Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent to Jaime Tardy, owner of the EventualMillionaire.com site, on November 4, 2013:
Jaime:
The same Goons are still doing the same things. I don’t go to other sites as often as I once did because I have seen the same dynamic play out so many times. But, when I do, they do all the same things and generally obtain the same results.
Part of what you are saying makes sense to me and part does not.
I agree 100 percent that people listen only to people they LIKE. The negativity is POISON and it hurts me in very serious ways. I am in favor of having more videos and of doing more to have my site visitors identify with me as a person. All of that is 100 percent right on, in my assessment.
I don’t agree with the part about forgetting the attacks. The attacks are a huge part of the story that needs to be told. Valuation-Informed Indexing is so far superior to Buy-and-Hold that the two are not in the same universe. So there has to be some explanation why for 32 years people have ignored what the research says. The explanation is that Buy-and-Hold has emotional appeal and the attacks demonstrate how emotional Buy-and-Hold makes people.
I believe that the big change will come when we have the next stock crash. I believe that people are then going to turn on the Buy-and-Holders. They are going to be looking for someone to blame for their troubles and the Buy-and-Holders will be the obvious choices.
My role is to pull everyone together. I will have a level of credibility that no one else will have because I have been talking about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold publicly for 11 years. I see that changing from a detriment to a benefit when Buy-and-Hold fails in a concrete way rather than just in a theoretical way. I will be able to say following the next crash that the losses that people have suffered show the benefits of HONEST investing advice and that I am the only one out there who possessed the integrity and courage to be fully honest on a whole host of important issues.
Here is a post about a woman who gets the “vision” that I have re this matter:
She points out that Kuhn (who wrote “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”) “shows how pathbreaking scientific ideas are rejected at first, usually for decades.” That is what is happening here and there is strong reason to believe that the days of rejection for Shiller’s ideas are close to coming to an end.
I of course do not enjoy the attacks. But the attacks point to a huge opportunity. The attacks show that Shiller is RIGHT (people do not attack when they have confidence in their position). And Shiller’s model changes EVERYTHING we think we know today about how stock investing works. Once Shiller’s ideas catch on (and we have already seen a big move in the right direction since the first crash), we will be seeing THOUSANDS of new millionaires in this field. I want to be one of them and I want to help lots of others become others of them. I intend to earn my millions doing good and important work.
I undertand that not everyone who tries something like this succeeds. All that I can say is that I am a VERY cautious person and that I have checked for every possible hole in the plan and I have not found any. I AM going to make changes in the site with the aim of bringing out my personality. But I am more inclined to playing UP the attacks than to playing them down. I titled my Ignite presentation “How to Become the Most Hated Blogger on the Internet.” I could see doing more of that sort of thing, letting people know right up front that they get honesty from me and that I have paid a price for that honesty and that they can take it or leave it (those who take it will of course be good customers).
I think this is a winning message, so I don;t want to water it down. I want to promote myself as “The One Investing Advisor Who Will Not Compromise on Issues of Integrity.” I’ve EARNED that designation and I want to cash in on what I have earned with 11 years of difficult work.
The reason I approach you is that you are strongest where I am weakest. I need to approach big names and persuade one to endorse my work. I have been successful in doing this in a limited number of cases. I had a researcher agree to spend 8 years of his life researching my stuff. That was a big win. I persuaded another researcher to publish research he co-aurthored with me in a peer-reviewed journal. That was another biggie. And I have had people like Mr. Money Mustache say that he agrees with my ideas but that he doesn’t want to put his name on them because of the attacks. He COULD change that view just enough for me to be a big hit. Or someone else as big as Mr. Money Mustache might come to see the opportunity in this (which I think is huge — we are talking about rewriting ALL the rules of investing)
and do for me what Mr. Money Mustache elected not to do. I on occasion force myself to go up to big names and ask for their help. But I think I need to do a LOT more of that. My sense is that doing that comes a lot easier to you and that you might be able to help me see how to proceed re that side of things.
My question to you is whether you see any possibilities. What I need is someone either to connect me to big names or to point me to big names that I did not think of pursuing and possibly to give me some advice on how to proceed so as to win them over.
I am grateful for the thoughts you have offered in any event. You will not hurt my feelings if you respond with a gentle “no.” I approached you because I thought that it was POSSIBLE that you possess the skills needed to make the key turn. I am not trying to say that I know for sure that our working together is a good idea. I saw something in you that I lack and thought that I should make an effort to see if it would be a good idea for us to work together.
Rob
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