Set forth below is the text of several comments that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
If another 20 years passes and you don’t get your story in The New York Times and you don’t see a dime of the $500 million payout, will you come to the conclusion that you wasted your time?
I think that another 20 years would just about do it, Anonymous. I am a stubborn cuss. But a person struggling to make his way through this mixed-up world of ours has to strive to be at least a tiny bit realistic.
No?
Flexible Rob
Can you afford to wait that long?
My primary project today is writing the book Investing for Humans: How to Get What Works on Paper to Work in Real Life. I expect to finish that by the end of the year. At that time, my intent is to seek employment in the corporate world. I will continue to write my weekly column and to respond to blog comments and to contact other sites at nights and on weekends. I can continue doing that indefinitely even if there is not money coming in from the investing work.
Rob
Job market is great right now. Why not go back to the corporate world now while things are good versus risking a potential down market in the future?
My most valuable asset is the 17 years of material that I house here at the site that tells the story of what the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world. My top priority is to protect and develop that asset. Finishing the book is a huge advance in that area. So that needs to come first.
Rob
What kind of job will you look for?
I’ve been out of the job market for a long time. I cannot be super choosy. I will be looking for editing jobs or low level jobs in the legal field.
Rob
You can go get a job now, to help avoid your own failure and finish your book during nights and weekends.
That’s not my intent. I have a lot riding on getting this story out and I believe that there’s going to be a big opportunity to get people to listen in the days following the next price crash, when millions of people will be hurting and looking for explanations. So I don’t want to take any chances on not having the book ready to go when the next crash comes. And of course I don’t know when that is going to be. So my aim is just to get it all down in a way that satisfies my high standards and then move on to the job thing.
It’s possible that I could finish the book prior to the end of the year. In that event I could seek employment a few months sooner. However, I don’t want to count on that. Things have been going well. But my experience with big projects is that unexpected obstacles always come into play before you get to the finish line.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.
Rob
“My most valuable asset is the 17 years of material that I house here at the site that tells the story of what the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world. My top priority is to protect and develop that asset. Finishing the book is a huge advance in that area. So that needs to come first.”
It actually has no value unless someone is willing to pay you for it. At this point, your most valuable asset is your ability to work.
Thousands of people have offered effusive praise for my work. When I first began doing this work, I never imagined that I could achieve even one-fiftieth of the impact that I have achieved. If I achieved this much praise just by putting the ideas before a small number of people on the internet, it is hard even to estimate how much money I could earn when the general population learns about them, as it will in the days following the next price crash, when you Goons will be placed in prison cells and every discussion board and blog on the internet will be opened to honest posting on safe withdrawl rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.
I think it would be fair to say that we never would have seen a single abusive post or a single criminal act had you Goons not seen the intense enthusiasm that about 10 percent of the various board communities showed for these ideas. 10 percent of the investing population is millions of people. And there is no one alive on Planet Earth today who has developed these ideas to the extent that I have. There is no one in an even remotely close second place.
Are you joking?
Rob
“Thousands of people have offered effusive praise for my work. ”
How much have those “thousands” paid you for your work?
How many of those thousands are posting here on your board to show they support you?
I have not earned one dime from this work in seventeen years.
And not one of the thousands who have expressed interest in the work is posting here today.
You’ve got me re those two, Anonymous.
I still say that your behavior demonstrates that you see the huge potential for me to make boatloads of money promoting the first true research-based model for understanding how stock investing works. You have put yourself at great risk of going to prison for a long time in the days following the next price crash. That’s strange, strange, strange behavior. My behavior of sticking at this for so long is unusual. But my behavior has not been one-fiftieth as strange as yours. I have hurt myself financially for 17 years with the hope of receiving a huge payout when the crash arrives. You have put yourself at grave risk of going to prison for the remaining years of your life. There’s no comparison.
I don’t think that you believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing. I believe that your skepticism is genuine. But you obviously don’t believe that all investors who learn about these ideas share your level of skepticism. If you believed that, you would just let me speak and enjoy watching them lose interest and walk away. Never one time have you considered doing such a thing. You behave the way you do because you have seen the same thing that I have seen — intense interest in a better way to invest on the part of about 10 percent of the investing population, which is millions of people. You can’t stand the thought of me making the millions that you believe that I will make if you permit the laws of the United States to rein in your behavior.
Well, I intend to make those millions anyway. And I intend to encourage hundreds of others to follow my lead and earn their own big paydays developing and promoting the first true research-based strategy. A win/win/win/win/win, if I ever heard of one.
We’ll see how it plays out, you know? I wish it hadn’t gone this way. I wish that you weren’t going to prison and I wish that my efforts to turn a buck with this stuff had not been delayed for 17 years and I wish that the people of the United States were not likely to see a 50 percent drop in stock prices over the course of the next year or two or three. I played the cards that I was dealt. That’s all that any of us can do.
But I certainly believe that I have been dealt more good cards than bad ones. There are some bad ones that have come my way. I have seen some very, very, very bad cards. The way it is. But I have also seen some very, very, very exciting and encouraging and life-affirming and enriching (in all senses of the word) cards. Good for me, you know? I have zero intention of throwing those cards back. It’s knowing that those cards remain in my hand that keeps me from breaking into tears when I think about all the pain that the bad cards that I have been dealt have caused me.
One has to take the bad with the good, no? Things become cliches for a reason.
If there is ever anything that I can do to help you out a bit, please let me know. I will be there. Holding grudges is bad karma, in my book. I don’t go for that sort of thing.
My best wishes.
Rob
I am just making rational comments and asking honest questions. Your responses indicate that you are the one with behavior issues. But then again, you are already know that as your behavior issues resulted in your wide spread banning.
Okay.
Rob