Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Sure, we can open every investing board to you, Rob. Here is what you have to do. 1) Stick to the topic instead of hijacking a thread. 2) Keep your responses short and to the point, instead of long diatribes 3) Answer questions directly, instead of evading or changing the subject 4) provide 3rd party evidence to support your claims (such as your unsubstantiated claims of job threats and death threats).
Seems reasonable, correct?
I am 100 percent happy to have the same rules that apply to Buy-and-Holders apply to Valuation-Informed Indexers.
I always stick to the topic being addressed in a thread to which I post. But, because the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research findings have not been widely explored, simple statements that I make describing how stock investing works if the last 37 years of peer-review research in this field is legitimate research cause nuclear explosions among some Buy-and-Holders and it is those nuclear explosions that highjack threads.
I don’t want to see any thread highjackings. I want us all to enjoy learning experiences by sharing our sincere takes with each other. When I put my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002, to the Motley Fool board, there were hundreds of community members who described the discussion as the most exciting and helpful one that they had ever seen at that board. So we know that there is a huge interest in exploration of these matters.
But a number of Goon posters responded to that thread and hundreds of follow-up threads started by many different community members with death threats and other insanely abusive thread-hijacking tactics. It is you Goons who want the threads discussing Valuation-Informed Indexing hijacked. The published rules of every site prohibit the tactics that you have employed. For the majority of community members who want to be able to discuss these matters in civil and reasoned discussions, we need to have enough community members willing to stick their necks out and demand that the site owners take effective action against you Goons when you advance your insanely abusive thread-highjacking tactics. Are you willing to help out, Anonymous?
It is definitely my preference to keep my posts short when I am able to give effective responses to intelligent and legitimate questions with short posts. But you Goons have been spreading a lot of confusion re these matters for many years now. Many investors have heard the phrase “timing never works” so many times now that they assume that there must be some truth to it. This is of course false. Shiller showed in 1981 that valuations affect long-term returns. If that is so, then stock investing risk is not static but variable (changing with valuation changes). If stock investing risk grows larger when stock valuations go higher, then investors seeking to keep their risk profiles roughly constant over time MUST adjust their stock allocation in response to dramatic valuation shifts. That is, market timing is MANDATORY for investors seeking long-term investing success.
The confusion on this point stems from a failure on the part of our Wall Street Con Men friends to emphasize the critically important distinction between short-term timing (which really does not work) and long-term timing (which always works and which is mandatory for investors seeking to keep their risk profile roughly constant over time). When you Goons put forward thousands of posts that fail to note the critically important distinction between short-term timing (bad) and long-term timing (very, very, very good — it is impossible to exercise price discipline when buying stock without practicing long-term timing), you cause confusion over what Shiller’s research says and I am not able to respond to questions from my fellow community members effectively without spelling out the distinction over and over again, which of course makes my posts longer than I would like them to be or than they would need to be if only you Goons were willing to participate in the discussions we all want and need to have in a less disruptive manner.
I of course always answer questions as directly as possible and I of course never aim to change the subject. It is of course my intent to continue answering questions as directly as possible and to continue to avoid ever changing the subject.
I am of course happy to provide a mountain of evidence showing how your criminally abusive behavior has held up progress in our community discussions at a large number of boards for 17 years now. I know that the vast majority of community members finds the discussion of death threats and threats of career destruction and board bannings and financial fraud and prison sentences extremely unpleasant. I obviously share that point of view. So I would be grateful if you Goons would just knock off the funny business 100 percent by the close of business today.
Make sense?
Rob
Anonymous says
Are you a victim?
Rob says
I am.
But so are you, Anonymous. You weren’t thinking a number of years back “Oh, I know what I’ll do, I’ll set things up so that I will be going to prison in the days following the next price crash.”
And so is everyone alive on the planet today. Everyone has to put money aside for retirement. No one can do it as effectively for so long as a Ban on Honest Posting on the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research remains in place. Even people who are too poor ever to own stocks are victims. If Shiller is right that valuations affect long-term returns (I believe that he is), then it was the relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies that was the primary cause of the 2008 economic crisis. Millions of poor people lost their jobs in that crisis. Those people are all victims of this massive act of financial fraud, even though they may never buy a single share of stock.
All of my blogger friends are victims. They would all love to be hosting exciting debates on the new research and they do not feel safe doing so because they have seen what you Goons do to people who dare to post honestly re these matters.
All Buy-and-Holders are victims. The Buy-and-Holders got lots of things right. In an ideal world, they would go down in history as heroes. But instead they are going to go down in history for the role that their mistake played in causing the worst economic and political crisis in our nation’s history. Huh? What the f? They are victims.
Learning how stock investing works is good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. Anything that stops that learning experience from moving forward makes victims of each and every one of us.
I’m a victim. I’m at least speaking up about it, you know? I’m not keeping quiet about the bad stuff. At least I can say that I stood up for myself and for my fellow community members and for my country and even for my Goon friends rather than just being a victim who lets the bad stuff continue without doing anything to bring it to a full and complete stop.
No apologies, you know?
My best wishes to you, fellow victim.
Rob