he watches television in his prison cell.
The community of people who comprise the United States of America is working its way toward achieving the biggest advance in its understanding of how stock investing works ever experienced in history. We are in the process of coming to see that buying stocks is just like buying milk, there are some prices at which the value proposition is amazing, there are some at which it is good and there are some at which it is poor. Once we all start buying stocks the way we all already buy milk, we will never again see another bull market. Which means we will never again see the bear markets that inevitably follow from bull markets. Which means that we will never again see the economic crisis that inevitably follow from bear markers.
I don’t like economic crises. They hurt millions of good people. So I oppose the Buy-and-Hold “strategies” that create them. I follow and recommend the first true research-based investing strategy, Valuation-Informed Indexing. I am 100 percent confident that everyone in this field will be working with me to help spread the word re Valuation-Informed Indexing once we all see the damage done by the promotion of Buy-and-Hold with the arrival of the next price crash. But we are going to have to wait to see how things play out in the real world to get you Goons on board. I have a funny feeling that you are not going to be willing to come clean just because I put forward some words about things I am 100 percent sure we are going to see happen in coming days.
Can you just calm down a bit until the next crash arrives and and then resume these discussions at that time? I sincerely believe that that’s the best way to proceed given the circumstances that apply today.
I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person in any event, my long-time Goon friend.
Rob
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