Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“I can’t buy a house today with the $500 million settlement payment that I expect to receive in the days following the next price crash. But I will be able to buy lots of houses then. And I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I helped millions of people live richer and betters lives than they ever imagined was possible in the Buy-and-Hold Era. That ain’t nothing.”
It is a BIG nothing and you haven’t help one single person. All you have done is wasting very valuable time that you can never get back.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow, in any event.
Rob
Do you understand the basis of settlement payments? To have such a case, you would need to show that you had an established base of business that generated a profit. You would then need to show how someone came in and damaged that business, resulting in a decline of profits. The settlement payment would then be factored on that lost profit. As you admitted yesterday, you don’t have any business as you don’t even have anything to sell (no materials) and no existing customer base.
The ban on honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is the biggest public policy issue before out nation today. In the event that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research we are looking at a fifth Buy-and-Hold Crisis that may be as bad or even worse than any of the first four. Millions of retirements will fail. Hundreds of thousands of businesses will go under. Millions of people will be thrown out of their jobs. Political frictions will be exacerbated.
All that we would have needed to do to avoid all that back in May 2002 was to apply the same laws that apply in every field other than the investing advice filed in the investment advice field as well. I proposed doing that at the time. When the Buy-and-Hold Crisis hits, we are going to have to come to terms with it as a nation. I have 19 years of material explaining how this happened and showing what we need to do to insure that it never happens again (encourage market timing/price discipline at ever turn). I have a funny feeling that there will not be one non-Goon who will have any objection to me receiving a settlement well in excess of $500 million. It wouldn’t surprise me on whit if a good number of you Goons came along for the ride.
You are focused on petty stuff. The lawyers can deal with all that. What matters here is that there are no two side. We all want the same thing. We all want to know how stock investing works. We are trapped the national debate on Shiller’s amazing research findings should have been launched in 1981. Had that happened, there never would have been any 4 percent rule (the idea that there could be any number that would always be the safe withdrawal rate is a perfect absurdity), so there never would have been any 4 percent rule for me to challenge. The reality is that there WAS a 4 percent rule and millions of good and smart people were taken in by it. The Buy-and-Holders don’t want to acknowledge the error (because it is so important that it be corrected and because it has remained uncorrected for so long). But the error must be corrected. We can never develop an accurate understanding of how stock investing works until we give ourselves permission to talk about these things. So we need to come to terms with what has happened and I am able to provide the most complete and the most balanced account of what is going on. I have a funny feeling that I am not going to have much difficulty collecting that $500 million.
That’s all so ONCE THE BAN ON HONEST POSTING IS LIFTED. So long as the ban remains in place, I can’t collect ten cents. So that’s the entire deal. We have 40 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there is zero chance that a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategy” could ever work for a single long-term investor. If the ban is lifted, I am gold. I have been working these fields for 19 years now. If the ban is not lifted, I am the greatest fool who ever worked Planet Earth. I believe that the ban will be lifted because, if Shiller is right about irrational exuberance, our economic and political system will not be able to survive the fallout if it is not lifted. I believe that we are a good people and that we will do the right thing when we are left with absolutely no other choice.
But we’ll see, you know? I am incapable of saying that I believe that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment in any event. So, if an angel came down from heaven and told me that there will never be a $500 million settlement check, I still wouldn’t be able to appease you Goons. I don’t have any other options but to continue to post honestly re safe withdrawal rates and re scores of other critically important investment-related topics. I personally have no worried about how big my settlement payment will be once the ban is lifted. My one big worry is re what the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will do to us all. But of course I am in the same boat as everyone else (including you Goons) re that one. So we will just have to let it all play out and see how things go.
I do wish you all good things in any event. I would like to think that that would help at least a tiny bit.
Rob
“You are focused on petty stuff. The lawyers can deal with all that.”
Getting your $500 million is petty? What lawyers have you been able to find that will talk up your case?
How many do you think I will be able to find in the days following a 60 percent drop in stock prices?
Rob
“How many do you think I will be able to find in the days following a 60 percent drop in stock prices?
The same number you currently have on board……zero.
Okay, Anonymous.
Rob
Well, you haven’t found any lawyers to take up your case in the last 20 years, have you?
I have not.
That’s why today’s CAPE value is one of the worst that we have ever seen in history. Investors have become more emotional in recent decades than they have ever been before. I want to change that. To do that, I need to be able to post honestly re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research.
Rob
You don’t have a lawyer, you don’t have any materials to sell, you don’t have any customers lined up to buy any materials, you don’t have a completed book, you don’t have a job lined up and your wife, son and priest all want you to go back to work. Has anything worked out for you yet?
Evidence-Based Investing, one of the lead Goons, recently acknowledged that I was right in what I said in my famous post of May 13, 2002 — the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site really does lack an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.
Rob
“Evidence-Based Investing, one of the lead Goons, recently acknowledged that I was right in what I said in my famous post of May 13, 2002 — the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site really does lack an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.”
No one had ever claimed that it does. You seem obsessed with disproving a claim that no-one is actually making.
Greaney said that a 4 percent withdrawal is “100 percent safe” at all valuation levels. I said that it is safe at some valuation levels and not at others. Greaney flipped his lid. That’s been the story for 19 years now.
If Greaney said that he personally believes that 4 percent will always work but that he is okay with people saying that they believe that you have to take valuations into consideration to identify what is safe, I would have no quarrel with him.
Rob
Rob,
You just can’t accept that you have just wasted the last 19 years. Evidence is not interested in becoming the next JWR.
Please let him know that I wish him all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.
Rob
Too bad. You lost Evidence, your wife, your son and your priest.
Life is tough, Anonymous.
I do wish you all good things.
Rob