Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Just hilarious. First of all, you are not listed as an author. Secondly, your claim as to this being the most important piece of research is plain silly.
Here is a reality break for you. You are just one of millions of people that has an opinion as to what you think is important. Your opinion is no more important than anyone else’s opinion. Secondly, all of this internet banter is just social banter for most people. In your case, you somehow think you are on some critical mission of utmost importance, when in fact, you are somewhere at the level of an internet troll. In the best case, you have provided a little bit of entertainment for those that like to play “poke the troll”. At worst, all of this has been one big colossal waste of time, that has caused suffering for your family members.
Please attempt to join the normal world.
I of course agree that I am one of millions of people who have an opinion. All opinions need to be heard and the fact that I happen to hold my opinion does not make it of more importance than any other opinion. But, yes, I do believe that I am on a critical mission of utmost importance. It’s not my opinion alone that makes that so. It is the REACTION to my opinion that makes that so. The reaction is telling us something very, very, very important.
The word that describes the reaction is “defensive.” Insanely defensive. Buy-and-Holders do not feel comfortable hearing their beliefs about how stock investing works challenged by discussion of the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That’s scary. That means that Buy-and-Holders LACK CONFIDENCE in Buy-and-Hold. They follow it. They have enough confidence to follow the strategy. But they are not able to engage in civil and reasoned discussion of the strategy. That’s very, very, very scary. That means that Shiller is right, that today’s stock prices are rooted in emotion rather than in something real.
That’s a very big deal. I became a Buy-and-Holder myself once upon a time because I believed that it was a strategy rooted in science. I know that there are millions of people who did as I did. They heard the claims that Buy-and-Hold is rooted in science and they found appeal in the idea of following an investment strategy rooted in science and so they went with Buy-and-Hold. But it turns out that their strategy is NOT rooted in science. It is rooted in a Get Rich Quick emotion, It is the high prices that apply today that make Buy-and-Hold appealing to most Buy-and-Holders. When those high prices disappear, so will the appeal of Buy-and-Hold. That’s why prices always fall hard at the end of a bull/bear cycle. The Get Rich Quick stuff, which is the thing which permitted prices to get so out of hand in the first place, disappears and people just don’t believe anymore, which makes it impossible for the crazy price levels to be sustained.
I agree to a point that many people view internet discussions as “social banter.” That’s why people don’t object strongly enough to the abusiveness of you Goons. But you Goons obviously don’t see it as merely social banter. If you did, you wouldn’t behave as you do. If you did, you would say ” oh, there’s Rob voicing his crazy opinion again” and let it be. If you thought that these discussions were just social banter, you would not feel a need to advance death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. You do those things because you feel very threatened by discussions of Shiller’s research and by how many people are persuaded by what is said in those discussions. The Buy-and-Hold stuff might be social banter to you. But the Valuation-Informed Indexing stuff is life and death to you. You haven’t been able to address it in a calm matter one time in 17 years.
I am not listed as the author of the paper. But Wade said many times that he learned about all of the ideas explored in the paper from me. How is that possible? He holds a Ph.D. in Economics .He should have been taught these ideas in all of his courses. He had to learn them from me. That tells us something very important. It tells us that these ideas have not until today received the attention that they deserve. If Shiller’s research is legitimate (I believe that it is), then we need to change all of the course material that leads to the awarding of a Ph.D. in economics. Shiller “revolutionized” (his word) the field. We need to change the course work to reflect that reality. And we need to feature the paper that Wade and I wrote together on the front page of the New York Times. That’s how word spreads. That’s how as a society we go about the business of teaching the world the newly discovered realities.
If the ideas are legitimate, they will prevail. It appears to me that it is going to take a devastating price crash that is going to destroy millions of lives for it to happen. That breaks my heart. But it appears to me after 17 years of this that that really is the case. If that’s the story, then that’s the story. We still need to open every site on the internet to honest posting re the last 38 years of research. People will need to come to terms with what Buy-and-Hold has done to them in the days following the crash. My work — which is informed by the work of thousands of other good and smart people — will help them to do so. What we all need to do is to avoid emotionalism when buying stocks. There is nothing more emotional than death threats and all the rest that the Buy-and-Holders have advanced to stomp out discussion of the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research. I believe that in the days following the next price crash enough people will see that it was a mistake to tolerate the criminal stuff and we will all move forward into a better future. We’ll see, you know?
I don’t think that this has been a waste of tine. I believe that Shiller merited his Nobel prize. I believe that what we have seen is a process that we had to go through as a society to get to the other side of The Big Black Mountain. I have learned something new every day of the past 17 years. Every day. I am always thinking about this stuff and I am always learning. I can state things more clearly today and in more depth than I could on the morning of May 13, 2002, or even than I could last week. And next week I will be able to do the job a little better yet. Shiller’s research is an important story and I am a journalist and journalists tell important stories for a living and there are not enough people telling this one today. So I am going to continue to soldier on. It will be interesting to see how things play out.
I don’t agree with you that I need to tolerate death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs to live in the “normal world.” We have laws prohibiting all that stuff in the normal world that I have lived in for 62 years. We haven’t enforced those laws for 17 years. So it would be fair to say that we have put our normalcy into abeyance because of our addiction to Get Rich Quick investment strategies. But I believe that we will as a society get over our addiction when we see with the next price crash what it has been doing to us and then we will move on. I believe that the normal world is the world in which different people can express different opinions about how stock investing works in civil and reasoned ways and remain friends. I think that the world that created our published posting rules is the normal world and that your Goon tactics are a temporary aberration, as temporary as today’s CAPE level.
We’ll see, you know? I will always think of you as a friend, Anonymous. I hope that, despite the front that you put up, you have learned a thing or two from me over the years. I certainly have no trouble saying that I have learned a whole big bunch more than a thing or two from you.
I don’t think it had been a waste of time. I think that I am doing the most important work being done by anyone alive on the planet today. I think that people need to know how to plan their retirements effectively. People put their life savings at stake when they plan their retirements. It matters. That’s my sincere take, in any event. My personal belief is that it is abnormal to pretend otherwise. I am honored to be doing such important work. I just hope that I am able to live up to the heavy responsibilities that have been placed on my shoulders. I wish it had been someone else, you know? I don’t claim to be smart enough for the job. I do it because everyone else ran away when they were faced with the death threats and all the rest.
I do wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.
Time Wasting Rob
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