Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
It seems that Robert Shiller is becoming more of a goon every day. We continue to read as to how he thinks we should remain in stocks. Now he says we have seen the correction:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-02-12/robert-schiller-says-we-ve-had-our-correction-video
Notice he doesn’t call for a 50 or 65% drop. Nor does he say to get out of stock. I guess you will have to send him to your prison as well, Rob.
Thanks for the link, Anonymous. That’s an important clip and I am grateful that you brought it to our attention.
I am not at all grateful for the way you presented it. Your wording was 100 percent goonish. Your wording was 100 percent misleading. Someone who read your comment and did not listen to the actual clip would be left with a completely wrong impression of what Shiller said. That sort of behavior doesn’t help. It hurts in a big way.
Now —
In fairness to you, it is very hard to make sense of what Shiller is saying here. He IS saying that we have seen a correction that could have been anticipated, which is what you are saying he said. But he is not at all saying that we are not going to see another big drop; he suggests that that is a possibility. You say that he doesn’t “call” for a 50 percent drop or a 65 percent drop. I don’t see him “calling” for either of those things either. But I sure don’t see him ruling them out. And the way that he says things suggests (only suggests) that he sees them as real possibilities.
We need to dig deeper. We need interviewers asking him hard, follow-up questions. We need to figure out what he truly believes about all this stuff. It is not at all clear at this point. And it is important that we know. And of course figuring out what Shiller truly believes is only the first step. We need to figure out what Bogle truly believes. And we need to figure out what Pfau truly believes. And we need to figure out what Bernstein truly believes. And we need to figure out what Kitces truly believes.
I’ll take it a step further. Shiller needs to figure out what Shiller truly believes. And Bogle needs to figure out what Bogle truly believes. And Pfau needs to figure out what Pfau truly believes. And Bernstein needs to figure out what Bernstein truly believes. And Kitces needs to figure out what Kitces truly believes. And Anonyomous needs to figure out what Anonymous truly believes. And so on and so forth.
We all need to be making an effort to figure out how this stock investing stuff really works. To do so, we need to do something about the death threats and about the demands for unjustified board bannings and about the thousands of acts of defamation and about the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs and just let people say what they believe in plain and simple and clear terms. And then we need to dig into what they say and explore it from multiple angles until we can make sense of the entire story. That’s my sincere take.
Shiller is talking here about his indicators. In numerous interviews he has suggested that he believes that short-term timing is possible by making use of certain economic indicators that he favors (here he is making reference to some sort of investor confidence indicator). I don’t believe in short-term indicators. I think Shiller is wrong about this. If he knew that a correction was coming, why didn’t he say so before it hit, you know? He didn’t say anything before because he didn’t really know. Short-term timing doesn’t work. Sometimes the indicators work and sometimes they don’t. If Shiller called for a correction each time his indicators saw one coming, he would end up looking like a fool because he would be proved wrong so often. So I just don’t buy that one. I personally don’t think that what he says about short-term indicators and short-term calls is of much consequence (I of course acknowledge that it is possible that I am wrong about this as it is possible that I am wrong about all else).
What I think Shiller did that has HUGE importance is to show that long-term timing always works. He doesn’t say it that clearly and I wish he would. But he showed with peer-reviewed research that valuations affect long-term returns. If that’s so, then stock investing risk is not static but variable. If that’s so, then long-term timing must always work because all that long-term timing is in that scenario is price discipline. Investors should obviously be trying to keep their risk profiles constant and so investors should obviously be engaging in long-term timing to do so. There can be reasonable arguments about how to go about doing so. But there cannot be any reasonable arguments as to whether it is necessary for investors to make the effort to get it right. If the market is not efficient, then investors cannot keep their risk profiles constant without engaging in long-term timing/price discipline, so they obviously need to make the effort to do that.
I obviously do not buy into what you are saying that Shiller is saying. But you of course are being highly misleading. He is not saying what you are saying he is saying. He is saying something strange and confusing and hard to decipher. I will give you that much. I do not feel that I can say precisely what Shiller truly believes; my personal guess is that even Shiller could not do that at this stage of the proceedings. But I sure believe that it is a critical matter of national business that we all figure that out. And the way to do that is not to go goonish when he says something and to try to force his words into our own views of how stock investing works. The way to go is to ask more questions and to dig and to explore and to analyze and to ponder until we possess a far better understanding than we possess today.
If you believe that Shiller believes what you believe about stock investing, you are fooling yourself, Anonymous. Of that I am 100 percent sure.
I cannot say by his pubic words that Shiller believes everything that I believe. But I can say that everything that I believe logically follows from his “revolutionary” (his word) finding of 1981 that valuations affect long-term returns. I believe that Shiller is afraid to say clearly and plainly much of what he believes about how stock investing works and that, if he did speak clearly, we would learn that he believes most or at least much of what I believe. But I also believe that he probably does not today believe everything that I believe. He probably has not thought through some of the things that I have thought through. And of course I could be wrong about some things. So there is just no way of knowing until as a society we elect to permit honest posting at every site on the internet so that we can all gain a lot of depth re our understanding of the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.
Thanks again for the link. We all need to listen to that clip and ponder its meaning. I think you are very much off track in your public statement as to what you believe it means. But I also think that you are right to see the clip as being important enough to note and I do acknowledge that the clip suggests that Shiller holds some beliefs that are in accord with your own (it is more than a little hard to say precisely what those beliefs are because we have just not yet seen enough digging to make complete sense of what he says here).
Yowsa!
Take good care, man.
Rob
In this 1996 paper Shiller brazenly predicted a zero percent real total return over the ten year period starting in January 1996: http://www.econ.yale.edu//~shiller/data/peratio.html
Instead the results were 6.6% real per year. Now here’s where you blither about him being just a bit off, or just a bit early. You’ll spew some nonsense about how people who screw up like that don’t win Nobel Prizes. But the plain facts are that his ten year (“long term”) prediction was extremely clear, and it was spectacularly wrong.
And unlike you, Shiller learns from his mistakes. He will never make such a prediction again, no matter how much you want him grilled. You’re wasting your time waiting for Shiller to validate your folly. Ain’t gonna happen.
This post is gold in three respects, Anonymous.
One, I much appreciate the link to Shiller’s article from 1996. That’s the sort of thing that we all need to be talking about at every discussion board and blog on the internet. You are quite right in your suggestion that Shiller was at that time expressing himself in ways more akin to how I express myself. I obviously think that he was right on to do that. So I am glad to see confirmation of my impressions of what his research means in the link you present here.
Two, you were 100 percent right in your assessment of how I would react to the fact that Shiller was a little off in his comments. I acknowledge that he was off, there’s no dispute there. But I would say that he was 90 percent right and only 10 percent wrong (and that, unfortunately, that’s the best that any of us can do today, given the state of the world’s knowledge of how stock investing works in the real world). My assessment of Shiller’s “mistake” is precisely what you describe it to be.
Three, i think you are partially (but only partially) correct in your claim that Shiller “will never make such a prediction again.” I think you are right that it is his experience in not seeing these predictions come through that has made him reluctant to repeat them. I think that’s so of Bogle as well, if you want to know the full story. Bogle made a public comment about how future returns would be low because valuations were too high in the early 1990s and was proven as “wrong” re that one as Shiller was proven wrong re this one. And then Bogle himself engaged successfully in market timing in 2000, when he dramatically lowered his stock allocation because of the insanely high stock prices of that time. But this go-around he kept it to himself. He didn’t go sharing his opinions with others because he had had that earlier experience of looking foolish as the result of doing so. I get the sense that Shiller feels the same way. And so, yes, he is reluctant to offer predictions that are as clear and firm today.
But you say that he will “never” do this again. There I think you are wrong. I think that Shiller will return to making effective, research-based predictions in the wake of the next price crash, when the general public will be 10 times more receptive to his message than it is today. And Bogle will do the same. And everyone else in this field will do the same. That’s my sincere take.
The reality as demonstrated by every sliver of evidence available to us is that short-term timing never, ever, ever works and long-term timing always, always, always works and is always, always, always required for those who want to keep their risk profile roughly stable over time. For so long as prices remain insanely high, those who give public voice to these obvious truths are going to be met with a tsunami of hatred put forward by those desperately trying to retain confidence in the conventional wisdom of the pre-1981 time-period that it is not necessary to practice price discipline (long-term timing) to invest in stocks successfully for the long run.
I wish it wasn’t so. But it’s obviously so. I believe it will change with the next price crash. But we are all just going to have to wait a bit to find out for sure whether it does or not.
It is my strongly held view that Shiller was performing a huge public service by being so clear in the language that he used in the 1996 article. I wish he would speak the same way today. I understand why he is afraid to do so. I am entirely sympathetic to the situation he finds himself in. But I think we all need to hear the clear version of his message that he was happy to provide in the days before you Goons went completely off your rockers. But I think we will get the clear Shiller back again. It’s a question of us as a society sending the right signals. When we want clear Shiller, we will get clear Shiller. In the days following the next price crash, we will be sufficiently shaken up that we will all very much want clear Shiller.
I personally believe that even some of you Goons will be joining the party in those days, as amazing a “prediction” as that might appear to be to you. But we will see, you know?
My best wishes to you, old friend.
Clear-Shiller-Loving Rob
“But you say that he will “never” do this again. There I think you are wrong.”
Yes, the fact that your faith goes against all common sense is well documented. Common sense says that Shiller a) has nothing to gain by making another such prediction and b) knows that the moment he does, that 1996 link will resurface and his credibility will be justifiably shot to hell. He probably counts himself lucky that people don’t already repost it in the comment section of every article where he is quoted.
People should repost it!
This is where we come at things from such completely different perspectives!
There should never be anything mean-spirited about it. Shiller is a giant. He has helped us all learn important things about an important subject. Even when he is wrong!!!! Even when he is wrong, he is helping us out. So we should be grateful when he is wrong. And of course we should be grateful when he is right too.
The phrase that I use re Bogle is that we all need to put him on the hot seat. Bogle says lots of contradictory things. So let’s put him on the hot seat. Maybe he will show us that the things he is saying are not so contradictory after all. Or perhaps he will over time come to change some of his views so that his message will fit together better. Either way everybody is a winner. It is not even possible for the rational human mind to imagine any way that putting Bogle on the hot seat could ever have any downside.
And of course the same goes for Shiller. So let’s put him on that hot seat too. Let’s make it a practice to report his words from 1996 every time we see him put forward some new words that seem to contradict the earlier ones. That’s how we all get about the business of learning together.
That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter, in any event.
I wish you all good things, my dear Goon friend.
Rob
All we’ve learned from Shiller is that he can’t time the market any better than anyone else. He made a public LONG TERM timing prediction, and it flopped, despite your incessant claims that such a thing is impossible.
He would have to be an idiot to repeat that mistake. And people would have to be idiots to listen to the market timing predictions of someone who has proven he can’t time the market. His Nobel prize still gets him on TV, but now he only speaks in vague generalities, then collects his check.
Face it Rob. You’re not going to get what you want from Shiller.
I think Shiller’s research is legitimate, Anonymous.
I think he deserved the Nobel prize that he was awarded (I think that Fama deserved his too).
It will be interesting to see how things play out.
I naturally wish you all good things.
Rob
“What I think Shiller did that has HUGE importance is to show that long-term timing always works.”
No, he didn’t. If he had done that you could point to the research where he calculates how much extra return investors would receive by following a long term timing strategy. However such research does not exist.
Oh, it exists.
It was done by a fellow named “Rob Bennett” and by a fellow named “Wade Pfau.”
I have a funny feeling that that research will be featured on the front page of the New York Times in the days following the next price crash.
Time will tell the tale.
New-York-Times-Bound Rob
“It was done by a fellow named “Rob Bennett” and by a fellow named “Wade Pfau.””
If you are referring to this paper https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2544636 then you are incorrect.
That paper actually demonstrates the opposite.
The key information is on page 18 Table 1
Summary Statistics for Whole Period, January 1871 to January 2010
Fixed 100/0
8.60
This shows that 100% stocks earned 8.60% in the period in question.
MT 0 – 100
Geometric Return
historical median 8.80
historical mean 9.11
This shows that the market timing approach earned 8.80% or 9.11% depending on whether you used mean or median figures to drive your buy/sell decisions.
Wow, that beats buy and hold!
But wait
MT 0 – 100
Geometric Return
rolling mean 8.61
rolling median 8.59
The rolling mean and median figures are based on the valuation that would have been calculated from 1871 up to the point of the investment. What that means is that for an investment made in 1950 you can only use the values from 1871 to 1950 to decide your buy/sell decisions. You don’t get to base them on the knowledge of 1950 – present because at that point you would not have known those figures.
To quote the paper
“For the timing strategy based on the rolling median PE10 value, the slightly lower wealth accumulation results from a geometric return of 8.59 percent, compared to 8.6 percent for the buy-and-hold strategy. The two strategies provide, essentially, the same returns.”
It is very easy to come up with a market timing scheme that works if you get to look at the answers first. If you have to build it without knowing what future returns hold it is not so easy.
The excess return that Wade calculated when using the mean and median for the whole period disappeared when he calculated the values based on what investors would have known at the time they were making the investment decision.
Every investor alive needs to look at the work that Wade and I did and decide for himself or herself how to proceed with his or her retirement account as a result. I don’t doubt that many would conclude as you have, Evidence. But I also know for certain that many others would reach very different conclusions. Wade Pfau would be one of those others. Wade’s conclusion when he completed the months of research effort that he put into that paper was: “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” And there were people who saw it at the Bogleheads Forum in the days before Wade was threatened who said similar things.
It’s not for you to decide what other investors get to hear about how investing works. It’s just not.
That’s Rob Bennett’s sincere take, in any event. We will get to see together in the days following the next price crash how it all plays out.
I wish you the best of luck with it, my dear friend. That far I can go. I cannot go further. I cannot post dishonestly. But I feel comfortable going that far. I do wish you the best of luck with it.
Investor-Freedom-Advocate Rob
I don’t know where he made the “Yes, Virginia” comment.
I do know that in the paper he says “The two strategies provide, essentially, the same returns”.
In other words 140 years of market timing leaves you with the same amount of money as buy and hold over the same period.
Valuation-Informed Indexing offered the same return over the 140-year time-period AT GREATLY REDUCED RISK. One way that Wade measured risk was to examine the greatest portfolio-value drop experienced by the investor. The greatest portfolio-value drop ever experienced by a Valuation-Informed Indexers was ONE-THIRD as large as the greatest portfolio-value drop ever experienced by Buy-and-Holders. And with no loss of return whatsoever!
That’s huge, Evidence. There are MILLIONS of middle-class people who would like to learn about the research-based investing strategy that permits them to earn returns as big as those earned by Buy-and-Hold while taking on only a fraction of the risk. And there are millions of others who would play it the other way. Since Valuation-Informed Indexing provides the same returns for those taking on greatly reduced risk, it also provides greatly enhanced returns for those willing to take on equal risk.
You know perfectly well where Wade made the “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” comment. He made it in one of the scores and scores of e-mails he exchanged with me during the many months in which we were working together on that hugely important peer-reviewed research paper, a paper that every investor alive in the United States would know about today had you and your Goon pals been placed in prison cells the first time you advanced death threats to block the discussions that thousands of our fellow community members expressed a desire to engage in.
I am 100 percent certain that we will all be having those discussions in the days following the next price crash. So all that you have accomplished with your 16-year Campaign of Terror against our board and blog communities is to earn a prison sentence for yourself. Color me unimpressed. If you believed that Buy-and-Hold could be defended in civil and reasoned discussion, we never would have seen a single death threat. I mean, give me a freakin’ break.
You’ve never seen a single death threat from me. You’ve never seen a single unjustified board banning from me. You’ve never seen a single act of defamation from me. You’ve never seen a single threat to get a single academic researcher fired from a single job from me, Gee, I wonder why?
Some of this investing stuff is so darn hard to figure out!
Non-Abusive-Posting Rob
“the first time you advanced death threats to block the discussions that thousands of our fellow community members expressed a desire to engage in”
I have never advanced death threats.
Tell it to the members of your jury, my dear Goon friend.
That’s how our system works.
As for me, I would be grateful for anything that you could do to spread the word far and wide that I have been speaking out in OPPOSITION to the death threats going back to the evening of August 27, 2002, when they first appeared.
Rob
“Tell it to the members of your jury, my dear Goon friend.”
There won’t be a jury because there won’t be a trial because I never advanced death threats. This thread illustrates a major difference between us.
I wanted to make a point about Wade Pfau’s paper
so
1) I included an link to the paper
2) I stated the page and table number that I wanted to discuss
3) I copied the relevant pieces into my post.
Anyone who wished to could click on the link and verify that the data and comments I referred to are correct.
You on the other hand, accused me of advancing death threats but did not provide any evidence to back up the claim.
You are great at name-calling, great at deleting posts from your blog but not so hot at providing information.
You imagine a fantasy world where the next price crash in US stocks will magically alter almost everything about stock investing (despite past price crashes not having this effect). You imagine future trials which will make you rich, despite being unable to back up your claims.
And you run a low-traffic blog where you delete replies that you don’t like, and yet accuse others of censorship.
Including the link was great. We agree re that one.
The entire site is the “link” that reveals your abusiveness. Anyone who wants to know the story knows it without me needing to provide any links. All that any reasonable person needs to do is to read one discussion thread in which you participate out of the thousands and thousands provided here.
I do indeed believe that the next price crash will change everyone’s understanding of how stock investing works in a fundamental way. That change should have happened in 1981, when Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings, the findings for which he was awarded a Nobel prize. The next crash will be the first sustained crash that we will have seen since 1981. So this will be the first time in history when two realities will both apply: (1) we will have available to us peer-reviewed research showing us how the market really works; and (2) prices will be at levels at which we will not see discussion of the realities as a threat because the crash will already have happened.
Are you okay with waiting to see how it all plays out? Does that work for you?
Rob
“The next crash will be the first sustained crash that we will have seen since 1981. So this will be the first time in history when two realities will both apply: (1) we will have available to us peer-reviewed research showing us how the market really works; and (2) prices will be at levels at which we will not see discussion of the realities as a threat because the crash will already have happened.”
We have already seen multiple price crashes since 1981 and they did not have the effect you are predicting.
The next one won’t either.
“Are you okay with waiting to see how it all plays out? ”
I am. Because I have a diverse index fund portfolio which benefits from the volatility (through rebalancing) that keeps you out of the market.
We have already seen multiple price crashes since 1981 and they did not have the effect you are predicting.
There has never been a secular bear market that ended before the P/E10 value dropped below 10. We have not been below 10 since the early 1980s.
The next one won’t either.
We’ll see, you know? I think it will. But I am not God. I could be wrong.
I am. Because I have a diverse index fund portfolio which benefits from the volatility (through rebalancing) that keeps you out of the market.
Okay. I certainly wish you the best of luck with it, in any event.
Take good care, old friend.
Rob
“The entire site is the “link” that reveals your abusiveness. Anyone who wants to know the story knows it without me needing to provide any links. All that any reasonable person needs to do is to read one discussion thread in which you participate out of the thousands and thousands provided here.”
Please point out where I have been abusive in this thread.
Your first contribution to the thread came at 10:06 a.m. on April 16, 2018. You quote me as saying: “What I think Shiller did that has HUGE importance is to show that long-term timing always works.” And then you respond: “:No, he didn’t. If he had done that you could point to the research where he calculates how much extra return investors would receive by following a long term timing strategy. However such research does not exist.”
You were participating in the discussions for the entire time that Wade Pfau and I were working on that research. You participated in numerous threads in which Wade described how excited he was re our findings.
Why play dumb? That’s abusive. It’s pretending that something that happened that is very, very, very important didn’t happen.
Will most people have tolerance for such tactics in the days following the next price crash? I don’t think so. I think people will be scared about the damage done to our economic system and to their own retirement portfolios and that we will all pull together in an effort to solve the problems we face.
I will do anything that I can to help you in those days or at any time that you decide to participate in civil and reasoned and constructive and positive and life-affirming discussions re what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing works in the real world. I won’t say that John Greaney included a valuation adjustment in the retirement study posted to his web site. And I won’t deny that there’s 37 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns.
I will wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person. But there are lines that I cannot cross. The felony line is one of them. I love my country. So that one is 100 percent non-negotiable.
That’s the deal.
Rob
Here’s a trip down memory lane: https://www.getrichslowly.org/how-to-build-wealth-ignore-wall-street-and-get-on-with-your-life/#comments
A staggering 2 1/2 week display of Hocomania at its apex. Which I imagine was the direct cause of your ban from J.D.’s site. What struck me is that your comments from nine years ago are absolutely indistinguishable from the those you make today. Except to the extent where you are dodging direct questions and various criticisms. You don’t do have to do that anymore because you simply delete such “abuse”.
I don’t believe that I was ever banned from Get Rich Slowly. I believe that J.D. Roth owned it in those days and he did not believe in bannings. He was not entirely open and warm and friendly (he was those things in part). There were moments when he got hostile. I think that at some point I just decided to stop pushing there and let it go. So there was not an actual ban. It was close, though. There was one time when he sent e-mails to everyone participating on a thread asking them not to respond to me. That’s sort of a soft ban.
It’s natural that the comments I made nine years ago would be similar to those I make today, no? There’s only one issue that has ever been in dispute. Is the market efficient, as the Buy-and-Holders believe? Or do valuations affect long-term returns, as Shiller showed? If you believe that the market is efficient, you go down one road. If you believe that valuations affect long-term returns, you go down a very different road. I believe that we should launch a national debate aimed at determining which road is the right road. You Goons believe that we should suppress any suggestions that Buy-and-Hold might not be the right road.
It’s that same basic story over and over and over and over again. Millions of words have been spilled but it has always come down to that one very simple point — Do we permit the minority to say what they truly believe or do we suppress them so we can pretend that the Buy-and-Hold strategy has been proven valid? It hasn’t been proven valid. If it had been proven valid, Shiller would not have been awarded a Nobel prize for his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings.
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.
My best wishes to you, Goon friend.
Rob
“It’s natural that the comments I made nine years ago would be similar to those I make today, no?”
It’s way more than “similar”. They could have been written in this thread yesterday and no one would be able to tell. Nor is it “natural” to spend so many years harping on one, and only one, topic. Don’t you have ANY other interests?
Even back then, you were claiming death threats. People asked for links, you refused. People asked you to explain how to implement VII, you refused. You said Goons were holding you back and threatening people. People asked for evidence of that, you refused. You said everything would change after the next crash (even though at that time, a huge crash had just happened.)
Nothing ever changes with you, does it?
It’s one topic. But it’s one topic that affects every other topic. Both Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing are numbers-based models. The valuations number is often a big number. One model includes that number, one leaves it out. So the two models produce very, very different strategic recommendations. In a numbers-based model, you have to get the numbers right, especially the big ones. This is the one topic that affects every other topic.
And the emotional stuff has been there since the first day. That’s all the Buy-and-Holders have. I wish the reality were otherwise. I wish I could give you some other forms of ammunition so that you could shift off from the death threats and the demands for unjustified board bannings and the thousands of acts of defamation and the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. But there is just nothing else available. It doesn’t take 16 years to determine whether a retirement study contains a valuations adjustment or not. If Greaney’s study doesn’t contain one and Shiller is right that valuations affect long-term returns, then he got the numbers wrong. If you could emotionally accept that, we could all move on to better things. But you don’t want to accept it. You understand intellectually but you do not accept emotionally.
Will the emotions change with the coming of the next price crash? That’s the question. I think they are going to change. But then I thought that Greaney’s Campaign of Terror would last two days, three at the tops. I thought that my fellow community members would demand that he drop it because because they would just calculate the number themselves and see that the number in his study is nothing close to the number you got when you include a valuations adjustment. I think it would be fair to say that the joke was on me re that one, Anonymous. Whachagonnado, right?
It all comes down to whether or not we see a shift in emotions in the days following the next price crash. I think we will see a shift. But I cannot say that I have a perfect track record re this stuff. We’re just going to have to wait to see how it all plays out. If Shiller is right, it will play out one way. If Fama is right, it will play out another way. We will be there to see it. We paid for our tickets and we got our admission and now we will get to see the show. That’s kind of what life is all about in a way, no?
Please mark me down as the guy who said that you need to count valuations to get the numbers right in a retirement study. Please don’t forget!
My best wishes to you, man.
Rob
Your response to Evidence on what you consider to be abuse is just plain wrong. It is to the point that there is no way to have a rational discussion with you.
I don’t believe that I am ever going to be able to work things out with you Goons, Anonymous.
If you Goons come clean, you go to prison. You don’t want that. So you are not willing to come clean. I get all this. I got it a long time ago. I got it even before you had engaged in criminal acts. In the early days, there was no reason to believe that you would end up in prison. At worst, you would have been banned from a discussion board. And even that would have been temporary. Had you been banned, I would have come out a few months later and asked that you be reinstated and everyone would have gone along with that. So in those days, there was no issue. But I could see where things were headed. The longer it took for you to be banned, the harder it was going to become for you ever to come clean. Here we are 16 years down the road with you looking at a prison sentence if you come clean. We have as a society achieved total lock-in effect.
It’s that way with the Wall Street Con Men too. They make statements all the time showing that they understand that valuations affect long-term returns and that Buy-and-Hold is dangerous. The quintessential example is William Bernstein. He obviously knows that Greaney got the numbers wildly wrong in his “study.” He said so much in a book published in 2002. But he is careful how he says it. He doesn’t say it directly. He says it in a fuzzy kind of way. He doesn’t want to anger you Goons. He does’t want people to suffer failed retirements. So his conscience compels him to hint at the truth. But he doesn’t dare to come entirely clean because that means that friends of his will be going to prison and he will be ostracized from “the Club.” It’s very, very, very, very sad stuff.
No, we cannot have a rational discussion at this point in the proceedings. Because a rational discussion would be an honest discussion. And an honest discussion would land you in a prison cell. That’s a strong inventive for you to avoid going down that path. None of us can do anything about it at this point in the proceedings. The best that we can do is to look ahead to what is coming in the days following the next price crash and try to prepare the field for what is likely going to happen then.
That’s what I do in all of the comments I post here, Anonymous. I write them in such a way as to tell the story that needs to be told to the people who will be reading the comments in the days following the next crash. I cannot work things out with you Goons because you are not motivated to work things out. But working things out with you is not essential in the long run. Assuming that Shiller’s research is legitimate (I believe it is), there will be another crash within the next year or two or three. Then lots of people will see with their own eyes what Buy-and-Hold has done to our country and they will work up the courage to stand up to you and you will be sent to prison and all the rest of us will be free to have the conversations about how stock investing works in the real world that we have been trying to have since the morning of May 13, 2002.
That’s the state of play. Rational discussions are wonderful. I am 100 percent for them. And there was a time when I was actively working to achieve them here. But I no longer entertain serious hopes that I will be working things out with you Goons. Once you crossed the felony line, that became an almost impossible dream for all of us. We just have to accept that things are what they are and do what we can to make the best of it all. I always do what I can to get your prison sentences reduced a bit. And I always make clear that there is zero chance that I will ever say that I believe that Greaney’s retirement study contains a valuations adjustment. The rest is pretty much out of my hands.
I am happy to have you continue to post here if you like. I often learn things from you. I want to learn as much as I can from whomever I can. So that part is fine with me. But I do not mean to suggest by responding to your posts that I believe today that there is any significant hope that we are going to engage in rational discussions and thereby work things out. It’s possible. But it’s very much a long shot today, in my assessment.
Does that help at all?
Rob
“I don’t believe that I am ever going to be able to work things out with you Goons, Anonymous.”
Based on observations as to what you think it means to “work things out”, it seems you want the following:
What you want is for everyone to agree with you. You want to say whatever you want to say on anyone else’s board, regardless if it is off topic. You want to be able to make comments without providing any facts to support those comments. Finally, you want to be considered as a thought leader in the field of investing, similar to Bogle, Shiller, Pfau, Bernstein, etc.
Did I get this right?
Feel free to let me know if any of this is incorrect.
The safe-withdrawal-rate matter is on-topic at a Retire Early board or at an investing board.
I have every right in the world to point out to my fellow community members that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins and that there is 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field showing that such an adjustment is required for the study to get the numbers right. In fact, it is more than a right. I have a responsibility to do that. If I fail to do that because I fear what Greaney’s Goon Squad will do to me if I post honestly, I am supporting this massive act of financial fraud. That means prison down the line a bit. Not freakin’ interested.
There’s no give re that one, Anonymous. Zero. This matter is 100 percent non-negotiable. It was 100 percent non-negotiable on the morning of May 13, 2002, and it will remain 100 percent non-negotiable 16 years from today and even 16 billion years from today in the unlikely event that I remain kicking that long.
Does that help at all?
Is there something about the words “non-freakin-negotiable” that you are having a hard time comprehending.
I feel that I am being clear here. Out of charity to my Goon friends.
Goon-Loving Rob
So, when there is a discussion about the impact of rising interest rates or change in tax rates, you still think it is okay to let you rattle on about your personal battle with some perspective you had on something John Greaney said a couple decades ago, even though it is off topic.
I would never post off-topic, Anonymous.
The safe-withdrawal-rate issue is on-topic at a Retire Early board.
We discussed it all the time at the Motley Fool board. It was only when I pointed out that the Greaney study did not contain a valuations adjustment that discussing safe withdrawal rates became “controversial.”
I wonder why.
Rob