Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site:
What you have described as a fantasy has built me a nice net worth
The net worth you refer to is not real. A portion of it is. But a good part of it is cotton-candy nothingness that will be blown into the wind when the next price crash arrives. What good does it do you?
You would like me more if I told you that your net worth is all real. That’s obvious. But would that be a kind thing for me to do to my friend? You still have options available to you to protect your net worth. I think it would be fair to say that a true friend would encourage you to educate yourself as to what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research says about how stock investing works and then to take advantage of the good options that remain available to you before the next price crash takes them away.
You see me as your enemy. I say that I am your friend. I say that anyone who helps you learn what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research says is your friend.
It is the Wall Street Con Men that you should be having doubts about, You don’t see me engaging in the word games that they regularly engage in, do you? What does that tell you about who is shooting straight here and who is just looking to put a few bucks in his pocket?
The heads of the tobacco companies told their customers that smoking did not cause cancer after research came out showing that it did. That’s what the customers wanted to hear. So the heads of the tobacco companies were “saints” to those people. A lot of those people died early and painful deaths as a result of what the heads of the tobacco companies told them. Were the heads of the tobacco companies true friends to the people whose lives they destroyed?
Sometimes a salesman for a product is not the most objective person to turn to for advice on when that product is worth buying.
These are my sincere thoughts re this terribly important matter, Pink.
Rob
The Pink Unicorn says
“The net worth you refer to is not real. A portion of it is. But a good part of it is cotton-candy nothingness that will be blown into the wind when the next price crash arrives. What good does it do you?”
My “cotton-candy” nothingness has resulted in a paid off home (worth $700,000), 3 paid off late model cars, put my kids through college, investment real estate and paid me about $128,000 in dividends and interest last year. I am a traditional buy and hold investor with a highly diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds and cash.
Perhaps you can tell me exactly how a good portion of this is going to blow into the wind.
We know that your plan is for an eventual windfall of $500 million.
Which one of us is living in a fantasy world?
Rob says
You’re the one living in the fantasy world, Pink.
Whatever amount of money you made investing pursuant to Buy-and-Hold principles, you would have made far more while taking on far less risk if you had followed Valuation-Informed Indexing principles. The Bennett/Pfau research shows that this has been so for 140 years now.
You should be asking yourself why you are so defensive. If you really believed in Buy-and-Hold, nothing I say would bother you. It obviously bothers you a great deal. Why do you think that is?
As for the $500 million, it’s not really a windfall. I earned that money, Pink. Wade Pfau was like a kid in a candy store during the 18 months when he felt that he was free to post honestly and when he was working on the research showing the superiority of Valuation-Informed Indexing over Buy-and-Hold. He spent his entire life preparing to do work of that importance and it made him very happy to have an opportunity to make his life efforts fruitful and meaningful.
Wade is not the only academic researcher who is going to be able to do important work once we open the internet up to honest posting. There are THOUSANDS of academic researchers who would like to be able to spend their life energy doing important work. If you cannot appreciate the leverage we are looking at here, you are not thinking clearly.
Jack Bogle will be doing important work after we open the internet to honest posting. Bill Bernstein will be doing important work. Larry Swedroe will be doing important work. Scott Burns will be doing important work. And on and on and on and on and on.
And that’s not worth $500 million, in your assessment?
I believe you, Pink.
Truly outstanding!!!!
Rob
Rob says
And what good does the nice house do you in prison?
How often do you think you will be able to tinker with the model cars in prison?
How often will you be able to get together with your college-educated kids and take joy in hearing about their latest accomplishments when you are in prison?
Why were you willing to give up all these good things? Does the fact that you were willing to give them up not tell us that Buy-and-Hold is the most emotional investing strategy ever concocted by the human mind?
How many others have done similar things? What does that tell us?
Not this boy. Find someone else. No can do.
I don’t like the idea of being banned from discussion boards that I built with my blood, sweat and tears. But I like the idea of spending the last few healthy decades of my life in a prison cell even less. I have a funny hunch that it’s not me who has shown himself to be off his meds re this matter, Pink.
Please take good care, in any event.
Rob
Anonymous says
Rob,
In the new world order of finance, can you tell us about how those levels will work? Is there anyone else that will be on the top level with you and can you tell us who are on the other levels below that?
Rob says
In the new world, we will all be working together, Anonymous.
My good friend Jack Bogle will feel 10 times better about himself because he will be doing good and honest and productive work.
It will be the same with my good friend Bill Bernstein.
And it will be the same with my good friend Larry Swedroe.
And it will be the same with my good friend Scott Burns.
Take a look at the correspondence I had with Wade Pfau for 16 months. Notice how happy he was in those days. That’s how everyone in this field will feel when everyone feels once again that it is safe to do good and honest and productive work.
No one will worry about levels in the new world. We will all make the contributions that we are able to make without needing to worry that there will be lots of others making important contributions in areas in which we are not so strong. No one will be worrying whether it is the Rob Bennett Show or the Jack Bogle Show or the Wade Pfau Show or the Robert Shiller Show because we will all understand that there is plenty of room for all our little shows in the big Let’s Work Together to Help Millions of Middle-Class Investors Show.
In the new world, no one will be silly enough to believe for two seconds that any one of us could ever become TOO TERRIBLY IMPORTANT to be able to walk to the front of the room and say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” when he had been found to have made an error re an important matter. We will all understand that that’s expected of us and we will all understand why it must be expected of us and we will all do our best to see that no friend of ours ever gets the funny idea in his head that he is the exception to that rule. None of us will ever turn our backs on our true friends in that way in the new world.
I hope that makes some sense to you, my longtime human-and-therefore-capable-of-error-making friend.
Rob
Anonymous says
Which one would be “cotton candy nothingness”
A) A broad diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, real estate and cash
Or
B) A plan to get a $500 million dollar settlement
Rob says
I’ve placed my bets and you’ve placed yours, Anonymous.
I cannot say that I like the way things have played out over the past 12 years.
But I also cannot say that I would want to change places with you for any amount of money.
We are both just going to have to wait for time to tell the tale.
I naturally wish you the best of luck with it.
Rob
Rob says
I think it would be fair to say that you take comfort with being aligned with powerful people and I take comfort with being on the right side of the History Train.
There aren’t enough powerful people in the world to persuade me to give up the benefits of being on the right side of the History Train.
And ten-thousand peer-reviewed studies showing where the History Train is headed are not enough to persuade you that people with wealth and power and influence can ever be overcome for the good of the overall society.
We’re like characters in a book around which a Great Drama is playing out.
I didn’t ask to be a character in a book. And I don’t think you did either.
But here we are. The drama is playing out around us whether we like the idea or not.
I am obviously not ever going to be willing to sell out my friends and the larger society to appease the powerful people whom you are trusting to protect you.
And you are obviously never going to be willing to let the harm being done to your friends and to the larger society persuade you to turn on the powerful people with whom you are aligned.
If there were some sort of compromise possible, I think it would be fair to say that your or me or someone else would have pointed to it a long, long time ago.
I’ve tried. I’ve bent over backwards in my efforts to make things appealing for every single person involved.
And you probably would say the same thing coming from the other direction. I don’t think you’ve tried very hard. But my experience with the humans is that people working different ends of a drama like this see just about everything differently.
I don’t see any possibilities that have not been explored. My take at this point is that the drama in which we are all enveloped is bigger than any of those caught up in it. No one knows what to do. I THINK I know what would work. But you appear to not have confidence in the merit of what I propose. And I obviously don’t have confidence in the merit of any of your suggested “compromises.”
So it is what it is, you know?
It’s not like I woke up one morning and said: “Oh, I know what I will do today. I will start a 12-year saga in which I will be banned from 15 different internet sites and thereby will come to co-author research showing million of middle-class people how to reduce the risk of stock investing by nearly 70 percent.” It all happened step by step. I questioned whether valuations should be accounted for in Greany’s study. Most community members felt that the debate that followed was the best we ever had in the history of the Retire Early Community. That made Greaney mad and he elected to burn the board to the ground. That convinced me that I was right and thousands of my fellow community members have supported me in amazing ways over the course of the 12 years and thereby have helped me to discover amazing things about how stock investing works that no one else has written about. And so you felt yourself forced to engage in more and more outrageous acts to keep the word from getting out.
I cannot walk away from the $500 million settlement payout that obviously goes to someone who has discovered such things under such circumstances.
And you cannot walk away with a prison sentence.
And I cannot do anything to be sure of eliminating the prison sentence (I believe that I can get it shortened a good bit but my sense is that that is not good enough for you). I cannot offer a compromise that you will accept because it is not me who will be assigning you the prison sentence. The only trading chip that you care about is not in my possession.
I hope that answers your question. I don’t want to go to prison under any circumstances. For obvious reasons.
My sense is that you don’t want to go to prison either. If I could trade that chip, I would. But I CAN”T. And I certainly am not even going to talk about something that lands me in prison as well. That’s obvious insane talk.
I didn’t go looking for a $500 million settlement. You Goons (with the cooperation of the Wall Street Con Men) forced that one down my throat. Please don’t complain to me now that you don’t fancy the idea.
And please don’t demand that I go back in time and change things that cannot be changed. The things that have happened have happened and it does no one any good for any of is to agree to lie about them. There are Post Archives. Even if I were to agree to deceptive acts here (and I won’t), I would be found out. So that line of thought leads nowhere.
The one good card that we’ve got is that the advance here is so big that it will make the millions of people who will be calling for your head very happy and less inclined to demand justice over mercy. If I were in your shoes, I would be exploring options for playing that card to my benefit.
But I am not you. And you are not me. And, if something like that was going to happen, it likely would have happened a long time ago. Things get harder to resolve with every passing day because with every passing day we see more financial losses as a result of our decision as a society to pretend that the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research doesn’t exist.
If that ever changes, I think that would be great. Obviously.
Do I think it is going to happen?
No.
I once did. I don’t think the odds are with us re that one today.
It makes me sad.
But whachagonnado?
Hang in there, man.
Rob
Anonymous says
I don’t align with anyone. I go with what works. I avoid silly strategies, like market timing.
With my portfolio, I can buy a new house or investment property. I can give to charities or done other causes. I can take a trip, buy a car or blow a few bucks on set of new golf clubs.
Have you tried buying anything with your planned windfall of $500 million?
Talk is cheap, Rob. Results and available resources are what count.
Rob says
How the heck are you going to play golf when you are in prison, Anonymous?
I don’t think you are thinking this through at all carefully.
I think I will get the $500 million. But $500 million or no $500 million, I am not going to prison. So I am miles ahead of you anyway you cut it.
I am NOT going to post dishonestly re SWRs. I am NOT.
You are going to have to try to find someone else, my long-time abusive-posting friend.
I wish you good luck with it.
Rob