Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“I should not hesitate and I should not apologize. I should permit and encourage those who have other views to state their sincere views as well. But I should insist on my right to post honestly.”
But you don’t. You want everyone else to open up their website for you to say whatever you want to say, yet you don’t allow that here for other people. I has posted this comment consistently, yet you ban just the comment itself, let alone the subject matter. You go out and write two pages worth of comments for every one line someone else writes on other websites and on this website, it is even worse. You are unable to have a normal conversation. For you, there is just one side that is filled with a bunch of talking points that are a repeat of everything you have said for the last two decades.
I sincerely believe that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research. So every thing that I say is 100 percent in conflict with what the Buy-and-Holders believe. The two models (Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing) start from opposite premises (the idea that investors are rational vs. the idea that investors are at times highly emotional). And the Buy-and-Holders have been suppressing open discussion of the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s research for 40 years now. So, when I speak, it shakes people up. I am making a strong, research-based case for things that they have never heard before and that would mean that they have been doing a bad job of planning for their retirement for many years now. Many conclude that the best thing to do is to shut me up, even if it take criminal behavior to pull that off.
I do not agree. It is the silencing of challenges to Buy-and-Hold that got us into this mess in the first place. If we had been hearing claims that Greaney got the numbers wildly wrong in his retirement study for years before I put up my May 13, 2002, post, it would not have caused such a stir. People would have just said: “Oh, here’s one more post saying something that we all have heard many times.” It was the long cover-up that made that post stand out. The cover-up had continued for so long that you had people like Scott Burns saying that it was “catastrophically unproductive” for me to point out the error in the Greany study. Huh? What the f? I would say that it was catastrophically PRODUCTIVE for me to do that. How the heck are we ever going to get the study corrected if we are afraid to point out the error in it?
That’s where I am coming from, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you all good things.
Rob
You do realize that Buy and Holders are a very small percentage of the market. Most stock trades are through institutional trading and as well as computerized trading. You could switch over every buy and holder to VII and it wouldn’t change one thing about the market. Instead, you would have an avalanche of retirement failures from people trying to figure out how to time the market.
No. I disagree with this comment entirely.
Institutional trades are made by human beings. Even computerized trades ultimately have some human input behind then. It is humans who design the algorithms.
The “idea” that market timing is not required is omni-present in our society, Anonymous. People (both experts and ordinary investors) fall into the thought pattern that this might be the first time in history when market timing is not going to be 100 percent required without even being aware that they are doing it. If we all want to become able to retire at earlier ages and to invest with far less risk, we are all going to need to pull together to spread the word re the amazing benefits of market timing. There is no other way. At the very bare minimum, we need to open every site to honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research so that people can hear both sides of the storu and decide for themselves.
You say that people with struggle with figuring out how to practice market timing effectively. They will is we don’t provide any guidance. How about if we flip things so that 70 percent of the advice that is provided in this field is advice re how to engage in timing properly? People are not stupid. This stuff is not intellectually difficult. Provide accurate and honest guidance and people will get it. The problem today is that people have experience with hundreds of markets in which price discipline is absolutely key and then they are told by people who pose as “experts” that market timing is not always required in the stock market. Huh? What the f? It’s highly confusing. That’s how a society ends up with a CAPE value of 36. Holy moly!
We are close. That’s what I believe. We are certainly not where we want to be. But I believe that we are close. The normal thing would be for someone like Shiller to publish Nobel-prize-winning research showing that timing is required and the idea would gradually spread through the society and catch on and eventually become dominant. We are now in a situation where people are going to need to see a horrifying economic crisis to play out before them to work up the courage to stand up to you Goons. Which obviously is unfortunate. But, once that happens, the pent-up demand for accurate and honest information re how stock investing works will be unleashed and word will spread like wildfire. We will be seeing articles re the true safe withdrawal rate being published on the front page of the New York Times and all that sort of thing. I think we will make it. But I am obviously highly biased re these matters.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Again, you are wrong. Institutional investors are not investing their money. It belongs to someone else and they are charged with investing that money into the market (or other stated objective). Buy and hold has no impact on what happens in the market.
Either price matters or it doesn’t. If price doesn’t matter, then the Buy-and-Holders are right and God bless them. If price matters, then the “idea” that market timing might not work is the most dangerous idea ever advanced in the history of personal finance.
If Buy-and-Hold makes no difference, then why do we see articles in which people advocate it. Are all of those articles a waste of time. Why do we have discussion forums like The Bogleheads Forum? If Buy-and-Hold doesn’t matter, why do we have do many people taking time to advocate it?
I think that Buy-and-Hold matters. I think it is very, very, very dangerous stuff. There is 40 years of peer-reviewed research showing that market timing is the key to long-term investing success. If it were not for Buy-and-Hold, we would all be market timers today. The only thing holding us back is that the Buy-and-Holder cannot bear to admit that they made a mistake re so critically important an issue and so they have insisted that honest posting re the past 40 years of peer-reviewed research. If there has never been a Buy-and-Hold, we would all be living far richer and better and fuller lives today.
Please mark me down as being PRO peer-reviewed research and ANTI Buy-and-Hold. You can;’t have both. If you are going to permit discussion of the peer-reviewed research, Buy-and-Hold cannot survive. And, if you are going to promote Buy-and-Hold, you are not going to want peoplre publishing peer-reviewed research that explores the realities of stock investing.
My best and warmed wishes to you.
Rob
” There is 40 years of peer-reviewed research showing that market timing is the key to long-term investing success.”
That is just a talking point. You have never reviewed 40 years worth of peer-reviewed research. You just keep making things up.
Okay. Well, please mark that one down as being my favorite talking point.
I naturally wish you all good things, Anonymous.
Rob
Just one of many mindless talking points you make.
Yes. Pointing out that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks a valuation adjustment is a mindless talking point.
Rob
Which investment experts have gone on record to say that they agree with your understanding of John Greaney’s work?
Which investment experts have gone on record to say that they believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s site contains a valuation adjustment and have identified the page at which that valuation adjustment is located?
Rob
“Which investment experts have gone on record to say that they believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s site contains a valuation adjustment and have identified the page at which that valuation adjustment is located?”
Your question is moot when you honestly answer my question.
I see it the other way around. I say that your question is moot when you answer my question.
Rob
“ I see it the other way around. I say that your question is moot when you answer my question.”
Wrong again. Your question was never valid to begin with. That is why Wade Pfau had to set you straight. You decided to ignore what Wade was saying, so now he ignores you.
It will be interesting to find out what Wade says in the days following the next price crash.
Rob