I’ve posted Entry #454 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Risk Is Not Volatility, Risk Is Not Knowing What Causes Volatility.
Juicy Excerpt: Strangely, however, we cannot say that Shiller has in a practical sense done much to reduce stock investing risk. If stocks are more risky when stocks are priced high (which is what Shiller showed), there has never been a time in U.S. history when stocks have been more risky than than have become during the post-Shiller era (from 1981 forward). There have been two huge changes in the stock investing world in the past four decades. In an intellectual sense, most of the risk of the asset class has been eliminated. And in a real-world sense, stocks have become much more risky.
Why do you have a comments section? You really aren’t interested in a real discussion. You never give any serious consideration of anyone else’s comments and you even block the majority of comments. When you do allow comments, it is only so you can respond with the same lines you have used for the last 2 decades. You might as well just totally shut down the comments section as it serves no real purpose.
I want feedback.
I’d like to have other Valuation-Informed Indexers posting here. Just because you believe that valuations affect long-term returns doesn’t mean that you know all there is to know about how stock investing works. We should all be talking things over with each other. That’s how we deepen our understanding and identify weak points in our understanding.
I’d like to have lots of Normals posting here. I want to know why people who have doubts about the merit of the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research have those doubts and I want to learn how to address those doubts effectively so that I can persuade millions to join the research-based investment advice revolution.
The only ones that post here even a tiny bit regularly are you Goons. You Goon are a bit of a drag at times, to be sure. But I cannot say that I have not learned important things from you from time to time. So I am reluctant to shut you down. I put up with the ugly stuff because I want to mine the good stuff, which really is there, buried deep down inside. The full truth is that buried deep down inside every Goon is a human who longs to know how to invest effectively for the long term as much as all the rest of us. I try to keep my focus on the good stuff that you bring to the table to the extent that that is possible and to tune out the boring, nasty, arrogant, foolish stuff.
Does that help a little bit?
Comment-Permitting (and Encouraging!) Rob
“I want feedback.”
No you don’t. You just want to keep pushing your points.
Here is the bottom line. You don’t consider others opinions. You twist everything to suit a view. You call people names and threaten them.
This is my last post, so now you get to sit around with a permanently empty comments section, a website that has little to no traffic/visibility and exists to only help you cope with your poor decisions.
Good luck. You need it.
“I want feedback.”
No you don’t. You just want to keep pushing your points.
You’re wrong, Anonymous.
I want both. I want feedback. AND I want to post honestly re my views on how stock investing works (or, as you put it, I want to push my points).
The two work together. I want feedback so that I can inform my thinking and challenge my current beliefs. Now — if I agree to post dishonestly (to push YOUR points because I am afraid of what you will do to me if I post honestly re my own views) then all of the informing stuff serves no good purpose. Say that I work so hard at listening to feedback that I become the best informed person in the world but that I agree to post dishonestly because I fear what you will do to me if I say something other than what you believe. Are my posts helpful? I say “no.” I say that my posts would be exceedingly unhelpful in those circumstances.
The whole discussion-board thing works ONLY if all community members feel 100 percent comfortable posting their sincere views. That’s why we have laws against financial fraud. We recognize as a society how dangerous your intimidation tactics are. So we adopted laws letting people know that we would send them to prison if they engaged in that sort of behavior. Good for us, you know?
I only wish that we had all been enforcing those laws going back to the morning of May 13, 2002. Then we would not have suffered that economic crisis in 2008 (we would have suffered a recession but things would not have gotten as out of control as they did) and we wouldn’t be looking forward to a follow-up in the next year or two or three. And you Goons wouldn’t be looking forward to long prison sentences. And the Motley Fool’s Retire Early board would today be the most successful investing board on the internet instead of a shell of what it once was.
Having those laws is a solid first step. But we need to ENFORCE those laws to get the job done.
My sincere take.
Point-Pushing Rob
Here is the bottom line. You don’t consider others opinions. You twist everything to suit a view. You call people names and threaten them.
This is my last post, so now you get to sit around with a permanently empty comments section, a website that has little to no traffic/visibility and exists to only help you cope with your poor decisions.
Good luck. You need it.
Okay, Anonymous.
I’ll miss the part of you that sometimes puts forward helpful words (but obviously not the other part).
And I sincerely wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.
Hang in there, man.
Name-Calling, Prison-Sentence-Threatening Rob