Set forth below is the text of a section of a blog entry that appeared at the Joe Taxpayer blog:
There were so many bloggers who gave a talk that I really run the risk of leaving off someone who deserves a mention, but here are the ones that stand out in my mind –
Rob Bennett – I’ve met Rob at prior FinCons and he strikes me as one of the most passionate people out there. Rob gave a talk at Ignite, an evening function in which each speaker has 5 minutes to share an idea via a set of 20 slides timed to change at 15 second intervals. Rob has a message to share, but somehow his message isn’t welcome in many financial forums. What’s Rob’s message? It seems to be twofold, first, stocks actually do get overpriced. Any of my readers old enough to remember the crash of ’87? No? No problem, we had another crash from 2000 through Mid-02. I know, that was still over a decade ago. The latest crash occurred from Mid-07 till Jan ’09. It would seem that Rob’s observation is correct. Another Rob, Schiller to be specific, had a similar idea. He doesn’t get kicked out out finance forums, that I know, instead he gets a Nobel prize. Which is pretty cool. The second part of Rob Bennett’s message is that by using data that we know, the PE10, which happens to be popularized by Robert Schiller, we have a tool to judge market valuation. If there’s a problem with the process Rob discusses, it’s that it takes time and patience. Check his site out, and see what you think.
You gonna print that out and stick it to the refrigerator?
I added Joe’s comment to the “People Are Talking” section of the site, Sensible. That’s the rough equivalent.
One of the things we need to do to build support for Valuation-Informed Indexing is to let the many people who have doubts about Buy-and-Hold know that they are not alone. Human are social creatures. Our confidence in an idea increases when we discover that lots of other people share our belief in it. So we want people who are giving consideration to the new model to know that there are lots of smart and good people who have explored it and found that it passes every test.
So, yes, I am certainly going to do what I am able to do to spread the word re what Joe Taxpayer thinks about this stuff. Joe believes that honest posting should be permitted on every board and blog on the internet. Good for him! He’s right!
Rob