Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Hey Rob, you gonna share the loot with your old trolling pals from days gone by at Morningstar’s Vanguard Diehards Board? They had a good gig going until you came along and rocked their world. They were just garden variety trolls, you were a troll on steroids who forced Morningstar to crack down on them when you were getting the boot. It seems only fair that you should share some of your bounty with them. Especially since it’s SOOOOO MUCH MONEY and it’s a SURE BET!!!
None of the people you are referring to were “trolls,” John.
There are two academic schools of thought re how stock investing works. One school (Buy-and-Hold) is rooted in the research of Nobel-prize-winning economist Eugene Fama. And one school (Valuation-Informed Indexing) is rooted in the research of Nobel-prize-winning economist Robert Shiller. There are good and smart people on both sides of the fence and people on both sides of the fence possess an absolute right to post their honest views at every discussion board and blog on the internet.
You are right that, if those good people really were trolls, then I was a troll “on sterioids.” I pushed harder than anyone else for recognition of the right of all those people to post honestly. I believe strongly that none of our boards can do the job they were put in existence to do (to help us all learn about the subject matter) unless the right of every poster, regardless of the school of thought to which he belongs, to post honestly be respected. There is no place on investing boards for intimidation tactics by which those holding the majority view seek to keep those holding the minority view in line. It is through the conflict produced when both views are presented in as strong a form as advocates of them can present them that we all find the strong and weak points of both schools of thought. When intimidation tactics are employed to cause members of one school of thought to self-censor themselves, the entire board community becomes a corrupt enterprise.
This is what The Great Debate is all about. We learned amazing things about how stock investing works in 1981. But so far we have learned these things only in an dry and dead intellectual sense. To incorporate what we have learned into our real-world investing lives, we need to win recognition of our right to post honestly at every investing site on the internet. When we do that, one of the two schools of thought will prevail on its merits, not because of the criminally abusive acts of its most emotional advocates. I love my Buy-and-Hold friends. But I want to see them restrained in their posting behavior by the laws of the United States and by the published posting rules of the sites they visit. I love what we have learned from the research that was once thought to support Buy-and-Hold. But I don’t want our excitement over the good things in that research to blind us to the good things to be found in research that was published in later years and that discredited some of the ideas generated by initial assessments of the earlier research.
I will share the bounty in the sense that I intend to use 5 percent to promote this site. That will turn this site into the most popular investing site on the internet. The good people to which you refer did a lot to inform the ideas presented at this site. So that helps them. And I intend to use another 5 percent of the settlement amount to finance a number of personal finance blogs that will advance ideas of a variety of different people. So we will have new ideas being developed by people coming at things from new perspectives. That’s what those fine people at the Diehards board that you are speaking of wanted all along. Their vision will indeed be realized in coming days.
Our laws against financial fraud are much-needed laws, John. That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters in any event.
My best wishes to you, Goon pal.
Rob
Hi Rob. What do I need to do to get some of that loot?
You need to post honestly, both re the substantive issues and re the 15-year cover-up (or the 36-year cover-up, it you want to take it back to when Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings.
The pioneers will properly receive huge financial rewards for their courage. One of the reasons why I love this country is that we have mechanisms in place to expose cover-ups that hurt us all. One of the mechanisms we have is civil lawsuits. Those who have the courage to speak up will suffer serious negative financial consequences in the short-term term but huge financial rewards down the road a bit.
These financial rewards are not “windfalls,” as you Goons like to put it. They are well-deserved financial rewards. The work that I have done for the past 15 years is the hardest work there is. I continue doing it because it is also the most important and fulfilling work there is. But it is mighty hard work. I have earned every last dime of the $500 million settlement payment that I expect to receive down the road a piece.
No apologies whatsoever. My country called on me and I answered the call.
Apology-Free Rob
Hi Rob ,
After learning about Value Investing on your site , before I had been brain washed by my Buy and Hold Broker. I finally learned on my own about Value Investing I will never go back. In fact using your calculator with these insane values I allocated 20% to stocks. Am I glad I did I have still had a decent gain with no worry! If my portfolio looses 80% I am still only down 16%, I can live with that. I feel no emotional worry this way.With Buy and Hold I lived with emotional fear of loosing 50% of my retirement portfolio.The rest of my portfolio went into Tips ETF, not bonds. I am just an average guy not a pro. I thank you again for doing the research because it saves us emotional hard ship and family problems as well.
Max
There are millions of middle-class people who are seeking a investment strategy that takes the worry out of providing for an old-age retirement, Max. The Wall Street Con Men fight me like the dickens but the full reality is that they could make a lot of money with this if they would just chill out a bit. People would buy more stocks if most of the risk of stock-buying were removed from the experience. In the long run, Valuation-Informed Indexing will bring in more profits than Buy-and-Hold.
This is a win/win/win/win/win. The only hard part is navigating the transition. People who built their careers around Buy-and-Hold see it as a turf battle and don’t take the time to think through the long-term marketing implications. Taking most of the risk out of stock investing makes stocks a more appealing asset class. I am the most pro-stock guy out there! Lots of people who think of themselves as being pro-stock just don’t see it yet.
And of course my work builds on the foundation built by the Buy-and-Holders. So in no way, shape or form should anything I have done be seen as a dig at them. They make themselves look bad by fighting an advance that they made possible in the first place. I praise the Buy-and-Holders all the time for all the good that I have done. But they cannot bear to hear praise coming from me. They attack me because I point out the one mistake they made. They don’t get it that none of the good they have done ends up counting for anything in the long run if they don’t fix the mistake.
Yowsa!
Rob
5% for just this site? That is $25 million. How would that generate a sufficient return?
I discussed monetization options in a recent comment at another blog entry here. There are lots and lots of possibilities.
But the point here is not to bring in money. The point is to pay back to the community that generated a lot of the investing insights explored here. There are thousands of people who have made contributions. Those people want to see their ideas help people. The more people I bring to the site, the more people get help. So I don’t have any problem devoting 5 percent of a settlement payment to promotion of the site. I mean, come on.
When this new internet communications medium is firing on all cylinders, we all do well. Some of us make money. Some of us tap into exciting new insights. Some of us make friends through the interactions that generate the discussions. There’s all kinds of cool stuff that goes on. I love this new communications medium when it works. The payment of the $500 million is one way that I can get it to work for me personally. But I also want to get the Retire Early community to where it would have been had you Goons never darkened our doorstop with your abusive garbage. $25 million in promotional spending could build an amazing community here.
I believe in turning bad stuff into good stuff. You Goons have been very, very bad stuff for our community. Spending the $25 million building up this site would turn the negative experience into a positive one that would benefit lots of people for a long time to come. My feeble Normal brain is not even able to imagine any possible downside. Has your far superior Goon brain been able to come up with anything?
Rob