Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent on December 19, 2018, to Leora Smith, author of an article titled How a Dubious Forensic Science Spread Like a Virus.
Leora:
My name is Rob Bennett. I much enjoyed your article on “How a Dubious Forensic Science Spread Like a Virus.” If you discussed “Making of a Murderer, Part Two” in the article, I somehow missed the discussion (I apologize). But I just finished watching that and your article certainly bears on the case made by the lawyers in the show. Anyway, lots of detail in there. It was a serious article but also fun and easy to read. And it’s an important topic because the issue has a bearing on how we mete out justice. That’s a compelling combination.
I want to share with you an article that I have written that in my eyes also makes a compelling case (please know that there are some who disagree very, very strongly!). It’s called “Buy-and-Hold Is Dangerous.” Does that sound boring? The most exciting stuff is often found hiding behind a boring title (because people do not know about the explosive material that has not thus far been revealed to them).
I ask that you give it two or three paragraphs to see if it pulls you in and then feel free to leave it for other pursuits in the event that it does not. However, if it does pull you in enough to get you reading to the end, you must tell me your reaction. That’s only fair.
Please keep doing the good work that you demonstrated in your fine article.
Rob
It looks like you are sending emails to lots of people, most (or all) of whom do not respond. You don’t need to create a daily post for each of them (unless you have so little new material to put out that you need to do this so you have a daily entry at your blog)
Instead what you should do is once or twice a month do an entry saying “Here is a link to all the begging emails I have sent recently, and have all the emails for a given period in a single page.
The recent emails were sent on December 19th so it looks like you are posting about 1.5 months ahead of when the posts appear. I assume that any comments that you are currently reposting as separate blog entries will appear around the end of March or into April.
The latest blog entry that I have entered is for April 26.
I can see creating some lists of e-mails sent and thereby combining five or six of them into a single blog entry. If I send some where there is not a unique message, I will do it that way. The ones that I have put up so far have unique transmittal messages. Those requires separate blog entries.
You say “you do not need to create a daily post.” I don’t need to do anything. The purpose of the blog is to tell the story of our nation’s shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. That shift is the most important advance in the history of personal finance. So I think it makes sense to document as much of what happened as can possibly be documented.
Say that we were all thinking clearly re these matters. In that event, we never would have seen a single abusive post, right? Shiller helped us all out in a very big by providing to us the missing piece of the investing puzzle. In 1980, we didn’t know how things worked. In 1981, Shiller helped us to snap into place the puzzle piece that we had been missing, that the exercise of price discipline is every bit as important in the stock market as it is in every other market that has ever existed. From 1981 forward, we have known (at least intellectually) how stock investing works in the real world. But we have obviously has a hard time working up the courage to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” So as of today we remain stuck in thus unappealing place with the financial fraud garbage and the prison sentences and failed retirements and so forth.
That’s a story, is it not? It is the most important personal finance story in the history of the United States. So I think it is worth telling the story with a good bit of detail and in a good bit of depth.
You note that most of the people to whom I have sent e-mails have not responded. Why? It’s perfectly normal that a large percentage of people sent unsolicited e-mails would not respond. That much is not surprising. But, that said, the response percentage has been remarkably low. I have had a few responses. But very few. What is going on there?
What is going on there is our problem. We all need to be looking at that one and trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Getting investing right is a high priority issue for each and every one of us. There is not one person among us who doesn’t entertain hopes of someday being able to retire. And, if Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research, the dominant investment strategy gets it precisely backwards. The last 38 years of peer-reviewed research shows that the most important thing in stock investing is to always, always, always practice price discipline (long-term timing). The Buy-and-Holders assure us relentlessly that there is no need to practice long-term timing, that it might even be a bad idea to do so. Huh? What the f?
When I send these e-mails, I am attempting to start conversations with people affected by this massive act of financial fraud. I am happy to respond to any questions that they put to me. Yet most do not ask questions. That’s the problem that we all face. If we want to get this investing thing right, we are going to need to put a little effort into it. We are going to need to feel a little bit of motivation to do better than how we have been doing for that past 17 years. No?
Now —
I believe that we will feel more motivated in the days following the next price crash. If Shiller is right in what he says about stock investing (I believe that he is), it is investor emotion that has pushed stock prices up to where they reside today. People like the feeling that comes from voting themselves raises. They feel that their financial futures are more secure than they really are. They don’t like being told that, to know the true value of their portfolios, they need to divide by two. I believe that the positive feelings that people have for Buy-and-Hold today will turn into negative feelings when they have lost a large percentage of their retirement money. Then people will become more interested in learning what the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us and we will all be off to the races.
In the days following the next price crash, we are all going to need to come to terms with what as a society we have done to ourselves. It’s my job to pull us all together. I think that having a record of these e-mails can help. Not in a huge way. I don’t say that they are life-and-death things. I see them as small steps forward, little ways of showing that, even during the days in which you Goons were ruthlessly smashing down efforts to inform millions of middle-class investors of the realities, there were people who continued to do positive things in a brave and kind and intelligent way. Good for me, you know? And good for the people who respond to the e-mails. And good for the people who perhaps don’t quite work up the courage to respond but who read at least a portion of the article and who give it some thought and who thereby put themselves in a position where they can get up to speed re what has been done to them in the days following the next price crash more quickly than otherwise would have been the case.
There was a time when I was posting daily at the Bogleheads Forum (then called Vanguard Diehards). Every time I responded to an honest question from one of my fellow community members seeking to come to a better understanding of the realities, one of you Goons would disrupt the thread with your smelly garbage tactics. I had people telling me that I was wasting my time, that there was no way to get the published rules of the site enforced in a reasonable way and that I should just give up. Well, it was those posts that so impressed Wade Pfau that he contacted me and asked me if I would be willing to work with him to develop research showing the superiority of Valuation-Informed Indexing over Buy-and-Hold. That led to our publication of the most important research published in this field in the past 30 years. So responding to those community members requests paid off big time.
That’s how I think writing these e-mails will pay off down the line. I might get a response rate of less than 1 percent. But among the tiny number of responses there might be one that leads to publication of an article at an internet site that details the entire 17-year cover-up and that causes a number of you Goons to be sent to prison. That would change the world. Once even a single prison term has been announced, I have a funny feeling that every site owner who has permitted your Goon tactics is going to come clean within 24 hours and our entire nation will enjoy an amazing learning experience in the following days. Like things are supposed to go in this great country of ours, like things would have gone at the old Motley Fool board starting on the morning of May 13, 2002, if only the site administrator there had had the courage to enforce the site’s published rules.
It’s people who will save us, Anonymous. People are the only ones who can do it. So, if we want to be saved, we are going to have to get about the business of contacting some people and of informing them re what has gone down. I would prefer to do it in a more efficient way. Take away the criminally abusive stuff and we could just tell people what they want to know at every discussion board and blog on the internet. You Goons obviously don’t like that idea and it is an unfortunate reality that you have the temporary power to block good things from happening. What to do, what to do?
Wade Pfau went with the cynical answer to that question. He saw that no one was going to help him if you Goons tried to get him fired from his job and decided that the thing to do was to appease you, the people of the United States be darned. I don’t feel comfortable taking that path. I prefer contacting a small number of the millions who need accurate and honest information re how stock investing works in the real world and responding to any questions they happen to have.
It’s a small thing. I get that. I accept that. But I would prefer to do a small positive thing than a big negative thing. What is my alternative? Should I appease you Goons by agreeing not to mention the error in the Greaney retirement study and thereby sell out my fellow community members so that I can turn a quick buck? I did that for three years from May 1999 through May 2002. I am ashamed of myself for not having had the courage to speak up at that time. So no more, you know? Once I worked up the courage to point out that his study lacks a valuation adjustment, there was no turning back.
I think that these efforts will pay off big time. But, if I never receive another response to an e-mail. I would rather keep doing what I am doing than go back to pretending that I believe that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies get the numbers right. A failed retirement is a serious life setback. So not this boy, you know?
Sending the e-mails is a small positive, It makes me feel a lot better about myself for me to put my energies to achieving small positives than it would make me feel to appease you Goons with my dishonesty and become able to turn a quick buck that way. I think that I will turn lots of bucks sticking with the honest posting thing. But, if not, I at least will be able to live with myself for doing what I was able to do given the circumstances that apply. That’s something. Compared to the only alternative open to me, that’s a lot.
I hope that that helps a tiny bit.
Small Positives Rob
You are sending random emails to random people that are likely disinterested at best. In short, your efforts are a waste of time.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all good things, in any event. I hope that that helps at least a tiny bit.
Please take good care, old friend.
Time-Wasting Rob
It is like my wife sending you emails in knitting scarves. I doubt you would consider the email of critical importance.
Lots of people have a great interest in knitting, But there are also lots of people who do not.
There is virtually no one who is not interested in seeing his or her retirement succeed.
The problem we face is that lots of people don’t appreciate the danger that the continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies poses to their retirements. It’s the Bernie Madoff effect. I was at a site where people were discussing the Madoff fraud shortly after it had been exposed. One guy posted that there certainly had been no fraud as he had made millions by investing in the Madoff fund. People can be tricked into thinking that a Get Rich Quick scheme is not fraudulent for so long as the dollar bills are there. When the dollar bills disappear, people get very pissed off because of the trick that has been played on them. But it is of course too late at that time to take action to get the money back. It never existed in the first place.
It’s all going to come down to how people react when their retirement accounts are wiped out. I believe that they will want to know what happened and how to make sure that it never happens again. I am going to tell them that we need to open every investing site on the internet to honest posting re the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field so that the Wall Street Con Men will always get called out when they try to push theit smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
Rob