Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“My new deadline is the end of the year.”
As with so many things, you have a weak grasp on the concept of “deadline”. Deadlines have consequences for being missed. The book is more along the lines of a new years resolution. Something you briefly pay lip service to, and then fail to deliver, as everyone expects.
I have a poor record re the self-imposed deadlines for completion of the book. The other side of the story is that no one else has written a book telling this story. So I am ahead of every other soul residing on Planet Earth today. When you look at it that way, it doesn’t sound so bad.
It’s not an intellectually difficult project. It is an EMOTIONALLY difficult project. Say that I were to get everything that I want by the close of business tomorrow. A reporter from the New York Times says that he wants to publish a ten-part series on the front page detailing the 40-year cover-up and describing all of the criminal stuff that we have seen and telling people about the amazing how-to implications of Shiller’s Nobel prize-winning research. Sounds pretty good for me. right? What would happen? We would see an economic crises, perhaps a Second Great Depression.
That’s what makes this so hard. My job as the person writing this up is to make the best possible case for Valuation-Informed Indexing. I should want the sentences to be hard-hitting. But, if they do their job of persuading millions of middle-class investors of the merit of following a research-based investment strategy, there are almost certainly going to cause an economic crisis. I don’t want to cause an economic crises! So there is a part of me that holds back, that doesn’t want to go there. I think that that’s true of everyone. We want to tell the truth. But, given the spot that the relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold has put us in, we also do NOT want to tell the truth.
So it has been a hard journey. I think it will end up being worth it 50 times over, though. I doubt that there will be one person who will be wishing that we could go back to the Buy-and-Hold days once we have opened every site on the internet to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. The transition is very, very, very difficult. But the end point will be well worth all the trouble.
Or so this fellow who often forgets to take his meds sincerely believes, in any event.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
“It is an EMOTIONALLY difficult project.”
Yes, as you keep saying. But at least two years ago, you said the book was nearly finished. You were cruising along. Then suddenly, utter train wreck. So either something happened, or you never really intended to finish this book. Which is it?
I believed what I said when I said it. It turned out to be a harder job than I realized at the time.
It kills me that it has taken so long. But it is what it is. I can’t deny the realities.
Today I am working through Part Four (there are 12 parts to the book). Part Four is where I describe the interactions that I have had with all sorts of experts in the field (Bill Bernstein, John Bogle, Michael Kitces, Scott Burns, and on and on). It’s very important to describe those interactions because the behavior of these people explains why we are in the fix we are in. And in ordinary circumstances it would be easy to just report what happened. Everything happened in public. I have all the records of what was said.
But it is very hard. I like all these people. They have all done things that have held us back. Their behavior will not look so good when we are on the other side of the next price crash, which I presume is when people will be reading the book. So it is hard for me to report these simple facts. I feel that I need to explain the behavior, to talk about all the pressures that these people are under and so on. But of course I do want to get across how the problem came to be.
So I have spent just an insane amount on Part Four. I procrastinated for months and months. I came up with rationalizations for why it would be okay to skip a lot of the material, to just leave it out. I now believe that I have made a lot of progress and have realized that leaving important stuff out is not the answer. But this is why the book has been do hard to write. Lots of people have done things that have contributed to the problem and they are smart and good people that I care about. So I have to think carefully about how to say things.
It’s been a rough road.
Rob
Part 4 of 12 parts? I am guessing you won’t have this book done for another few years. I guess that pushes the job search out even further.
I am aiming for the end of this year. But it will be done when it’s done. I have been wrong before.
Rob
So the job search finally kicks off at the end of this year?
If I meet my target date for finishing the book, it will.
Rob
How much longer can you go without an income? No urgency?
How much longer can millions of middle-class investors go without access to honest and accurate reports on what the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world?
That’s where the urgency lies for all of us.
Rob
Middle class investors are not paying your bills. How much longer can you go without an income?
Does your wife agree with your sense of urgency and priorities?
Middle class investors are not paying your bills. How much longer can you go without an income?
I have found a way to make it work for 19 years. I will continue to find a way to make it work. I love my country, Anonymous. My country needs to find a way to provide access to honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research to millions of middle-class investors. That should be the top priority for each and every one of us, in my sincere assessment.
Rob
Does your wife agree with your sense of urgency and priorities?
She does not. But I know her well. I believe that, when she sees what happens to millions of middle-class investors in the days following the next price crash, she may well change her mind. We’ll see.
Rob
So you have left it up to your wife to earn an income?
I am not going to go into detail re that matter here. I discuss it a bit more in the book.
It would be fair to say that she does not agree with my decisions. My view is that a person has to live with his conscience above all else. I could not live with myself if I did not do everything in my power to open every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the past 40 years of peer-reviewed research.
I love my wife. But I do not believe that I can love my wife in a full and complete way if I do not demonstrate love for my country when it is demanded of me. My country needs me re this matter. I could not live with myself if I did not do what I could. So I continue to do that.
Rob
Most wives would divorce their husband if they avoided getting a job in 19 years. Shouldn’t your wife/family be your first priority? Why can’t you write you book and work a job?
William Bernstein was a practicing neurologist. Wade Pfau worked in academics and is a key member of a financial advisory firm. Jack Bogle worked at Vanguard. Robert Shiller is with Yale. All these experts have worked a job while still interacting with the overall financial community. How is it that you cannot work a job to bring home an income because you feel you need to spend your time surfing the interest with the task of trying to post on other websites and get your board bannings removed?
No one agrees with your story about saving the world, but that is besides the point. There are plenty of hours in the day to work on your passion as well as to work a job that brings in an income to provide for your wife and family. How is it that you feel it is different for you?
Most wives would divorce their husband if they avoided getting a job in 19 years. Shouldn’t your wife/family be your first priority? Why can’t you write you book and work a job?
Most site owners would ban someone who advanced a death threat. If ordinary rules applied in the investment advice area, there never would have been any problems.
My family is my first priority. My family lives in the United States. If this next Buy-and-Hold Crisis is anything similar to the earlier ones we experienced, we could end up suffering a Second Great Depression. That would affect my family in a very serious way.
This matter is time-sensitive. In our earlier Buy-and-Hold crises, the CAPE value did not just fall to fair-value levels. It fell to levels far below that because millions of investors panicked. It is very important that we avoid panic. The only way to do that is to get honest and accurate information out to people so they can make sense of what is happening to them.
Rob
You didn’t answer the question. Why not work a job at the same time. There are plenty of hours in a day.
William Bernstein was a practicing neurologist. Wade Pfau worked in academics and is a key member of a financial advisory firm. Jack Bogle worked at Vanguard. Robert Shiller is with Yale. All these experts have worked a job while still interacting with the overall financial community. How is it that you cannot work a job to bring home an income because you feel you need to spend your time surfing the interest with the task of trying to post on other websites and get your board bannings removed?
No one agrees with your story about saving the world, but that is besides the point. There are plenty of hours in the day to work on your passion as well as to work a job that brings in an income to provide for your wife and family. How is it that you feel it is different for you?
All of those people can add more value to the world once they feel safe posting with 100 percent honesty re safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics. You Goons consider me Enemy #1 because my aim is to open the entire internet to honest posting. So I have had to deal with 500 times the level of abuse of any of these others. I think that that’s the way to go because the positive leverage effect would be off the charts. We will all be learning so much when all these people (plus thousands of others) feel free to post their sincere views.
If we are all thinking clearly, there wouldn’t be a single person (including you Goons!) opposed to the idea of permitting honest posting on safe withdrawal rates or on any other critically important investment-related topic. People have a hard time appreciating how important this is in the investment advice field because honest posting is just permitted as a matter of course in all other fields. It turns out that permitting honest posting is mighty darn important! Once a ban is in place, the need to continue the cover-up becomes more and more important to those who favor it. Things had gotten so bad in the investment advice filed that, on the morning of May 13, 2002, there was a feeling among some that it would be okay to ban honest posting re safe withdrawal rates because it would make the Buy-and-Holders feel bad for people to learn the research-backed realities. Huh? What the f?
If we are not going to permit honest posting on the numbers that people use to plan their retirement, we should not have an investment advice field. People need accurate numbers. When things reach a point where honest posting is prohibited, the entire investment advice project serves no purpose. Lots of people in this field want to do honest work and help people. Nothing could be more clear. They shouldn’t have to live in fear re what the Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads will do to them if they dare to do so.
That’s my sincere take, Anonymous. The last 40 years of peer-reviewed research is the most important 40 years of peer-reviewed research in the history of investment advice. We need to provide some means by which millions of investors can gain access to civil and reasoned discussions of it.
My sincere take.
Rob
Why would you be willing to risk a long prison sentence because some Goon friend of yours got an important number wrong in a retirement study posted at his web site?
That’s nuts, Anonymous. I mean, come on. It’s not a close call.
Shiller showed that stock investing is a highly emotional business. But this stuff is off the freakin’ charts!
Rob
You didn’t answer the question. Why not work a job at the same time. There are plenty of hours in a day.
The book needs to come first, that’s all. There are millions of lives riding on this. That’s a lot of responsibility on my head. I want to be sure that I can say that I did everything in my power.
Think of how important it is to you to be sure that no place on the internet permits honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research. I am coming at it from exactly the opposite perspective. That’s how important I think it is that people have access to honest and accurate reports of what the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research says.
I haven’t committed any criminal acts! Give me that much! I am not entirely obsessed.
Rob
Only Rob Bennett can save those millions of lives!!!! I can’t believe you actually posted this stuff to show how nuts you really are.
Okay.
I believe we should all be united. We all need to know how stock investing works. If irrational exuberance is a real thing, that changes everything that we once thought we knew about how stock investing works. If irrational exuberance is real, then every calculation that the Buy-and-Holder have ever done is in error (because Buy-and-Holders don’t take it into consideration). That’s a big deal. We should all want to get this stuff figured out because this stuff affects all of us in a very big way.
My best wishes to you and yours, in any event.
Rob
“ I believe we should all be united. We all need to know how stock investing works.”
Everything is out there. Everyone can make their own choices on investing. You made your choice to get out of the market and to quIt your job. That is your right, even if no one else agrees with it. Same goes for everyone else.
The number of times that a thing is said makes a difference. There were thousands of people who participated at the Motley Fool’s Retire Early board back in the day, Greaney’s retirement study was discussed constantly. People thought it was real. Not because Greaney had demonstrated convincingly that he had included a valuation adjustment in the study. Those of us who had doubts as to whether it included one were afraid to speak up because Greaney had a reputation as a highly abusive poster who didn’t tolerate challenges to his study. So we kept it zipped. And lots of people assumed that “this must be more or less on the mark.”
I think honest posting is essential. For so long as most people in this field are afraid to say that the Buy-and-Hold Emperor is wearing no clothes, this field will be 100 percent corrupt. In the vast majority of cases, the corruption is non-intentional. People repeat things that they have heard with no idea that they are not valid, thinking that because they have not heard challenges to these claims there must be something to them. But there is nothing to any of the claims rooted in some way to The Big Mistake, the loony tunes idea that there might be some alternate universe where market timing is not always 100 percent required for every investor at all times.
Market timing is price discipline. Price discipline is the magic that makes markets work. Take market timing out of the stock market and you turn it into a car without brakes. That approach always ends in tears. I believe that we will set things straight in the days following the next price crash, which will bring on an ocean of human misery in the event that stocks continue to perform in the future anything at all as they have always performed in the future. I believe that we will make it to the other side and from that point forward we will all live far richer and more fulfilling lives than we ever imagined possible during the Buy-and-Hold Era. But I believe that we will be traveling some rocky road first.
Buy-and-Hold! Science! The 4 Percent Rule! Stay the Course! Research! Get Rich Quick!
My best wishes to you, Anonymous.
Rob