Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
Rob,
He says “timing” and that is what it means long term timing is still timing. It means ALL timing. Tell me where he says timing excludes long term timing. So, do we have an agreement? Are you ready to accept the consequences.
You are right that long-term timing is a form of timing, Anonymous.
That is why it is a Big Lie for the Buy-and-Holders to say that there is research showing that timing doesn’t work. Timing ALWAYS works. There is 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing that.
Short-term timing doesn’t work. If the Buy-and-Holders said “short-term timing doesn’t work,” that would be honest. Given that long-term timing always works and is always 100 percent required, the claim that “timing doesn’t work” is a Big Lie.
I don’t believe that it was a lie in 1965, when people first started saying it. It was then a mistake. Fama never checked whether long-term timing worked or was required. He only looked at one form of timing (short-term timing) and jumped to a hasty conclusion that what was true of one form of timing was true for the other form of timing. Shiller was the first to test long-term timing and he found that Fama was wrong to jump to his hasty conclusion. Every test of the question done in the 33 years since shows the same thing.
A mistake that has been covered up for 33 years is a Big Lie. It is my job to EXPOSE the Big Lie. I want millions of middle-class investors to know what was done to them. I want to see those who have engaged in financial fraud to cover up the Big Lie sent to prison.
Why? Because the announcement of your prison sentence is going to go viral on the internet. Once it is common knowledge that the claim that a Buy-and-Hold strategy (failing to exercise price discipline) might on some distant planet work out well for one or two long-term investors is a Big Lie, we will all be able to pull together and work to bury the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.
Valuation-Informed Indexing is Buy-and-Hold with the dishonest Get Rich Quick element removed. Good for Valuation-Informed Indexing! I advocate Valuation-Informed Indexing, the first TRUE research-based strategy, a corrected form of Buy-and-Hold that actually works in the real world.
Does all of that not make good sense?
Rob
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