Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Normal people can give a short and direct response.
Not in these circumstances they can’t, Anonymous.
In ordinary circumstances, I would say that the reason why people weren’t showing up at a web site was that they did not see value in the material. But I have had thousands of people tell me that my stuff is the best investing stuff that they have ever seen. I have had people tell me that my stuff is the best investing stuff that they have ever seen and then ban me from their web site in the same e-mail. That was Carl Richards. Explain that one in a short and concise statement! I had never heard of such a thing until it happened to me. If someone else told me that story, I am not sure that I would believe it. But I was there. I have the e-mails. So I know that it really happened.
Carl was the main speaker at one of the Financial Blogger Conferences that I attended. So he had thousands of people listening to him and applauding him and talking to him afterwards and all this sort of thing. If Carl said during that talk what he told me he thinks of my work — that is is of “huge value” — I would have thousands of people coming to the site everyday. That is how you make that happen. Somebody says something like that and then dozens of other bloggers invite you to lunch and then they invite you on podcasts and tell their readers about you and the thing just grows and grows and grows.
Why didn’t Carl do that? Why did he instead ban me from his site? He told me that his readers were upset by what I was saying when I commented at his site. He said that he read everything he could get his hands on about Valuation-Informed Indexing. He said that his opinion is that my work has “huge value.” But most of his readers are Buy-and-Holders because that is all that they have ever heard about. So he can make an easier buck just letting them continue to believe in the long-discredited strategy and keeping them safe from hearing about the one with “huge value” that he knows in his heart is the future.
That’s the story of why there are not thousands of people here. Buy-and-Hold came first and Valuation-Informed Indexing is such a huge advance that site owners don’t want people to hear about it. It makes them look bad when people hear about it because they have not been promoting it, they have been promoting Buy-and-Hold. So I get cut out.
And the readers get cut out. The readers would be fine with Valuation-Informed Indexing if they could hear about it in an environment free of all the abusive stuff and if they could ask all their questions and if experts could comment on it in a reasonable and honest way and if all of the ordinary things that happen in all other cases happened in cases in which Valuation-Informed Indexing was being discussed. The Buy-and-Holders don’t want to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” and so we keep people from learning about the far superior strategy. And we hurt everyone by playing it that way.
Is that a short and direct response?
There is no short and direct response that makes sense in these circumstances. We have social norms that we follow in this country that are not followed in discussions of Valuation-Informed Indexing. And we have laws that are not followed in discussions of Valuation-Informed Indexing. It’s a weird situation and it is not one that I created, it is one that I am trying to overcome.
If you want to know why people don’t come here, look at your own behavior.
I think it will change in the days following the next price crash. I wish that we didn’t have to wait. I wish that we could all pull together and make it change tomorrow. But I don’t think that’s likely to happen, given what I have seen over the past 16 years.
I don’t want to lie to people about the numbers that they are using to plan their retirements, Anonymous. The Buy-and-Holders don’t want to correct their retirement studies and so I have to be cut out and the result is that people don’t come here. Either things will change following the next crash or they will not. My only option is to wait for whatever changes are coming because I cannot bear to lie to my friends about the numbers that they are using to plan their retirements. That’s not in me. That’s not what I am about.
I will make a prediction. I believe that in the days following the next price crash, Greaney will look back and wish that he had never insisted that anyone lie about the numbers that people are using to plan their retirements. And that Lindauer will do the same. And that Bogle will do the same.
We’ll see, you know? If that happens, I will do everything in my power to pull us all together so that we all can do the best work that we can do and so that we all can live the best lives that we can live. That much I can do and that much I will do. I won’t lie about the numbers that my friends are using to plan their retirements. I won’t say that I believe that the safe withdrawal rate is always the same number. I don’t believe that it is so and I am not going to put up any posts saying that I believe that it is so. It would be fraud for me to say that. It is not a reasonable thing for one person to ask of another.
We’ll see how it goes. You know perfectly well why people don’t come here because you engaged in all the abusive behavior that made it a reality. I don’t like it that people don’t come here. But I would like it less if I lied about the numbers that my friends were using to plan their retirements. I couldn’t live with myself if I did that. So, no thanks.
We’ll see how it goes. I wish you all good things. I feel that I can do that and still live with myself. So I do that. But that’s as far as I can take it.
I hope that helps a small bit.
Short and Direct (Not!) Rob
Another year over. Was 2018 your best year yet? What new, exciting plans to you have for 2019?
I wouldn’t say that 2018 was my best year yet. It was like all the other years from 2002 forward. I was undefeated on the substance side. And I had no victories on the process side. The story has been that as a society we see over and over and over again that valuations affect long-term returns and that as a society we elect over and over and over again to ignore what we see and to continue believing that the numbers that turn up on our portfolio statements as the result of a highly emotional process possess real and lasting economic significance. We are in the process of learning how we fool ourselves by letting our Get Rich Quick impulse run wild.
I don’t think that we made great progress in 2018. We achieved little advances here and there and failed to take advantage of opportunities to achieve bigger advances that were presented to us. Sometimes when you achieve the big advance, you look back at years of small advances like 2018 and see that those small advances set things up so that the big advance became possible. The journey from the not-so-great place where we are today to the wonderful place where we all deep in our hearts want to be tomorrow is achieved through a process. I think the process is moving forward. I am not able to say how close we are to the end. We were close on the morning of May 13, 2002, you know? The comments that we saw at the old Motley Fool board showed that. We were close but obviously not close enough. We are closer today but still obviously not where deep in our hearts we all want to be.
I am not able to say whether 2019 will be the year or not. I obviously hope so. All human reason says that it will be. Permitting honest posting on the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research is all good stuff with zero possibility of any downside. So my mind tells me that we will cross the goal line in 2019. But of course my mind also told me that we would cross the goal line in 2002 and in 2003 and in all the other years through 2018. So I have learned not to trust what my mind tells me re the timing of these things.
It COULD be 2019. That’s what matters. But it also might not be 2019. I have to be realistic re that aspect of things or I wouldn’t be able to continue on despite the many, many, many crushing disappointments. So I am not going to form a personal assessment as to whether it is actually going to be 2019 or not. I will permit myself to entertain some hopes and and then just accept that that’s as far as I can dare to push it.
We will decide as a society whether it will be 2019 or some later year. That’s as it should be. I have a role. My role is to give it my best shot to push things in a positive direction. But that’s as far as my role extends. I cannot force things.
I can offer my take on what is going on for people who care to to consider. And, if there are others who jump in and tell those people “we will not permit you to consider this take,” I can say why I think it is a bad idea for us as a society to let those people take on that power to decide things for the rest of us. But if I am met with a shrug of the shoulders when I make my case, I have to accept that answer despite how strongly I disagree with it. That’s just the way things are. That’s reality.
I don’t think that that reality is a permanent one. There are too many sub-realities pointing in the other direction for me to accept that meta-reality as the permanent reality. But I don’t feel that there are any plans that I could make for 2019 that would insure that a new meta-reality would become the dominant one in 2019. There are too many factors at play, there are too many people involved. I have to wait for the decision of our society as a whole as to whether to resolve the dramatic tensions between what Buy-and-Hold teaches us about how stock prices change over time and what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock prices change over time.
Do I believe that as a society we will ultimately make the right decision? I do. I love my country. That runs deep. There’s been no questioning of that at any time over the past 16 years. There’s been a mountain of disappointments. I give you Goons that one. But my core belief in the goodness of our country remains in place. So we will have to see how it all plays out.
The same country of people that has left a Ban on Honest Posting in place at every large investing site on the internet for 16 years now also awarded Robert Shiller a Nobel prize in Economics during that same time-period. We are a conflicted people at this moment in time. I believe that it will be the next price crash that will shock us out of our confusion, that will help us to see that we need to work harder to resolve the question that the publication of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research findings of 1981 first placed before us.
I believe that that price crash is coming (because I believe that Shiller’s research findings are legitimate). But I don’t believe that it is possible to say that that crash is coming in 2019 (because Shiller agrees with Fama that short-term timing doesn’t work). So I don’t have precise plans for 2019. My plan is just to continue to give it my best shot in hopes of helping each and every one of us (including you Goons) to live better lives from this point forward.
My best wishes to you for a happy and healthy and prosperous New Year, my dear Goon friend.
Partying (in a Family Man Sort of Way) Rob