Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“Yes, Buffett, Bogle and Shiller are holding back. And so is everyone else working in this field. That’s the only possible explanation for what we have seen.”
……….the only possible explanation??? When you said “I could be wrong”, you didn’t really mean that, right?
I meant it.
Me being wrong doesn’t explain what we have seen. If the issue here were that I were wrong, we would never have seen a single death threat or a single demand for a single unjustified board banning or a single act of defamation or a single threat to get a single academic researcher fired from a single job. If the Buy-and-Holders were convinced that I was wrong, they would be happy to let me make my case at every board and blog on the internet and then they would make their case with confidence that it would prevail.
The Buy-and-Holders follow Buy-and-Hold principles. That’s clear. But they lack confidence in their own strategy. That’s why we see all this strange behavior.
We have an emotional time-bomb out there. People like Shiller and Bogle and Buffett and lots of others don’t say all they know because they do not want to set off the time bomb. They are afraid of the reaction that they know they will see based on what they see when they try to let our small parts of the truth. Millions of investors are terrified of what is coming. They know that it makes zero sense to believe that stocks are the only thing you can buy where price doesn’t matter. But their entire lives are riding on this strategy. They cannot bear to accept that they have made such a big mistake. The experts are afraid to set off that time bomb by coming clean about all the stuff they have been holding back on.
I could be wrong. Anyone could be wrong about anything. But you sure do not believe in your heart that I am wrong. If you believed that, you would never have behaved in the manner in which you have behaved for 16 years running now.
I am here for you, Anonymous. I will always be here for you.
And that’s as far as I can go with it, you know?
Rob
“Me being wrong doesn’t explain what we have seen. If the issue here were that I were wrong, we would never have seen a single death threat or a single demand for a single unjustified board banning or a single act of defamation or a single threat to get a single academic researcher fired from a single job.”
If you are not wrong, then I guess this means all the goons are in prison and you have your $500 million.
I haven’t earned one dollar from my investing work over the past 16 years. And not only are none of you Goons in prison — I don’t think there’s one case where one of you has been banned from a board or blog.
But what about after the crash, Anonymous?
If Shiller is right, then 50 percent of the money that people see in their stock portfolios today is the product not of real economic gains but of irrational exuberance. What if that is so? What if Shiller is right? What if he deserved that Nobel prize of his?
If the day comes when we all see that he was right, I don’t want to have thousands of posts in my file showing that I told my friends to have confidence that the irrational exuberance was real. I want to have thousands of posts in my file showing that I did everything in my power to persuade people that the irrational exuberance was NOT real.
We are working at cross purposes.
I like you. I have learned from you. I am grateful for those learning experiences. I respect your right to say things the way you see them. I consider you a friend.
But I cannot see myself saying things that I don’t believe when talking about an issue that could cause my friends to suffer very, very serious life setbacks. That’s not me. That’s a bridge too far for this boy.
Is it okay with you if we wait to see how things play out in the days following the next price crash? I have a funny feeling that we are all going to be on the same side in those days. We will be working together. We won’t be experiencing any of the frictions that have been holding us back for 16 years now.
If following a Get Rich Quick strategy brought immediate negative results, we all would have been in agreement all along. The trouble is the things that you point out in your comment. The investors in the Madoff fund loved, loved, loved Bernie Madoff because he told them what they wanted to hear. He told them that they were smarter than everyone else, he told them that they were the smartest investors that ever lived, he told them that they were the exceptions to the rule, that there was no way that Get Rich Quick could every lead to anyplace bad for them. And for a good amount of time they were able to persuade themselves that it was so. But of course in the end it was not so.
Are you okay with waiting to see how things turn out in the end? If you avoid prison for 16 years but then end up there, was your way of behaving a success? I say “no.” If I don’t make a dime for 16 years but then collect a $500 million settlement check, was my willingness to take on you Goons and post honestly re the errors in the Greaney study a smart move? I say “yes.”
We are just going to have to wait to see how it all plays out. I can say lots of positive things about you Goons and about Buy-and-Hold in general. But I am not able to say that I believe that the Greaney retirement study contains a valuation adjustment. I am more confident today that that study lacks a valuation adjustment than I was on the morning of May 13, 2002. Why? Because thousands of people have looked at it over the past 16 years and not one of them was able to identify one. That tells me something, If you were thinking clearly about this stuff, I think it would tell you something too.
I any event, I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person. I hope that helps a small bit.
Pre-Crash Rob
We are all getting to be old men, so I don’t think there is much more time left. Besides after 16 YEARS, that is plenty of time to have waited for it to play out, and then some. It is time for you to go from “I (Rob) could be wrong” to “ I (Rob) am wrong”.
I agree with you that 16 years is plenty of time. When I put up the famous post, I thought that there would be two days of abuse, three at the tops. Whachagonnado?
I do wish you all good things in any event, my dear friend.
Hang in there, man.
Old Man Rob