I’ve posted Entry #541 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called It’s Not Economic Developments That Cause Market Turns.
Juicy Excerpt: What matters is not the economic development, what matters is the investor reaction to the economic development. Investors who are emotionally open to a price drop will respond differently to a change in interest rates or energy prices or political turmoil than will investors who are not emotionally open to a price drop. We need more investigations into what makes investors more open or closed to price drops.
I cannot believe that someone like you that spends so much time on making posts, has such little knowledge as to the subject matter. Don’t you wonder why you can’t get any support here?
I have an amazing amount of support. That’s been true going back to the first day. There were scores of people at the Motley Fool site saying: “Thanks, Rob, for starting the most exciting discussion we have ever seen.” If I didn’t have a great amount of support, you never would have engaged in a single criminal act to hold me back. I mean. come on.
Now — the fact that there are lots of people who want to hear what the research says doesn’t mean that there are lots of people who want to participate in discussions in which the lives of their loves one are threatened by Buy-and-Holders who want to see the Buy-and-Hold Era continue a little while longer. But criminal acts are desperation moves. The fact that you have behaved as you have over the past 19 years shows that Buy-and-Hold is hanging on by its fingernails.
What happens after the next price crash? I think that people start asking questions. And then those of us who believe that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research provide the answers. And then we all begin living richer and fuller lives from that point forward. We’ll see, you know?
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow, Anonymous. Hang in there, man.
Rob
What support? No one is commenting here. Many people would dispute your interpretation of comments at the Motley Fool and other boards, but at this point, that was so long ago, it really is no longer relevant. What support, if any, have you had in the last 5 years?
There’s 40 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. The author of that research was awarded a Nobel prize in recognition of the huge advance he achieved. That research was based on 150 years of stock-return data. That’s a mountain of support.
The other side of the story is that there is not one iota of evidence that market timing is not always required. Wade Pfau spent 16 months trying to find something and he came up empty-handed. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with him is so powerful that you Goons threatened to get him fired from his job if he continued doing honest work. Your own behavior shows how powerful our research is.
It’s a rare case in which 100 percent of the evidence supports one side of a controversy and 0 percent supports the other. But that’s where things stand. There is no intellectual support for Buy-and-Hold. What there is is a mountain of INSTITUTIONAL support. Buy-and-Hold was developed at a time when Shiller had not yet published his Nobel-prize-winning research. So the Buy-and-Holders got the market timing thing wrong. Now there are thousands of wealthy and powerful and well-connected people who do not want the word getting out about the mistake they made and about the ocean of misery that it has caused millions of people.
I don’t want to be on the side of the ocean of misery. I don’t believe that the Buy-and-Holders want to be there either. You see them drop hints about the realities all the time. But few are willing to give up their high-paying careers just to be able to do honest work. I believe that we are going to see some put their necks on the line after the next crash. Then we can all begin living better lives from that day forward.
Having 100 percent of the evidence supporting me is enough for me, Anonymous. I wish there had been no criminal acts. I wish there has been no abusive posts. But we don’t reside in heaven. This is Planet Earth. Sometimes things get a wee bit off track down here in the Valley of Tears. I am going to continue to say that I do not believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains a valuation adjustment and wait to see how things play out after the crash. The big benefit of playing it that way is that doing so permits me to sleep at night.
You have continued posting abusively for the past five years. That’s strong evidence that even you Goons don’t truly believe that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment. If you believed that it did, you never would have put forward a single abusive comment.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
The question, which you ignored with that babbling, was “What support, if any, have you had in the last 5 years?”
Obviously the correct answer is “None.”
Every day that the Greaney retirement study goes uncorrected is more support for Valuation-Informed Indexing. If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, every Buy-and-Holder would want to know about any errors that they made and they would want to correct them within 24 hours of learning about them. The fact that the Greaney study was not corrected yesterday is highly significant evidence of the dangers of going with a pure Get Rich Quick approach. If it is not corrected again today, that will be even more evidence.
It was 19 years ago when I pointed out the error in the study. That’s a LOT of support. Holy moly!
My best wishes.
Rob