Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Here are your problems:
The majority of your content is 15 years old.
The majority of your content is repetitive. In fact, it doesn’t look like you have had anything new to say for over a decade.
Your predictions have failed.
There have been no successful outcomes with your strategy and you have even failed.
Why would you continue to waste time on something that has no perceived value?
If Valuation-Informed Indexing did not have huge perceived value, discussion of it would not be banned at a single site, Anonymous. You do not ban things that are not a threat. I mean, come on.
We know how stock investing works today. That’s wonderful. We can all live better lives from this point forward as a result.
But there is a price to be paid for incorporating what the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us into our knowledge base. The price is that the Buy-and-Holders will have to learn how to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” Some are fine with that. But there are enough who do not want to go there and who have enough power to get their way to hold the rest of us back. For now, the rest of us have been willing to tolerate being held back.
The next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will bring on an ocean of human misery. I believe that that will cause some more people to work up the courage to stand up to you Goons. We don’t need that many to make it happen. We already have 10 percent of the population that believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research. If another crisis brings that up to 20 percent, I believe that will turn the key.
It’s all downhill sledding from there. For each and every one of us. We all want the same things. We all want to know how stock investing works in the real world.
My sincere take.
And my best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Anonymous says
“If Valuation-Informed Indexing did not have huge perceived value, discussion of it would not be banned at a single site, Anonymous. You do not ban things that are not a threat. I mean, come on.”
That makes no sense at all. In fact, it is just the opposite. Take technology for example. Each time we see advancements in cell phones, electric cars, battery technology, etc., we see that it is covered extensively on websites that talk about technology. Technology with no value is not covered.
I dare you to show examples that back up your claims.
Rob says
Bill Gates wrote an e-mail to the employees of Microsoft employees in 2015 that stated:
“Early on, Paul Allen and I set the goal of a computer on every desk and in every home. It was a bold idea and a lot of people thought we were out of our minds to imagine it was possible.”
If all discussions of any efforts to achieve that goal had been suppressed on grounds that the people who were seeking it were “out of their minds,” we would all be living poorer lives today. Advances are of course covered after they have been proven. That’s obvious. Once everyone has been persuaded that Shiller’s amazing research findings are legitimate, there won’t be one person who will object to discussion of them. The issue we are facing today is that we can never get to that point until we permit discussions. It is through discussions that a new idea either takes over the world or is shown to be wanting. We cannot possibly learn which it is with Valuation-Informed Indexing until we permit honest discussions at every web site.
If you were confident that there is some sort of flaw to Valuation-Informed Indexing, you would support my effort to open every site to honest posting because you would be confident that Buy-and-Hold would prevail in civil and reasoned discussions. Your behavior shows that your doubts about the ability of Buy-and-Hold to prevail in civil and reasoned discussions are as great as my own. The different is that, if Buy-and-Hold is as dangerous as Shiller’s research shows it to be, I want to see it go down. You want to see Buy-and-Hold remain dominant regardless of how dangerous it is. My goal is to know as much as possible about how stock investing works. Yours is to see Buy-and-Hold always remain dominant, regardless of whether it helps people or hurts people.
My sincere take.
Rob
Anonymous says
When did Bill Gates get banned on websites because of the value of his ideas?
Rob says
People who bring exciting new ideas to the world have been encountering hate from people who are making a good living on the old ideas ever since the world began, Anonymous. It’s the oldest story in the book. Do a search for graduation speeches by Steve Jobs if you want to figure out what is going on here.
The trouble is not that this is hard to figure out. It is as easy as pie to figure out. The trouble is that you do not want to figure this one out. Figure it out and Greaney has to correct his retirement study and you do not want that. That’s been the entire story from A to Z going back to the morning of May 13, 2002. Some guy got an important number wrong in a retirement study posted at his web site and he really, really, really does not want to acknowledge it. That’s been the 19 years.
I really, really, really want him to acknowledge it. Or at least to have thousands and thousands of people in the field to acknowledge it so that it doesn’t really matter anymore whether he personally acknowledges it or not. In part because I don’t want people to be taken in by the false claims made in the study. But also more importantly because what it tells us about the investment advice field in the year 2021 that there is an error in a retirement study that was brought to public light in May 2002 but that has not been corrected for 19 years now. If Buy-and-Hold causes us to get the numbers wrong in retirement studies, what else did it cause us to get wrong?
All kinds of things. That’s why we are living under the threat of a CAPE value of 38 today. We pull together to bury Buy-and-Hold 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things, and all that goes away. I believe that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research. Sue me, you know? Either market timing isn’t required or valuations affect long-term returns. It cannot possibly be both. We should all be permitted (and encouraged!) to make use of basic logic and common sense when making decisions about how to invest our retirement money.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investment strategy you elect to pusrue.
Rob
Anonymous says
When you read what you posted, think about what you ban from this site.
Rob says
Death threats and other criminal stuff are a genuine threat to what I am trying to achieve with the site, Anonymous. They drive away good people. I need to attract good people to the site to achieve my goals.
I don’t ban people for saying that they believe that Buy-and-Hold is a good strategy. I don’t agree with them but I do not ban them. I wouldn’t even ban someone for saying that he believes that the Greaney retirement study contains a valuation adjustment. I would add a comment of my own saying that I do not believe that it contains a valuation adjustment and let readers decide for themselves what to believe. But, if someone threatened to kill my loved ones because I had pointed out that it lacks a valuation adjustment, then, yes, I would ban that statement (the statement, not the poster who offered it). And I would offer no apologies. Criminal stuff does not add, it subtracts. There is no place for criminal stuff in discussions of stock investing, in my sincere assessment.
Rob
Anonymous says
You already told us that your market timing scheme is more important than your wife and family. How about God? Does he come after your market timing scheme as well?
Rob says
Market timing is price discipline. It’s not a “scheme” to engage in price discipline when buying stocks any more than it is a “scheme” to engage in price discipline when buying anything else. It would be a “scheme” to FAIL to engage in price discipline/market timing.
Someone who cares about God and family and friends would want millions of stock investors to have access to honest and accurate reports of what the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world. Say that I discovered the cure for cancer but that there were people who ran cancer treatment centers who did not want the word to get out about the cure because their big incomes would be placed in jeopardy if cancer were cured. Would you say that I would be going against God’s will to tell people about the cure for cancer? I would not. I would say that it would be doing God’s will to help people get cured from cancer. And I of course think it is doing God’s will to explain to people how stock investing works according to the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.
That’s my sincere take, in any event.
Rob
Anonymous says
So you put VII in front of God. Got it.
Rob says
Developing and promoting the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept is how I serve God, Anonymous. I did not feel that I was doing God’s will during the three years when I was too cowardly to speak up.
Rob
Anonymous says
Because God wants you to get a $500 million windfall since working a job only give you chump change?
Rob says
The $500 million isn’t a windfall. It is the compensation that I would have received for my work had you Goons not engaged in criminal behavior.
And, while that $500 million goes to me, it benefits every investor on the planet. After I received that $500 million, I will be invited to be the keynote speaker at the annual Financial Bloggers Conferences for many years to come. That will help us all to speak the word re how stock investing works in the real world. Which of course benefits each and every one of us.
Including you Goons. I think it would be fair to say that the jury determining the length of your prison sentences will be taking into consideration how many lives have been destroyed by your 19-year cover-up of the error in the Greaney retirement study. The more people who learn about what the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research says, the fewer lives will be destroyed. So that $500 million payment may end up helping you Goons more than anyone else.
Yes, I think God wants all that to happen. I believe that God loves us all. I believe that God gave us the brains that permitted us as a society to produce Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research and to see it awarded a Nobel prize and that he wants us to use them to achieve good purposes. It’s hard to imagine a purpose more good than snapping the last piece of the stock investing puzzle into place at long last.
Rob
Anonymous says
“ Yes, I think God wants all that to happen. ”
You really think it is God’s will for you to be rich and famous and for your critics to go to prison? Really?
Rob says
I do.
We obviously did not know all that we needed to know about how stock investing works in 1980. We achieved a huge advance in 1981 with the publication of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that there is precisely zero chance that a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategy”could ever work for a single long-term investor. We all should be living better lives today. But the Buy-and-Holders feel that it would make them “look bad” for people to learn that they did not always know it all.
It is God’s will that we enforce the laws that permit us all to engage in civil and reasoned discussions of how stock investing works in the real world. Prison sentences send a message. Huge monetary awards send a message. I think it would be fair to say that you Goons have no intention of ever saying “Oh, our criminal behavior has destroyed enough lives, we are going to bring the financial fraud stuff to a full and complete stop today.” We need to show our desire as a nation that all investors have access to honest reports re what the peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world.
Everyone benefits when this massive act of financial fraud is brought to a full and complete stop. We are all in this together. We all should be working together to bury the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things. If there had never been an Buy-and-Hold, Greaney never would have made the error he made in his retirement study. And it is not just the errors in the safe withdrawal rate studies that are the problem. We need to see honest posting on asset allocation and on risk management and on retirement planning in general. All of it.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the days following the next price crash.
Rob
Anonymous says
I don’t think your priest would agree with your opinion.
Rob says
I had lots of conversations with my priest about this. You are right that he did not agree. But his disagreement had nothing to do with the investing issues. His disagreement was because of arguments that you often advance here — the investing work was not bringing in money and my first priority should be providing for my family.
I don’t question his good intent. But I don’t agree with his conclusion. We live in communities. We cannot go through life caring only about ourselves and our families. When the entire United States is under threat (consider what Buy-and-Hold did to us in 1929), people need to speak out. I am not helping my family if I put food on the table in the short term but in the long term let a Second Great Depression play out that means that everyone in the United States ends up living a dramatically diminished life.
Pretending that all that matters in this life is providing for one’s family is an excuse. People are afraid of you Goons and so they come up with rationalizations for not speaking up against your criminal acts. I think we all have a responsibility to speak up in opposition to criminal acts that hurt millions of people in very serious ways.
I cannot speak for God. I will have to accept God’s judgment when He delivers it whatever it turns out to be. But I can say with certainty that it took a great weight off my conscience when I worked up the courage to stand up to you Goons on the morning of May 13, 2002. I have felt better able to sleep at night ever since. I think that that’s one way that God uses to let me know that I am doing the right thing. If we do see an economic crisis as a result of our unwillingness to stand up to you Goons, I will be able to say that I did everything in my power. I am proud of that. That’s important to me.
Rob
Anonymous says
So you feel that you God’s word better than your priest and you also ignore the wishes of your wife. Is there anyone alive today that you would believe if they explained to you how you are wrong?
Rob says
“So you feel that you God’s word better than your priest and you also ignore the wishes of your wife. Is there anyone alive today that you would believe if they explained to you how you are wrong?”
If Greaney posted a PDF of the page of his retirement study that contains the valuation adjustment, I would look at that.
I don’t expect to see it after 19 years. I put the odds that he is going to do that at less than the odds that the moon is really made of green cheese. But that would make an impression on me.
Rob
Anonymous says
So there is no one that you would ever listen to that says you are wrong. Yet at the same time, you think everyone else should listen to you.
Rob says
I think that everyone should listen to everyone. That’s how we all learn together.
The fact that you Goons feel that it is so important that only one side of the story be told tells me that you are not nearly as confident as you pretend to be. The Ban on Honest Posting has gotten you trapped in a corner. You would be better off if you had been permitting honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research all along. That way, if we ever experienced the economic crisis that we should be expecting to see if Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research turns out to be legitimate research, people would not see it as your fault. If you had permitted honest posting, people would see it as just one of those things. But, given that it was you who insisted on the ban that left millions of people vulnerable to horrible financial losses, I think it would be fair to say that many people are going to seek financial damages from you.
Bans on honest posting are not the norm in our society. The fact that you have to go so far outside the norms of our society to make the case for Buy-and-Hold tells me that there is something terribly wrong with Buy-and-Hold.
I don’t say that everyone should listen to me. I say that the laws of the United States should be following so that everyone has the opportunity to listen to me if they care to while also having the freedom to ignore every word I say if they care to do that instead. It should be up to each investor how to invest his or her retirement money, not some group of internet goons.
Everyone should agree with that. There shouldn’t be any dissenting voices. There ARE dissenting voices. But I don’t think there should be any. I believe that the laws against death threats and unjustified board bannings and thousands of acts of defamation and acts of extortion used to silence academic researchers doing honest work in this field are good and necessary laws. The people who say that I am wrong never make a case otherwise. They just say “Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold is obviously popular, so you should just zip it.”
If all of us who see the dangers of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold give in to the pressures to zip it, how are things ever going to change? I want us all to live better lives in the future than we ever imagined possible during the Buy-and-Hold years. I didn’t ask for this job But I think it would be fair to say that someone has to do it and it appears that through a strange set of circumstances I was elected. So I give it my best shot. I can do no more and I can do no less.
Rob
Anonymous says
“Pretending that all that matters in this life is providing for one’s family is an excuse.”
Pretending to have more important things to do than provide for one’s family is despicable. So says your priest, your wife, us Goons, and everyone else. Yours is the attitude of a selfish, lazy bum.
“I have felt better able to sleep at night ever since. I think that that’s one way that God uses to let me know that I am doing the right thing.”
Or maybe you’re a sociopath.
Anonymous says
You just admitted you wouldn’t listen to anyone and then turned around to say you would. Your history shows That you have ignored everyone on their opinions over the last 2 decades and that includes your priest and your wife.
Rob says
“Yours is the attitude of a selfish, lazy bum.”
Yeah, yeah.
Rob says
“You just admitted you wouldn’t listen to anyone and then turned around to say you would. Your history shows That you have ignored everyone on their opinions over the last 2 decades and that includes your priest and your wife.”
I listened carefully to my wife and I listened carefully to my priest. Listening and agreeing are different things. Neither of them addressed the investing issues that are at the core of this.
Does the retirement study posed at John Greaney’s web site contain a valuation adjustment or does it not? That’s what matters. There were friends of mine at the old Retire Early board who used that study to plan their retirements.
Rob
Anonymous says
“ I listened carefully to my wife and I listened carefully to my priest. Listening and agreeing are different things. Neither of them addressed the investing issues that are at the core of this.”
The investing world has listened to you and doesn’t agree with you. Working men and women listened to you about why you won’t work and they don’t agree with you. In the end, you suffer from it. The bad news is that you are making your wife and kids needlessly suffer as well.
Rob says
10 percent of the investing world STRONGLY agrees with me. John Walter Russell devoted eight years of his life to researching my ideas about stock investing without receiving a dime in compensation because he thought they were so important. Thousands of my fellow community members expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted, knowing that they were placing their life in danger by doing so. Wade Pfau devoted 16 months of his life to researching Valuation-Informed Indexing and concluded that: “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” I think it would be fair to say that none of you Goons ever received a tiny fraction of the support from investors that I have heard on a daily basis at times when honest posting was permitted.
I can live with all that. I believe that Buy-and-Hold is the past and that Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future. We’ll see.
Rob
Anonymous says
So you are saying that 90% of the investing world disagrees with you.
Rob says
I think that’s so, Anonymous.
If you have any doubts re that one, take a look at today’s CAPE level. A CAPE level of 38 is a logical impossibility in a world in which honest posting re the past 40 years of peer-reviewed research is permitted at every site.
Rob