Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent on November 24, 2018, to Lucas Nolan, a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
My name is Rob Bennett. I would be grateful if you would take a look at the attached article, “Buy-and-Hold Is Dangerous.” It reveals both the great power of the new internet discussion-board communications medium to do good in the world and how the potential of the new medium can be thwarted via censorship and self-censorship.
I have been able to connect with numerous experts in the investing field who have grave doubts about the continued viability of the dominant Buy-and-Hold Model for understanding how stock investing works and I have seen the efforts of these good people to put our economic system on a sounder footing undermined by the insanely abusive tactics of those seeking to protect the discredited model from effective challenge. If we get the word out, the good guys win. But it has been a struggle trying to get the word out.
I am grateful for any help or suggestions that you can offer. Please take good care. And thanks for the valuable work that you do.
Rob
“I am grateful for any help or suggestions that you can offer.”
I’ll offer this. You’re wasting your time sending your magnum opus to these nobodies. The League of Goons has already anticipated everyone you might decide to send it to, and warned them.
You need to focus on the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal. They’re too big for goons. Send it to them every day until they publish it. And if that doesn’t work, start sending it twice a day.
I don’t agree with much of what you say in this comment. But there is one point that you make re which we are in strong agreement. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are the difference makers. When they report on all the fraud stuff that has suppressed questioning of Buy-and-Hold for 37 years now, everyone else will feel safe doing the same. We beat the cover-up by making people aware of it. And we make people aware of it by getting it written up on the front page of the New York Times. When the Times has the story on its front page, everyone else will add follow-ups in a very short amount of time.
We are not too far from having the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal report what needs to be reported. Brett Arends wrote an article titled “The Market Timing Myth” in the Wall Street Journal on October 14, 2010. It stated that: “For years the investment industry has tried to scare clients into staying fully invested in the stock market at all times, no matter how high stocks go. It’s hooey. They’re leaving out more than half the story. Anyone who followed the numbers would have avoided the disaster of the 1929 crash, the 1970s or the past lost decade on Wall Street…. I wonder how many stayed fully invested because their brokers warned them ‘you can’t time the market’.”
That’s it. That’s the story that needs to be told. To tell the entire story would take a ten-part series. But the 2010 article from Arends says what most needs to be said in a very concise manner. So the Ban on Honest Posting has not been complete. There have been breaks in the wall. Some very big breaks. If the Ban were 100 percent complete, Shiller would not have have been able to find a publisher for his book. If the Ban were 100 percent complete, Shiller would not have been awarded a Nobel prize. If the Ban were 100 percent complete, the Bennett/Pfau research paper would not have been published in a peer-reviewed journal. If the Ban were 100 percent complete, there wouldn’t have been so many community members telling me that they were looking forward to meeting me when I attended the annual convention with Bogle (before I was banned from attending).
It took courage for Arends to write that article. It took courage for the editors of the Wall Strert Journal to run the article. But the article was published. Why didn’t it bring on the collapse of Buy-and-Hold?
It didn’t bring on the collapse of Buy-and-Hold because there was no reaction to publication of the article. I was expecting the next morning to see 20 or 30 of my fellow personal finance bloggers offer reactions to those amazing words, either positive or negative or in-between. I didn’t see one of them do that. Just me. I am the only personal finance blogger who commented on that amazing. provocative, break-through, bold article. That’s why we are where we are today. That’s why we are looking forward to a deepening of the economic crisis rather than living through the greatest period of economic growth in our history.
The $64,000 question is — Will there come a time when more of my fellow personal finance bloggers will come to see that the pain of not talking about the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field has grown so great that it is worth taking on the beating they will experience by standing up to you Goons to get the word out to people? I think that day is going to come. I think that’s when we will see the entire Buy-and-Hold Model come tumbling down to the ground.
Arends would have written a follow-up had there been a strong reaction to that article. His editors would have published his follow-up had there been a strong reaction to that article.
We are deciding these matters as a community. Today there are huge benefits paid to those who are willing to pretend that the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research doesn’t exist. And there are huge penalties imposed on those who work up the courage to do honest work in this field. So we don’t get much honest work. We get lots of Buy-and-Hold marketing slogans. And the stock crashes that follow from the relentless reiteration of those marketing slogans. And the economic crises that follow from the loss of spending power we all experience as the result of those stock crashes.
The price is too high. The personal price for posting honestly is insanely high today. So we don’t see too many people working up the courage to stick their necks out. But the collective price for continuation of the Ban on Honest Posting will be so high in the days following the next price crash that a good number of us just will no longer be able to bear keeping it zipped. And then someone like Arends will publish something like what he published in 2010 but instead of generating zero reaction it will generate a huge reaction and we will as a society see 37 years of advances in our understanding of how stock investing works achieved in the space of a few weeks.
Or so Rob Bennett believes, in any event, you know?
I think we are close. I don’t think that Arends would have written that article unless we were close, It turned out that at the time he wrote it we were not close enough to get the job done. That’s of course very sad in about a million ways. But the optimistic take is that we were close enough to get that article written. And the publication of that article sent a message to all the rest of us who would like to be doing honest work in this field that we are very, very, very close to seeing something that will change all of our lives in a very, very, very positive way.
I am going to hang in there and wait for all the amazing good stuff to take place. I love my country, I think we are going to win this one. I think that death threats and threats of career destruction are the past and that open, civil, respectful discussion of the last 37 years of peer-research is the future.
We will see.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.
Rob
“Brett Arends wrote an article titled “The Market Timing Myth” in the Wall Street Journal on October 14, 2010.”
Because he was employed by the WSJ as a columnist. Maybe that’s what you need to work on. Polish up that resume.
Those publications aren’t in the habit of reprinting articles from Breitbart, Mother Jones, the Bonesteel Weekly Farm Report, or whatever other rags you’ve been sucking up to.
I don’t need to be employed by the Wall Street Journal to help people out by pointing out to them the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies. Once Shiller published his peer-reviewed research showing that valuations need to be taken into consideration in the calculation of the safe withdrawal rate, making that point became fair game for all of us.
What I need is for every site owner on the internet to work up the courage to do honest work in this field. Then it will not just be Arends at the Wall Street Journal telling people the truth about stock investing in one column published on one day. People learn from repetition. When the Wall Street Con Men push their smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage relentlessly morning, noon and night, most people conclude that there must be something to it. If it were all a con, lots of people would be saying that, right?
Well, since the morning of May 13, 2002, I have been saying it. I have been doing my part. I can do no more and I can do no less, right?
And things written at Mother Jones and Breitbart certainly affect what is said in the Wall Street Journal. I noted above that Arends and his editors need to see that their courage made a difference if they are going to continue to take courageous steps. Each time a reporter or editor at one of these other publications puts his life or career on the line by noting that the retirement study at John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins, he makes it easier for all the rest of us who want to do honest work in this field to do so.
Martin Luther King called for a civil rights revolution, Do you think that his efforts would have been successful if no one responded to his words? He is the big name. He did more than anyone else. But each person who dared to speak out, even if only to friends and family, made a difference. So it is with the Buy-and-Hold Crisis. We are all suffering the results of the relentless promotion of this Get Rich Quick strategy. We all can play a role in opening the entire internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, Anonymous.
Martin Luther Kind Admirer Rob
“I don’t need to be employed by the Wall Street Journal to help people out by pointing out to them the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies.”
Stop dancing around. You said you wanted your 11,000+ words published in the Wall Street Journal. There are two ways for that to happen: Either you are employed by them, or you are a big name like John Bogle.
So far, after 16 years, you are a big fat 0.0000000 out of 2.
I don’t need to be personally employed at the Wall Street Journal for the 11,000 words that I wrote to have influence. The 11,000 words could persuade someone who is already employed at the Wall Street Journal to write something using his or her own words.
What I want is for honest posting re the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research to be permitted at every investing discussion board and blog on the internet. The merit of that position is so great that I don’t think that there should be a single person expressing any criticism whatsoever in regard to it. It is by hearing the other guy out that we all learn. Our boards and blogs no longer serve any purpose once we ban honest posting at them. If we are going to have the board and blogs, we should be permitting honest posting on them. That’s my sincere take.
If Bogle has something to say, let’s hear it. But is he makes a mistake, let’s point it out to him before he embarrasses himself further by repeating the mistake. I am Bogle’s friend. That’s why I point out his mistake when I see them. I would want him to do that for me if I made a mistake. So I make an effort to show the same respect to this great man from whom I have learned so much over the years. If all of Jack’s friends had been doing that all along we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.
Make sense?
Rob
“The 11,000 words could persuade someone who is already employed at the Wall Street Journal to write something using his or her own words.”
How are they going to be persuaded if they never see it? Why do you think if you send it to them directly, they will ignore it, but if the Tombstone Gazette runs it, they will stumble across it and say “Wow, if they ran it, the author must not be a lunatic!”
This is what Wade referred to as “Rob-logic”.
I’ve sent things to reporters at the New York Times and at the Wall Street Journal.
The thought in my head when I send such things is that it is likely that they will be ignored (because of the criminally abusive tactics that are employed by the Buy-and-Holders) but that there is always a chance that the recipient will take positive action. And that of course has happened on numerous occasions. It makes me happy when that happens.
There are great reporters at all these other places. So I send to other places as well. The need to open every discussion board and blog to honest posting re the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research is the most important public policy issue before our nation today. Why should I limit myself to two newspapers. I would like to see every newspaper and web site on the planet writing about the matters.
Ronan Farrow got a lot of attention for the reporting he did on Harvey Weinstein. NBC refused to go with some of his stuff because it was too hot. So he took it to the New Yorker and thereby changed the world in a very positive way. It sounds like you would have advised him to give up if NBC was not interested. I don’t see it that way. The thing to do is to tell the story to whoever will give it a listen. In time it will be featured at all of the big outlets. And the Bill Cosby stuff first got out as part of some guy’s comedy routine. It ended up in the New York Times. It didn’t start there.
When the story breaks, people are going to be asking all of us what we did to protect our country in the days when it was under attack. I don’t want to give some lame story about how I didn’t think it was worth contacting only the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Those are powerful outlets. So I certainly want to include them in the mix. But by no means do I want to limit myself to them.
It was a post that I put to the Motley Fool’s Retire Early board that set off the nuclear explosion. What if I held off on putting forward that post because I wanted the story to be told in the New York Times and in the New York Times only. Huh? What the f? The New York Times is far more likely to take the story today, now that it has been explored at hundreds of other places and we have had peer-reviewed research published showing that Valuation-Informed Indexing is superior to Buy-and-Hold and have seen Buy-and-Holders threaten to destroy the career of the researcher involved because they don’t want people to learn about their mistake. That sort of thing makes the story bigger and more important. We are far more likely to get the story on the front page of the New York Times after something like that happens than we are before it happens. And that sort of thing happens when we explore outlets other than the New York Times.
Everyone who loves this country should be working this story ever day at every news outlet that they can think of. The way we end corruption is by exposing it. Sunshine is a disinfectant. The New York Times can provide a lot of sunshine. So they are certainly going to be a part of our effort to take us all to a far, far better place than where we are today. But there are thousands and thousands and thousands of places that can help a bit and all forward movement is good movement.
When I see my doctor for my diabetes check-ups, I give her updates. On one visit, I gave her a copy of “Irrational Exuberance.” So she knows more about corruption in the investing advice field than she did before I started meeting with her regularly. She could tell another doctor at a convention and he might get pissed off when he loses money in the next price crash and tell his brother, who writes for the New York Times.
There’s no way of telling what act it is going to be that is going to get us over the finish line. My rule is that any honest telling of the story is a plus and any time that someone backs down in the face of the intimidation tactics of the Buy-and-Holders, we all are set backwards. So I try hard never to back down and always to post honestly. That’s what will get the job done in the long run. I am 100 percent sure.
And Wade should never have been threatened. When you Goons have been placed in prison cells, where you belong, Wade will return to posting honestly at every board and blog. And he and I will be best friends. I look forward to that day very much.
My best wishes to you.
Sunshine Disinfecting Rob
“I’ve sent things to reporters at the New York Times and at the Wall Street Journal.”
But not THIS thing. Why not?
Are the reporters being threatened by the goons?
But not THIS thing. Why not?
The night is young, Anonymous.
I send it to several places each week. There will be transmissions to people at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in time.
Sometimes you learn things from your interactions with others. It could be that someone will suggest an addition and I will make it and that that addition will make the difference for a reported at the New York Times.
I intent to send it to all kinds of places. I’ve been at this for 17 years. If it gets to the New York Times next week or next month or next year, it at least got to the New York Times. If you want to be sure it gets to the New York Times, why don’t you write to the New York Times and describe the issue and explain to them that I have an article that tells the entire story and suggest that they contact me. If someone from the New York Times contacts me, there is a good chance that I will get back to them.
I am not the only person in the world who knows how e-mail transmissions work. Anyone can help out here. I am going to send to a mix of people. But I sure don’t object if others want to jump in an expand the mix.
Do you want to ask the head Goons over at the Bogleheads Forum if they want to run the article at the site? I wouldn’t be surprised if someone from the Times read the forum. We could get it before them that way. Bogle looks at the forum. So we could get it to him too that way. And if there are any Buy-and-Holders who have problems with anything that I say in the article, they can make their points there too so people will hear both sides.
The reason why your side is doomed is that I win every time someone new hears the story and you lose every time someone new hears the story. Time is on my side. Threats can keep the ocean of learning back for a time. But it is not going to work long-term. So I don’t worry much about who I send it to. I know that sending it to anyone is a plus. So I send it. And in time I know that it will reach the right people. If that ends up being the New York Times. great. If it ends up being someone else, also great.
I didn’t connect with Wade Pfau by being featured in the New York Times. It was my posting at Bogleheads that made that happen. At the time I had people telling me that it was foolish to post at Bogleheads because you Goons were so insanely abusive. But I ended up getting my name on the most important piece of peer-reviewed research published in this field in the past three decades. I can live with that.
The key is sending it out. I make an effort to contact several people each week. I think it would be fair to say that I am doing more than anyone else on Planet Earth to get this story out. So I sure don’t offer any apologies re my transmission list.
My best wishes.
Rob
“why don’t you write to the New York Times and describe the issue and explain to them that I have an article that tells the entire story and suggest that they contact me.”
You would delete a completely honest answer to that question.
Are the reporters being threatened by the goons?
Wade Pfau wasn’t threatened directly until we finished our research paper showing that Valuation-Informed Indexing is superior to Buy-and-Hold and he presented it to the Bogleheads Forum and received lots of positive comments that scared you Goons out of your minds. But from the first day on which he contacted me he was afraid of getting on the wrong side of you Goons. He often referred to the “hostile environment” at that site. Why the heck would the environment there be hostile? Buy-and-Hold is supposed to by a research-based strategy, is it not? So what is there to be hostile about? If you believe in research, you are certainly going to want to hear about the new peer-reviewed research findings, are you not? So what’s this stuff about a “hostile environment”?
Greaney advanced his first death threat on the evening of August 27, 2002. I knew about the error in his study from the first day I posted at Motley Fool, in May of 1999. I didn’t point out the error until May of 2002. What the heck was going on for those three years? I knew about the error, there had been no death threats and yet I didn’t point out the error to my friends, who were using the study to plan their retirements. It was that old hostile environment matter causing problems again.
People are social creatures. We want other people to like us. Buy-and-Hold is the dominant academic model for understanding how stock investing works. It has been for a long time. Tell people that Buy-and-Hold is flawed and they are going to get angry with you. They don’t always have to advance direct threats to get the message across. People are sensitive enough to pick up that they are upsetting other people and that there are going to be consequences for doing so. It happened to me, it happened to Wade Pfau and it happens to all these reporters to which you refer.
They know that they are saying something shocking if they say that there is 37 years of peer-reviewed research discrediting Buy-and-Hold. They don’t necessarily know it on a conscious level. They probably would not be able to articular how they feel. But they hold back from saying things that they would say if they did not feel intimidated. And they even hold back from thinking things that they would think if they did not feel intimidated.
That’s the entire story here. We all want to know how to invest effectively. We are all on the same side. But some of us want to explore whether Buy-and-Hold has any flaws so that it doesn’t ruin us and others of us want to keep any discussion of flaws suppressed. Those who want to suppress discussions have all sorts of ways of communicating their preferences and those thinking of starting discussions are able to pick up on those preferences. Many choose never to say a word. Others say a few words, get a negative reaction, and then shut up. A tiny few are like me and interpret the attempts to suppress discussion as signs that discussion is very, very, very much needed and thus state their concerns all the stronger and more frequently in response to the efforts to suppress them.
Most reporters have not been threatened directly. But most know the score, at least subconsciously. When the pain of keeping discussion of these matters suppressed grows greater than the pain that they suspect they will experience by speaking up, the reporters will speak up. You Goons have made it clear that the price for speaking up is going to be very large. But, if Shiller is right, the pain for suppressing the discussions is eventually going to be even larger. At that point people will work up the courage to speak and we will all be off to the races.
Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, you know? We will not know for sure, blah, blah, blah.
My best wishes.
Rob
You would delete a completely honest answer to that question.
Life is tough all over, Anonymous.
I wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, in any event. I hope that that helps a tiny bit.
Rob
“It could be that someone will suggest an addition and I will make it and that that addition will make the difference for a reported at the New York Times.”
You’ve sent it to a lot of people already. Do you have any evidence that any of the recipients has read a single word?
(Real evidence please, not just a link back to this site.)
I’ve had two people who have told me that they have read it. I believe them. It is possible that they were being polite. But I believe that the odds are that, if they said they read it, they read at least a significant portion.
I have experience with this sort of thing from when I sent an earlier article to 30,000 academic researchers. I had a very low response rate to those e-mails — 0.5 percent. But I know that the ones who responded really did read it because in numerous cases I entered long e-mail exchanges with them that showed that they had read it.
What’s the alternative? Not send things?
People have been not sending things for 37 years now. Has that gotten the job done? It seems to me that it has not. It seems to me that it is better to send things.
It’s all about cognitive dissonance, Anonymous. That’s the story here. There are no magic words that I can say that will break the cognitive dissonance spell. But my instincts tell me that I need to engage on it. When I engage, I learn. That’s been true from the first day. It is very, very, very hard to engage. It is emotionally painful stuff. But over time I learn, so long as I continue to engage. I know things today that I did not know years ago. I learned those things slowly through thousands and thousands of interactions with both skeptical and supportive voices (and, yes, even in some cases from interactions with Goon voices).
I couldn’t have written that article five years ago. I could have written a good article five years ago. But not one as good as the one I finished a few months back. The beauty of that article tells me that I am continuing to advance in my understanding of these issues. And that of course is what I want to do. So I continue to seek interactions.
Do I wish that the process were more efficient? Yes. A hundred times yes.
But that one us not my call. We need to work through these issues. And I have a role to play in helping us do so. So I am playing my role to the best of my ability.
I hope that helps a small bit.
Rob
“What’s the alternative? Not send things?”
Almost anything would be a better alternative as you have completely wasted your time. Flip burgers, deliver newspapers, clean toilets, etc. all of these things would have been a much more productive use of your time.
So you say, Anonymous.
But I am not convinced.
If you believed deep in your heart that I have wasted my time for the past 17 years, you would have stopped commenting on my blog entries a long, long, long, long time ago.
You personally think that Buy-and-Hold is a good strategy. I believe that much. But I think you have doubts, doubts that you are afraid to face up to just yet, My words drive you crazy because my words stir up those doubts. You are not able to walk away and ignore my words. You feel a need to crush them when they appear before you.
It’s not just you, of course. There are millions of people following Buy-and-Hold strategies today. Few are as intense in their hate of Shiller’s work as you. But most Buy-and-Holders feel at least a little uncomfortable when their investment strategy is questioned. I think that we need to get to the bottom of why that is so. I think that that’s a big deal. I think that the emotional side of the stock investing experience is the great unexplored continent of our time. It’s hard and scary work exploring it. But the benefits that stand to be gained from putting in the effort are immense.
I wish you all good things. I hope that that helps at least a small bit.
Rob
“So you say, Anonymous.
But I am not convinced.”
That’s the issue. Other people have to see value in what you say or do. Otherwise, it is a waste of time. You don’t have that support, but delusionally think you do.
I don’t think that I suffer from a delusion. I think that I suffer from holding a minority view on an issue that is a highly sensitive one for the people holding the other point of view. Shiller and Fama were both awarded Nobel prizes for their work. It’s not possible that both are right — they say opposite things about what causes stock price changes. I think that we should all be engaging in a national debate over those differences until we have resolved once and for all who is right and who is wrong. But it is a very scary debate for Buy-and-Holders to engage in. They feel that they have their life savings riding on their belief in Buy-and-Hold and they cannot bear to engage in sustained questioning of beliefs that are so core to their existence.
Lots of smart people see great value in what I say. There are over 200 statements that I run on a slider at the top of every page of this site that show that to be so. But those people don’t represent the majority, And most of those people don’t say all that they believe; they hold back so that the brutal abusiveness that has been directed at me will not be directed at them.
If you think about what a CAPE level of 28 means, you can understand why that is so. A CAPE level of 28 means that our entire society is today suffering from delusions about the value of their stock portfolios. The title of Shiller’s book is “Irrational Exuberance.” A CAPE level of 28 suggests not some small level of irrationality, it suggests that investors today are suffering from so much irrationality that they are delusional, to use your word. So it is hard at this moment in time for us as a society to have the discussion we need to have to advance in our understanding of how stock investing works.
Will the level of abusiveness and irrationality subside as the CAPE value falls? I believe it will. But we of course will just have to wait and see. Humans are capable of becoming delusional about stock prices. The fact that we are able to reach a CAPE level of 28 shows that beyond any reasonable doubt. But we are also capable of making use of human reason to come over time to a better understanding of how stock investing works. The fact that Shiller’s book was published by a major publisher and became a best-seller shows that. The fact that Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize shows that. The fact that the Bennett/Pfau research paper was published in a peer-reviewed journal shows that. The fact that I have over 200 statements of support that I was able to put in that slider at the top of every page of this site shows that.
So, yes, most of us are suffering from delusions about the value of our stock portfolios today. Today’s CAPE value shows that. But we are capable as a people of overcoming those delusions and adopting a more reasoned understanding of how stock investing works than the one we adopted in the days before Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research. Lots of things show that too. I don’t think that helping us as a society move from a delusional understanding of how stock investing works to a more reasoned one is a “waste of time.”
But we will just have to wait to see how it all plays out to know for absolutely sure.
My best wishes.
Non-Delusional Minority Opinion Holder Rob
“I don’t think that I suffer from a delusion.”
But you do. You have been told this time and again by many people. You choose to not believe it. You then convince yourself otherwise by interpreting things only in a way that fits with your desires. You don’t have the analytical capability and discernment to really judge if you are right or don’t. You only want to believe you are right and then you immediately reflect anything that doesn’t fit a story you want to have cast.
You’re describing cognitive dissonance, Anonymous. I am saying that you suffer from cognitive dissonance and you are saying that I do. It’s a standoff.
The back-and-forth reminds me of the comment that was made by one of the members of a peer-review committee that rejected the research paper that I co-authored with Wade Pfau (and which I view as the most important peer-reviewed research published in this field in 30 years). He said: “The elephant-in-the-room question is — What is the ultimate criterion for one to conclude with confidence that one strategy is better than the other?”
Standing by itself, the comment is of course fine. There is a world of difference between Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing and the issues at stake are of the utmost importance — the retirements of millions of people are riding on the answer to these questions. So naturally it is so that we all would like to identify the ultimate criterion for concluding with confidence that one strategy is better than the other. I heartily endorse that man’s words.
Except in the context in which they were advanced. The words were offered to explain a rejection of a research paper that would go a great distance toward helping us all to figure out which strategy is superior if only it were featured on the front page of the New York Times. If we do not as a society know for certain which strategy is superior — and 100 percent of the evidence that has accumulated over the past 17 years shows that as a society we do not know for certain which strategy is superior– then we should make it public policy concern #1 to get to the bottom of that one. That means working it and working it and working it, talking it over and talking it over and talking it over, exploring in depth issue after issue after issue after issue.
You say: “You don’t have the analytical capability and discernment to really judge if you are right.” I don’t think that’s so. But there is a problem with me assessing for myself whether it is so or not. If it were so, I would not be able to perform a proper assessment no matter how I tried. So I need to run my ideas past others to over time gain the ability to make a clear and firm and balanced and confident assessment. But that is of course the very thing that I cannot do for so long as the Ban on Honest Posting remains in effect. So I oppose the ban.
I have seen amazing lows and amazing high. The Goon stuff is the lowest of the lows that I have ever seen on the internet. The Goon stuff goes so low that I often hesitate to mention it in my writings because the Normals whom I need to persuade to prevail in these debates have never in their lifetimes encountered anything so low and so my accurate reports of things that you Goons have done cause them to doubt me rather than to doubt the investment strategy for which these low tactics are put to use.
The highs are just as high as the lows are low. Say that I am right on only one point — 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. If I got everything else that I have said over the past 17 years wrong and I got that one right, I have made the biggest contribution to this field that anyone has made over the past 17 years. In the event that the Greaney study truly lacks a valuation adjustment (and it does), Greaney didn’t just destroy the lives of the thousands of people at the Motley Fool site who used his study to plan their retirements. He destroyed the lives of MILLIONS through his insanely abusive posting tactics.
We had thousands of people at that site who would have helped us to get the word out about the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies to every investor alive on the planet today. Greaney isn’t the only one who made that mistake. EVERY Buy-and-Hold retirement study makes that mistake. And 95 percent of all articles that have been published in recent decades telling people how to plan their retirements are rooted in the findings of those Buy-and-Hold retirement studies. Our failure to get those studies corrected for 17 years now is the biggest economic and political issue before us as a people today. The survival of our economic system is at stake. It is possible that even the survival of our political system is at stake.
Or so Rob Bennett truly believes, you know?
I could be wrong. I am one of those darned humans, like Greaney and Bogle and Lindauer, and we are known as a species to make terrible mistakes from time to time. But I cannot in good conscience take the word of internet Goons that I am wrong as gospel. Those millions of people need to have someone stand up for them and insist that every discussion board and blog on the internet be opened to honest posting re these matters. I have been elected for the job. So I am going to give it my best shot. I couldn’t live with myself if I did any less.
If the entire internet is opened to honest posting and the result of a civil and reasoned debate in which people from “both sides” participate without any fear of being punished in any way for stating their sincere views re these matters shows that I am wrong about these matters, I pray that I will have the grace to say so in a clear and simple and direct way. But it is only a civil and reasoned debate that could persuade me that I am wrong. I don’t give much credence to death threats or demands for unjustified board bannings or thousands of acts of defamation or threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. I could not live with myself if I let acts of intimidation persuade me to sell out my country. No this boy. That’s not what I am about and it’s not a close call.
So we will have to wait a bit and see how it all plays out. If Shiller is right in what he says in his Nobel-prize-winning research (I believe that he is), then we are going to see another price crash in the next year or two or three. If the CAPE level tells us the amount of emotion present in investors at a given point in time, then a lower CAPE will be signifying less emotional investors. That is, investors more open to engaging in civil and reasoned discussion of the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. I think that’s where things are headed. We will see. I will always say everything that I can to put you Goons and our Wall Street Con Men friends in the best possible light without crossing the felony line myself. But I will never say that Greaney’s study contains a valuation adjustment. There are limits. Prison life is not for me.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all of your future life endeavors, my dear Goon friend.
Cognitive Dissonance Sufferer (Not! — I Think!) Rob
“You’re describing cognitive dissonance, Anonymous. I am saying that you suffer from cognitive dissonance and you are saying that I do. It’s a standoff.”
No, it’s not a standoff. Just look at the facts. You have been told the same thing on a consistent basis by many people with high credibility. Secondly, your plans and predictions have failed. Third, you have been banned/rejected from almost every major investing forum. Lastly, you can’t even muster support on your own board where you control the messaging. You want to believe every other option, while ignoring the facts in front of you.
The highs are just as high as the lows are low, Anonymous.
Greaney based his retirement study on the Trinity study, which is peer-reviewed research that was used as the basis for hundreds of thousands of articles on how to plan a retirement. I have never studied investing in school, I have never managed a mutual fund. So what do you think the chances would be that I would discover an error in Greaney’s study and that my discovery would be endorsed by a number of the biggest experts in the field?
The odds of that one are a million to one. But it happened. If that could happen, if the Buy-and-Holders could get the numbers that were used by millions of people to plan their retirements so wildly wrong, then what the heck else did they get wrong, you know?
I acknowledge that I have been banned by many sites. I don’t dispute that. And in ordinary circumstances I would agree that that would be a bad sign for me. If so many people hate my stuff, there must be something wrong with what I am putting forward.
But I don’t buy it in this case. There’s just too many people who have checked the Greaney study and concluded that there is no valuations adjustment in it for me to believe that I was wrong about that one. And that’s an error that put millions of people’s retirements at risk. So there’s no public policy issue before us today of more importance than getting those retirement studies corrected.
I say it’s a standoff. You’ve got the power, I’ve got the 37 years of peer-reviewed research and the Nobel prize.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
Rob
Your Greaney tales are just one small part of a larger delusional train wreck. You use it as a quick smoke screen when anyone tries to have a rational discussion with you.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all good things, in any event.
I hope that that helps at least a tiny bit.
Delusional Train Wreck Rob
It would be awesome if you would stop throwing around “cognitive dissonance” as if you understood what it was. Because you don’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. This discomfort is triggered by a situation in which a person’s belief clashes with new evidence perceived by that person. When confronted with facts that contradict personal beliefs, ideals, and values, people will find a way to resolve the contradiction in order to reduce their discomfort.
As when someone says that there is peer-reviewed research supporting his claim that the safe withdrawal rate is always the same number despite 38 years of peer-reviewed research (prepared by a Nobel-prize-winning economist!) showing that valuations affect long-term returns.
Rob