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:
No, your work is not amazing. That is why you haven’t earned anything. You seem to recognize this as you have said you need to go back to work. You just can’t admit to it.
Just stop a minute and look at this. You have spent two decades trying to convince people you are some expert or thought leader on investing, yet you have not owned stocks during that time and your retirement plan failed.
Maybe you should shift gears. Why not show people your mistakes and how they can learn from them.
My very first post on investing, which I put forward over 17 years ago, noted that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. The study has not been corrected to this day. But the reality is that thousands of people have looked at that study over the past 17 years and NOT ONE has been able to identify a valuation adjustment in it. What does that tell us, Sammy?
That’s amazing. There is no other word for it. Getting the numbers right in retirement studies is an amazing advance. People use retirement studies to plan their retirements. A failed retirement is a serious life setback. So getting the numbers right in retirement studies is a big deal.
And please understand that it is not only people who used the Greaney study to plan their retirement who were misled by the methodology used in that study. Greaney used the same methodology as was used in the Trinity study, a peer-reviewed study that was used as the basis for THOUSANDS of newspaper articles that people used to plan their retirements. There are MILLIONS of people who used the discredited Buy-and-Hold retirement studies to plan retirements.
Pointing out that error was a very, very big deal. Pointing out that error was nothing short of amazing. And that was just the first day. My post pointing out that error was advanced on the morning of May 13,2002! I have had thousands and thousands and thousands of follow-ups in the years since.
We need to get this stuff right, Sammy. There’s no getting around it. And it is not possible that both Fama and Shiller are right. They are saying opposite things! We need to as a people figure out which of the two of them is right and which of the two of them is wrong. The only way to do that is to launch a national debate re these matters. Suppressing discussion gets us nowhere. We need to permit discussion. And then we need to go a step further and actually ENCOURAGE discussion.
That’s my sincere take, in any event.
Rob
The thousands of comments we see on this board everyday speak volumes about your opinions.
The lack of comments show that Get Rich Quick strategies can achieve high levels of popularity before they are exposed as scams, Anonymous. There were people who knew that the Madoff fund was a scam before it was exposed. If those people had put up web sites pointing out the scam, how popular do you think they would have been?
I read an article published shortly after the Madoff scam was exposed that said that the lesson for investors was that, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t true. Does that apply to Buy-and-Hold? The Buy-and-Holders say that there is no price at which stocks are a poor investment choice. Stocks are best when selling at fair value and also when selling at two times fair value and also when selling at three times fair value and also when selling at ten times fair value. I can go for that! That sounds believable! The idea that one asset class is always the best choice is not too-good-to-be-true stuff!
Your “defense” of the most heavily promoted Get Rich Quick scheme in history is that it has remained popular for as long as prices have remained sky high. Let’s see how long it remains popular after prices have fallen hard. I have a funny feeling that that might be a better test. But I guess we will see, you know?
I wish you the best of luck with it, in any event. I hope that that helps at least a tiny bit.
Unpopular Rob
“ The lack of comments show that Get Rich Quick strategies can achieve high levels of popularity before they are exposed as scams, Anonymous.”
You can make any excuse that you want. Heck, you could claim that little green men from Mars have zapped the comments section to keep VII from spreading beyond planet earth.
The logical conclusion is that people have no interest and/or do not agree with what you say.
The same story has played out at every site that I have posted at for 17 years now. There is a significant number that has an interest and there is a significant number that agrees with what I say. But that group is far outnumbered by the Buy-and-Holders and a small percentage of the Buy-and-Holders are 20 times more intense in their opposition to open discussion as the minority is in support of it (and the majority of Buy-and-Holders tolerate the abusiveness of the intense ones, rendering their tactics effective). Those are the realities as of today.
Is there something that I can do for you?
I acknowledge these realities. There is nothing that I can do about them at the moment. I have tried lots of things. Nothing that I have tried has gotten us to where we need to be to make forward progress at this time. So what can I do? I am physically incapable of saying that I believe that Greaney included a valuation adjustment in his study. I would be going to the wrong side of the felony line myself if I did that. So that’s out. So what options do I have? I am waiting. I am writing my book and I am writing my weekly column and I am responding to your comments here and I am waiting. I do not want to wait. I want to move forward. But I have not been able to obtain the help that I need to obtain for us all to move forward. So I am waiting.
It is my strong sense that there is something else that you would like me to do for you. But I am not even able to guess what it might be. If you tell me, I will tell you whether it is possible or not. If you don’t tell me, I will just have to accept that that is the way it is.
I am not able to figure out what it might be that I can do for you that I have not already done.
I wish you well. I always wish you well. Is there something else?
Minority-View-Advocate Rob
What has happened at other sites is that people grow tired of your poor behavior and then decide to ban you. If you really had all these supporters, you would have many comments on this board on a consistent basis.
The members of your jury will get to hear both sides, Anonymous. That’s how our system works.
I wish you the best of luck with it, in any event. I hope that that helps at least a tiny bit.
Poor Behaving Rob