Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“That’s why I have made this topic my focus. We all need to pull together to get our discussions of this particular topic on the right track.”
This is YOUR topic. That doesn’t mean everyone else has to bend to you. We have heard you say everything 10,000 times and are just plain tired of it. You kept clogging up every thread with the same things. It got to be such a nuisance that there was no choice but to ban you. There really is nothing more to say.
You Goons are 10 percent of the community, Anonymous. Give me a freakin’ break. Buy-and-Holders comprise 90 percent of the community. So I am very much in the minority. But 100 percent of those who participate in community discussions (including you Goons!) agreed to follow the published posting rules and the laws of the United States before they were permitted to post. You are in the majority re the substantive issue but I am in the majority re the procedural issue.
You don’t get to decide what your fellow community members can hear. They can hear whatever they please. They can ask whatever questions they please. If you violate the rules, you get the boot. If you violate the laws of the United States, you end up in a prison cell. I mean. come on.
If you truly believe that there is nothing more to say, stop posting.
You can do as you please. If you submit a comment here that I think might in some way help some of our fellow community members understand how stock investing works, I will approve it. But if you mix in garbage with the good stuff, I will also call you out on the garbage. And, if you submit a comment that is pure garbage, I will of course delete it. That’s my job.
I wish you all good things. But that’s as far as it goes. I care about my fellow community members and I view a failed retirement as a serious life setback. So I intend to continue to post honestly re safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.
I hope that is okay by you. I hope that policy doesn’t “clog up” anything for you. I hope that you don’t get “just plain tired” of me doing that. I hope that you don’t find me a “nuisance” for doing that. I hope that you don’t view acceptance of that reality as “bending to me.”
But, in the event you do, I imagine that I am just going to have to live with that reality. I don’t post dishonestly on the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements. It just doesn’t happen. Not in 15 years, not in 15 billion years. Not once, not ever. No way. no how. Not this boy.
And when I see retirement studies that my friends are using to plan their retirements that get the numbers wildly wrong, I point out the errors in them. There was a time when I didn’t do that. There was a time when I rationalized my lack of courage in being willing to take on you Goons. There was a time when I kept it zipped, just like lots of other good and smart people do today. I am not proud of that. I am ashamed of that. I sure don’t ever intend to return to my shameful policy of keeping it zipped re the errors in Greaney’s retirement study. Find somebody else, you know? I feel better doing honest work that helps people. A LOT better. Big bucks or no big bucks, that’s the way that I intend to continue to play it.
I really do wish you all good things. But there are limits, you know?
My best wishes to you and yours in any evemt.
Rob
Anonymous says
“You don’t get to decide what your fellow community members can hear. They can hear whatever they please.”
Yes, the community decided it was tired of listening to you. The community banned you at almost every financial discussion board and even started the most successful board (Bogleheads forum), just to get away from you.
Rob says
And the people who warned investors in the Madoff fund of the dangers of investing in that fund prior to its collapse were ignored.
We all have a Get Rich Quick impulse within us and it is the thing that makes stock investing risky. When we open every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field, most of the risk of stock investing goes “poof!” That will be a very good thing, so far as I am concerned.
Yes, it bothers people to hear the realities of stock investing discussed at a time when they are trying to believe that their portfolios are truly worth two times what the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field says they are worth. But will it not bother them even more to see 50 percent of their life savings disappear into thin air?
I would rather be hated by a good number of investors today and then be able to face them in the days following the next crash. I would want someone to warn me if I were in danger of losing 50 percent of my life savings by following a Get Rich Quick investing strategy. I try to treat my friends on the internet in the way that I would want them to treat me if the tables were turned, So I tell them the truth (as I see it).
That’s the job, so far as I see it. The thing that I loved about Buy-and-Hold in the days when I was a proud Buy-and-Holder is that it was rooted in research, which meant that it could not just be marketing hoo-hah. But of course when you ignore the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research because people don’t like hearing the message at a time of sky-high valuations, you turn the thing back into marketing hoo-hah.
I support what Buy-and-Hold was intended to be when Bogle was starting out. I believe in reporting what the peer-reviewed research says honestly and accurately, not spinning it to sound like what people want to hear at times of sky-high valuations. Once you start spinning, you lose the objectivity that research provides when used properly and that’s the thing that made Buy-and-Hold attractive to me in the days when I believed in it.
My best wishes.
Rob