“Wade Pfau Is the Only Person Who Has Contacted the Authors of the Trinity Study (the Study That Was Primarily Responsible for the Once Widespread Belief in the “4 Percent Rule”) Pointing Out the Need for a Correction in Their Study. Once That Correction Is Issued, Everyone Working in This Field Will Feel Free to Write Honestly About the Error That the Buy-and-Holders Made in Believing That It Is Not Necessary for Stock Investors To Exercise Price Discipline When Buying Stocks. We Will All Then Be Free To Participate in a National Debate As To Whether It Is Buy-and-Hold or Valuation-Informed Indexing (the Model That Says That Valuations MUST Be Taken Into Consideration When an Investor Sets His Stock Allocation) That Is the Future of Investing Analysis.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

Of course, Wade is the person that explained to you that you are wrong on the SWR issue. Wade is also the person who asked you to stop talking about him, yet you still sent out over 30,000 emails about him. Wade is also the person who said you have caused him thousands of times more harm than any so called “goon”.

Wade is a super guy trapped in circumstances that he did not create.

He is the only person who has contacted the authors of the Trinity study (the study that was primarily responsible for the once widespread belief in the “4 percent rule”) pointing out the need for a correction in their study. Once that correction is issued, everyone working in this field will feel free to write honestly about the error that the Buy-and-Holders made in believing that it is not necessary for stock investors to exercise price discipline when buying stocks. We will all then be free to participate in a national debate as to whether it is Buy-and-Hold or Valuation-Informed Indexing (the model that says that valuations MUST be taken into consideration when an investor sets his stock allocation) that is the future of investing analysis.

You are right that there was one occasion on which Wade said that I am wrong on the SWR issue. But there were also scores and scores of occasions on which he said that I was right on the SWR issue and that he was extremely grateful to me because of what he learned in the hundreds of e-mails that he exchanged during the 16 months in which we worked together producing peer-reviewed research that he believed was important enough that he might be awarded a Nobel prize for his efforts. On the one occasion in which he expressed a belief that I was wrong, he was under extreme pressure; you Goon had threatened to get him fired from his job if he did not issue that statement — the man had two small children to provide for.

Wade and I do not communicate with each other today. But that will change and we will be good friends again after this matter gets cleared up. Wade obviously hopes that that will happen soon. As do I. As do thousands of others. We’re close, Sammy. We live in a great country and we are in the process of working together to build up the courage to make this happen. My personal hunch is that even you have secret feelings from time to time in which you wish that the nasty stuff could be put behind us and we all could work together to figure out how this stock investing stuff really works. Imagine!

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person in any event.

Rob