Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
When did Bogle say he was afraid? I missed that.
Bogle put forward a post saying that he could see how it would work for an investor to change his stock allocation six times during the course of an investing lifetime, three times when prices reached insanely high levels and three times when prices reached insanely low levels. That’s Valuation-Informed Indexing! That should have settled the matter.
Why didn’t it? It didn’t because Bogle did not take the obvious next step of saying: “Given that there is 39 years of peer-reviewed research supporting market timing, all of the criminally abusive stuff we have seen from the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer needs to come to a full and complete stop by the close of business today.” Why didn’t he do that? Bogle was afraid of what you Goons would do to him if he posted in complete honesty. There is no other possible explanation of his strange behavior.
We are all afraid of you. Our nation adopted laws against extortion and against financial fraud and against threats of physical violence for good reasons. Without those laws, we can never achieve progress as a society. There are always going to be some people who don’t want to move on from the old ways and who will turn to criminal acts to block the progress that benefits all of us.
This has been our problem re the safe withdrawal rate matter going back to the morning of May 13, 2002. It doesn’t tale 18 years to determine whether or not a retirement study posted at some guy’s web site contained a valuation adjustment or not. I mean, please give me a freakin’ break.
Bogle (the Honest Version, Not the Goon-Intimidated Version) Fan Rob
So John Bogle was in on the mass conspiracy against Rob Bennett.
“ There is no other possible explanation of his strange behavior.”
The only possible explanation is that Rob Bennett is wrong.
So John Bogle was in on the mass conspiracy against Rob Bennett.
Bogle was in on the mass conspiracy against anyone who believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research. His own words show this. Bogle advanced a post to the Bogleheads Forum saying that he could see how Valuation-Informed Indexing could work. He didn’t endorse it. But he said that he could see how it would make sense for an investor to increase his stock allocation three times in the course of an investing lifetime when prices got insanely low and it lower his stock allocation three times in the course of an investing lifetime when prices got insanely high. That’s Valuation-Informed Indexing! That’s what works!
Given that Bogle believed that Valuation-Informed Indexing makes sense, he should have asked Mel Lindauer to knock off the funny business, especially the criminal stuff. He didn’t do that because he was afraid of what Lindauer and his Goon Squad would do to him if he posted with complete honesty. That’s sad. Bogle created a monster when he suggested (as he did on many occasions) that there might be some mystical alternative universe in which it is not 100 percent required to practice market timing (price discipline!) when buying stocks.
The “idea” that it might not be 100 percent required for all investors to practice market timing/price discipline when buying stocks is the marketing gimmick that ate the U.S. economic system. We need to move on to something real, to something truly research-based.
Rob
The only possible explanation is that Rob Bennett is wrong.
And yet we are 18 years down the road and to this day Greaney has not posted a screen-shot of the page in his retirement study containing the valuation adjustment.
I wonder why.
Rob