“I Am Commenting on ALL Research. Shiller’s Research DISCREDITS Fama’s Research and All Buy-and-Hold Research. There Was Never Any Research Showing That Long-Term Timing (Price Discipline) Isn’t Always Required. That Was an ASSUMPTION, Not a Finding. Fama Showed That Short-Term Timing Doesn’t Work and the Buy-and-Holders Jumped to the Conclusion That Long-Term Timing Isn’t Required. They Didn’t Check, They Just Assumed. Shiller Was the First to Check.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

All of that is factually incorrect. Wade, and many others, have addressed our comments regarding John Greaney. You can choose not to agree with it, but that doesn’t mean anything other than your disagreement. Secondly, your comments about the 38 years of research is also wrong. You are not commenting on all research. Instead, you are just stating your opinion on a couple comments from 2 people. Third, we have significant amounts of outcome data on buy and hold portfolios that have been successful, yet we have zero outcomes based on VII. Lastly, your claims of criminal activity lack any factual basis. Your claims of death threats and job threats continue to remain unsupported.

What matters is what the members of your jury say when they meet in the days following the next price crash. How many site owners do you think are going to be willing to ban honest posting on safe withdrawal rates after your prison sentence has been announced? I know! I know! The answer is: precisely zero. And, once there is no ban in place, every investor alive in the United States is just going to learn and learn and learn and learn and learn. All of the hundreds of investing insights that we should have been mining for 38 years now will suddenly become available to us within the space of a few months. It will be the most exciting time for investors in the history of our nation. Are you joking?

I am commenting on ALL research. Shiller’s research DISCREDITS Fama’s research and all Buy-and-Hold research. The core idea in all Buy-and-Hold research is that the market is efficient, that price changes are caused by a rational assessment of economic developments. Shiller showed that that is not so, that valuations affect long-term returns, that price changes are caused by investor emotion, which is transitory and not real or permanent. There is nothing going the other way. There was never any research showing that long-term timing (price discipline) isn’t always required. That was an ASSUMPTION, not a finding. Fama showed that short-term timing doesn’t work and the Buy-and-Holders jumped to the conclusion that long-term timing isn’t required. They didn’t check, they just assumed. Shiller was the first to check and he showed that valuations affect long-term returns (which cannot possibly be so if the Buy-and-Hold assumption is valid). And everyone who has ever checked this in the 38 years since has found the same thing.

We should open up every site on the internet to honest posting and get the word out re the dangers of Buy-and-Hold to every investor alive on the planet. That’s Rob Bennett’s sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.

I wish you all good things, dear friend.

Opinion Holding Rob