Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent to the owner of the Love Breeds Accountability site on January 28, 2020:
Hello:
I am an INFJ too. My experience is that it is a superpower in the right circumstances and can get you into a lot of trouble in others.
I would like to share with you an article that I wrote about the widespread promotion of the Buy-and-Hold investment strategy. I believe that it was the widespread belief that market timing is not required that served as the primary cause of the 2008 economic crisis and that may bring on a new economic (and political) crisis in not too long a time. Here is a link:
[Link provided here]
I ask that you read two or three paragraphs and see if it pulls you in. In the event that it does, please let me know and we can discuss possibilities.
Please take good care.
Rob
Why do you post these if you don’t get a response?
Because I believe that we all should be doing everything in our power to open every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. Our retirement accounts matter. We all should be doing everything we can to protect them. Even if you are a Buy-and-Holder (most of us are), you should want to hear both sides of the story, just in case. We permit honest posting in every field of endeavor other than the investment advice field. I think we should do it in the investment advice field.
It would be hypocritical if I asked others to take action but I never took action myself, would it not?
The fact that I rarely get responses shows how important it is to send out these e-mails. If I got responses, I wouldn’t need to send out e-mails.If I was getting responses, there would be no problem. we could just follow the normal procedure of permitting all to post their honest views. The reason why I do not get responses is that we all feel so had about what we have done to ourselves, we don’t want to face it. Is it going to be any easier to face after the refusal to look at the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research extends another week or another month or another year? It sure does not seem so to me, Anonymous.
The way in which things are handled in the investment advice field runs counter to our most basic cultural norms. We all need to keep chipping away at that wall of fear of Shiller’s research findings. We are a good people. We will get to where we need to go sooner or later. We just need to keep at it. Those of us in the 10 percent who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research need to keep making the case, NOT to give in to the brutal abusiveness of you Goons. Each time one of us gives in, it makes you Goons stronger. We want the American people to win this one, not to lose it.
I keep sending the e-mails because I rarely get responses. If I got lots of responses, we would know that the problem is gone and we could all just post our honest views at every site with no fear of what the Buy-and-Holders would do to us in response. That’s the normal procedure. That’s what we would all be trying to achieve, if we all were thinking clearly.
I hope that that helps at least a tiny bit.
E-Mail Sending Rob
Oh no. William Bernstein, just like Robert Shiller, says Rob Bennett is wrong.
https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/04/words-of-wisdom-from-william-bernstein/
Dr. Bernstein says that you can’t time the market and that you should be fine with any crash, including the current situation as stock will typically do fine in 5-10 years. That is consistent with Buy and Hold.
Bill Bernstein said that the safe withdrawal rate at the top of the bubble was 2 percent. Was he right then?
I don’t even a tiny bit agree that people should be fine with crashes. Crashes are like floods and hurricanes. They hurt people in very, very serious ways. We should all be working hard to prevent price crashes. Opening the internet to honest posting re the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research would end price crashes overnight. You can’t have price crashes without having insane levels of overvaluation. And you can’t have insane levels of overvaluation if you encourage people to keep their risk level constant by engaging in market timing. Stock prices are self-regulating so long as investors are permitted to learn what they need to know to act in their self-interest.
Please feel free to quote me re this issue all over the internet.
My best and warmest wishes to you (and to Bill Bernstein too, who got a lot of stuff right along with the stuff he got wrong).
Market Timing (Not Buy-and-Holding) Bill Bernstein Fan Rob
William Bernstein does not time the market and says Rob Bennett is wrong.
If you dropped all the criminal stuff and all the non-criminal abusive stuff, Bill would be happy to participate in our discussions in a 100 percent honest way and we would learn what he really thinks about all these matters. Full truth be told, HE would learn for the first time what he really thinks re all these matters.
I was a Buy-and-Holder once. I detected some of the contradictions. But there were so many good and smart people who thought that Buy-and-Hold was a good strategy that I didn’t trust my own instincts. I finally worked up the courage to express my doubts out loud and then I saw that there were a good number of smart and good people who shared my doubts and that there was an insane amount of defensiveness on the Buy-and-Hold side of the table. So those doubts grew. And over time I was able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together and become a confirmed Valuation-Informed Indexer (which is just Buy-and-Hold with the one huge error (that market timing is not required) corrected.
Bernstein already believes that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies get the numbers wildly wrong. That’s a good start. Chapter Two of his Nine Pillars of Investing book is the best concise statement of the case for Valuation-Informed Indexing that I have ever seen. So we are not going to have much trouble bringing Bill Bernstein on board once we open the internet to honest posting and he is expressing his sincere views and hearing lots of others express their sincere views. We just need to take that one critical step. We need to follow the laws of the United States in discussions of stock investing just as we follow them in every other field of human endeavor.
I think we are going to get there, Anonymous. In the event that stocks continue to perform in the future at least somewhat as they have always performed in the past, we will be seeing a devastating price crash in the not too distant future. That will give a lot of people the courage they need to stand up to you Goons. And then we are on our way. It will not be too long a time after that when we will see people like Bill Bernstein singing the praises of market timing to the skies. I am sure.
Perhaps not 100 percent sure. But pretty darn sure. The intellectual case for market timing is just too strong for me to imagine that we could not get a guy like Bernstein to join the party once he could see that it was safe to do so. And I think that it is going to become an entirely safe thing in the days following the next price crash, when irrational exuberance over Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick becomes irrational depression over Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick.
We’ll see.
Bernstein Fan (The Chapter Two Version!) Rob
Who threatened Dr. Bernstein? Why do you call him a liar, just like you call Wade Pfau a liar and Robert Shiller a liar? If they are lying about this stuff, then that makes everything else suspect. If so, there is no need to listen to anyone but you, right Rob?
When I say that these people are liars, I make it a point to note that that is the human condition — we are ALL liars. And I make it a point to include myself in the group suffering from that human condition. I knew that Greaney’s study lacked a valuations adjustment for three years before I worked up the courage to tell the truth about it.
It’s good to be at least a tiny bit skeptical about everything you hear. I can go along with that much, But we need to know stuff. So we do need to hear people out. I believe that the answer is to permit honest posting from everyone. Then you hear the claims but you also hear challenges to the claims. That’s perfect. That’s the path to a great learning experience.
What threatened Bernstein was the “hostile atmosphere” at the Bogleheads Forum that Wade Pfau often referred to. The idea that market timing is not required was the one huge error that the Buy-and-Holders made. It was discovered in 1981. The defensiveness today is not just over the error itself, it is over the 39-year cover-up. So the atmosphere there is very, very, very, very hostile to discussions of the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research.
Just about everybody would prefer to be doing honest work. If the Buy-and-Holders had never said that timing was not required before Shiller came along. we all would have been Valuation-Informed Indexers from 1981 forward. But that is not the way the history of the thing played out. As a society we got it wrong before we got it right. So getting it right has always required saying the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” That’s been the hold-up for all of us for 39 years now.
The thing that threatens Bernstein is the same thing that threatened me for the three years before I worked up the courage to point out the error in Greaney’s study. He wants to be popular. He wants to be able to make a living. He does not want to see his loved ones killed. These are all perfectly normal things.
The one mistake that the Buy-and-Holders made was no small thing. If the most important thing in stock investing is that we are all always sure to practice market timing and the Buy-and-Holders suggested that market timing might not be required, how do you think it makes them feel for people to learn now that they had it wrong all those years? It makes them feel really, really, really, really bad, Anonymous. And they act accordingly.
That’s what Bernstein is up against. That’s what Wade Pfau is up against. That’s what Michael Kitces is up against. That’s what Robert Shiller is up against. That’s what Rob Bennett is up against. That’s what anyone who has ever thought to put forward an honest, helpful word about how stock investing works is up against. If Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research, everything that anyone said on any investing subject before he published that research in 1981 is wrong. And there are a lot of wealthy and powerful and well-connected people who very, very, very much do not want millions of middle-class investors to find out.
But they have to find out. Our system cannot continue if we do not fine some means to get accurate and honest and research-based investment advice out to people. The safe withdrawal rate is not one number but a number that varies depending on the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. Everyone needs to know. It is a painful process getting the truth out there. But there is no other way to do it than just to do it. The sooner that the truth gets out, the less painful it will be for all of us. So we just need to grit our teeth and rip the bandage off.
My sincere take.
And my best wishes.
Liar (Some of the Time!) Rob
Why do you see all these threats, but no one else has seen them?
Lots of people see them. It’s a rare person who is willing to put his life and career at risk by talking publicly about them. I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me privately and told me “I love your work but please don’t tell anyone that I said that,” It’s nice to hear that sort of thing. But it doesn’t get the job done.
The question is — Are there going to be more people who have the courage to stand up to you Goons after a 70 percent price crash? I believe that there will be. We are already at 10 percent of the population. If we get to 20 percent, I think that will get the ball rolling. Once we have a few sites at which honest posting on the peer-reviewed research is permitted, the thing will just grow and grow and grow. People will see that there’s money to be made giving honest investment advice and then there will be no stopping us.
So says Rob Bennett, in any event. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
My best wishes to you and yours, Goon friend.
Optimistic Rob