“We Cannot Wait Until There Is a 100 Percent Consensus That Valuation-Informed Indexing Is the Answer Before Permitting Honest Discussion of the Findings of the Last 34 Years of Peer-Reviewed Research. For So Long as All the Researchers Fear That Their Careers Will Be Destroyed If They Publish Just One Honest Research Paper or Post One Honest Comment, We Cannot Get the Ball Rolling.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:

So even if your load of BS regarding Wade is true what about the thousands of other researchers you referenced?

Many of the researchers still believe in Buy-and-Hold, Anonymous. Wade believed in Buy-and-Hold before we did our work together. John Walter Russell also believed in Buy-and-Hold before we did our work together. And I believed in Buy-and-Hold myself before Greaney threatened to kill my wife and children if I continued to post honestly on safe withdrawal rates and 200 of my fellow community members endorsed his post.

Believing in Buy-and-Hold is easy. Believing in Buy-and-Hold today is like what it was to believe that the earth was flat in the days before mankind learned that the earth is actually round. The earth sure appears to be flat. It’s not at all hard to understand why most people once believed that. Buy-and-Hold sure appears to produce good results for significant periods of time. Those who followed Buy-and-Hold strategies did gangbusters from 1981 through 1999. What’s not to believe?

The purpose of research is to go beyond surface appearances. It appears that stock price changes are determined by economic developments. That’s why the Buy-and-Holders jumped to that unfortunate conclusion. Shiller’s 1981 research went beyond surface appearances and showed us that that is zero chance that it is economic developments that cause stock price changes.

If it were, stock prices would fall in the pattern of a random walk. In the long term, they never do. That means that it is something else — investor emotion — that determines stock price changes. Economic developments can have an indirect effect because economic developments influence investor emotion. But investor emotion is the dominant influence. Economic developments must pass through the filter of investor emotion before they have their effect on stock prices.

That changes everything.

Most academic researchers understand that there are holes in the Buy-and-Hold Model. But most do not yet buy into the Valuation-Informed Indexing Model. For that to happen, we need to permit them to do honest research and to talk over their research findings with all of their peers. We need to have all of the experts in this field talking over all of the exciting discoveries that we have made over the past 34 years. When that happens, knowledge will grow and grow and grow and grow.

We cannot wait until there is a 100 percent consensus that Valuation-Informed Indexing is the answer before permitting honest discussion of the findings of the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. If we demand a 100 percent consensus before permitting the first honest post, we will never get to where we all very much want to go.

We have 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing what works. That’s enough to justify opening up every board and blog on the internet to honest posting. Once we do that, it’s all downhill sledding. We all want the same things. There are hundreds of billions of dollars to be made getting these ideas out before people. If we permit honest posting at just one large board, we will see good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. We will end up experiencing the greatest period of economic growth ever seen in the history of our nation.

But we do need to start. For so long as all of the researchers fear that their careers will be destroyed if they publish just one honest research paper or post one honest comment, we cannot get the ball rolling. For us to see THOUSANDS of honest and accurate reports of what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research shows us, we need to start with ONE honest and accurate report. The rest just follows from that.

The problem is that the cover-up has been going on for 34 years. The Wall Street Con Men are worried that they will be going to prison if they come clean today.

I cannot change that by myself.

If people want to talk about some sort of amnesty, I am fine with that. But I cannot adopt an amnesty by myself.

I hope that all makes good sense to you.

My best wishes to you and yours.

Rob