Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
I’d say once per thread, and on topics related to the thread. There’s no need to repeat yourself. Any assertions should be cited. Keep your responses brief and to the point. And respond politely, and without hyperbole.
Buy-and-Holders repeat themselves endlessly. If I have heard that “timing doesn’t work” once, I have heard it ten-thousand times. If those of us who believe in research-based strategies are going to be effective in pointing out the dangers of Buy-and-Hold, we are going to have to reiterate basic principles many times, just as the Buy-and-Holder repeat their claims over and over and over again. The human mind places confidence in claims that it hears many, many times. When people hear a claim thousands of times, they are inclined to think there must be at least some grain of truth in it.
I won’t keep my responses to the questions of community members brief in cases in which it is clear from the wording of the question that the community member is confused on an important point and needs step-by-step guidance to clear up the confusion. My job is to help people develop a better understanding of how stock investing works. When that can be done in a few words, it makes sense to use a few words. When more words are required, it makes sense to go with more words. My focus is on helping my fellow community members.
Is it “polite” to say that the errors in the Old School SWR studies became public knowledge on the morning of May 13, 2002, and that those studies have not been corrected to this day? That’s a stone cold fact. But the reporting of that fact shows that the Buy-and-Holders are working a huge scam. Is it “polite” to point that out? Again, my aim is to help my fellow community members.
I would prefer not to need to point out that the Buy-and-Holders are working a scam. But until the day comes when the errors in the retirement studies are corrected I am not free to say that the errors in the studies have been corrected. To do that would be to tell a lie in furtherance of the biggest act of financial fraud in U.S. history. That would mean prison time for me following the next price crash. Huh?
Is it hyperbole to say that in the 140 years of U.S. stock market history available to us Buy-and-Hold has not yet ever worked for even a single long-term investor? My name is on peer-reviewed research showing just that. Is it hyperbole in your assessment for me to point out what the peer-reviewed research says?
Is it “to the point” for a Buy-and-Holder to threaten to kill my wife and children if I continue to “cross” him by posting honestly about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field says? If I am required to post “to the point” should not Buy-and-Holders be permitted to do the same? How do we handle death threats when it is board “leaders” who post them or endorse them? Should we call out board leaders who fail to keep their posts “to the point” by posting threats of physical violence as part of an effort to intimidate community members who root their posts in the academic research?
These are the friction points, Anonymous.
We don’t accomplish anything by pretending they don’t exist.
Honesty.
That one word sums it all up.
Will honest posting be permitted or will it not?
If it is, I am in.
If it is not, the board is a corrupt enterprise and my job is to warn people of the dangers of being associated with it in any way, shape or form.
I hope that helps a bit.
Rob
“Will honest posting be permitted or will it not?”
You long ago gave up even trying to post anywhere but here. How about this question: “Can I learn to play the violin, without ever seeing a violin?”
I haven’t given up on anything, Dizzy.
People developed a different view of the Bernie Madoff fund after the con was exposed than they had when the phony numbers showed that everyone was getting rich.
I see no reason to think it will turn out different with Buy-and-Hold.
We are ALL drawn to Get Rich Quick schemes. It is in our nature. The job of an investing analyst is to warn people of the DANGERS of Buy-and-Hold, not to go along with The Big Lie that there is some mystical study somewhere that supports this smelly garbage.
It will all work out following the next price crash. You Goons will be put in prison cells and the rest of us will rebuild our broken economy.
Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, in any event.
My best wishes.
Rob
Rob: I’ll continue to troll while my kids go without.
Normals: Then we’ll continue to ban you.
We’ll see how it all turns out following the next price crash, Anonymous.
Rob
We’ll see how it all turns out following the next price crash, Anonymous.
We just had the worst price crash in decades. Any $500 mm checks in the mail then?
We came close, Anonymous.
Read threads from the Bogleheads Forum from early 2009 and you will see what I am getting at. Some people gave up on Buy-and-Hold then. Others started to think about it. Others started at least asking hard questions for the first time.
Prices went back up pretty quickly and the hard questioning stopped. So Buy-and-Hold is still with us today. But things are not as they were before. Support for Buy-and-Hold today is far more tentative and uneasy than it was before the 2008 crash. That’s true even among you Goons.
Things with go south for this “strategy” quickly with the next crash. There’s never been anything intellectual there. It’s always been a marketing gimmick first, second and third. Violence is what keeps Buy-and-Hold going. People keep their mouths shut because they know that the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads will destroy their careers if they dare to speak honestly about what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research shows.
The 2008 crash was NOT the worst price crash we have seen in decades. It was a hard crash that did not last long. Prices recovered too quickly for that to be considered a significant crash. It’s not just the price drop that affects people. It’s how long the price drop remains in place.
You will see a much bigger emotional reaction when we see a crash that takes the P/E10 level down not to 13 but to 7 and when that drop remains in place FOR YEARS. There’s never been a time when Buy-and-Hold became popular and we did not see that. So that’s what the peer-reviewed research in this field says is coming next. And, yes, that crash will hit with much more impact. That crash will be the death blow to the Buy-and-Hold “strategy.”
Or so Rob Bennett believes, you know? I’m not God. I could be wrong.
But I don’t want to go to prison and you are not going to see any posts with my name on them arguing that Buy-and-Hold is anything other than the most massive act of financial fraud in U.S. history between now and then. I have worked hard to build a reputation as the most severe critic of Buy-and-Hold alive on Planet Earth today and I expect to cash in on that reputation when millions of middle-class investors become sick of the endless promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick approach and we put you Goons in prison and get about the business of rebuilding our broken economy from the hits it took during the years when we came to refer to a group of Wall Street Con Men as “experts.”
I want nothing to do with it, Anonymous. If you ever want me to help you get your prison sentence reduced a bit, please just ask. But I don’t ever want to cause you to feel that there’s a chance that I might post in “defense” of Buy-and-Hold myself. I have zero willingness to commit felonies. I have zero desire to end up in a prison cell myself. Please try to find someone else.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Support for Buy-and-Hold today is far more tentative and uneasy than it was before the 2008 crash. That’s true even among you Goons.
Any links or evidence to back this up? I didn’t think so.
If you ever want me to help you get your prison sentence reduced a bit, please just ask.
I’m so scared Rob. Tell me, do you have any good suggestions for prison reading?
Any links or evidence to back this up?
Every post you advance shows this, Anonymous.
A program could be developed that would look for words expressing confidence and words indicating uneasiness and you could compare how Buy-and-Holders spoke on discussion boards in 2002 with how they speak today. It’s not a close call.
If I can see it so clearly, lots of others have the intellectual ability to see it clearly. The problem is that they do not WANT to see it. There’s tons of money to be made pushing Get Rich Quick strategies and Buy-and-Hold is the purest and most dangerous GRQ strategy ever concocted by the human mind.
It’s all emotion. That’s all Buy-and-Hold has going for it. And the emotions of Buy-and-Holders are shaky today. When the P/E10 is 8, the emotion will be strong in the opposite direction. You don’t want to have any posts in your file “defending” Buy-and-Hold at that time.
Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes.
We will see how it all plays out over the next few years. That’s the only thing that is really going to convince you.
Rob
I’m so scared Rob.
You’re scared.
You have persuaded yourself that there’s a chance that you won’t go to prison.
That’s not enough to make you not scared. So long as you understand that there’s a good chance that you WILL go to prison, you’re scared. And every post you put forward shows that you believe that there’s a good chance.
I’d go with Lord of the Rings as your reading material. It’s long.
Rob
No one is scared, Rob. People are just having a bit of fun with you. Just pulling on the puppet strings.
I know that’s your line, Anonymous.
I don’t believe you.
Time will reveal the truth of the matter one way or the other.
Rob
There will always be crashes and I am sure there is one coming….at some point. However, it is stunningly naive to equate a crash with ‘Rob Bennett Winning’. Assuming a normal crash and nothing catastrophic, people will freak out and do the normal stupid things they do during a crash and then things will resume.
Crashes are just an opportunity to transfer wealth from the weak hands to the strong.
We’ll see, Laugh.
There’s now 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing that overvaluation is not real, it’s just cotton-candy nothingness that gets blown into the wind in the long term. The Buy-and-Holders tell people to count their phony bull-market gains as real and that hurts them. I think that people will be upset re the lies they were told and will become just as emotional in their OPPOSITION to Get Rich Quick strategies as they had at earlier times been emotionally enthusiastic about them.
But I am not God. I could be wrong. We are just going to have to wait and see.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.
Rob
It is just amazing. I was able to buy my car, pay cash for my house and put my boys through college with cotton candy nothingness. What a miracle!
The investors in the Madoff fund said the same thing until the fund collapsed, Anonymous.
Get Rich Quick always looks good in the short term. Otherwise, no one would fall for it.
The problem is that it never works in the long term. It’s a logical impossibility that it ever could,
If it sounds too good too good to be true, there’s a good chance that it’s not true.
My take.
Rob
So which of the Vanguard funds and underlying securities are run as a Ponzi scheme similar to Bernie Madoff?
They all are. Every last one of them.
That’s like asking: “How many of the soda fountains in the pre-Civil Rights South discriminated against blacks?” They all did. Every last one of them.
The reason why the answer is the same in both cases is that the underlying dynamic is the same in both cases.
There was no justification for discrimination against people with black skin. There was an historical explanation of the phenomenon. But there was no justification that made sense to people in the years just before the Civil Rights Revolution took place. For anyone to practice racial discrimination, everyone had to do so.
There were soda-fountain owners who did not want to practice racial discrimination. It was made clear to them what would happen to them if they failed to do so. If one soda-fountain owner treated blacks fairly, it made all the soda-fountain owners who did not do so look very, very bad. So a Social Taboo was created prohibiting fair treatment of blacks.
Not everyone believed in racial discrimination. But everyone practiced it. That was so by definition. If you didn’t practice racial discrimination in the pre-Civil Rights South, you were removed from the society. So, once again, everyone in the society practiced racial discrimination. The practice was too horrible to survive unless it was universally practiced (and therefore never challenged).
That’s where things stand today with Buy-and-Hold.
There has never been a sliver of support in the peer-reviewed research for this smelly Get Rich Quick garbage. It is impossible for the rational human mind to imagine how there ever could be a sliver of support. So to keep it going, we must force everyone to pretend to believe in it. The day Buy-and-Hold is subject to questioning in the same way that every other idea is subject to questioning in our society is the day that Buy-and-Hold falls.
How can an “idea” survive when it is plainly absurd (the claim that price discipline is not required in the stock market is the OPPOSITE of what is true in every other market — price discipline is the thing that makes every other market work!) and 100 percent at odds with all of the peer-reviewed research available. Huh?
For Buy-and-Hold to survive, everyone must pretend to believe in an absurdity. There is 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing us all that Buy-and-Hold is dangerous as all get-out. So in ordinary circumstances we would all move on to better things (Valuation-Informed Indexing). The problem is the 34-year cover-up. If as a society we permit honest posting re what works with stock investing, lots of wealthy and powerful people will be going to prison for a long time. They don’t want to go to prison. So they are using their power and wealth to keep the cover-up going another day, another week, another month, another year.
The problem with that strategy is that each day the cover-up remains in place we destroy thousands of additional middle-class lives. That means that the anger will be even greater following the next price crash. And that means that the prison sentences for those who continued to advocate Buy-and-Hold with 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that it could ever work for even a single long-term investor grow even longer. Not good.
My job is to help BOTH the millions of middle-class investors AND the Wall Street Con Men. By exposing this massive act of financial fraud, we let the millions of middle-class investors learn about the first true research-based strategy. At the same time, we shorten the prison sentences for the Wall Street Con Men and for the members of their Internet Goon Squads. Pretty darn cool trick, huh?
I sure think so.
I wish you all the best that life has to offer a person, Anonymous.
Rob
Q: Which funds are Ponzi schemes?
A: They all are.
Q: Post a link to support (anything)
A: The whole web supports me.
Q: Who gave you this job?
A: The people of America.
All very specific questions, all total nonsense replies. This leads directly to justifiable bans. One might ask why you insist on acting this way, but that would be pointless since you’ll either delete or dodge the question.
I’ve posted numerous blog entries on my e-mail correspondence with Wade Pfau. Wade holds a Ph/D. in Economics from Princeton. There is no one better qualified to check what the peer-reviewed research in this field really says.
Wade spent a lot of time trying to find a single study supporting the core Buy-and-Hold claim that price discipline (long-term timing) is not required when buying stocks. He was not able to find a single study. He was amazed to learn that the Wall Street Con Men had been pushing this crazy Buy-and-Hold stuff for decades without even a single sliver of evidence supporting it. He was so surprised that he went to the Bogleheads Forum to ask if anyone there knew of a single study. Bogle did not. Bernstein did not. Swedroe did not. Ferri did not. No one at a huge Buy-and-Hold board knew of a single study supporting Buy-and-Hold. Gee, I wonder why.
The reaction of the Wall Street Con Men was not to apologize to the American people for causing an economic crisis and putting millions of middle-class investors on a path leading to failed retirements in days to come. Their response was to support you Goons when you threatened to get Wade fired from his job by sending defamatory e-mails to his employer unless he agreed to stop posting honestly re these matters. Again — Gee, I wonder why you responded in that manner.
When you Goons are sent to prison, it’s over, X. Yes, everyone in the United States wants to know the truth about stock investing. If you hadn’t already committed financial fraud, that would include you too. The only reason why you are on the other side is that you don’t want to go to prison. Is your prison sentence my fault? I have been urging you for 13 years now to STOP engaging in financial fraud. I am today working to get your prison sentence reduced a bit. That’s a lot more than you are doing yourself!
I wish that someone else had exposed the massive act of financial fraud long before I came on the scene. Then I would never have seen a single death threat from a single Buy-and-Holder. Someone had to do it, right? We don’t want this economic crisis to go on endlessly right?
So I am doing what I can. I can do no more and I can do no less.
It’s not “nonsense” to love one’s country. If Buy-and-Hold were not a scam, Greaney would have corrected his retirement study within 24 hours of the moment he learned of the errors he made in it. Give me a freakin’ break.
Being banned from a corrupt discussion board is not as bad as going to prison. I don’t like being banned from any board. But I really, really don’t like the idea of going to prison. So I will continue posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates and lots of other critically important investment-relateed topics.
I love my country. Part of loving it is believing in it. So I believe that we will bring these matters to a successful conclusion following the next price crash. I sure hope so.
Time will tell the tale.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
So, Vanguard funds holds stocks like Pfizer, J&J, Kimberly Clark, Apple, etc. to your logic, these companies are all Ponzi Schemes.
The companies aren’t Ponzi schemes.
It is the claim that the Buy-and-Holders make that there is no need to exercise price discipline when buying stocks that turns stock investing into a Ponzi scheme for those who fall for it.
Valuation-Informed Indexers buy all those same companies. What Valuation-Informed Indexers do differently is that they consider price when making purchases. Just as everyone does when buying socks or bananas or cameras or anything else other than stocks.
It is the Buy-and-Hold Lies that have turned the stock market into a Ponzi scheme and that have caused the biggest economic crisis in our history.
Buy-and-Hold makes multi-millionaires out of the con men who continue to push it 34 years after the peer-reviewed research showed that there is precisely zero chance that it could ever work for a single long-term investor. But it destroys the nation that tolerates continued promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick approach. That makes it a strong net negative. I would prefer to see the Wall Street Con Men earn a few million less and to live in a strong county comprised of millions of middle-class people who will be able to retire at reasonable ages.
My sincere take.
Rob
If the companies are not positive schemes, then the funds are not Ponzi schemes as the companies themselves are what these funds are made of. In a ponzu scheme, the investor has no real underlying assets.
Buy-and-Holders are buying real assets. But at the top of the bubble they were paying three times what those assets are worth. So two-thirds of their money was going to buy cotton-candy nothingness.
Say that you had a portfolio of $900,000 at the time. That’s $600,000 of cotton-candy nothingness.
If that’s not a Ponzi scheme, I don’t think I want to see a real Ponzi scheme.
Bogle is Bernie Madoff multiplied by 5,000. It’s the same act of financial fraud. But it hurts millions more because Bogle is perceived as being a real expert rather than a con man.
I think we all should be spreading the word about the con. That’s how we bring it to an end. By bringing it to an end quicker, we shorten the prison sentences a bit. It’s a win/win/win.
My sincere take.
Rob
If Buy-and-Hold were not a Ponzi scheme, why would we have seen death threats?
The Buy-and-Holders sure know that it is a con!
If I was on a jury, that’s the first thing I would look at.
I mean, come on.
Rob