Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
What a funny headline. You try to speak for people almost everyday.
I speak for people re the process issue but never re the substance issue.
I favor Valuation-Informed Indexing over Buy-and-Hold. So I of course advocate Valuation-Informed Indexing over Buy-and-Hold in all my writings. But you have never once heard me say that someone is wrong to follow a Buy-and-Hold strategy if that is what that person believes in or that someone is wrong to advocate a Buy-and-Hold strategy if that is what that person believes in.
I believe strongly that those who believe in Buy-and-Hold not only have a right to make the case for Buy-and-Hold but that they also have a RESPONSIBILITY to do so. It’s not just the Valuation-Informed Indexers who have a right to post honestly. We all do. If we don’t all post honestly, all of our discussions are gravely compromised. If we don’t all post honestly, all of our discussion boards and blogs become corrupt enterprises.
I think it is at least somewhat fair to say that I speak for others when it comes to the process question. 90 percent of us believe in Buy-and-Hold and only 10 percent of us believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing. So it might seem intuitive that we would ban discussions of what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing works in the real world. That’s the majority position, right? Those who believe in Buy-and-Hold have a lot riding on it being a legitimate strategy. Why shouldn’t they throw their weight around? Buy-and-Hold is a lot less likely to remain dominant if we permit honest posting re the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research. Why not just ban honest posting at every internet site? That makes sense, doesn’t it?
No. It does not make sense. Not in this country. Not in a country that has laws making financial fraud a felony.
Our laws against financial fraud reflect what we are as a people. We are TEMPORARILY not enforcing those laws because it hurts so much to acknowledge that as a people we have for 37 years now been tolerating a criminal cover-up of the most exciting research ever published in this field, research that is so important that the author of it was awarded a Nobel prize for his amazing, life-affirming work. We feel ashamed that we all played a role in permitting continued promotion of the Buy-and-Hold strategy to bring on an economic crisis that caused hundreds of thousands of businesses to fail and that caused millions of good, hard-working people to lose their jobs. We failed ourselves by tolerating this criminal cover-up for so long. Please note that I include myself in that condemnation. I knew about the error in Greaney’s retirement study for three years before I worked up the courage to post about it.
We are liars. We believe that honest posting re how stock investing works should be permitted. That belief is reflected in our laws, good and necessary laws. But we get quiet when we see those posting in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney and Jack Bogle advance death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs because we don’t want their fire directed at us. We have principles. We have beliefs. But we lack the courage to stand up for them when there is enough money and power on the other side of the table to do serious harm to those who dare to do so.
I do indeed presume to speak for the people who support the laws against financial fraud in theory but who are afraid to speak up at our boards and blogs because they love their family members and because they do not want to see their reputations and their careers destroyed. Those are good people. Their goodness evidences itself in the laws that we have enacted and in the published rules of every site to which I have posted. Their cowardice in the face of those engaging in the criminal acts is a temporary thing. It does not reflect what they truly are. So, yes, I dare to speak for the goodness in my fellow community members, both the Buy-and-Holders and the Valuation-Informed Indexers, who hold back from speaking their minds in the face of such horrors.
I don’t believe at this point that it is at all likely that we will as a people work up the courage to speak up prior to the next price crash, which will do great, lasting harm to millions of us. But I am 100 percent certain that we will work up that courage once we have seen that ocean of human misery with our own eyes rather than just having read the peer-reviewed research that shows that it is coming. There is a big difference between seeing peer-reviewed research showing that such a day is coming and reading about the ocean of human misery in the morning newspaper.
It is really the laws against financial fraud that speak for us all and that reveal what sort of people we are down deep inside. I merely take note of those laws and thereby give voice to a very positive assessment of the people who adopted those laws.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the days following the next price crash.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, dear Goon friend.
Funny-Headline-Writing Rob
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