“If Motley Fool Had Given Greaney the Boot When He Advanced His First Death Threat (As I Recommended at the Time), Valuation-Informed Indexing Would Today Be the Dominant Model for Understanding Stock Investing.”

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 have posted the same thing 17,877 times.  What makes you think that when you post it 17,878 times, people will suddenly change their mind?

There were scores of people who responded to my very first post asking if we should consider valuations when calculating the safe withdrawal rate by thanking me for starting the most exciting and helpful discussion in the history of the Retire Early board. If Motley Fool had given Greaney the boot when he advanced his first death threat (as I recommended at the time), Valuation-Informed Indexing would today be the dominant model for understanding stock investing today.

Motley Fool went for the quick buck. It’s hard for a research-based strategy to compete with a pure Get Rich Quick approach for popularity points.

I have never had any problem whatsoever convincing lots of people of the merit of following a research-based approach. The problem is that, the more successful I am in persuading people, the more brutally abusive you Goons become. People don’t like to see the lives of their loved ones threatened. Until as a society we agree to enforce the laws of the United States in the investing advice field as we do in all other fields, you Goons are going to have the edge.

I believe that we will see a big change in the days following the next price crash, when millions of people will see half of their stock portfolio disappear into thin air. We’ll see.

Rob