Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
It was wrong of me to make posts that appeared to make fun of you. With that said, my posts have always been based on truth. You have made many false and hurtful allegations against very good people. You have given out harmful financial advice, despite having no training/education in the field. Most importantly, you have failed to adequately provide for your family.
Please consider these words seriously as this is my last post.
I wish you all the best, Anonymous.
Please take good care, dear Goon friend.
Rob
Have you ever contributed at reddit?
There seems to be a large and active FIRE community at https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/
I have a vague recollection of having put a post up there at one time. Did they do an “Ask Me Anything” with Wade Pfau? Or am I thinking of someplace else?
I would of course love to be a part of that community. But that community faces the same problems that were faced by the Motley Fool community and the FIRE community and the Early Retirement Forum community and the Morningstar community and the Bogleheads Forum community. There are lots of people in that community that would love to be able to discuss what the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works. But there is also a small but very intense group of Buy-and-Hold Goons that will disrupt any discussions that the Normals attempt to have and turn them ugly and unproductive. Keeping people from learning about the recent research is a life-and-death matter for about 10 percent of the population of Buy-and-Holders.
I think we are as a society going to overcome you Goons. Because I don’t see that we have any choice. You can’t have a nation where millions of people face the responsibility of financing their own retirement in which honest posting on the most important 40 years of peer-reviewed research is prohibited. I think the people of the United States are going to prevail in the end. But I think it is going to take another economic crisis to show people how dangerous it is to go with a pure Get Rich Quick approach to get enough people to work up the courage to stand up to you Goons. Once that happens, it is downhill sledding for all of us.
Stock investing is simple. The stock market works just like every other market that has ever existed works. Price discipline is what keeps the market functional. Take market timing out of the equation and you are always going to bring on an economic crisis sooner or later — there is no other way that things can go once you venture down the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold (no market timing!) path. But a small number of Buy-and-Holders don’t want to admit their mistake and the vast majority of Buy-and-Holders don’t feel strongly enough about the matter to stand up to the Goons and suffer the consequences that follow from doing so. So here we are.
My best wishes to you, Evidence.
Rob
You should offer to do an AMA on reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/
I would certainly ask you a question or two if you did.
Post your idea there and make your case for it. If enough people show an interest, I am game.
Rob
I don’t think that it is how it is supposed to work. I think it is the “Ask me Anything” person who is supposed to make the post.
I am not able to say. I don’t follow it. I was under the impression that they would invite someone to participate.
My best wishes to you, Evidence.
Rob
An interesting thread at Bogleheads about CAPE https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=331341&newpost=6424959&view=unread#unread
It’s great that they’re talking about CAPE. Humans learn by talking things over.
What’s not so great is that the leaders of the Bogleheads Forum have a long history of discouraging posts that challenge the Buy-and-Hold dogmas. So you’re going to get a slanted view in a discussion held at that site.
Still, it is better that they have a slanted discussion than that they have no discussion at all. I predict that people will be revisiting these matters in the days following the next price crash and that we will all be making a lot more progress re our understanding of them at that time.
We’ll see.
Rob