“The Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold Urge Is Inherent in Human Nature. Shiller’s Research Shows Us How to Overcome One of the Big Weaknesses of Human Nature By Quantifying the Effect That Irrational Exuberance Has on Stock Pricing and Thereby Empowering Us All to Resist the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold Urge By Engaging in Market Timing.”

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:

And there you go blaming John Greaney and others. Start taking responsibility. Your timing scheme failed. You ruined your own retirement. Stop trying to find a scape goat. You can’t change history. Accept your failures, learn from them and then move on by fixing the mess you got into.

I blame Greaney. But I certainly don’t blame only Greaney. I blame myself (I failed to speak up about the error in Greaney’s retirement study for three years because I was afraid of what the reaction would be). I blame all of us. The Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge is inherent in human nature. Shiller’s research shows us how to overcome one of the big weaknesses of human nature by quantifying the effect that irrational exuberance has on stock pricing and thereby empowering us all to resist the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge by engaging in market timing.

Greaney did not behave well. But Greaney did not do this by himself. It is our collective tolerance of Greaney’s behavior that is the real story. We say what we believe about that behavior when we enact laws against it. But those laws are not self-enforcing. To benefit from Shiller’s amazing Nobel-prize-winning insights, we need to insist on reasonable enforcement of the laws that apply in every field of human endeavor outside of the investment advice field.

Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, you know, Sammy?

My best wishes to you, dear friend.

Rob