Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent to John Hayward, author of the Doctor Zero blog, on January 22, 2010.
John:
My name is Rob Bennett. I write the “A Rich Life” (http://arichlife.passionsaving.com) blog.
Like you, I often write about middle-class concerns (although I write about personal finance rather than politics).There’s no one I know of who possesses a sharper understanding of middle-class political concerns than you do. Your blog entries have helped me sort out my own thoughts on numerous occasions.
I would like to let you know about an issue that APPEARS to be a personal finance topic but that in reality is a political one. It is the question of whether investors should follow a Buy-and-Hold strategy. The reality is that this strategy was discredited by the academic research 30 years ago. The Stock-Selling Industry continues to promote it because it puts millions in their pockets and because they don’t want to acknowledge the human misery they have caused by failing to acknowledge the mistakes they have made over the past three decades.
I need help in getting this message out. If you have any interest, I hope you will contact me so that I can share with you what I have learned from working this issue full-time (as a blogger, with no compensation) for eight years now. The issues are simple. The implications are far-reaching. We could help millions of middle-class people if we could create a place where they could gain access to accurate and honest reports on what the academic research says about how to invest effectively. I think this is possible if we could get the word out about this on Tea Party and Sarah Palin blogs. As you know, there are a lot of people hurting because of the economic crisis, which I believe was caused primarily by the reckless promotion of the Buy-and-Hold idea.
I have written a Google Knol entitled “Why Buy-and-Hold Investing Can Never Work” that provides some background.
Thanks for listening. You are touching the hearts of a lot of people and educating a lot of people about things that they need to understand to make sense of things happening to them. I wish you all the success in the world with your blog.
Rob
http://arichlife.passionsaving.com
There hasn’t been a Robcast since January 27th. Have you given up on podcasts as a means of delivering your message?
No. I will be recording many more RobCasts. I have a list of over 50 investing titles that I want to record. I also would like to record a good number of RobCasts on saving themes.
My biggest concern today is opening up the internet to honest posting on the grave flaws in the Buy-and-Hold Model. Our economic and political leaders have failed us and the U.S. economic and political systems are headed over a cliff as a result. The answer is to let the thousands of community members who have expressed a desire to be able to post honestly to do so.
We have the means to solve all our problems. But it is not possible to solve a problem without first acknowledging the problem. The “experts” who have been advocating Buy-and-Hold for 30 years after the academic research showed that the odds of it ever working in the real world are precisely zero need to learn how to pronounce the Three Magic Words.
We should all be working together as a community to make that happen. At the very minimum, I want to know when I go to sleep each night that I have done the best that I can do to move the ball forward a little bit that day. I can do no more and I can do no less, Evidence.
I encourage you to join in the effort. One person can make a difference. We could all use your help.
Rob
My biggest concern today is opening up the internet to honest posting on the grave flaws in the Buy-and-Hold Model.
Previously you have been concerned with opening up the internet to honest posting on SWRs. How did that campaign work out?
Is there a discussion board today where you can post in an honest and informed manner on the subject of SWRs?
How did that campaign work out?
In terms of substance, it’s worked out far beyond anything I possibly could have imagined, Evidence.
We have had thousands express a desire that honest posting be permitted. We have had hundreds offer constructive and positive comments. Those comments are the source material that we used to build the Valuation-Informed Indexing strategy and the Rational Investing model and the 200 podcasts and the 100 investing articles and the four unique calculators and the dozens of Guest Blog Entries.
Did you expect to see anything like that on the morning of May 13, 2002? I certainly did not.
Is there a discussion board today where you can post in an honest and informed manner on the subject of SWRs?
There’s not a large, active discussion board that I know of that permits this today Evidence. There have been a few blogs that permitted honest posting: (1) Digarati Life; (2) Psy-Fi Blog; (3) Weakonomics; some others. My guess is that there are some bear boards that would permit honest posting. But I do not today know of any large, active investing board that permits honest posting on the analytical errors in the Old School SWR studies or on the grave flaws of the Buy-and-Hold Model.
If you or anyone else knows of a board that is open to honest posting on these matters, I would be grateful if you would let me know about it.
Rob
Does anyone buy and hold anymore? Who does that? I know my grandpa did.
I’m afraid that there are still one or two of them out there, Kathy.
You’d be surprised.
But it certainly would be fair to say that Valuation-Informed Indexing is The Choice of a New Generation.
Rob