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:
Yet, if anyone followed your advice since 2010 on VII, they would have missed out on one of the largest bull market runs we have seen. Robert Shiller has said time and again to not use CAPE for timing the market. Shiller has continued to recommend holding stocks. Your only explanations of this is that he is lying or holding back due to the “goons” you talk about on your website.
Despite your spin, the fact remains that buy, hold and rebalance has continued to be successful for millions of people, while we have yet to see one successful example of VII.
I, and others, would be happy to debate all of this, along with the comparison of facts over at your website, but you have decided to block those conversations. Instead, you have filled it up with your tales of goons, fraud, prison, death threats, job threats and host of others fantasies.
I don’t believe that anyone has “missed out” on anything, Sammy. If it is true that valuations affect long-term returns (there is now 36 years of peer-reviewed research showing this), then it is investor emotion that determines stock price changes, not economic realities. So any “gains” that investors see as the result of overvaluation are temporary in nature, You don’t “miss out” on anything by being out of stocks at times when such gains are obtained.
Shiller is certainly holding back on a lot. What’s the #1 thing people read investment books to obtain? People want guidance on how to invest their money. Shiller wrote the most important book ever published in this field, a book that he describes as “revolutionary” and a book that was rooted in research that caused Shiller to be awarded a Novel prize. Please check out that book and see what it says about the how-to issues of stock investing. Shiller did not direct one word of his book to those questions, Sammy.
Why?
Because those are the questions that matter. Those are the questions that set the Buy-and-Holders off. Those are the questions that generate “controversy.”
Shiller is a hero for showing us how stock investing works. That’s magic. That’s amazing. But we need to take it to the next step. We need to explore the far-reaching how-to implications of Shiller’s amazing Nobel-prize-winning research.
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
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