“My Profession Is One in Which You Are Taught to Expose Cover-Ups. So I React Very Differently to Death Threats and Threats of Career Destruction Than Either Bogle or Shiller Do. They Worry That It Would Not Be “Professional” to Point Out That Financial Fraud is a Crime. I Put My Readers First. I Tell the Story.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

“He is also a great man, one who has done more to advance our understanding of how stock investing works than any other human alive on the planet today. ”

You mean he has done more than you???? Are you sure???

I’ve also done something of huge importance, Anonymous. It drives you out of your mind to contemplate that reality. But it is a reality all the same.

I am a journalist. I could never do the things that Shiller and Bogle have done and I would never try. But I don’t see them doing the things that I have done either. Bogle knows that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies lack a valuation adjustment. He’s been in the room when we were having discussions about it and I told him about it in several e-mails. Why hasn’t he done anything? I think it would be fair to say that he doesn’t feel comfortable engaging in journalist-type activities. Well, someone has to go about the business of getting those studies corrected before they do more harm. I am on the case. I am in the process of doing something that Bogle either is not able to do or is not willing to do. I offer no apologies whatsoever, you know?

Shiller is the same. You Goons ask me all the time, why doesn’t Shiller speak out more forcefully re the dangers of Buy-and-Hold? Part of it is that, like Bogle, he is not a journalist. To some extent he probably doesn’t know how to go about it. To some extent he probably doesn’t feel comfortable doing what it would take to get the job done. Professors don’t have to take the sorts of hits that I have been taking on a daily basis for 16 years running now. So he shies away from this important work. He has done and continues to do hugely important work. So I certainly don’t mean to be critical. But the world has room for more than one profession. I do a different sort of work than the work that Bogle and Shiller do. I love them for what they do. But I take pride in what I do too. That’s one of the reasons why I have not been willing to fold when you Goons have gone into freak-out mode.

Now —

Where will all this amazing journalism work take us once I get us all to the other side of The Big Black Mountain? It is going to take us all to some truly amazing places.

One of the problems that I have in convincing people of the merit of Valuation-Informed Indexing is that I lack “street cred,” according to one of my friends from the Bogleheads Forum. I do not hold a Ph.D. in Ecnomics, I have never managed a mutual fund, that sort of thing. People want to be sure that they are following good ideas when they invest their retirement money. So they want to see that the person that they are listening to possesses the proper credentials. That makes all the sense in the world. And I certainly don’t possess the type of credentials that Bogle or Shiller possess. I have said on numerous occasions that I do not consider myself an “expert” in this field as that term is generally used. I am not an expert and I do not possess any desire to ever become an expert.

So what value do I add?

If I open the entire internet to honest posting on the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research, I will make a HUGE positive contribution. I will change the lives of millions for the better. Say that I achieve my goal of getting Bogle to give a speech in which he acknowledges that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies lack valuation adjustments and that all of those studies are corrected. Guess who will be helping us all out in big ways on the day following that speech? That speech will free Bogle up to offer his honest and informed thoughts on scores of critically important investment-related topics. And the same is true of Shiller. And of hundreds of others.

We need experts in this field to help us all out. I am not an expert in this field. I cannot do the job for them. But I can fill the need for an honest and reasonably well-informed journalist, a need which is crying for relief in the investment advice field. Buy-and-Hold was once a real thing. But they made a mistake. Shiller’s research had not yet been published at the time that Buy-and-Hold was being developed. They had research showing that short-term timing didn’t work. So they jumped to the unfortunate conclusion that long-term timing (price discipline) might not be needed either. Then, when Shiller showed that nothing could be farther from the truth, they fell under the spell of cognitive dissonance and just ignored what Shiller had showed. Now we are 37 years down the road and we all are in a big mess.

They needed a journalist!

The biggest reason why a lot of these people fell under the spell of cognitive dissonance is that they were experts! For the big shots in this field, Shiller’s research wasn’t just an intellectual advance. It was a personal threat. They had spent years developing their reputations as experts and all of those years were devoted to learning about and promoting Buy-and-Hold. How do you think they felt to read peer-reviewed research showing that it was all a big pile of smelly garbage? Those are the sorts of conditions perfect for a massive case of cognitive dissonance. They couldn’t deal with the reality that was presented to them. So they turned off their minds and pretended that Shiller hadn’t done work of any practical consequence.

I was a Buy-and-Holder. I followed the strategy for a time. But I never earned a degree studying it. And I never told clients to follow the strategy and charged them money for doing so. And I never attended conferences with other Buy-and-Holders and joked around with them and became friends with them and all this sort of thing. I did not have nearly the personal stake in the Buy-and-Hold project that Bogle did. Shiller didn’t have that personal stake either in one sense — he was not a Buy-and-Holder himself. But he associates professionally with lots of professors whose lives depend on Buy-and-Hold not being undermined. I would bet any amount of money that that is one reason why Shiller holds back from advancing clear statements telling us all how dangerous Buy-and-Hold is. He is compromised too to some extent even though his personal reputation was built undermining the case for Buy-and-Hold rather than building it.

My profession is one in which you are taught to expose cover-ups. That’s what I do. That is something that I take pride on. So I react very differently to death threats and threats of career destruction and all this other garbage than either Bogle or Shiller do. They get quiet when they see that stuff. They walk away. They worry that it would not be “professional” to point out that financial fraud is a crime and that the people responsible for this massive cover-up will likely be going to prison in the days following the next price crash. I put my readers first. I tell the story. I tell it with kindness because I feel great affection and respect for the people involved. But I tell the story honestly too. Because that is what I freakin’ do. That’s me. That’s your boy. I am a journalist. It’s in my blood. I couldn’t play it different if I tried. Telling me not to point out that a retirement study is in error is like telling a dog not to bark. Huh? What the f?

I am not the person to tell you what mutual fund to invest in or what stock to pick or how to take money out of a 401(k) fund or anything like that. There is nothing that I can say about any of those subjects that couldn’t be said better by thousands of other people. There is no way that I could add value addressing those sorts of matters and so I don’t bother trying to do so. If you need an investing expert, check out Bogle or Shiller. They are the two best out there, in my sincere assessment.

But if you want to know why Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research findings have been ignored by most people in this field for 37 years now, I’m your guy. That’s a STORY. That one is a story and a half. That one is the biggest story in the history of personal finance, in my humble assessment. Putting a story like that in front of me is like putting a slab of beef in front of a hungry dog. I bite down and I don’t let go until the thing is finished. I didn’t get into this profession by accident. This is what I was born to do. I take the job seriously. Getting the numbers right in retirement studies is not a joking matter for this boy.

I’m doing something important. Something very, very, very, very important. Bogle and Shiller also do important work and I obviously don’t pretend to be in their class in their field. But I don’t see them putting much effort into doing what I have been doing for 16 years now. And someone very, very, very much needs to do this work. So I am not going to sit in the back of the room and not ask questions when I see people hawking retirement studies that are 37 years out of date, We need those studies corrected. I have been elected to get the job done and I intend to make it happen.

Bogle and Shiller and lots of others will be able to do better work for the rest of their lives once I have opened the internet to honest posting and they feel comfortable posting their sincere views. Things will just get better and better and better and better. When we look back, we will realize that we couldn’t possibly have gotten there without the contributions of John Bogle or without the contributions of Robert Shiller or without the contributions of Rob Bennett. We all have our own little role to play. I am grateful for what they have done. When they feel free to speak more openly about their true feelings, I have a funny feeling that they will both be saying that they are grateful for what I have done as well. Our skill sets play off of each other’s skill sets. The whole thing does not work without each person playing his part to the best of his ability.

I hope that helps a small bit, my dear Goon friend.

My best wishes to you.

The Reluctant Investing Expert (But the Enthusiastic Practitioner of Investigative Journalism) Rob