Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Contrary to your post, it is not just me saying this. It is the common view. You have been banned by most of the major boards and people have stopped talking to you.
It is painful for people to consider the dangers of Buy-and-Hold, as revealed by the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. Most people hate hearing what I have to say. That much is fair to say. And you are correct to say that I have been banned at every major investing site on the internet and that lots of people who were once friends to me have stopped talking to me. Telling people the realities of stock investing as revealed by the peer-reviewed research in this field is not the quick route to fame and fortune.
People need to hear it all the same. If Shiller is right, we are going to be experiencing another price crash within the next year or two or three. Some people are open enough to these ideas that all they need is to see a few more posts exploring this stuff to become convinced enough to lower their stock allocation and save themselves a lot of pain. Others are not open to that possibility but would benefit from hearing at least a little discussion of these matters so that they will understand better what is happening when the next price crash arrives and brings about a deepening of the economic crisis that began in 2008. There will come a day when people will look at Shiller’s research as a blessing. Most don’t see it that way today. But even those who very much do not see it that way very much need to be exposed to it more than they have been so far. Everyone alive on the planet needs for this debate to be launched. It is a matter of urgent public policy importance.
And you are wrong in suggesting that there have not been hundreds of fine people who have already put their necks on the line and asked that honest posting be permitted. I have had many people, Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers alike, thank me for my contributions. Some work up the courage to do so publicly only once or twice and then retreat for cover because they do not like the idea of seeing the lives of their loved ones threatened. Others say something only to me and plead with me not to let anyone know their views on these matters. I have had investment professionals call me on the phone and talk to me for hours re these ideas because they want to be able to make use of them in advising their clients and then ask me not to tell anyone that we talked. That sort of thing should never happen. The fact that that sort of thing has happened on so many occasions tells a frightening story — we have as a nation advanced our understanding of how stock investing works in amazing ways in the past four decades but criminal behavior on the part of those who advocate the strategy that came first had held us back from learning what we all very much need to know.
There are some who are so intense in their hatred of any consideration of the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research that they have engaged in criminal acts. There is a larger number who personally would never engage in criminal acts but who feels a good bit of sympathy for those who do and offers them encouragement in quiet ways. And there is a still larger number who is generally complacent re these matters and cant figure out what all the shouting is about. And there is a number that is about equal in size to you Goons that would like to see the discussions held but who is only willing to say so once or twice because they are not willing to pay the price that I have paid to make that happen.
The bottom line is that as a nation we need to have the discussions. So we need to figure out as a people how to overcome the Goon problem. We need the participation of the Normals if the discussions are to achieve their full potential and the Normals will not participate until something is done about the criminal behavior. So we will as a people need to work up the courage to insist on prosecution of the criminal stuff.
I believe that that will happen in the days following the next price crash, when the cost of not having the discussions will be concrete and clear to all. I of course wish that the realities were otherwise, but, given what I have been seeing for over 17 years now, I no longer believe that they are. I believe that we are a good people and I believe that we ultimately will do what needs to be done. But for the moment we do not have it in us. I have tried everything that I can think to try and I have not been able to make the good stuff happen on a widespread scale (I have had amazing success in making it happen on a small scale, such as when I worked with Wade Pfau to co-author the most important piece of peer-reviewed research published in this field in the past 30 hears). It horrifies me to think that it is going to take another price crash to bring us all the other side of The Big Black Mountain. But that is what the history of the discussions of the past 17 years tells me is the case.
Watching and Waiting Rob
feed twitter twitter facebook