Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
There really is no value in this site. All you do is sit around telling us about your hate for buy and hold and for those that don’t agree with you (that you describe as goons).
It’s not possible that I sit around talking about my hate for Buy-and-Hold or for my many Buy-and-Hold friends, Anonymous. It’s not possible because I do not FEEL hate for Buy-and-Hold or for my Buy-and-Hold friends.
I am the world’s most severe critic of Buy-and-Hold as it is promoted today. I say that it is a big pile of smelly garbage. I say that the relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies caused the economic crisis. I say that millions of middle-class people are going to suffer failed retirements because my good friend Jack Bogle has not yet worked up the courage to walk to the front of a room and say the words “I” and “Was” and”Wrong.” All of that is so, and, yes, because all of that is so there is one sense in which I suppose it would be fair to say that I hate Buy-and-Hold.
But hold on.
Is all that ugly stuff what Buy-and-Hold really is?
I say no. I say that Buy-and-Hold is something very different from what you Goons (and, yes, even my good friend Jack Bogle) today claim it to be.
Buy-and-Hold is two things. It is the thing that was put forward in the days before Nobel-Prize-Winning-Economist Robert Shiller put forward his “revolutionary” research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. In those days Buy-and-Hold was all about using the peer-reviewed academic research to guide one’s investing strategies. But today there is a new version of Buy-and-Hold that is something very different. The phrase “Buy-and-Hold” today signifies an investing “strategy” that calls for the investor to possess a burning hatred for discussions of the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research and to employ all forms of trickery and deception and intimidation to keep all investors (including one’s self) from learning how stock investing really works in the real world.
Everyone alive hates one of the two forms of Buy-and-Hold, Anonymous. Those of us who feel a passionate love for what the Buy-and-Hold project was in its early days (a quest to help millions of middle-class investors invest more effectively) naturally hate to see the Buy-and-Holders of today drag the concept through the mud with their deception and intimidation tactics. We want Buy-and-Hold to work. So we naturally want to update the concept to reflect the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research. Those who are emotionally addicted to the Get-Rich-Quick version of Buy-and-Hold naturally hate those of us who argue that exploration of the peer-reviewed research should be permitted. There’s no support in the academic research for Get Rich Quick. It makes the Buy-and-Holders who are in the Get Rich Quick camp “look bad” for millions of middle-class people to find out what the research really says.
Which Buy-and-Hold is the real Buy-and-Hold?
That’s the question here. If the ugly form of Buy-and-Hold is the real form of Buy-and-Hold, Jack Bogle is the Frank Underwood of Personal Finance. Jack has caused more human misery than anyone who has ever worked in this field. That’s objective fact. Millions of people have already lost their jobs in the Buy-and-Hold Crisis. Millions more will lose their jobs following the next price crash. When you suggest that the ugly form of Buy-and-Hold is the only legitimate version of Buy-and-Hold, you suggest that Jack Bogle caused this economic crisis by intent You suggest something very, very, very horrible. When you suggest such horrible things, you speak in hate.
I speak in love. I suggest something very different.
I argue that Jack Bogle is a good man who allowed his pride to get too caught up in a highly promising but ultimately flawed idea and who today suffers from a horrible case of cognitive dissonance as a result. I say that, when Old Saint Jack wrote in one of his books that, were he ever to be found to have made a mistake that hurt millions of investors, he would want his friends to point it out to him, he was speaking from the heart. I am Jack’s truest friend. So I have done what my friend asked of me. I will continue to do it until my friend’s heart melts and he works up the courage to do the right thing. I believe that after the next price crash he will do it. We will see. In any event, my actions are rooted in a deep love of the man that I call “friend.”
Your actions are rooted in hate, Anonymous. Every day that the Ban on Honest Posting continues, more lives are ruined. Every day that the Ban on Honest Posting continues, more people cross the lines that lead to prison sentences down the road. Every day that the Ban on Honest Posting continues, the prison sentences that will be imposed on those who crossed those lines years ago grow more lengthy. Bad stuff piled on top of bad stuff piled on top of bad stuff. Hate piled on top of hate piled on top of hate.
That’s the real Buy-and-Hold?
I say otherwise.
I hate the hate. That much is fair to say. But the reason why I hate the hate is because I love the true Buy-and-Hold Project, I love what Buy-and-Hold stood for in earlier days and I love what Buy-and-Hold will stand for again after my good friend Jack works up the courage to walk to the front of a big room and say The Three Magic Words. I love the true Buy-and-Hold, not the b.s. version pushed by the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney.
This site is of immense value.
There has not been any intellectual support for the phony version of Buy-and-Hold for 33 years now. We are on the one-yard line. The one thing that the millions of good people who today reside in the United States need to bring this economic crisis to an end and to bring on the greatest period of economic growth in our history is the courage to stand up to you Goons and to insist on the recognition of the right we all possess to post anywhere we please on the internet in accord with what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works in the real world. We know that there are millions of people who possess a great desire to hear the realities. We need one venture capitalist or one large site owner or one big-name journalist or one economist or one policymaker to work up the courage to take on you Goons and the entire Buy-and-Hold house of cards comes crashing to the ground.
This site gives those people what they need to steel themselves against your Campaign of Terror.
People worry that the Wall Street Con Men will employ their huge financial resources to destroy them through phony lawsuits. It’s pretty hard for the Wall Street Con Men to do that when the materials collected at this site are available for use in any trial. The Wall Street Con Men obviously don’t want the Wade Pfau matter getting public attention. The threat of lawsuits that have held many honest people from speaking up against the Get Rich Quick garbage for 33 years now has been neutralized by the materials collected at this site.
People worry that you Goons will attack their sites and that other site owners will not step in to help them because they feel that the number who want to hear the realities of stock investing is so small. But that number is NOT small. We know that by what the materials at this site tell us. Those people are AFRAID to speak up. But they are not small in number. I wouldn’t have over 200 expressions of intense support at the “People Are Talking” section of the site if the number favoring honest posting was small. Again, the intimidation tactics engaged in by those seeking to “defend” the b.s. version of Buy-and-Hold have been neutralized by the materials collected at this site.
I win, Anonymous.
You Goons lose.
I knew it all the time!
Rob
Anonymous says
Are you drinking large quantities of alcoholic beverages when you make this stuff up or is really an underlying mental illness?
Rob says
It’s just love, Anonymous.
I feel a great love in my heart for all my fellow community members and so I cannot bring myself to lie to them.
And I also feel a great love in my heart for my Buy-and-Hold friends. I know that deep in their hearts they intend to do good and that they need their friends to help them out when they get a little too full of themselves and start thinking that they are the first of the humans that cannot make mistakes.
I love you, Anonymous.
Even when you threaten to kill members of my family, I am able to see a lovable side to you (why would you be so angry if you didn’t care?) and that lovable side touches my heart and inspires me to solider on.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Anonymous says
Looks like people are actively talking about the merits of the 4% withdrawal rate openly and freely.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/07/retiring-now-how-the-4-withdrawal-rule-could-hurt.aspx
This was on my Yahoo front page. This basically debunks about 90% of what you choose to ramble about these days. Your failure is not a giant conspiracy but on the shoulders of a single man, yourself.
Rob says
Have the studies that have been found to have been in error been corrected, Anonymous?
If not, why not?
Have we all pulled together to support a massive publicity campaign to warn the millions of people who crafted retirement plans pursuant to these discredited studies of the trouble they are in?
Are we actively promoting the New School studies that correct the mistakes that caused the numbers in the Old School studies to be so wildly off the mark?
Have we analyzed how we made these mistakes in the first place and what changes we need to make to insure that nothing like this ever happens again?
Have articles been written exploring why it took nearly 10 years from the time the mistakes became public knowledge for the big-name news organizations to write about them?
If people were talking openly and freely, we would be talking about all these questions.
And we would be DOING things too. It’s not enough just to talk about old mistakes. We need to create new studies and new calculators that GET THE NUMBERS RIGHT.
If we found out that our water supply was poisoned, we would quickly get about the business of fixing the problem and supplying people with water that is NOT poisoned. The article doesn’t do that re the poisoning of our investment advice as a result of the mistake that the Buy-and-Holders discovered 33 years ago and have not fixed to this day.
It’s not just me who believes that there is something terribly wrong with Buy-and-Hold. YOU believe that. Otherwise, you wouldn’t behave as you do.
I wish you all good things.
Rob
x says
Have the studies that have been found to have been in error been corrected, Anonymous?
Did you even bother to read the article? With your drastically reduced activity, it seems like you’d have plenty of time to keep up on your reading. Anyway, your old buddy Wade states quite emphatically that 4% is not safe. What more of a “correction” do you require?
Rob says
Wade said that the Old School studies were in error YEARS AGO, X. He wrote to the authors of the Trinity study asking that they correct their study. That’s when you Goons threatened to get him fired from his job if he did not ditch the honest posting routine. AND BOGLE BACKED YOU UP.
That’s why you are going to prison. You get that, right?
I don’t WANT to go to prison. So I am posting honestly.
I said above what sort of correction I require. I require the sort of correction we see in every field of human endeavor other than in the investing advice field. We need to see the studies corrected. We need to see accurate studies promoted. We need to go back and study how we got this one so terribly wrong and determine what we need to do to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. We need to see that damages are paid to the millions of people who were taken in by the garbage studies. We need to decide how long the prison sentences should be for those who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney and Jack Bogle. We need to make settlement payments to those who tried to solve the problem by posting honestly and who were targeted by the Buy-and-Hold Mafia as a result. We need to send a message to all academic researchers in this field that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia is no longer running the show and that starting here, starting now we want to encourage all researchers to do HONEST work.
Does that help?
Going to prison is not on my bucket list. I have zero desire to participate in this massive act of financial fraud. I told Wade when he signed up with you Goons that he was “insane” to do so. I think it would be fair to say that it would be equally insane for me to do so today.
Of course the studies are in error. Everyone who bothered to take five minutes to check the Greaney study to see whether it contained an adjustment for the valuation level that applied on the day the retirement began knew that back on the morning of May 13, 2002. Now we need to get the legal matters taken care of so that we can all begin enjoying the benefits of being the luckiest generation of investors ever to talk Planet Earth. We need to get your prison sentence announced so that the millions of us who very, very much need to know how stock investing works according to the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research can get about the business of talking about this subject in honest and accurate and research-based ways.
Does all of that make good sense to you, X?
Rob
x says
I see. The correction you require has nothing to do with correcting numbers (which Wade did) and everything to do with fixing your hurt feelings and punishing your critics (which he didn’t do, to his eternal shame.)
Since you asked, no, that doesn’t make good sense.
Rob says
I have zero interest in involving myself in the biggest act of financial fraud in U.S. history, X.
Going to prison is not high on my bucket list.
I would be truly grateful if you would try to find someone else.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investing strategies you elect to pursue.
Rob