Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Is there anyone, other than you, that knows how stock investing works?
There are thousands of people who know bits and pieces of the story, Anonymous. Shiller is obviously the leader; all of my work is rooted in his Nobel-prize-winning research. Bogle obviously knows a lot; Bogle developed every aspect of Valuation-Informed Indexing with the exception of the need to practice price discipline that follows from Shiller’s research. Bernstein has the safe withdrawal rate right — he said that you need to subtract two points at times of insanely high valuations; he’s just afraid to say that it is 2 percent because he knows what you Goons will do to him if he “crosses” you by posting honestly. Wade Pfau said that he was not able to sleep at night because he was so excited to learn about Valuation-Informed Indexing. Larry Swedroe posted tons of honest stuff; he won’t use the words “financial fraud” to describe Buy-and-Hold because he doesn’t want to see you Goons destroy his career. And on and on and on and on and on.
The better question is: Is there anyone working in this field who doesn’t know that Buy-and-Hold is a con?
If there was someone who thought that Buy-and-Hold was a legitimate strategy, that person would be embarrassed by the behavior of you Goons and would insist that you knock off the funny business. Thousands have asked you in one way or another to do that. But how many insist on it in the face of your death threats and your threats of career destruction? Has anyone but me done this?
I won’t post dishonestly, Anonymous I flat out refuse, So, yes, I am today 14 years ahead of anyone else. I have spent the last 14 year developing the first true research-backed strategy. I refuse to waste time pretending to believe in a strategy that was entirely discredited 14 years ago. I have too much self respect to waste my time and energy that way.
I am not stopping anyone else from posting honestly. I encourage it. And I am working to get prison sentences announced for you Goons. That helps all the thousands of people who want to talk the realities but who today are afraid to do so.
It’s not that this stuff is intellectually difficult. I certainly am not smarter than Bogle or Shiller or Pfau or any of the others. The difference is that I care too much about my readers to betray them in the way that these individuals have betrayed their readers. I am certainly unique in that regard. There is no one in a close second place. Even you Goons have commented on that thousands of time.
Someone had to move first. There is always someone who moves first. There is no other means by which change can be achieved.
When I get my $500 million settlement, that will send a signal to thousands of others that it pays to do honest work in this field. You won’t have a hard time finding people saying what I say today then. People will be running from Buy-and-Hold when your prison sentence is announced and people will be running toward Valuation-Informed Indexing when my $500 million settlement is announced.
It wasn’t my plan to be the first to stand up to you Goons. I just posted honestly on a single subject of great importance to my readers (safe withdrawal rates) and everything else followed from that. I invited thousands of others to join me. Not surprisingly, many people don’t like to see their loved ones threatened and many people don’t like to see their careers destroyed. The key is getting your prison sentence announced. Then everything flips.
Is there anyone who has enough confidence in Buy-and-Hold to insist that you Goons permit honest posting? Why not? Is there any other field in which we see this sort of behavior?
There is not. Investing is important. There is 35 years of peer-reviewed research showing that Buy-and-Hold is the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind. Every ethical person wants to find a way to provide access to honest reports on what the peer-reviewed research says. But as of today no ethical person is permitted to earn a living in this field. Gee, I wonder if there will be long prison sentences announced following the next price crash. Some of this stuff is so darn hard to figure out!
I am no genius, Anonymous. I am a guy of perhaps slightly better than average intelligence. If I can see that this is a scam, so can Jack Bogle. And he obviously DOES know. There is no way in God’s green earth that he would permit his name to be associated in any way, shape or form with Mel Lindaauer’s if he believed that there was even a 1 in 10,000 chance that Buy-and-Hold could survive a discussion in which honest posting re the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research was permitted. If Jack Bogle is that certain that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage, how much confidence in it can anyone else really possess?
No one believes in Buy-and-Hold today, Anonymous.
Lindauer’a behavior shows that he lacks confidence in this “strategy.” Greaney’s behavior shows that he lacks confidence in this “strategy.”The behavior of all those who have posted in “defense” of these two insanely abusive individuals have shown by their behavior that they lack confidence in this “strategy.”
No one believes in the strategy. Lots and lots of people follow the strategy. It’s a pretty darn sad situation.
There are good reasons why we enacted laws against financial fraud. Those who stand to make gobs of money by exploiting our weakness for Get Rich Quick strategies are always going to be tempted to endorse Buy-and-Hold. We need to enforce those laws, get prison sentences announced and then get about the important business of rebuilding our broken economic and political systems.
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.
Please mark me down as OPPOSED to the 14-year cover-up. Please mark me down as SUPPORTIVE of reasoned enforcement of the laws against financial fraud.
Rob
Besides Rob Bennett, is there anyone that will publically say that buy, hold and rebalance is a con? NOPE? I think that says it all.
On the day after the story about this massive cover-up appears on the front page of the New York Times, there will be millions saying it, Anonymous.
This is how cover-ups work. They DELAY the day that the truth gets out. But the tactics that must be used to keep the cover-up going grow increasingly abusive as more and more people learn the realities. When I saw Greaney advancing death threats in August 2002, it became clear to me that this particular cover-up had been going on long before I even came on the scene.
If the realities being covered up are important enough, the cover-up eventually fails. And then there is a flood of information that goes public all at the same time. Shiller showed with peer-reviewed research published in 1981 that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor. Had Bogle come clean immediately, we all would be living better lives today and none of you Goons would be on your way to prison. But once Bogle engaged in a cover-up, a dynamic was set up in which the Wall Street Con Men became desperate that the realities of stock investing not be publicly discussed with the millions of middle-class investors who want to know about them and who very much need to know about them.
I didn’t make this the biggest story in the history of personal finance. All that I did was read Shiller’s book and then explore the implications that logically follow from his “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) research. Bogle made this a huge story by engaging in a 35-year cover-up. And you Goons made this a huge story by extending the cover-up to the internet, which wasn’t around in the days when Bogle made the decision to engage in a cover-up.
This story has been suppressed for so long that, when it blows up, the explosion will be a nuclear one. We will go from having one guy telling the truth about stock investing to having millions telling the truth about stock investing in the space of one day. Buy-and-Hold dies intellectually 35 years ago. It will die in a practical sense on the day our story is written up on the front page of the New York Times.
Your prison sentence will be announced shortly thereafter. Again, you have no gripe with me. Your gripe is with Bogle. And with your fellow Goons. And with yourself. I did what any man who loves his country is bound by conscience to do. Greaney’s retirement study contains no adjustment for the valuations level that applies on the day the retirement begins. Fact. I told. Good for me. Bad for you that you thought you could lie about it and get away with destroying the millions of middle-class lives that you destroyed by advancing and then “defending” that lie.
I can’t say that I am not sorry for you because I am sorry for you. But I am more sorry for the millions of middle-class investors whose lives you destroyed.
I am sorry for Bogle too. I wish that he had more true friends. A true friend is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear but need to hear when you screw up big time. Bogle’s friends are like Richard Nixon’s friends. They are people who are concerned not for the man but for the favors they can extract from him by flattering him. Not this boy. Find someone else.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors regardless of the length of the prison sentence assigned to you by the members of your jury. My best and warmest wishes to you.
Rob