Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Oops, they did it again: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/18/warren-buffett-and-jack-bogle-recommend-buying-and-holding.html
The title says it all, “Warren Buffett and Jack Bogle agree on the formula for long-term success: Buy and Hold”
Buffett and Bogle are super rich, famous and respected. You are the exact opposite of all those things. What is your plan for convincing people that they are wrong and you are right?
Since you never answer questions directly, I’ll handle this one myself. You have no plan, and have never had one. You write this stuff only to distract yourself from the disastrous results of your decades of poor decisions. Doesn’t seem to be working so well though.
Bogle says in the article you linked to: “never, never, never be in or out of the market. Always be in at a certain level.”
What does he mean by “a certain level”? If he means that the typical investor should always keep perhaps 30 percent of his money in stocks, then I agree. Is that what he means? Or does he mean that investors should always stay at the SAME stock allocation regardless of changes in valuations? If that’s what he means, I strongly disagree and so does the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. If valuations affect long-term returns, as the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research shows, then an investor who sticks at the same stock allocation despite dramatic shifts in valuations is permitting his risk profile to change dramatically. Huh? What the f? That makes precisely zero sense.
I posted a blog entry a long time ago about an interview that Bogle did in which he came pretty darn close to endorsing Valuation-Informed Indexing. I recall debating with myself whether I should use the word “endorse” in the headline for the blog entry. Bogle said that there are six times in the life of an investor when he might want to adjust his stock allocation upwards (three times) or downwards (three times) because of extreme valuations. That’s exactly what I say. I once looked at the historical return data to see how often investors would need to adjust their stock allocation in response to valuations to keep their risk profile roughly stable. The answer is that it needs to be done on average once every 10 years. Most investing lifetimes last 60 years, from age 25 to age 85. So what Bogle said in that interview checks out.
Now —
It’s a close call as to whether Bogle actually endorsed Valuation-Informed Indexing or not. He didn’t say that all investors MUST make the allocation changes, as I do. He indicated that he thought that there was a good chance that they would work out if they did. He said things in a way that suggested that he felt some distaste about the idea. The way he said it was, you COULD do this, rather than you SHOULD do this. So I don’t think it is quite fair to say that he endorsed Valuation-Informed Indexing. But he came as close as a person could come to doing that without actually doing it.
So Bogle knows more about all this than he is letting on. Why does he play it so cagey?
He doesn’t want to acknowledge that Buy-and-Hold is a marketing gimmick, a scam, that never in 150 years of stock market history has it worked for even a single long-term investor. The Bennett/Pfau peer-reviewed research shows that following a Buy-and-Hold strategy rather than following the peer-reviewed research ALWAYS dramatically increases risk while also dramatically diminishing long-term returns. Huh? What the f? Why would anyone want to increase risk while diminishing return? Because it feels good in the short term. We all have a Get Rich Quick impulse residing within us and Buy-and-Hold appeals to that impulse. That’s it. That’s the only appeal. There is no intellectual appeal to Buy-and-Hold.
Here is more from Bogle from the interview you link to: “If you try to trade in and out of the market, your emotions will defeat you totally,” Bogle added. “Short-term betting is not a good way to go.”
So he is not talking about long-term timing. He is not rejecting Valuation-Informed Indexing. He is rejecting some crazy way to invest in which the investor engages in short-term timing, an approach that has been discredited not just by 37 years of peer-reviewed research but by 53 years of peer-reviewed research. Surprise! Surprise! Thanks for sharing a link that confirms what we have all known for 53 years now, Anonymous.
If there were even a tiny sliver of evidence suggesting that it is not necessary to practice price discipline when buying stocks, you would have put it forward 16 years ago, Anonymous. No such evidence exists. Common sense tells us that price discipline must work when buying stocks (price discipline is what makes markets work) and of course Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research confirms that what common sense tells us must be so really is so.
If Bogle had it to do over, he would have come clean about the mistake he made when he developed the Buy-and-Hold concept when it was first revealed by the peer-reviewed research, back in 1981. Now he’s trapped. So he engages in the word games that you see in that article. I am trying to help him escape his trap and you are trying to make it harder for him to escape. And you are Bogle’s friend? You are not Bogle’s true friend. I am Bogle’s true friend. Prior to 1981, Bogle believed that investors should consult the peer-reviewed research when deciding on an investment strategy. I think that the big guy was right the first time. Full truth be told, I am 100 percent sure of it.
Research is great. Bogle is a hero to me because his was the loudest voice telling investors to consult the research when deciding on an investment strategy. But part of the scientific process is staying alert to new developments in the field. We saw a huge new development take place in 1981. In the days when Buy-and-Hold was developed, there was research that many people interpreted as showing that the market is efficient and that price discipline (long-term timing) is not required. In 1981, that research was discredited. Now we know how stock investing really works. Now we know that not only does long-term timing/price discipline always work, long-term timing/price discipline is always 100 percent required for investors seeking to keep their risk profile roughly stable over time.
Bogle should be helping us to spread the word about this very, very exciting advance in our knowledge of how stock investing works.
I believe that in the days following the next price crash, he will be. I think he is a good man and, when he sees the ocean of human misery that he has caused by ducking the issue for so many years, he will become a fierce advocate of my idea of permitting honest posting re the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field at every discussion board and blog on the internet.
We’ll see, you know?
I am the biggest Bogle fan in the world. Except for the garbage about how investors do not need to exercise price discipline when buying stocks. That one is a long-discredited lie. It makes my friend Jack Bogle look bad when he engages in word games suggesting that he thinks it is just fine for investors to fail to exercise price discipline when buying stocks. I don’t like to see my friend look bad. So I am going to continue to encourage him to come clean re the garbage aspects of Buy-and-Hold and update the concept to reflect Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research findings. At that point, Bogle will be promoting the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept and I will be proud to stand beside him and promote it with as much energy as he does.
Does all of that not make perfect sense, my dear Goon friend?
The Opposite of Super Rich and Super Famous and Super Respected Rob
A couple big drops in the market. I don’t see a single person that has blamed buy and hold. Guessing that you haven’t received any calls from Jack Bogle or Wade Pfau asking to work with you. That does not bode well for your expectation of a windfall.
I don’t pay any attention to the daily ups and downs, as you know. I know what you are talking about because I saw a headline referring to it. But I don’t view the daily ups and downs as being of any significance. It could go up tomorrow and it could go down tomorrow. I don’t believe that anyone can know. I believe that Bogle and I are thinking along the same lines re that one.
Did Buy-and-Hold cause the drops? Buy-and-Hold caused the high prices that apply today. If we all taught people what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research shows, stock prices would be self-regulating. You wouldn’t have these crazy high prices. And the crazy-high prices probably played a role in the drop. There were things that set it off. But investors would have responded differently if they didn’t have the fears in the back of their mind that come at times of high prices. So, yes, I would say that Buy-and-Hold played a role.
I am 100 percent certain that both John Bogle and Wade Pfau will be working with me in the days following the next price crash. They are both good people and they both are going to be horrified to see what Buy-and-Hold has done to us all. And so we all will be working together. I look forward to it.
Do I wish that we were working together today? Very much. Do I wish that we had started working together on the afternoon of May 13, 2002? Very much. You can’t always get what you want, you know?
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
My best wishes.
Windfall-Expecting Rob
Here’s an article on the price drop:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-11/the-stock-market-meltdown-that-everyone-saw-coming
I agree with almost every word of it. I agree with everything except the line at the very end where he says the random walk is the best explanation of how prices play out. In the short term, yes, I agree with even that part in the short term. But not in the long run. Prices do NOT play out in the pattern of a random walk in the long term. In the long term, prices play out in a hill-and-valley pattern in which valuations go up for many years of ever greater irrational exuberance and then down for many years of ever greater irrational depression.
Ritholtz is right that we humans have an inclination to see patterns that are not there. But we ALSO have an inclination not to see patterns that are there that we would prefer not to see. The hill-and-valley pattern has been playing out as long as there has been a stock market open for business. To pretend otherwise is to be willfully ignorant of the realities of the stock market. I don’t say that for the purpose of being insulting to my Buy-and-Hold friends. But the point needs to be made. The hill-and-valley pattern has always been there. What possible purpose is served by pretending otherwise?
It is fine to use the random walk to explain short-term price increases. But that just doesn’t work in the long term. To explain long-term price changes, you have to acknowledge the hill-and-valley pattern and then devote a little mental energy to figuring out why it always applies. If stock price changes are determined primarily by investor emotion, as Shiller says, the hill-and-valley pattern makes perfect sense. If stock price changes are determined by economic developments, as Bogle says, the hill-and-valley pattern makes no sense whatsoever.
It’s a mistake to see patterns that do not really exist. It is also a mistake to ignore patterns that really do exist. The goal should be to see REALITY, to not fool yourself. I think that anyone who fails to see the long-term hill-and-valley pattern, and who fails to make an effort to come to terms with it, is making just as much of a mistake as the person who fails to see that stock prices play out in the form of a random walk in the short-term and that no patterns apply in that context.
Short-term timing never works because stock prices always play out in the form of a random walk in the short-term. Long-term timing always works because stock prices always play out in a hill-and-valley pattern in the long-term.
That’s my sincere take, in any event.
Long-Term Pattern Seeing Rob
“You can’t always get what you want”
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need
It works two ways, Evidence.
Yes, I think it applies to me. But I have a funny feeling that it might apply to you too. In the final analysis we’re all in the same boat.
We’ll see, you know?
Rob
“In the final analysis we’re all in the same boat.”
No, we are not. Some of us are prepared for retirement, while others are waiting for a magical “ windfall”.
I disagree.
If you are following a Buy-and-Hold strategy and Shiller is right, you are not nearly as prepared for retirement as you have led yourself to believe that you are.
And I am not waiting for a windfall. I expect to receive a large settlement payment in the days following the next price crash. That’s compensation for work that I have been doing for 16 years now. It will be coming in all at one time but it’s certainly not a windfall. I worked harder for that money than for any money that I have ever earned. And I don’t think there’s one person in the United States who will say at the time that I am not entitled to one penny of the payment. You didn’t do that work. Bogle didn’t do it. Shiller didn’t do it. Somebody sure had to do it. It was very, very, very, very important work that very, very, very, very much had to be done. So I did it. And I will accept payment for it and I will say “thank you.”
We are all in the same boat because we all need to know how stock investing works. It matters to all of us. Anyone who acts like he has always known everything there is to know about the subject and couldn’t possibly have anything new to learn is fooling himself. The rest of us should be helping that person out, not shrinking back from pointing out his inconsistencies out of fear of him. The fact that Buy-and-Holders engage in intimidation tactics to keep people from raising challenges to their strategy is not a sign that the strategy is a good one,it is a sign that the strategy is a poor one. We should be helping them out. Not everyone has perfect knowledge of himself. We cannot force people to see things that they don’t want to see. But we should make an effort. We should say the things that people trying to hide from the truth don’t want to hear and leave it to them ton decide what to do about what they hear. And, yes, when their choice is to engage in criminal behavior, we should take note of that and offer our sincere observation that we don’t see that as a wise course of action for the long term.
We’ll see how it all plays out, Anonymous. I will continue to say that I see no valuation adjustment in the Greaney study and you will continue to do the thing that you do. We will see whether people in the middle change how they respond to the things we say after millions have lost 50 percent of their life savings. I think that will shake people up. I think we will see a change at that time. But you are not going to change what you do because I say that. We are going to have to let it play out before us to know for sure. I don’t have it in me to pretend that I see a valuation adjustment in Greaney’s study. So we are just going to have to exercise a little patience and see how it all plays out.
I do believe that we are all in it together. I think that you never would have gone down this road if people who came before you had come clean in the way that I am urging you to come clean. So there is a sense in which you are as much a victim of the intimidation tactics as you are a perpetrator of them. That’s very, very, very sad. Someone has to break the cycle. I think it would be fair to say that I was elected. So I am going to give it my very best shot.
Even if there were no settlement payment coming, I would do that. Because I care about my friends. Both my Buy-and-Hold friends and my Valuation-Informed Indexing friends. I will get the settlement payment because I contributed something important to the world and our social norm is to compensate people who contribute something important. I would contribute that something important even if I were not going to receive compensation for doing it. Because I care about my friends. And, when you consider that everyone is affected by whether we understand investing or not, when I say that I care about my friends, I am really saying that I care about my country. Because that’s what our country is — a collection of all the people who live here.
If as a people we approved of your intimidation tactics, the use of them would not be a felony under our legal system. So I know that the people of my country stand with me. We are in a bit of a fix at the moment in that we have tolerated the cover-up so long that it has become very hard for us to lift the cover on what has transpired over the past 37 years. That’s so. We are not as a people voting for what we deep in our hearts believe is the right way to go. I think that will change with the crash. I think that we will make it together to the other side of The Big Black Mountain. But we are just going to have to wait a bit to find out for sure.
I have love in my heart for you. I care. I will tell people about the criminal stuff. That’s my job and it is an important job. But I will also tell people about how you Goons were victims of circumstances too, about how you never could have pulled off the cover-up without help from a lot of Normals and even from me — I failed to speak up for three years when I knew that the study contained no valuation adjustment and I was afraid to step forward. We will decide as a people how to move forward. I will put you in the best light in which I am able to honestly place you when it is my turn to talk. And others will make the call as to what happens to you as that one is just not my call.
I hope that works for you, dear Goon friend.
My best wishes.
Goon-Helping Rob
“I expect to receive a large settlement payment in the days following the next price crash.”
Yes, everything with you is about expecting. Expecting things which are totally outside your control (not to mention insanely far-fetched.) But actually doing nothing. Oh, you might say you PLAN to do this or that. But somehow it never happens.
You used to call yourself Farmer Hocus, when in fact you have less control over your future than a farm animal.
“And I am not waiting for a windfall. I expect to receive a large settlement payment in the days following the next price crash. ”
Disagree. It is not “work”, because no one else considers it to be so. It is your folly.
“We are all in the same boat because we all need to know how stock investing works.”
Disagree again. We already know how investing works.
“If as a people we approved of your intimidation tactics, the use of them would not be a felony under our legal system.”
This is stuff you make up. Just because you say it, it doesn’t make it true.
Bottom line, Rob……when you say that it is everyone else that has a problem, the truth is that you are the one with the problem.
Yes, everything with you is about expecting. Expecting things which are totally outside your control (not to mention insanely far-fetched.) But actually doing nothing. Oh, you might say you PLAN to do this or that. But somehow it never happens.
You used to call yourself Farmer Hocus, when in fact you have less control over your future than a farm animal.
I don’t think things are totally in my control or totally out of my control. One person can do what one person can do, no more and no less. I have done my part and then some more on top of that and then some more on top of that. But we live in communities. If I am going to succeed in opening every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics, I am going to need help. That’s just a reality.
I do not control outcomes. I certainly do not control timing. But I control ME. I control what I say in my posts and then others control what happens as a result of those posts being advanced. I obviously do not like everything that has happened. But there are there are lots of things that have happened that I like very, very, very much. It is my intent to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and seeing where things go and of course always hoping for the best.
I think that I have more control over my future than a farm animal. But I certainly don’t think that I have total control. We live in communities and the communities have a say. That’s just the way it is. I control whether I pretend that I don’t know whether or not the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment. I elected not to continue pretending on the morning of May 13, 2002, and I have stuck with that ever since. I haven’t controlled the reaction, I haven’t controlled the outcome. But I controlled what went out on posts with my name on them. I would say that I control that part and not the rest and that I have to learn to accept that the rest my not to be my liking. I cannot control others. I can at least seek to control my self.
My sincere take.
Out-of-Control Rob
“I do not control outcomes. I certainly do not control timing. But I control ME. I control what I say in my posts and then others control what happens as a result of those posts being advanced. ”
What you continually do is blame everyone else. The problem is NOT everyone else. The problem is YOU.
It is not “work”, because no one else considers it to be so. It is your folly.
Is it okay with you if we wait to see what people say in the days following the next price crash? If people don’t say that it is important work then, then I would agree that it has been my folly. But if people agree then with my assessment, then all the years of hard work will pay off big time both for me and for my country. I’d like to see what happens after the crash.
We already know how investing works.
So you say, Anonymous. But it you were engaging in self-deception, you wouldn’t be aware of it, right? That’s the way self-deception works. It’s a sneaky little bugger.
when you say that it is everyone else that has a problem, the truth is that you are the one with the problem.
The guy with the Nobel prize just forgot to take his meds. That makes perfect sense. I believe you, Anonymous.
Problem Child Rob
Back to this huge settlement you “expect”. Even though you have filed no lawsuits, and have said you have no intention of doing so. How does that work? How will this money magically make its way into your pocket?
What you continually do is blame everyone else. The problem is NOT everyone else. The problem is YOU.
Either I did a good thing when I pointed out that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins or I did a bad thing when I did that. A failed retirement is a serious life setback. So I obviously think that I did a very, very, very good thing. It took a lot of courage to put forward that famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002. I see it as my finest moment.
As for everyone else, all you need to do is to check whether the study has been corrected as of this morning or not. If everyone else was doing his job, the study would have been corrected sometime over the course of the past 16 years, no? Well, it hasn’t been. So I think it would be fair to say that lots of someone elses have been screwing up over that time.
Do I have sympathy for all the someone elses? I do indeed. I failed to speak up myself for three years out of fear of what would be done to me if I posted honestly. So I know the feeling. I blame myself for those three years. And I blame all the others for engaging in the same wrong behavior that I engaged in for those three years when I was doing wrong.
We don’t solve the problem by failing to speak up. We make the problem worse by failing to speak up. We didn’t always know everything there is to know about how stock investing works. So, until 1981, it was no-harm, no-foul. And we are weak creature subject to cognitive dissonance. So, even for a good number of years after 1981, I wouldn’t say that it was a terrible wrong that we did. But at some point our shame about the cover-up grew so strong that some of us ventured forward with death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs and the rest of us sat in silence, afraid to do anything that might get that fire hose of hate turned on us as well.
Yes, I say that as a people we made a terrible mistake when we did that. Just as we made a terrible mistake when as a people we failed to speak up about slavery and when we failed to speak up about the research showing the smoking causes cancer and when we failed to speak up about Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. We make mistakes as a society. Slavery was wrong. It didn’t end until some brave people worked up the courage to speak up. And so it is with Buy-and-Hold. Those who follow the peer-reviewed research in this field learned 37 years ago that there is precisely zero change that it can ever work for even a single long-term investor and they should have all been speaking up all the time.
I will never be unkind to those people and fail to mention the intense pressures that were applied to them to keep their mouths shut. But I will not rejoin them after what I have seen. I should have been speaking up all along and I am ashamed that for three years I lacked the courage. I have learned over the past 16 years how important it is that we all speak out and so I now always urge people to do that. And I am 100 percent confident that in the days following the next price crash all of the many good and smart people who are afraid to speak up today will be thanking me for encouraging them to do so when they lacked the courage.
We’ll see, you know?
Brave Rob
Back to this huge settlement you “expect”. Even though you have filed no lawsuits, and have said you have no intention of doing so. How does that work? How will this money magically make its way into your pocket?
I haven’t said that I won’t file lawsuits. I expect to file them.
I contacted a number of lawyers a good number of years back. The first time that I contacted a lawyer was in the Fall of 2002. We have the same problem with lawyers that we have with web sites. Web sites are afraid to write about the massive cover-up because they feel that their sites will be destroyed if they expose it. Lawyers are afraid to take cases on a contingency basis because they are afraid that they will not prevail in an environment in which everyone is afraid to talk about this massive act of financial fraud.
There were people who tried to speak up about Bill Cosby and Harvery Weinstein in earlier days. What do you think happened to them? At best, they were ignored. At worst, their careers were destroyed.
We need a social change. We need this stuff written up on the front page of the New York Times. Then there will be no shortage of lawsuits. I believe that we will need to have Congress pass some sort of legislation saying who will receive compensation and who will not because otherwise we will have so many lawsuits that our system will not be able to handle it. I will accept whatever compensation our society determines is appropriate. I am confident that that will be a very big number. But whatever it is, I will accept. I love my country and I will accept my country’s decision re the matter (so long as that decision is made without intimidation tactics being applied).
I did important work and I naturally expect to be compensated for it and I have no worries as to whether I will receive that compensation or not. If the cover-up continues until our society collapses, I obviously am not going to receive any compensation. But in that event we all will have far bigger worries, right? If the cover-up comes to an end following the next price crash, I will receive my compensation and all will be well re that aspect of the question. So I don’t see how I can lose.
I can lose big-time if our economic system collapses. But I don’t protect myself from that loss by telling lies about safe withdrawal rates. So that possible loss (which I do worry about although I try not to focus on it too much) doesn’t have any bearing on my decision as to whether to post honestly or not. I don’t see how I can experience any permanent loss from posting honestly. I can experience a temporary loss, one lasting until prices crash. But, if Shiller is right and valuations really do affect long-term returns, I don’t see how there can be a permanent loss from posting honestly. So I do what I do.
Does that help at all?
Lawsuit-Filing Rob
Google is my friend. It is not your friend, since it makes it so easy to document your lies, not to mention how it made you permanently unemployable.
Says Rob, today: “I haven’t said that I won’t file lawsuits. I expect to file them.”
Says Rob, 5 years ago: “The full truth here is that I am not even going to need to file papers to obtain the $500 million.”
Since you will deny it, here’s the link: http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2013/12/04/following-the-next-crash-we-will-see-all-kinds-of-things-come-out-that-we-can-barely-imagine-today-i-believe-that-we-are-going-to-hear-shiller-say-that-he-has-been-intimidated-for-years-until-we/
Well?
The entire reason why a number of years ago I brought up my willingness to accept a $500 million settlement is that I would prefer to work things out with Bogle and my other Buy-and-Hold friends. I want to work WITH these people, not against them. I don’;t want there to be any papers filed. I don’t want to see lawsuits proceed. It serves no purpose for things to be done in antagonistic ways. We are all in the same board. We all want the same things. We all should be working together. That was my point of view on the morning of May 13, 2002, and that has been my view every day since and that will be my view for 16 billion years into the future if I am around that long.
AI obviously expect to be compensated for my work. If I can obtain that compensation without needing to file lawsuits, that is obviously best for every single person involved. If there is no other way to do it, then we will have the lawsuits. We will have to wait a bit to see how things play out.
Does that help at all?
Litigation-Skeptical Rob
“We are all in the same board. We all want the same things. We all should be working together.”
Wrong. No one has wanted to work with you for the last two decades. Go ahead and file your lawsuits.
Would love to see the claims in your lawsuit and what damages you feel you have incurred to justify $5.00, let alone $500 million.
Wrong. No one has wanted to work with you for the last two decades. Go ahead and file your lawsuits.
You can only speak for yourself, Anonymous. You cannot speak for everyone.
Lots of people have shown that they would like to work with me. And the fact that we have laws against financial fraud shows that as a people we all favor my approach over your approach. So I am on solid ground re that aspect of the question.
The problem has been one of intensity. You Goons are willing to devote your entire lives to blocking honest posting re the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. The Normals, which comprise about 80 percent of the population, cannot relate to that. They oppose financial fraud but they are not going to speak up against it when the price for doing so is hearing the lives of their loves one threatened.
Will a price crash in which they lose 50 percent of their life savings change that? I think it will. I think that the next crash will be a scary event. Hundreds of thousands of businesses will go under, Millions of people will lose their jobs, Millions will see their retirements failed. Millions more will see their hopes for retirement fading. We will see political unrest, which is already a problem, growing.
I those changed circumstances, lots of good and smart people will work up the courage to stand up to you Goons. Every discussion board and blog on the internet will be opened to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics. We will all make it together to the other side of The Big Black Mountain and we will all spend the remainder of our years wondering what we were thinking in the days when we failed to work up the courage to do what so obviously needed to be done.
Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, you know?
He has gotten them wrong before. It could be happening again. If it were, he would probably be the last to know. The only way to find out for sure is to wait a bit to see how things play out in the days following the next crash.
I do wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, my dear Goon friend.
Research-Loving Rob
Would love to see the claims in your lawsuit and what damages you feel you have incurred to justify $5.00, let alone $500 million.
The lawyers will prepare the language used to support the claims. That’s their job. But you don’t need an I.Q. of 140 to see that 500 million is very much a lowball number, given the circumstances that apply here. I show that with every column that I write at the Value Walk site and I have written over 400 of them at this point.
If Shiller is right (I believe that he is), then stock prices will become self-regulating once we open every site on the internet to honest posting. Buy-and-Hold ASSUMES that investors act in their self-interest. Valuation-Informed Indexing acknowledges that investors are held back by their Get Rich Quick impulse and provides them the tools they need to overcome their self-destructive emotional impulses. The Stock-Return Predictor shows investors that stocks offer a far greater value proposition when priced reasonably than they do when they are priced at insanely high levels. Once that information is easily available to all investors, people will sell shares when prices get too high and that will bring the price back to reasonable levels. That means that we will no longer have out-of-control bull markets. And that means that we will no longer see the economic crises that the relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold “strategies” always brings on.
If bringing an end to economic crisies isn’t worth a whole big bunch more than $500 million, I’d like to see what you think would be worth more than $500 million. There is talk that Manny Machado might get a contract of $300 or $400 million this off-season. For hitting a baseball? I take nothing away from Manny Machado’s baseball hitting skills. But if his talent is worth $300 or $400 million, getting the word out about the what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world is worth a whole big bunch more than that. And it ain’t a particularly close call.
I believe that even you Goons will be saying that the work that I have done over the past 16 years is worth a whole big bunch more than $500 million after this is all over, Anonymous. Maybe you will be saying it from prison cells. And maybe you will be the last to say it. But I believe that there will come a day when you will be seeing it. People can change. Sometimes it is the people who appear least open to change who embrace it after they experience the downside or their arrogance and stubbornness. Do you think that there were people who opposed the freeing of the slaves who acknowledged after the slaves were freed that they were in fact wrong about that one? I do.
Change is hard. Big change is very hard. Shiller blessed us with the biggest change in our understanding of how stock investing works that we have ever seen. It is been hard for all of us to get our heads around what he has done. That includes me. But we are going to do it. We have already made many important steps (like awarding him a Nobel prize!) and I am 100 percent confident that the ocean of human misery that we will see in the wake of the next price crash will get us the rest of the way there. I hope that we can meet somewhere and put away a few tall cold ones at that time and laugh together at some of the things that went down in earlier days.
Please hang in there dear friend. Don’t let the bad guys get you down.
Cold-One-Drinking Rob
“If bring an end to economic crisies isn’t worth a whole big bunch more than $500 million, I’d like to see what you think would be worth more than $500 million. There is talk that Manny Machado might get a contract of $300 or $400 million this off-season. For hitting a baseball? I take nothing away from Manny Machado’s baseball hitting skills. But if his talent is worth $300 or $400 million, getting the word out about the what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world is worth a whole big bunch more than that. And it ain’t a particularly close call.”
Your response makes no sense. Rewards from a lawsuit are based on losses incurred. What specific losses have you incurred?
As to your point above, baseball team owners determine the value of Manny Machado. No one has determine that what you provide is worth anything at all.
The losses that I have suffered are all the earnings that I would have seen spreading the word about what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing work had there not been abusive posting on the part of the Buy-and-Holders. The Bennett/Pfau research shows that each investor could obtain FAR higher returns at GREATLY reduced risk if we permitted honest posting re the last 37 years of research. Say that each investor alive in the United States had been willing to pay me just $1,000 each to help them out. There are millions of investors. Do the math and you come up with a number a lot bigger than $500 million. I mean. come on.
Of course the team owners determine Machado’s value. I remember once upon a time when that wasn’t the case. Dick Allen was one of the best player ever to play for the Phillies. When I was a boy, there was a huge controversy when he asked for a $100,000 contract. There was no free agency then. So if other teams wanted to pay him what he was worth, they couldn’t do that. And we all lost out as a result. How did that change? Curt Flood brought a lawsuit that changes the world of baseball. That’s how good things happen. Brave people have to stand up for something good and take the hits that come from the people trying to hold back progress.
I stood up to Greaney and then to Lindauer and then to Bogle. And I will be compensated for it. I am happy to take a lot less money than the amount to which I am entitled under the laws of the United States. Why? Because $500 million is such a big number that I am not sure that it matters much if I take a lower amount than I could get if I took this through the courts. And because I love Jack Bogle and I would far rather work with him than be doing things that causes some to think that I am working against him. I am the True Boglehead! I learned about the importance of following the peer-reviewed research from Bogle! That’s Valuation-Informed Indexing! So Bogle is my main man.
It will all work out. Your own behavior shows how important this stuff is. If you didn’t think that stock investing mattered, you would never have committed criminal acts. People just don’t do that sort of thing over matters that they don’t consider hugely important. Please give me a freakin’ break.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, dear friend.
Dick-Allen (and Curt Flood!)-Fan Rob
You’ve been talking about this “settlement” for at least 5 years. Actually longer, since Wade noted it as Step 3 of your plan (the plan that famously lacks a Step 2.)
In that entire time, what progress have you made? Court dates? Depositions? A single person who will come here and say you deserve a nickel?
The answer of course is that you have made no progress. And there is no reason for anyone not named Rob Bennett to believe that you will ever make any progress. Meanwhile, time marches on, and you keep getting older. And poorer. How are you even able to pay your bills?
The 16-year cover-up of the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies is the biggest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States, Anonymous. There is nothing else even in a close second place.
We need to have this massive act of financial fraud written up on the front page of the New York Times. Then all kinds of good stuff happens to all of us. But none of the good stuff can happen until enough of us work up the courage to stand up to you Goons to get the story written up on the front page of the New York Times.
I’ve done all that I can do. I have done lots of things. But, no, we don’t see the benefit of those good efforts until we get this story written up on the front page of the New York Times. At that point, no one is afraid anymore to tell the truth about how stock investing works. From that point forward, we all live better lives.
Did the people who spoke up about Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein achieve “no progress” until the day that the Me Too Movement exploded? I sure don’t think so. Those people laid the groundwork for the Met Too Movement. Their actions emboldened those who came after them.
We have to start somewhere. I could not bear to destroy the lives of my friends at the old Retire Early board. And so I worked up the courage to point out the errors in Greaney’s study. And all of the wonderful work that has been done in the 16 years since, by me and by lots of others, followed. Do we need to get that work before the eyes of every investor on the planet? Obviously. For that to happen, we need that write-up on the front page of the New York Times.
I think we will see it in the days following the next price crash. The price of the relentless promotion of Get Rich Quick investing strategies will be too obvious for any of us to hold out any longer. We will have Jack Bogle working for us in those days. After Bogle goes, what is left for you Goons? Nothing. You Goons will flip. Once you Goons flip, will there be anyone left to argue the case for Buy-and-Hold?
I sure don’t think so. But we are going to have to wait to see how things play out following the crash to know for sure.
Yes?
Getting-Older (But Not Wiser!) Rob