Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Are you referring to the book that you said would be out 12 years ago?
That’s the one!
It will be a humdinger when it is ready for public consumption, I promise you that muvh. Whenever I feel a little discouraged, I read the first three Parts (the first 27 chapters) and that gives me a confidence rush. Those first three Parts are perfectly polished today. Part Four needs a lot of work. The other Parts need work but are in better shape than Part Four.
‘I won’t put it out until it is perfectly ready. I am not willing to compromise even an inch re that one. This is to be a statement that lasts forever. The statement is coming together more quickly now than ever before. I think I will bring it home in not too much mote time.
I am 100 percent confident that it will be worth the wait. Yes, I wish that I had finished it sooner. But is there anyone else who has published a clear and complete statement on the dangers of Buy-and-Hold? If there is, I haven’t heard about him or her. If I end up being first, I guess you could say that it’s understandable why it took some time to make it perfect. This stuff is HARD.
Not intellectually. It’s hard EMOTIONALLY saying things that millions of people very, very, very much do not want to hear. They need to hear them but they very much do not want to hear them. So to be the one writing down the words of the message is very, very hard. But someone has to do it. And I think that it would be fair to say that the universe elected me to perform the task. So I am giving it my best shot.
My best wishes to you, as always.
Rob
“ And I think that it would be fair to say that the universe elected me to perform the task”
The universe? Really? You can’t get even one person to post in favor of you on your own website.
That’s the problem, Anonymous.
Say that there’s a 1 in 100 chance that what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002, really is so — that the Greaney retirement truly does lack a valuation adjustment. If that’s the case, we should be talking about that at every discussion board and blog on the internet. Greaney isn’t the only one who pushed the 4 percent rule. There were thousands and thousands of newspaper articles on retirement that cited it. Millions of retirement plans were crafted pursuant to a belief that the 4 percent rule is a reasonable rule. If it’s wrong, people need to know.
We’re not going to advance the ball by living in fear of you Goons. The 10 percent of the population that believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research needs to work up the courage to stand up to you Goons. It’s the only way that the word is ever going to spread. There are no other possibilities.
The hard part is getting one large site to permit honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research. After that, it will be downhill sledding. But we do have to secure that first large site for the benefit of the non-Goon population. In not too much time, we will have thousands of people posting here on a daily basis. We’re not going to get there by cowering in fear.
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
The entire world is wrong and everyone else needs to change what they are doing versus you giving any consideration that you might be wrong.
“ Say that there’s a 1 in 100 chance that what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002, really is so — that the Greaney retirement truly does lack a valuation adjustment. If that’s the case, we should be talking about that at every discussion board and blog on the internet.”
My Tesla Model 3 lacks a microwave oven. Should every discussion board and blog on the internet be discussing it?
The entire world is wrong and everyone else needs to change what they are doing versus you giving any consideration that you might be wrong.
No. It is not anything close to the entire world that has insisted that discussion of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research findings be prohibited at every site on the internet. It is just you Goons. You represent about 10 percent of the population of Buy-and-Holders. That’s it. You have power far beyond your numbers because you engage in criminal behavior that scares people and people in positions of authority are not willing to stand up to you (because they share your belief in Buy-and-Hold), But the laws that exist to protect us all from the tactics that you employ are a reality that reveal something important about what the majority of people believe deep in their hearts re these matters (not about Buy-and-Hold itself but about how discussions of the legitimacy of the Buy-and-Hold concept should be conducted).
Today’s CAPE value is 38. So the Get Rich Quick “idea” is obviously very popular today. It has never been more popular. But irrational exuberance is not a lasting thing. It never has been. By its very nature it is not a lasting thing. If it could last, it would not be irrational. So the CAPE is going to go down hard at some point, When that happens, I believe that we will as a people revisit the foundational beliefs that caused us to make it a felony to advance death threats and to engage in extortion to silence academic researchers and all the rest.
I believe that the existence of those laws tells what we really are and the irrational exuberance/Buy-and-Hold/no market timing/ death threats/4 percent rule stuff is a the product of a temporary fit of emotion that will in time disappear into the wind. I believe that at that time pretty much the entire world will come to agree that the 20-year cover-up of the error in the Greaney retirement study (it lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins) was a tragic mistake.
We’ll see.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow.
Rob
My Tesla Model 3 lacks a microwave oven. Should every discussion board and blog on the internet be discussing it?
Getting the numbers right in retirement studies is important. People use retirement studies to plan retirements. An investing discussion board that forbids the discussion of errors in retirement studies has failed in its mission.
If Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research (I sincerely believe that it is), then it “revolutionizes” (Shiller’s word) the entire field of investment analysis. We have as a society been for 40 years now working up the courage to begin reaping the benefits of that revolutionary advance in a practical real-world sense. We are not quite there yet. But we are close. I believe that one more Buy-and-Hold Crisis will push us over the goal line.
Again, we’ll see.
Again, my best wishes to you.
Rob
The analogy went right over your head.
I guess so.
My best wishes to you, Anonymous.
Rob