Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:
Out of hand? Yesterday, for example, I left a post about this subject as to how you are hypocritical by wanting to post what you want on other people’s sites, but don’t do the same on your site. You deleted it. I have tried posting numbers about buy, hold and rebalance returns yet you have deleted those.
In return, you write an article about being polite and then in the comment section you call me a goon and try justifying your choice to ban me. You are your own worst enemy.
Please go to Greaney’s site and take a look at his retirement study, Sammy. I pointed out on the morning of May 13, 2002, that it lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. It still lacks that today. 17 years have passed. The study has not been corrected. It just sits there, uncorrected, hurting people who are taken in by it.
That’s the problem. There’s nothing that I can do as one person to fix it and there’s nothing that you can do as one person to fix it. This is something that we need to address AS A NATION. The ordinary procedure would be that, Shiller would publish his research showing that valuations affect long-term returns in a peer-reviewed journal and a national debate exploring its implications would be launched. And we would all learn and learn and learn and learn and learn. And we would all be better off from that point forward. We would all be living better lives from that point forward.
The ordinary procedures obviously did not apply in this particular case. The research was published, Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize in recognition of his amazing advance. But the studies rooted in the old understanding were not corrected (the astounding reality is that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies did not even exist on the day when Shiller published his breakthrough research — the Trinity study and all the studies that followed from it came later — the Trinity study was granted peer review even though its methodology conflicted with the findings in Shiller’s peer-reviewed studies). So here we are.
We live in a world in which there are retirement studies floating around that purport to be peer-reviewed but which use methodologies that are in direct conflict with earlier peer-reviewed research. If Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate, those studies are likely going to cause millions of failed retirements down the road a bit. But they remain uncorrected even though the errors are public knowledge. The authors of the studies are not interested in correcting them and the people of the United States are not interested in pressing them to make corrections. We have all taken up residence in the Twilight Zone.
Do you have any bright ideas as to how we might proceed? My bright idea is that we all work together to launch the national debate re the many, far-reaching implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research. If you have something better in mind, I’d like to hear it.
If your something better is that I just keep quiet about the errors, no thanks. I did that for three years. I was afraid of what Greaney would do to me if I spoke up. I felt bad about myself. A lot of the people who were being taken in by his study were friends of mine. So I worked up the courage to do what had to be done. I’ve learned a lot about how stock investing works in the 17 years since. And I have done all that I can to share what I have learned with lots of others. I have faced a lot of flak, to be sure. But it feels healthier facing flak than it did living in fear.
I wish you all good things, Sammy. That much I can do without feeling bad about myself. So that much I do. I cannot keep quiet about the errors in the studies without feeling bad about myself. So that I do not do.
Rob
feed twitter twitter facebook