” Shiller’s Work, As Amazing As It Is, Does Us No Good, If We Do Not Talk About It At Every Site on the Internet. We Need to Talk About It to Understand It and to Put It to Good Use.”

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:

There are two problems with that.

1. With your timing scheme, you wasted the last two decades on the sidelines, spending down your nest egg, forcing you back to work. It’s too late for any crash to save you now as you have little to nothing to put back in the market (timing failure).

2. After all your childish talk about goons, made up death threats, made up job threats, references to jury trials, prison threats, dreams of people paying you $500 million settlements, etc., I don’t think anyone has even the slightest interest in revisiting all those delusional rantings.

I disagree with all of that, Sammy.

I am a personal finance journalist. That’s how I make my living. Our inability as a society to make the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest personal finance story in our nation’s history. So naturally I am going to work it as hard as I can and for as long as I can. And I will of course be rewarded for my efforts once we decide as a society to launch the national discussion that in an ideal world would have been launched in 1981, when Shiller published his research showing that the market is efficient and that there therefore is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold (price indifferent) strategy could ever work for even a single long-term investor.

I have seen two sorts of reactions to my work over the past 18 years. I have seen intensely positive reactions from a good number of people. Wade Pfau wrote me to ask if I would work with him on research proving the validity of my ideas and then concluded after 16 months of work and the exchange of scores of e-mails that “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” That’s a pretty darn positive reaction.

And there have of course been the intensely negative reactions, the death threats, the demands for unjustified board bannings, the thousands of acts of defamation, the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. That stuff has obviously hurt me as it has hurt all of us. But that stuff does not tell me that I should agree to keep my mouth shut to appease you Goons. It tells me just the opposite, that I should insist on my right to post honestly at every site on the internet. If all of us who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research had been insisting on our right to post honestly going back to 1981, we would as a society have solved this problem a long time ago and we would all be living better lives today.

I am doing the most important work that a personal finance journalist could ever do and I am proud of the many successes that I have enjoyed over the past 18 years. We know intellectually how stock investing works today. Shiller provided a huge piece of the puzzle with his Nobel-prize-winning research. But what good has Shiller’s work done us? Today CAPE level is one of the highest ever seen in history. Shiller’s work, as amazing as it is, does us no good, if we do not talk about it at every site on the internet. We need to talk about it to understand it and to put it to good use.

Learning how stock investing works in theory is one thing. Putting that learning to use on a day-to-day basis to make sure that stock prices never again reach the insane levels that cause us all so much financial pain is something different. I believe that my work will play a big role in getting us there at some point in the not too distant future. Cross your fingers, you know?

I wish you all the best that this life as to offer in any event, Sammy.

Rob