Set forth below is a comment that I posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“But he never actually says those words.”
And there you have it. Shiller says what HE is thinking, not what Rob Bennett wants him to say. You do this with almost everything. You twist around what people say, or don’t say, in order to make it seem like everything aligns to what you want. You somehow feel as if everyone needs to say what you want and that people need to let you say whatever you want on their forum. Write your own book and say what you want to say, but leave everyone else alone.
We live in communities, Anonymous. When one member of the investment advice community (Shiller) says something important (that valuations affect long-term timing), other members of the community (like me) incur an obligation to take that something into consideration when advancing their own contributions to the community discussions. If valuations affect long-term timing, there is precisely zero chance that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all times; it is a number that is higher when valuations are low and lower when valuations are high. So I said that. Good for me. I did what all community members are supposed to do.
You didn’t like that. Because you want people to maintain confidence in Greaney’s study. I don’t want that. I want people to have confidence in Greaney’s study if it is accurate. But if Greaney got the numbers wildly wrong, I want people to lose confidence in Greaney’s study. I like Greaney as a friend and I am perfectly happy to help him out when I am able. But I like all of my fellow community members. I am not willing to risk seeing thousands of my fellow community members suffer failed retirements just because one insanely abusive community member is embarrassed to have people learn that he got the numbers wildly wrong in a retirement study posted at his web site. No freakin’ way, no freakin’ how.
I don’t feel that everyone should say what I want. I believe that everyone should feel 100 percent safe saying precisely what they believe. I am 100 percent opposed to the use of intimidation tactics to coerce community members into saying things that they do not believe to create a phony impression of consensus when no consensus truly exists. The majority of our fellow community members are Buy-and-Holders. I want them saying why they think Buy-and-Hold is a good approach. But a significant minority (perhaps 10 percent) has serious doubts about Buy-and-Hold. I want those people expressing those doubts and not being threatened into silence by you Goons.
Why should I “leave everyone else alone,” as you suggest? If I see that Greaney’s study is in error, I have a responsibility to point that error out to community members who might believe that the study is legitimate if I fail to speak up. I want to help people, not destroy their lives. I am going to continue pointing out errors in studies when I see them. I am going to continue objecting to acts of financial fraud and to death threats and to all the rest that you Goons bring to the table.
The United States is a community of people too. As a community of people, we have made it a crime to advance threats of physical violence and to engage in extortion and financial fraud. I think that those are good and necessary laws. So I am not going to join you Goons in pretending that Greaney included a valuation adjustment in his study. Thousands of our fellow community members have looked at the Greaney study over the past 17 years and not one has been able to locate a valuation adjustment in it. That tells me that I am on the right track in thinking that there is not one there.
I will indeed say what I have to say in my book. But I will then try to share what I write in my book with every investor on the planet, including those who congregate at all of the boards from which I have been improperly banned at the demand of you Goons. I offer no apologies whatsoever. I like those board communities and I want to see them serving the purposes for which they were formed. It is not possible for them to do that for so long as this massive act of financial fraud continues.
My sincere take.
And my best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Saying-What-He-Believes (Not Just in His Book But Everywhere!) Rob
“We live in communities, Anonymous. ”
Yes, we live in communities. These communities don’t allow made up death threats. They don’t allow made up job threats. They don’t tolerate bad behavior. That is why the communities banned you.
It’s all going to come down to what happens in the days following the next price crash, Anonymous.
I am not able to lie to my friends about the numbers that they are using to plan their retirements. You Goons do not feel able to come clean re the 17-year cover-up of the error that Greaney made in the retirement study posted at his web site. We are at a standoff.
I believe that we will see a change in the circumstances that apply in the days following the next price crash. A 60 percent drop in stock prices is going to hurt us all in very serious ways. There is all the difference in the world between knowing as a matter of theory that there is zero chance that a strategy could ever work for even a single long-term investor and seeing with your own eyes the real-world consequences that following that strategy had on your friends and your neighbors and your co-workers.
I think that we are a good people. The fact that Shiller’s book found a publisher shows that. The fact that it became a best-seller shows that. The fact that he was awarded a Nobel prize shows that. The fact that we have had thousands of our fellow community members express a desire that honest posting on the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field be permitted at every discussion board and blog on the internet shows that. The fact that an academic researcher holding a Ph.D. in Economics contacted me to ask if I would work with him to co-author research showing the superiority of Valuation-Informed Indexing over Buy-and-Hold shows that. The fact that that this researcher was so excited over our findings that he was thinking of having the research published in the most prestigious journal in the field shows that. A good people is going to fix this problem after it has seen with its own eyes the pain that will be suffered by millions of middle-class people from the continued promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold approach. I am sure.
I will do whatever I can to help you out at that time. I will not say that I believe that the study posted at Greaney’s site contains a valuation adjustment. But I will do whatever I can that does not take me to the wrong side of the felony line. I wish you all the best of luck with it.
Bad Behaving Rob
You think it is okay to make up death threats and job threats because you think the market will crash?
Nothing that I have said is made up. The hostility started from you Goons on the morning of May 13, 2002, and has never ceased since.
The problem has been that the Normals find it “okay” that, when challenged, Buy-and-Holders respond with a hostility that sometimes evidences itself in death threats and job threats and sometimes does not. People don’t have a hard time seeing the hostility. That part is easy. People have a hard time seeing why it is a big deal. People figure that, if there really is a problem with Buy-and-Hold, someone would have told us about it a long time ago. Most people have the attitude that “this is not my business, there are people who take care of this sort of thing, researchers and experts.” The reality is that there is no one here but us chickens.
Researchers are human. So they do not like to be threatened. Experts are human. So they do not like to be threatened. That’s the secret of the success of the Buy-and-Hold “idea.” For a Get Rich Quick idea to succeed, there HAS to be intimidation. It cannot be done any other way. People do not willingly sign up for a Get Rich Quick scheme. Bernie Madoff must have engaged in a certain amount of intimidation. I have never heard that as part of his story. So I don’t think that there were any death threats or things of that nature in the Madoff story. But intimidation had to be present at some point. Humans are curious. So it is inevitable that people asked questions at some point And, to keep the fraud going, there had to be sharp responses aimed at shutting down the questioning. You are always going to see that in cases of fraud. It is the distinguishing characteristic. Threats to the fraud are suppressed so that the fraud can continue.The fraud fights for itself.
Buy-and-Hold is just a bigger case of the general phenomenon. It is the biggest case that we have ever seen. There are MILLIONS involved in this fraud. Those millions don’t wake up in the morning aiming to trick anybody. They are aiming to trick themselves. They want to think that their retirements are in good shape and, to believe that, they need to believe that the numbers on their portfolio statement are real and not the product of irrational exuberance. So they think that. And their apparent certitude about Buy-and-Hold (they wouldn’t follow it themselves if they didn’t truly believe in it, would they?) does convince others and help the fraud to spread. So they really do hurt others, unwittingly.
This is what we are dealing with. We are dealing with a defect of human nature that makes stock investors want to trick themselves and that causes them to trick others as well unwittingly after they have tricked themselves. The good news is that an Economics professor at Yale has seen through the trick and published peer-reviewed research revealing it to us all and been awarded a Nobel prize in recognition of his good work. The last step on our journey to overcoming this terrifying “strategy” is giving ourselves permission to talk about its horrors on every discussion board and blog on the internet. We are not there today. But I think we are close. The only thing holding us back is that we need to have a number of us work up the courage to stand up to you Goons, to call out death threats and job threats when we see them rather than to keep quiet about them and leave it to someone else to handle that unpleasant task (which will of course cause the death threats and the job threats to be turned in the direction of the person calling them out).
I think that we are going to make it, Anonymous. I think that success is going to be achieved as part of a horrible process in which we are going to see millions of failed retirements and hundreds of thousands of failed businesses and millions of people being thrown out of work and greatly increased political frictions. I think it is going to be bad stuff. Very bad stuff. But I think that we are going to make it to the other side bruised and battered as a nation but still more or less in one piece. And I think that from that day on we will all appreciate the need to permit honest posting on the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research at every discussion board and blog on the internet and Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick will never reign supreme again. I don’t believe that ever again in the history of the United States will we see a CAPE value of 44 (I believe that we may see 20 again — we are not going to become angels — but not 44.
But we’ll see, you know?
I am not going to say that I believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contained an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. And Greaney obviously has zero intention of ever correcting his study. So we are where we are. Either the next price crash causes some more people to work up the courage to stand up to you Goons and we all work together to achieve the biggest advance ever achieved in the history of personal finance or that doesn’t happen. The only way that we are ever going to know for sure is to watch the reaction that plays out nation-wide in the wake of the next price crash.
I wish you the best of luck with it, in any event. I hope that that helps at least a tiny bit.
My best wishes.
Buy-and-Hold Skeptic Rob
“Nothing that I have said is made up. The hostility started from you Goons on the morning of May 13, 2002, and has never ceased since.
The problem has been that the Normals find it “okay” that, when challenged, Buy-and-Holders respond with a hostility that sometimes evidences itself in death threats and job threats and sometimes does not. ”
And there again you just make it up. We already know these threats didn’t take place.
Okay, Anonymous. I am going to continue to say that I do not believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins and we will just have to wait a bit to find out how things play out in the days following the next price crash.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all of your future life endeavors.
The Making-It-Up-Guy Rob
Normal people don’t make up claims of death threats and job threats. If a threat occurs, they provide actual proof by showing the threat.
Changing the subject shows you know you are wrong.
Okay, Anonymous.
Rob
Wade Pfau has already explained your error on John Greaney’s work. You have failed to correct this on your site. That must mean you are guilty of fraud.
What will Wade say when he is called to testify at your trial? That’s what matters.
My sincere take.
Wade Pfau Friend Rob
What trial? Oh, you must be talking about when the court must decide on your sanity.
Okay.
Basket Case Rob
Do you think your mental status will improve once you get a job?
I think that the financial future of everyone who lives in the United States will improve once you Goons are placed in prison cells, where you belong, and the rest of us are free to talk over what we have learned about how stock investing works from the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research. Being afraid of you doesn’t help. When one of us shows fear of you Goons, it causes others to become more afraid. When one of us works up the courage to stand up to you, it helps others to work up the courage to stand up to you. Each of us has an effect on the community as a whole. We each have to consider how our actions affect the actions of everyone else.
When one of us shows fear, it causes others to become more afraid. Standing up to you causes others to work up the courage to stand up to you.
Criminal acts reveal desperation. Your reliance on criminal acts shows that Shiller is right, investors are NOT purely rational creatures, investors are at times HIGHLY emotional. So we need to adjust the numbers that we get when we assume 100 percent rationality with additions or subtractions relecting the effect of investor emotionalism.
Evidence of your abusiveness is part of the research that we need to be looking at to come to a full understanding of how stock investing works. The data that Shiller and Pfau and Russell and Arnott look at helps. But we also need to look at the death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and the thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. That stuff is just as important. It was Greaney’s first death threat and the fact that 200 of my fellow community members endorsed it that told me that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage. Everyone needs to be able to see that it is emotion that rules the Buy-and-Hold mind.
Those of us who are trying to help people come to a deeper understanding of how stock investing works (high prices are caused by emotion and do not not last!) should not be afraid of the Buy-and-Holders (the Get Rich Quickers!). We have the law on our side. The Get Rich Quickers do not.
Will those laws be enforced immediately? They will not be.
Will those laws be enforced after millions have been hurt by the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold stuff in very serious ways? I believe so. And then we will all have to come to terms with what we did to ourselves by not incorporating Shiller’s insights into our understanding of the subject going back to 1981.
We need to go through what we are going through today to get to the place where deep in our hearts we all want to be tomorrow. What we are seeing from you Goons (out-of-control emotionalism on the subject of stock investing) is what causes price crashes. I don’t like how price crashes hurt people. So I am going to tell the story of what causes them. And we now have 17 years of Post Archives available to us for the telling of the tale.
I think that the book that I am writing will be the most important book ever published in the field of personal finance. Others don’t want to write it because they don’t want to face all of this ugliness. But it is by facing the ugliness that we come to terms with it and overcome it and free ourselves from it in the future.
I think that the mental status of the community of investors will improve once my book is published and we experience the price crash that brings it a big readership. We have to go through this dark stuff to unlock in a practical sense the magic that Shiller tried to deliver to us 38 years ago.
That’s my take, Anonymous. Call me madcap.
Mental (In the eyes of Buy-and-Holders) Rob
Going the purely emotional route (Buy-and-Hold) permits you to feel better for a time (when prices are at unjustifiably high levels) and then worse for a time (when prices crash to fair-value levels and then even lower). I think it is better for every single investor and for the economic system as a whole for us always to remain as close to fair-value price levels as possible. There’s less jumping around that way. And that way you always know where you stand. You can plan your future effectively because you are living in reality, not in an emotional fantasy world.
Buy-and-Hold is the emotional approach. It has the emotional highs and it has the emotional lows. I don’t like emotional lows. Which means that I don’t like emotional highs either because it is emotional highs that bring on emotional lows.
The difference is price discipline. Price discipline COUNTERS the emotional highs brought on by price indifference (Buy-and-Hold). Buy-and-Hold is rooted in price indifference. Valuation-Informed Indexing is rooted in price discipline. Price indifference possesses great emotional appeal because it permits investors to set prices wherever they please. Price discipline has great long-term appeal because it permits greater returns at lower risk.
The purpose of investment research is to reveal to us what works, not what sells. Shiller is right, Fama is wrong. Fama made great contributions. He deserves his Nobel prize. But he dropped the ball re the importance of all investors practicing price discipline when buying stocks.
Price-Discipline Advocate Rob
“Going the purely emotional route ”
Going the emotional route? You mean like calling people goons? Telling them they are going to prison? Making up death threats? Making up job threats?
Our laws against extortion and against financial fraud and against threats of physical violence are good and necessary laws. It is not an emotional act to report such crimes. The emotional thing is to IGNORE such crimes when you see them taking place before your eyes. Our system cannot work when such crimes go unreported.
Rob
The legal system ignores crackpots that make up false allegations and community members ban those crackpots for such misbehavior. Your situation is a direct result of your misbehavior.
Okay, Anonymous.
Please take good care.
Rob
Other than a few critics, everyone avoids and / or ignores you, yet you don’t want to accept the realities of why this is the case. Instead, you try and cope with a fake story line.
I don’t want to be ignored and I don’t want any of the others (about 10 percent of the population) who believe that the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in the investment advice field is legitimate research to be ignored. I think that we have something important to add to the discussion that benefits Valuation-Informed Indexers and Buy-and-Holders alike. I view powerful learning experiences as one of the few true free lunches available in this world and I love free lunches! And I care about all of the investors who are hurt when the laws of the United States are violated in an effort to keep people in ignorance re the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s research findings.
I am a Valuation-Informed Indexer, not a Buy-and-Holder. I want to see Valuation-Informed Indexing grow in influence at a much more rapid pace. That won’t happen until Valuation-Informed Indexers adopt a policy of calling Buy-and-Holders out when they engage in criminal or abusive acts to suppress discussion of the new research. If I am going to ask others to speak out, I need to speak out myself.
There’s nothing fake about the story line. The very fact that we have laws against this stuff shows that as a society we view it as bad stuff. I think we are right to do so!
There’s no valuation adjustment in Greaney’s retirement study! There’s no valuation adjustment in Greaney’s retirement study! There’s no valuation adjustment in Greaney’s retirement study! My sincere take.
Many people will react differently to a showing that there’s no valuation adjustment in Greaney’s retirement study in the days following the next price crash than they do today. That’s just human nature. You Goons show that you see that by the fact that you post here. If you were not worried about going to prison, you would just go on with your lives. You’ve said that you’re going to do that on several occasions, but you never stick to it. I wonder why.
Anyway, I see no valuation adjustment in Greaney’s study. And I think that people who are considering making use of the study to plan their retirement need to know that and to reflect on what it means for the likelihood that their retirement plan will be successful. I view a failed retirement as a serious life setback. Shiller is not a Buy-and-Holder. He wouldn’t have been awarded a Nobel prize if he were saying the same things that lots of others have been saying for over 50 years now.
There have been many people who did NOT avoid me or ignore me. There have been thousands of people who have expressed a desire that I be permitted to post at every discussion board and blog on the internet and to not be subjected to intimidation tactics when I do so There have been hundreds who have responded to my stuff with helpful comments and observations and questions that have helped me and many others to learn important things. And there have been a few who have worked with my to develop the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept in -ways that I believe will change the world in important and life-affirming ways. I view the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau as the most important research published in this field in 30 years. I added more value to this world with the 16 months that I spent working with Wade on that research than I did with any other project that I have worked on in my lifetime. I am exceedingly proud of it. And Wade never would have sent me an e-mail asking me to work on that research with him had I not worked up the courage to stand up to Greaney seven years earlier. Doing the right thing in the face of relentless abuse can have a big payoff somewhere down the line.
I’m a learner and a teacher, Anonymous. That’s the deal. Maybe God made me a learner and a teacher (that’s what I think), maybe it was Evolution, maybe it was just the Fates. Whatever it was, that’s the way the cards came down. There are no other learning and teaching opportunities with 1/500th of the potential of this one available today in this world. So I think that I am just going to continue riding this wave and seeing where it takes me. It has taken me to some awful place in the past 17 years. I’ll give you that one. It has also taken me to some amazing, wonderful places, places that I couldn’t have dreamed up in the days before I advanced that famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002. My assessment is that the good stuff that we have seen is going to end up having 500 times the influence of all of your nasty, abusive garbage. Just a funny hunch I have experienced from time to time, you know?
We’ll see. Learn! Teach! Grow! Read the Research! All of It!
My best wishes to you, Anonymous.
Avoided and Ignored Rob
You are just repeating the same delusions that have been addressed thousands of times.
I would say that it’s the other way around, Anonymous It’s the Buy-and-Holders who repeat and repeat and repeat a mistake that was uncovered by the peer-reviewed research 38 years ago.
There is zero evidence that price discipline (long-term timing) is not required when buying stocks. ALL of the evidence shows that long-term timing always works and is always required. But the Buy-and-Holders continue to make this crazy claim that there might be some mystical, magical world where long-term timing might not work every time, Huh? What the f?
It all goes back to a mistake made back in 1965. Eugene Fama published research showing that short-term timing doesn’t work. Good for him. That one has stood the test of time. That was an important finding. If the Buy-and-Holders told investors to avoid short-term timing, they would be heroes.
That’s not what they say. They say to avoid all forms of timing, both short-term and long-term. Why do they do this? They didn’t know about the importance of the distinction between short-term timing and long-term timing at the time they were developing their strategy. Shiller showed that in 1981 and Buy-and-Hold was developed before that. So the Buy-and-Holders just made a mistake. No biggie. It happens. The only humans who never make a mistake are the ones who never try to accomplish anything.
So the Buy-and-Holders make a mistake and Shiller uncovers it and all is well that ends well, right? Not quite.
The Buy-and-Holders become EMBARRASSED by their mistake. So, instead of owning up to it, they elect to cover it up. And then they are embarrassed not only by the mistake itself but also by the cover-up of the mistake and then also by the cover-up of the cover-up and so on and so on and so on. And now, 38 years down the line, they are also worried about the hundreds of thousands of civil claims for damages that will be brought against them by investors who will lose large portions of their life savings because the Buy-and-Holders have failed to own up to this mistake for 38 years now and about the criminal charges that will be brought against those who have posted in “defense” of you Goons and so on. It gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.
It can never get better, Anonymous. Actually, there’s one way that it can get better. But only one.
The only way that it can ever get better is if those who are aware of the mistake start making it a practice to call the Buy-and-Holders out on their b.s. when they advance the crazy idea that it is not necessary to engage in market timing or that there might be some mystical, magical, alternate universe in which market timing is not required. It’s about 10 percent of us who see these claims as b.s. If that 10 percent consistently calls the Buy-and-Holders out on their b.s., the mistake will get fixed. But that’s the only way that it is ever going to happen.
The penalty for the Buy-and-Holders owning up to their mistake is just too huge for them ever to do it on their own. No one wants to go to prison. No one wants to pay damages in a civil lawsuit. No one wants his clients or his readers to learn that he is the sort of “expert” who is 38 years behind in his reading of the peer-reviewed research in his field. So the Buy-and-Holders are not going to on their own walk up to the front of the stage and say “oopsie!” That is just not going to happen.
So how do we ever get this mistake fixed? The Buy-and-Holders ain’t going to fix it on their own. And they are going to make sure that the thousands of honest and good people who would like to see the mistake fixed so that our economic and political systems can survive are going to pay a huge price if they dare to “cross” the Buy-and-Holders by posting honestly re the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research. What happened to me is what happens to anyone who dares to note that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies lack an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. The Buy-and-Holders don’t attack me because they don’t like the way I look. They attack me because I post honestly about the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s Nobel-Prize-winning research and there is no way that Buy-and-Hold can survive someone doing that.
Millions of people want to know how stock investing works in the real world. Permit me to post honestly and I will soon be making millions and then tens of millions and then hundreds of millions. And, after I make hundreds of millions, there are going to be thousands of bloggers joining me and then thousands of investment advisers and then thousands of academic researchers and then thousands of authors and then thousands of policymakers and then thousands of economists on and on and on.
The mistake that the Buy-and-Holders made (failing to distinguish long-term timing from short-term timing when research was published showing that short-term timing doesn’t work) is the biggest mistake ever made in the history of personal finance. Long-term timing is price discipline. Persuade millions of investors that there is no need to practice market timing and you are going to bring on an economic crisis. We have seen an economic crisis on every occasion in U.S. history in which Buy-and-Hold has become a popular “strategy.” It is not even possible for the rational human mind to imagine a scenario in which we would not see an economic crisis once Buy-and-Hold became popular. Market timing is price discipline. Remove price discipline from the market and it collapses. Every market depends on price discipline to function. Crash the market and you remove trillions of dollars of spending power from the economy and the economy collapses too. It has happened every time because it MUST happen every time.
I’m not the one breaking the law, Anonymous. I am not the one in a panic. I don’t like how you Goons have destroyed our boards and the lives of the people who populate them. Obviously. But I believe that our country is a good country and I believe that we will see reasonable enforcement of our laws in the days following the next price crash, when people are able to see with their own eyes what Buy-and-Hold delivers to millions of investors every time that it is tried.
We’ll see, you know?
I am going to continue to say that I see no valuation adjustment in the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site. That much is under my control. That much I will do. The rest is out of my hands. I would like to see us all stay within the confines of U.S. law in our discussions. But I only get one vote. I don’t always get my way. Perhaps you’ve noticed.
I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person. I like to think that that might help a tiny bit. That much I can do in good conscience and so that much I do do. I cannot in good conscience say that I believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. So that I do not say. No freakin’ way, no freakin’ how.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Delusional (According to the Buy-and-Holders!) Rob