Set forth below are the texts of two comments that I recently put to another blog entry at this site:
You seem to have some bizarre view of the world where stock prices are divorced from economic performance or in fact, stock prices drive economic performance.
Stock prices have been driving economic performance for 140 years, Laugh.
There is 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing this to be so.
If you educated yourself on these matters, you wouldn’t find the research-based findings to be “bizarre.”
That’s ignorance and arrogance and wounded pride talking.
If you felt confidence in the strategies you follow, you would feel no need to speak in this manner.
Rob
In the short term this may be driven by ‘emotions’ but no one (with the exception of an unemployed guy in nowhereville VA) contends that long term stock returns are a product of ‘emotionalism’.
That explains why Wade Pfau, who makes his living doing investment research and who holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton, made the comments quoted (and linked to) at the bottom of this article:
It also explains why you Goons were so afraid of what would happen when millions of middle-class investors learned of the peer-reviewed academic research that I co-authored with Wade that you threatened to send defamatory e-mails to his employer in an effort to get him fired from his job.
It also explains why people like Jack Bogle and Bill Bernstein and Scott Burns and Larry Swedroe and Rick Ferri did nothing when they learned of your tactics. These people are all shooting straight with us. They have not permitted financial considerations to influence their public statements about what the peer-reviewed academic research of the past 32 years really says.
That all makes perfect sense, Laugh.
Truly outstanding!!!!
Rob
Delusional. Enough said.
Honest. Non-Negotiable.
Rob
Speaking of Wade, I see he’s in the Wall Street Journal again, quoted along with his (new) research partner. You can find the link if you’re interested. Something about lowering stock allocation shortly before you retire, then slowly increasing it. Whatever it is, it’s not VII. I didn’t see him mention the name of his long-time teacher and mentor.
Wade has a pretty high profile for someone who is both cowering from goons and destined for prison.
And he lives in a country that will be going through its Second Great Depression if people like him do not work up the courage to stand up to the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads, Bizarro.
I’m clean. I like the feeling of being clean.
I know from my many conversations with Wade that he likes that feeling too. Yes, he likes the feeling of being able to provide for his family as well. But, if it were his choice, he would be enjoying the feeling of being able to provide for his family and ALSO the feeling of being clean.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. I believe that the same is true for my good friend Jack Bogle. And for my good friend Bill Bernstein. And for my good friend Larry Swedroe. And for my good friend Scott Burns. And for lots and lots of my other Buy-and-Hold friends.
I believe that even you Goons would like to enjoy the feeling of being clean again. Call me a cockeyed optimist, but that’s what I believe.
If you ever are able to work up the courage to acknowledge that you would like to experience that good feeling again, let me know and I will do everything in my power to help you out (short of committing financial fraud myself, to be sure).
Until then, please know that you (and Wade and Jack and all my other Buy-and-Hold friends) have my best and warmest wishes.
Rob