“There Are Two Ways to Do Stock Investing. You Can Go Rational or You Can Go Emotional. The Only Explanation for Failing to Correct Errors in Retirement Studies Is That You Have Gone Emotional. There Is No Rational Reason Not to Practice Market Timing at All Times. The Only Possible Reason for That Choice Is It Permits Irrational Exuberance to Take Over.”

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 should have corrected your errors over 19 years ago.  Funny how you won’t even allow a link to the thread you say is famous.

If the study had been corrected 19 years ago, we wouldn’t be having this discussion today, Anonymous.

There are two ways to do stock investing. You can go rational or you can go emotional. The only explanation for failing to correct errors in retirement studies is that you have gone emotional. There is no rational reason not to practice market timing at all times. The only possible reason for that choice is it permits irrational exuberance to take over.

I don’t like irrational exuberance. So I vote for market timing. That’s the difference between us. That’s the difference between Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing. That’s the entire shebang.

Do you want to know the true and lasting value of your portfolio? Or do you want to be comforted by the pretty lies supplied by irrational exuberance? Fail to practice market timing and you transform Buy-and-Hold — which in other respects is a research-based approach — into a pure Get Rich Quick approach. Not this boy, you know?

I favor Buy-and-Hold with market timing added. That’s Valuation-Informed Indexing.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, dear Goon friend.

Rob