Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“I made a few calls to lawyers a long time ago. I experienced the same problem talking with the lawyers re my lawsuits as I have experienced trying to get the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies corrected. People have a hard time believing in what you refer to as “this whole conspiracy thing.” ”
That should have been your clue that you were wasting your time.
The effect on me was just the opposite.
Say that Shiller is right. That means that bull markets are a mass delusion.
How does a society engage in a massive delusion? It’s not easy. If the site owners were enforcing the published posting rules, we could not have bull markets. People like me would spill the beans and the mass delusion would come to an end.
In ordinary circumstances, if criminal acts were used to stop people like me from spilling the beans, people like me could go to lawyers and get help and again the mass delusion would come to an end. So the reaction of the lawyers is part of the bull market story too.
Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize because he did something of huge importance. The Buy-and-Hold Model is the dominant model for understanding how stock investing works. The Buy-and-Hold Model says that stock prices are set through a rational process. So they are real, they can be trusted. Shiller says something different. He says that prices are set by shifts in investor emotion. They are NOT real. They cannot be trusted. They are temporary. To the extent that stock prices are set by investor emotion, they are the product of a mass delusion. Learning that that is so is a huge advance.
I love my country. So I want news of this advance to be shared with every investor on the planet. So that we all enjoy its benefits. I am not even able to imagine any downside.
You are saying that I should interpret any sign that Shiller is right, that stock prices really are the product of a mass delusion, as a sign that I am wasting my time. I suppose that in the short term that is kinda, sorta so. It’s hard to break through the mass delusion. I have been trying for 17 years and I have had my head slammed against the wall 17 million times.
But the mass delusion hurts each and every one of us in very, very big ways. If we are going to get over it, we are going to need to discuss these matters openly and frankly and honestly. There is no other way. So I don’t interpret signs that we really are suffering a mass delusion as signs that I am wasting my time. I interpret those signs as signs that we all really need to get about the business of opening every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research.
Buy-and-Hold says that it is reason that matters. Shiller says that it is emotion that matters. All that I have seen from Buy-and-Holders for 17 years now is emotion on top of emotion on top of emotion. That doesn’t tell me that I am wasting my time. It tells me that we all need to be paying more attention to what Shiller showed.
If Shiller is right that it is emotions that determine stock prices, emotions are not going to be the same when the CAPE value is 8 as it is when the CAPE value is 30. If Shiller is right, all of the people who today do not want to hear what the Valuation-Informed Indexers say are going to in the days following the next price crash be angry about the lies that were told to them by the Buy-and-Holders. Emotion works in two directions. You have benefited from them for 17 years. When the CAPE value is 8, I think that the emotion will be helping me, not you.
But, again, I think we are going to have to wait to see how it all plays out.
Rob
Let me get this straight. The fact that you can’t get an attorney to pick up your case, you view that as a positive sign. Yet, I would bet that if you could find an attorney to pick up your case, you would also see that as a positive sign. It has been almost 2 decades. You haven’t seen a real positive sign yet. I think you deep down inside are now figuring out that you have had it all wrong. Thus, you recent comments about finally getting a real job at the end of the year.
I view it as a positive sign that you Goons have for 17 years relied on death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs to block discussion of the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That’s desperation stuff. If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, you never would have relied on that sort of thing even a single time. You do it because you have no other options.
It works because it makes the cost of posting honestly so great that most people are not willing to pay it. But what if the cost of following Buy-and-Hold becomes so great that people are demanding new ideas? Then all of the people who today are afraid to post honestly are going to work up the courage to do so.
It seems to me that it all comes down to how people react to losing more than half of their retirement savings in the next price crash. I think that they are going to react negatively. I don’t know everything. I could be wrong. But that’s my sincere belief.
I am not capable of posting dishonestly re these matters in any event. It’s not in me. So I hang on, I do what I can to continue learning more myself and I wait to see what happens. It’s not like I have any other options available to me.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
The only death threat made, was the one that came from you. All the board banning look to be justified. The largest collection of defamation can be found on this website. All you have to do is just stop with the defamation. The career threat is made up. That has been confirmed by Wade. Your positive sign is really a negative sign. You have to realize that you are wrong, thus your recent comments about going back to work.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all good things, in any event.
Rob