Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“It’s every single issue, Anonymous.”
It just seems one issue. You want every website to be focused on discussing VII, right?
Every site should permit honest posting on the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research. Absolutely. Without question.
I don’t agree with the word “focused,” though. It should be the people who visit the site who determine its focus. 90 percent of the population today believes in Buy-and-Hold. So I would expect 90 percent of the posts to be rooted in a belief in Buy-and-Hold principles. That should be the focus.
The focus can change over time, of course. It would be my hope that, once we permit honest posting, we would begin to see more people coming around to a belief in Valuation-Informed Indexing. So we might well see the focus move in that direction over time. But it’s not for me to say. That’s for the community as a whole to say.
I guess you could say that my HOPE would be that in time the focus would move in the direction of Valuation-Informed Indexing. But I only get to say what my personal focus is. For so long as I personally believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing, that has to be my focus when I am posting on investing or I am not being honest. I obviously possess a 100 percent right to post honestly. So that one is solely for me to say. But I don’t possess a right to set the focus of the entire community of a board and I would never dream of trying to do such a thing. The board as a whole has to work its will re that one.
I hope that helps a small bit.
Rob
“That’s for the community as a whole to say.”
It doesn’t seem that the community has any interest in what you have to say.
The community has huge interest.
If the community didn’t have huge interest, we wouldn’t have seen thousands of our fellow community members put forward expressions of a desire that honest posting on the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research be permitted at every discussion board and blog on the internet.
That huge interest in a paradoxical way is a big part of the problem. If the interest were less widespread and less intense, you Goons wouldn’t feel compelled to engage in criminally abusive behavior to block the community from getting what it wants. But you fear that, if you permit honest posting at even a single large site, the entire Buy-and-Hold scam will collapse to the ground. I think you are right about that one. The difference between us is that I want to see Buy-and-Hold collapse and you want to see it survive.
I cannot make the community less interested in seeing honest posting, Anonymous. That interest was there on the morning of May 13, 2002, when I put forward my famous post pointing out that Greaney’s retirement study lacks a valuations adjustment. That post took off like a shot not because the ideas in it were so amazing (they were actually pretty darn obvious ideas). It took off like a shot because the ideas in it were common-sense ideas with huge natural appeal to millions that had been suppressed for many years.
Most people don’t believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing today. I am certainly not saying that. It is about 10 percent of the population that believes in VII today. But about 80 percent of the population has at least some interest in hearing the story. That’s millions and millions and millions of people, enough to make anyone who posts honestly re these matters very, very, very rich indeed. The problem is the 10 percent of the population that becomes so insanely abusive when the implications of the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research is discussed anywhere on the internet go into an insane rage and engage in criminally abusive behavior to stop the spread of these ideas.
I believe that the insanely abusive stuff will no longer fly after the next price crash. People will be scared about their financial futures, scared enough to work up the courage to stand up to you Goons. Once they do and your prison sentence is announced, there will be nothing to stop the rest of us from enjoying the most exciting learning experience in the history of personal finance.
Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, you know? I have gotten them wrong before, and, if it were happening again, I would probably be the last to know. So we are just going to have to wait a bit to see how it plays out to know for sure. I hope that works for you, my dear Goon friend.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
“The community has huge interest.”
They have a funny way of showing it. In the real world, that is. Do you remember the real world? It’s that cold unpleasant place that you decided long ago wasn’t for you.
But let’s suppose that there really is some unseen pent-up interest in you. In the last comment thread (back in February, been dead around here lately) you said flat out that you will do nothing. You will take no action. In fact you have no plan at all. So whether or not there is “interest” is pretty moot, isn’t it?
I agree that they have a funny way of showing it. I’ll give you that one.
The real world is the place where Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize for his 1981 peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. I see the real world as a pretty darn wonderful place. It’s in the real world that the good news over the past 16 years has been 50 times more good than the bad news over the past 16 years has been bad. The abusive Goon stuff really happened and really was tolerated. We don’t live in heaven. Bad stuff takes place. But the good stuff has been 50 times more good than the bad stuff has been bad. That’s the bottom line. The real world is a good place for Valuation-Informed Indexers.
I said that I will do nothing to put you Goons in prison. That’s up to others. I will continue to post honestly. I’m not going to say that Greaney’s study contains a valuation adjustment. But I don’t intend to carry a sign around saying “Prison for the Goons!” The reality is quite to the contrary. I intend to be making serious efforts to get your prison sentence reduced by putting your behavior in the best possible light in which it can be put by someone posting honestly. I will need credibility to achieve good results with those efforts and I sure wouldn’t be helping myself in the credibility department by saying today that I believe that the Greaney study contains a valuations adjustment. That’s one of many reasons why I refuse to say that.
The fact that there is interest in what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research says is of critical importance. We need to see people work up the courage to stand up to you Goons. The rest is all downhill sledding. Precisely 100 percent of the evidence available to us supports Valuation-Informed Indexing and precisely 0 percent of the evidence available to us supports Buy-and-Hold. Every single person on the planet benefits from a lifting of the Ban on Honest Posting. Even people who don’t own stocks benefit by us bringing an end to the economic crises that inevitably follow once Buy-and-Hold “strategies” become popular. So the people of the United States and indeed of the world can’t lose once your prison sentence has been announced and once reports of it have gone viral. It is all upside and no downside.
Without interest in knowing the realities, it ain’t gonna happen. The problem we have today is that, while millions possess a mild interest in learning about the implications of the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research, very few possess an intense interest. In contrast, there are a good number who possess an intense interest in blocking honest discussions from taking place. So you Goons prevail over and over again even with zero evidence on your side — threats to kill people are enough for you to get your dirty work completed.
But what if interest in learning what the peer-reviewed research really says grows in the wake of a price crash that depletes millions of retirement accounts by 50 percent or more? Then you Goons will be cooked and the American people will be living on Easy Street. I love my country. I want to see millions of people living on Easy Street. I don’t in any direct sense want to see my Goon friends behind prison bars. But if that’s what it takes to bring this economic crisis to an end, then that’s what it takes, you know? I can live with seeing you go to prison even if it saddens me to think about it.
It’s that interest in knowing the realities of stock investing that will save us all in the end. The interest has always been there. The interest was in great evidence on the morning of May 13, 2002. But the interest in honest posting has not ever been as strong as the interest in shutting down honest posting, which is red-hot intense. We need to see more interest in getting the word out about what the research says and less in the smelly, abusive, criminal tactics in which you Goons specialize. I believe that we are going to see both in the days following the next price crash.
But we’ll see, you know?
There’s nothing like letting things play out to find out which “side” is really right re this one. There’s a saying in baseball — They say “that’s why we play the games.” You can speculate in March that the Astros are stronger than ever and are sure to be repeat World Series winners. But the other teams get to make their effort at dethroning the 2017 champions. You have to play the games to find out for sure. That’s how it is with this Campaign of Terror thing. We are going to have to play the games to see how people feel about your phony retirement studies after they have seen their retirement accounts wiped out. That’s the true test.
I think you Goons are going to fail that test. I think that I am going to pass that test. But we haven’t played the freakin’ games yet! The P/E10 is still in the 30s. People haven’t experienced the bad side of Buy-and-Hold yet. When people experience the human misery that allows follows from the relentless promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick approach, I think that they will act in their self-interest and have you Goons put behind prison bars, where you belong. But I don’t expect to be able to persuade you today, with the P/E10 in the low 30s. After the crash, I think you’ll be persuaded. After the crash, I think it is possible that you will be calling for a prison sentence for yourself!
We’ll see, you know?
I wish you the best of luck with it, in any event. I hope that helps to some small degree.
Well-Wisher Rob
“You have to play the games to find out for sure.”
The games are over. The season is over. You lost every game. Didn’t score a single run. But you won’t go home. You’re standing alone, in the dark, in right field, yelling to no one “IT’S NOT OVER!”
You’re free to walk out of the stadium, get in your car, drive home, and get on with the rest of your life, Anonymous.
If you choose to do that, I will wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors.
Does any of that hold any appeal for you? Playing it that way seems to make a certain amount of sense to me, given the circumstances that apply here.
Old-Man-Shouting-at-the-Sky Rob
“You’re free to walk out of the stadium, get in your car, drive home, and get on with the rest of your life, Anonymous.”
Everyone else has moved on with their lives, but you haven’t. You are still repeating same old tired lines, with nothing to show for it.
Everyone else has moved on with their lives, but you haven’t. You are still repeating same old tired lines, with nothing to show for it.
I once was a Buy-and-Holder, Anonymous. The reason why is that the Buy-and-Holders said that investors should use the peer-reviewed research as a guide to how to invest effectively. That made sense to me. I wanted to avoid the emotional traps that seemed to me to be the source of much of the risk of investing. So I bought into that idea,
There is a price that comes with a belief that following the research is best. Research permits us to learn new things over time. When we learn new things, we have to move on from old and once secure but now discredited ideas.
The way that I see it is that I am the one who has moved on and it is the Buy-and-Holders who continue to repeat the same old tired lines. How many times in the past 37 years have we all heard a Buy-and-Holder say “timing doesn’t work” despite a mountain of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns and that therefore long-tern timing MUST work (since risk is a variable and not a constant and it is obviously a positive to keep one;s risk profile roughly constant over time)?
We are coming at these things from different perspectives. I am sure.
Future-Focused Rob