Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
So you can’t name just one person and provide a link, yet Wade Pfau has denied that there was ever any threat made against him. So the whole premise is false to start with. When you send out 30,000 emails making the claim, you were just spreading something that lacks any proof.
The guy spent 16 months of his life studying whether long-term market timing always works or not. He sent me scores of e-mails describing his excitement over our findings. He posted numerous articles at his web site summarizing our work. He contributed to discussions about it at the Bogleheads Forum on many occasions, He sent our paper to several peer-reviewed journals and had it published in one. Then you Goons threatened to destroy his career unless he took the articles he had written down from his web site and agreed to stop doing honest work on these matters in the future. And he wrote to me and told me that he was scared of you and that one of the journals he had contacted had told him that they had received hate mail from Buy-and-Holders. He told me that he thought that he might lose his job if he continued doing honest work and that he thought that the best thing he could do was to keep quiet. That’s extortion, Anonymous.
And of course this is not the only case. There’s the fact that I was banned from many sites where hundreds of posters have expressed a desire to be able to hear what I have to say and despite the fact that I have never once in 19 years violated a published posting rule. There’s the fact that I have had financial advisers call me on the telephone because they want to pick my brain on Valuation-Informed Indexing but they ask me not to tell anyone that they have spoken to me. Rob Arnott said that he would like to help me but that he is dealing with too much “controversy” of his own because he has spoken honestly about the effect of stock valuations on long-term returns. Bill Bernstein said that the safe withdrawal rate studies were off by two full percentage points at the top of the bubble but then never said that when he was posting at the Bogleheads Forum. The Wall Street Journal ran a story in which Bret Arends said that the ides that long-term timing doesn’t work is “a bunch of hooey” and that the Buy-and-Holders leave out half the story when they talk to investors. Numerous professors who teach this stuff in universities have told me that my work is top rate and yet I am banned everywhere that matters. Call me madcap but, yes, I have come to believe that there is some funny stuff going on.
A nation cannot survive indefinitely if there is no means to communicate to millions of investors what the peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world. The people of the United States are going to find a way to overcome you Goons. Because we have no choice. It will happen in the days following the next price crash, when millions of people will be able to see with their own eyes the consequences of the relentless promotion of a pure Get Rich Quick approach to stock investing without people even being able to hear about the downside of it and to deide for themselves. We’ll see, you know?
I will continue to wish you all the best things that this life has to offer a person. And I will continue to maintain that the retirement study posted to John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. Because I believe that it is best for you Goons and for Greaney himself that this cover-up brought to a full and complete stop. I don’t believe that any of us is capable of knowing everything there is to know about a subject. So we should always be willing to let the other guy say what he thinks and to keep our minds open to learning from it. That’s where I am coming from, Anonymous. That’s the story here. I truly do not believe that that study contains a valuation adjustment. So that’s what I say when discussions of safe withdrawal rates come up on the internet.
My best wishes.
Rob
The nation won’t survive if Rob Bennett is not allowed to post what he wants on other people’s websites? Really?
Yes, really.
It’s not my name that is important. It’s knowing how stock investing works that is important. That’s very, very, very important. How the stock market works affects how the entire economic system works. So it’s important to get that one right. If we were all thinking clearly, we would all want to get it right. But we are in this situation where some academics came up with some ideas that millions bought into and only later did we learn that those ideas were in error. So we have very strong opposition to the idea of permitting the learning process that we would need to get to to develop a better understanding. We need as a society to overcome that opposition or we could suffer extremely serious consequences.
If you have watched the movie “The Grapes of Wrath,” you have an idea of what we might be looking at. The wonderful news is that, now that was have access to Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research, great depressions are optional. We now know what we need to know to avoid them. But knowing intellectually how to avoid them doesn’t do us any good if we don’t spread the word by opening the internet up to honest posting. It all comes down to that. We can have very good results in the future or we can have very bad results in the future, depending on how we handle that one.
My vote is that we open every site on the internet to honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Everyone’s ideas are out there. Your opinion doesn’t count any more than anyone else, and there is no obligation to allow you to have free reign on anyone else’s board, just like you don’t allow it on your board.
No.
My opinion certainly doesn’t count more than anyone else’s. I obviously agree with that much.
But every site ownersabsolutely has an obligation to take action when people seeking to “defend” the Greaney retirement study engage in criminal acts (threats of violence, extortion, etc.) to suppress discussion of the error he made in it (he failed to include a valuation adjustment). People discussed the Greaney study at the old Motley Fool board on a daily basis. People handed in resignations from high-paying corporate jobs because of what Greaney said in that study. Everyone who was aware of the error was under an obligation to point it out. When people are intimidated into silence through the use of criminal acts, it plants a false impression in the minds of all community members. They think: “The study must be accurate given that no one is saying that it is not.” There would have been LOTS of people pointing out the error if no intimidation tactics had been employed.
I believe that the same laws that apply in every field of human endeavor outside of the investment advice field should apply in the investment advice field as well. That is my sincere take.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yous, Anonymous.
Rob
You say that “everyone’s ideas are out there.”
The difference is that those pushing Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold ideas do not have to worry about seeing the lives of their loves ones threatened or seeing their careers threatened if they post their sincere views re how stock investing works. Those who believe that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research do. So the Get Rich Quick ideas get 50 times the circulation. Buy-andHold came first. If Valuation-Informed Indexing is ever going to become the dominant model for understanding how stock investing works, we are going to have to decide as a society to apply in the investment advice field the same laws that apply in every other field of life endeavor.
I believe that the laws against death threats and against extortion and again financial fraud are good and important and necessary. If we had not applied those laws in other fields of human endeavor, we would not have achieved a lot of the progress that we have achieved as a society over the years. We are now in a position to achieve great advances in our understanding of how stock investing works. I think we should go for it.
That’s where I am coming from, in any event.
Rob
“It’s not my name that is important. It’s knowing how stock investing works that is important.”
I know of no one who knows less about how stock investing works than you. So if it’s so important to share correct information, we need to ban the lunatics who think staying out of stocks for 25 years was a wise decision.
Luckily, that’s exactly what happened.
Okay, Anonymous.
I am going to continue to say that I do not believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investment strategies you elect to follow.
Rob
“ I am going to continue to say that I do not believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.”
Many people, including Wade Pfau, pointed out your errors on John Greaney’s work. You even admitted your error, too bad you won’t admit your error in staying out of the stock market for the last 25 years. It’s funny how you want to talk about investing in stocks, yet you haven’t owned stocks for 25 years. Kinda like the Pope trying to give out sex tips.
There’s nothing funny about the fact that I point out the dangers of going with a high stock allocation at a time when stocks are more dangerous than they have been at any earlier time in U.S. history. I believe that most people should own some stocks — I suggest perhaps a 30 percent stock allocation when prices are where they are today. But I believe that every investor alive should be going with a lower stock allocation than what he would go with if prices were reasonable. When would you expect me to point out the dangers — at a time when prices are reasonable and the dangers are small?
And the Pope should 100 percent be giving out sex tips. Sex is a part of life. The Pope should be helping people to live better lives. Any Pope who doesn’t ever address sex is a bad Pope. The Pope should of course point out dangerous sex practices, just as I point out dangerous stock investing practices, But he should no more say to avoid sex altogether than I would say to avoid stock investing altogether.
My sincere take.
Rob
Yet you and the Pope lack experience and a track record. Stick to what you know. Investing isn’t your area of expertise.
If investing isn’t my area of expertise, then how is it that I ended up being the person who discovered the error in the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site? That’s huge. There were a lot of people at the old Motley Fool board who had used that study to determine when it hand in resignations to high-paying corporate jobs.
I don’t claim to be some big investing expert. I never studied it in school. I never managed a fund. But I think it would be fair to say that I possess a deeper understanding of Valuation-Informed Indexing than anyone else alive. I have been developing the concept for 19 years now. And Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future of investment analysis. This Ban on Honest Posting is not going to remain in place in the days following the next price crash. I mean, come on. So I have come to possess very deep knowledge re a very, very important aspect of the stock investing story, the MOST important aspect.
You don’t threaten to kill somebody’s loved ones for no good reason, Anonymous. The behavior that you have evidenced over the past 19 years shows how important you consider the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. We are in agreement re how important it is. Our point of disagreement is that I think that we should all be free to post honestly re that research at every site on the internet and you want the Buy-and-Hold stuff to remain free from challenge. Yucko, you know?
Rob
Why is it that everyone else has a different interpretation of Greaney’s work versus you? Why is it that only you see the death threats? Why is it that only you see the job threats? Why is it that you are the one that has the most bans from all the leading investing blogs? Are we to believe that all of these other people out there are all wrong about everything and that only you are right?
It’s not only me who says that valuations affect long-term returns. There are thousands of people who posted in support of me at the various boards and blogs. Robert Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize for his amazing research showing that valuations affect long-term returns.
All of that does not get the Greaney study corrected. For the study to be corrected, Greaney would have to make a change to it. I cannot compel that and neither can any of those other thousands. If we had the support of the site owners, we could have those who promote discredited studies removed. But the site owners make a lot of money promoting a pure Get Rich Quick approach to stock investing. I asked the site administrator at Motley Fool to remove Greaney. He thanked me for my “thoughtful” e-mail. He told me that he thought it would be ideal if Greaney permitted honest posting. But he didn’t remove him. Eventually, he removed me. And he nominated Greaney for Poster of the Year at the site.
Why do tobacco companies sell a product that kills people?
Why do companies pollute the environment?
Why was the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal kept quiet for so long?
There’s money in it. Mountains of money. That’s the answer.
Laws don’t enforce themselves. People have to enforce them. And, for the length of a bull market, lots and lots and lots of people appear to be ahead of the game in dollar terms if the irrational exuberance remains on the books. The irrational exuberance cannot remain on the books if we permit honest posting. People want their retirement plans to work out, and, if we permit them to obtain the information they need for that to happen, they are going to do what they need to do. Which will bring stock prices down.
Do you want that? I do.
I don’t want all the pain that goes with it. But I want prices to reflect the economic realities. We can’t get there without going though a lot of pain. Sooner or later, we are going to have to do it, whether we like the idea or not, I hope we learn our lesson. I hope that, when we see all the pain that follows from the relentless promotion of all the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold garbage, we make a vow as a society to never, ever, ever let it happen again. I think we will do that. We’ll see, you know?
Human beings get themselves into trouble by turning off their brains and giving in to emotional impulses. It’s been happening since the beginning of time. Shiller told us what we need to know to insure that it never happens again in the stock investing realm. I say that we should take advantage of what he showed us. And I believe that we will begin doing that when we see how much pain following the pure Get Rich Quick approach caused us.
Does that help?
Rob
If what you say is true, why can’t you get even one person (anonymously or otherwise) to post here in agreement with you? How is it possible for everyone else to be wrong and you alone, be right?
Hundreds have said that I am right. Thousands have said that they would like to be able to hear what I have to say. A few have even spoken up, asking you Goons to knock off the funny business. But very few are willing to continue doing that after they experience the death treats and the threats of career destruction. That stuff is scary. It is doubly scary when people in positions of authority fail to take effective action to stop it.
There are good reasons why we have laws against threats of violence and against extortion and so on. Such laws are necessary to keep progress going when people threatened by change strike out to stop it.
It’s a terrible shame. But the good news here is 50 times more good than the bad news here is bad. It will be interesting to see how things play out.
Shiller would never have been awarded a Nobel prize if it were only me. I mean, come on.
Rob
Claims of hundreds and Thousands, yet no one posts here, when they can do so anonymously. I think we all know the real reason.
It will be interesting to see how things play out in the days following the next price crash. I am going to continue to say that I do not believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. I don’t do criminal.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, Anonymous.
Rob
“I don’t do criminal.”
You don’t do sane either. In fact you don’t do much of anything.
Except waiting. Credit where it’s due. You are great at waiting.
Thanks for that much, Anonymous.
I don’t see that I have much choice. I felt like a creep for those three years when I didn’t speak up about the error in the Greaney retirement study. I have a tendency to over time become friends with the people that I post with on discussion boards. I sure don’t want to go back to feeling like a creep by selling those people out. But the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is a huge advance. It means rewriting all the textbooks, rejiggering all the calculators, explaining to millions of people an entirely new way of understanding how stock investing works. That’s not a one-person job. I am going to need some help from site administrators and academic researchers and investment advisers and policymakers concerned about the future of our economic system and so on. So, yes, I wait.
I believe that we will see a change in the days following the next price crash. It’s like what you see in an area where there is a high risk of flooding. You can tell people “don’t build your house here, the science says that someday in the not too distant future it will be washed away in a flood.” Lots of people who like living where they are are going to look at the sky and say “it seems like a sunny and pleasant enough day, I think I will just remain where I am, now go away, I don’t want to hear anymore about what the science says.” But, after the flood hits and many lives are destroyed, it’s a different story. Then people say: “Why didn’t you tell us about the flood back when there was still time to do something about it?”
I believe that there will be people who will work up the courage to stand up to Lindauer and Greaney (and their respective Goon squads) in the days after the flood hits. If Fama is right, it’s not even an issue. If Fama is right, the risk of a crash is not greater today than at any randomly chosen time. But, if Shiller is right, which I believe is the case, the risk is much, much greater today. The risk is probably greater today than it has been at any earlier time in U.S. history. A case could be made that the risk is greater today than it was in January 2000. That’s not so going by the CAPE value alone. But the amount of time that a bull market has been in place is another risk factor and we have had many more years of irrational exuberance today than we had had in 2000.
So, yes, I wait. I also pray that the crash will not be as bad as the past 40 years of peer-reviewed research in this field indicates it might be. And I pray that, in the days following the crash, we all find a way to put our differences behind us and to get together for a few frosty cold ones and have a laugh about the craziness we lived through in earlier times.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, old (Goon) friend.
Sentimental Rob