“I Don’t Know Everything and I Do Not Claim To. You Do Not Know Everything Either. The Difference Is That You DO Claim to Know Everything. When You Deny Others the Opportunity to Hear Both Sides and Decide for Themselves, You Are Implicitly Saying That You Know Everything and Don’t Even Need to Consider Other Points of View.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

You say that VII works:

“ I would point him to the Bennett/Pfau research showing that market timing has always worked for as far back as we have good records of stock prices.”

Then you admit, it hasn’t been working:

“Going by the historical, the crash should have arrived 14 years ago. You’ve got me re that one, Anonymous. We are living through something unprecedented. It’s scary.”

So, it really has not ALWAYS worked and if you are the 60 year old guy following VII, you are screwed.

I think that we all have to do the best we can with the information available to us. I don’t know everything and I do not claim to. I believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing. You do not know everything either. You believe in Buy-and-Hold. The difference is that you DO claim to know everything. When you deny others the opportunity to hear both sides and decide for themselves, you are implicitly saying that you know everything and don’t even need to consider other points of view. I reject that. I believe that we all need to remain open to other points of view.

I don’t believe that anybody is screwed. I believe that we all should do the best we can given the information available to us. I believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing. So that’s what I tell people I believe in.

And I naturally wish you all good things.

Rob