I have posted Entry #562 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called An Important Purpose of Investment Research Is to Reveal unpopular Truths.
Juicy Excerpt: The biggest problem, though, is that the Buy-and-Holders are not entirely sincere in their belief in the power of research. They do believe in research. It is clear to me that that is so. But one element of the scientific mindset is always to question, never to fall into the trap of believing that you have it all figured out. The Buy-and-Holders have fallen into the trap of believing that they have it all figured out. They no longer are open to questioning of their claim that market timing doesn’t work. The Buy-and-Holders of today disdain the recent research.
You need to change your Bio. It needs to tell everyone who you will single-handedly save the lives and retirements for millions of people, save the entire US economy and become one of the richest people we have ever seen.
The advance from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is huge. It is the biggest economic advance in our nation’s history. Getting irrational exuberance under control for the first time will permit our economic system to function far more smoothly than it ever has before and all of us living in it to retire many years sooner while taking on far less risk with our retirement money. I can live with that!
I am of course proud of the role that I have played in making this huge advance a practical reality (not just a theoretical one). I certainly don’t claim that I did it myself. We have had thousands of people express a desire that honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research be permitted at every discussion board and blog on the internet, without a single exception. The brave and kind and intelligent souls who did that did it knowing that they were putting their lives and the lives of their loved ones at risk by “cross” you Goons. So good on them, you know?
I wish that we didn’t have to endure another economic crisis to get to the place where deep in our hearts (including the depraves hearts of our Goon friends!) we all want to be. But I do believe that in the not-too-distant future we will make it to the other side and there won’t be one non-Goon among us who will ever look back in fondness to the Buy-and-Hold days that we will have left behind (and I believe that it is entirely possible that a good number of you Goons will sign up with the good guys at that time as well).
Wish us luck!
Rob
We know that you are really proud of yourself. You must be humbled with all those thousands of your fans posting here everyday as to how great you are.
The thousands of people who have posted in support of me are not posting here today. I very much wish they were. When we are all learning from their posts on a daily basis, we will enjoy the strongest surge of economic growth in our nation’s history. I look forward to the day when they all feel 100 percent safe in posting their sincere beliefs. That’s how it should be.
In try to spin things in a positive direction. You Goons hate the idea of those people feeling safe to post honestly. That seems messed-up. You Goons will live better lives after we all have secured our right to post honestly. Yet you resist the advance. Why? There has to be some reason. The reason is that the advance promises to be so huge that you can’t stand it. Acknowledging that such a huge advance is possible suggests that there was a day when you did not know it all. So, as beneficial as that advance would be for all of us, you find it threatening and scary.
I wish you didn’t. But I can’t say that it makes me unhappy to see that you view Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research as being as important as I do (with the difference being that I want everyone in the world to know about it and you want to block that from happening). We fundamentally agree, Anonymous. We both see a huge advance. You oppose it and I support it. That’s the only difference. And, after you see the ocean of human misery that will likely arrive with the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, it would not shock me one little bit if you end up agreeing that we should have been permitting honest posting re the peer-reviewed research all along.
I look forward to joining you for a few nice cold ones and laughing about the craziness that went down in earlier days. We are in the process of working it all out.It gets better. I am sure.
Rob
It is amazing that a few unknown goons have been able to block these thousands of supporters from posting. They must be sophisticated hackers that can track down those thousands and put up those barriers. It is so amazing as to how you have all these answers and know everything, so that us stupid morons can learn everything from you. Shiller should be working on getting you nominated for a Nobel prize of your own. Will he be one of the many experts writing recommendations for your new book?
The story of what has happened over the past 19 years is an amazing one, Anonymous. You won’t get any argument from me. But the reality is that it is not the first amazing thing that has ever happened in the history of the United States. I find it amazing that there was a time when women were not able to vote. I find it amazing that there was a time when there were large numbers of people who defended slavery.
Those things changed over time. But those changes did not come easily. There was lots of resistance to the positive changes. That’s what we have seen with our efforts as a nation to move from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. A lot of people are dug in re Buy-and-Hold and are not willing to hear what the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is trying to tell us all.
I won’t be asking Shiller to write a blurb for my book when I finish writing it. But I certainly believe that he will be part of the national debate that I believe we will be having re these matters after we see the damage that the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will do to millions of people and that Shiller and I will engaged in extensive conversations about all sorts of matters in those days and that he will agree to write a blurb for the book when it is picked up by a major publisher. Why wouldn’t he?
Re how much I know about these matters at this point, I know a lot because I abandoned Buy-and-Hold on the evening of August 27, 2002, when Greaney advanded his first death threat and over 200 of my fellow community members endorsed it (while about 50 endorsed a post taking issue with the tolerance for death threats by Buy-and-Holders). There is no one else on the planet who has spent 19 years of his or her life studying these matters at the level of intensity that I have devoted to them in the 19 years since my famous post of May 13, 2002.
Yes, I have learned a lot. I believe that Valuation-Indexing is the future of investing analysis and that Buy-and-Hold is the past. I believe that it makes sense to devote my energies to preparing for the future. I encourage all others doing work in this field to do the same. The more hands we have working these fields, the more forward progress we will make and the sooner that forward progress will be achieved.
Rob
Why wouldn’t Shiller write that blurb now? Are those goon hackers blocking him, just like they block people from seeing the evidence on all those death threats and other criminal acts?
Yes.
Shiller and everyone else who works in this field is aware of the social taboo against honest posting re the dangers of Buy-and-Hold.
Do you think that every person who opposed slavery spoke out in opposition to it in the days when slavery was still legal and a large percentage of the population practiced it? They didn’t. They said what they thought they could get away with, just as Shiller has done and just as Bogle did when he we alive and just as Berntein has done and just as Pfau has done and just as Kitces has done and on and on and on.
Drop all of the criminal stuff and you will see questioning of Buy-and-Hold increased by leaps and bounds. Lots of good and smart people want to tell us the research-based truths re market timing and safe withdrawal rates and lots of other matters. But for so long as they see criminal acts engaged in by those “defending” Buy-and-Hold going unprosecuted, they are going to be reluctant to stating their sincere beliefs plainly and clearly and boldly. We need to apply the same laws that apply in every field other than the investment advice field in the investment advice field as well if we want to gain access to accurate and honest reports of what the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world.
There is no valuation adjustment in the retirement study posted at John Greaaney’s web site. Even Evidence-Based Investing has now acknowledged this. When you’ve lost Evidence….
Rob
Wow, so those goon hackers have been able to not only block Shiller, but they have blocked Bogle, Pfau, Berstein and Kitces. They must have some incredible hacker skills to be able to target them so efficiently and completely.
They must have gotten to Evidence as well since Evidence just said this past week that Greaney’s work is much different versus what you say. Or possibly those goon hackers were able to change his words.
I still can’t figure out how those goons can filter out all the criminal stuff you bring up. There isn’t even a tiny bit of it to be found on the internet. They are so crafty in hiding it. In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen anything like it on the internet since you can uncover also every other conspiracy effort on the internet. They have done something never seen before in history. They must be the most powerful goons ever. In fact, we don’t even know who these goons are. Just incredible. Why do you think these goons are better than any other goon hacker out there?
I’ve answered this one thousands of times. It’s a good and important question. I don’t say different. But at some point we just have to accept that the answer is the same on the 10,000th time I answer it as it was on the first time I answered it.
How do the Goon hackers persuaded people to smoke even though smoking causes cancer? How do the Goon hackers cause people to adopt poor diets even though poor diets lead to heart disease? How do the Goon hackers persuade people to drink to excess? We humans have weaknesses and the Goon hackers exploit those weaknesses, that’s how.
It would be hard to find someone who doesn’t have a stake in Buy-and-Hold being right. If Buy-and-Hold is right, then the insanely inflated numbers showing the value of your stock portfolio are real and all that irrational exuberance in your name counts as real money. Even those with nothing invested in the stock market are better off is Shiller is wrong. If Shiller is right, we are soon going to see an economic crises that will cause hundreds of thousands of businesses to go belly up and even people with no money in the market will lose their jobs. Irrational exuberance FEELS good to each and every one of us.
I believe that for financial planning purposes it is important to know the real numbers. So I believe that we all need to take irrational exuberance into consideration when making decisions as to how to invest. I think Shiller merited that Nobel prize he was awarded.
But I understand how the Goon hackers could gain a temporary advantage by pushing a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategy.” I believe that a higher percentage of the population will see the merit of the idea of permitting honest posting re Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research in the days following the next price crash. But we’ll have to be a little bit patient to find out for sure, you know? I wish you all the best of luck with it in any event.
Rob
Wow, the goon hackers force people to eat, smoke and drink excessively and keep people from knowing about the dangers? They must be all powerful.
Those goon hackers really have no equal. I can find out about every other conspiracy on the internet, such as aliens, who killed JFK, what happened to Jimmy Hoffa, etc. Yet at the same time, the goons have totally hidden the vast conspiracy against market timing and VII as well as all the criminal acts, etc. They are probably blocking The New York Times from giving you coverage and are probably trying to block all those publishers from finding out about your new book.
The Goons are not all powerful.
Shiller was able to get his book published.
He was awarded a Nobel prize.
Wade devoted 16 months of his life to doing research with me showing that Valuation-Informed Indexing is far superior to Buy-and-Hold in every possible way.
Cracks in the dam that I believe we will see collapse altogether in the days following the next price crash.
We’ll see.
Rob
I disagree. Those goons appear to be all powerful. They have blocked the biggest mass conspiracy against VII that has ever been seen. Heck, they even blocked your name from Wade’s study. The probably have blocked Jerome Powell from learning about VII. They have reached the highest levels in the world. Only your superpowers can save the world.
I actually believe that it is going to be a key Buy-and-Hold principle that is going to save the world. It was the Buy-and-Holders who came up with the one about how we should use the peer-reviewed research as guidance re how to invest in stocks.
I hadn’t even read Shiller’s book at the moment I hit “Send” on that famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002. I knew that the safe withdrawal rate could not possibly be the same number at all times because Bogle wrote in his book that “Reversion to the Mean is an iron law of stock investing.” If prices always revert to the mean, then stocks offer more value when they are priced low than when they are priced high and market timing is 100 percent required for all investors who want to keep their risk profile constant over time.
You Goons must have been sleeping on the day that Bogle wrote his book!
Rob
I guess you should be a Yale professor given your significant accomplishments. Or maybe that is just shooting to low. You should be head of the Fed, instead of Jerome Powell.
I’m inclined to aim a bit higher.
Personal finance journalist?
Rob