Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
When looking at my account balance vs tour’s, I would say that your interpretation of Shiller’s work is wrong.
If you thought that my interpretation of Shiller’s work was wrong, you would be inviting everyone you could think of to offer alternative interpretations in an effort to determine the correct interpretation. I have been suggesting for years now that you ask Shiller to appear at the Bogleheads Forum and that you ask him whether he believes that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all valuation levels. It hasn’t happened. I wonder why.
Valuation-Informed Indexers are always asking to have discussions because we have rationality and research on our side, Buy-and-Holders have to avoid discussion because all that they have on their side is the temporary illusion of success created by the flood of irrational exuberance that we always see when Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold is heavily promoted.
I believe in the peer-reviewed research. Call me madcap.
Rob
“ If you thought that my interpretation of Shiller’s work was wrong, you would be inviting everyone you could think of to offer alternative interpretations in an effort to determine the correct interpretation. ”
Thousands have tried for decades. You never listen and you keep repeating the same nonsense.
“ I believe in the peer-reviewed research. Call me madcap.”
No you don’t. You push a narrative of what one guy said. That’s it.
Okay. Well, I am going to continue pushing that narrative. I sincerely believe that it is a logical impossibility for the safe withdrawal rate to be the same number at all valuation levels in a world in which valuations affect long-term returns (which is what Shiller showed in his Nobel-prize-winning research.
I am engaging in financial fraud if I say that I believe that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all valuation levels. I like to make friends with the people I meet on discussion boards. I believe that my friends deserve better than dishonesty from me.
My best wishes to you, Anonymous.
Rob
“ Okay. Well, I am going to continue pushing that narrative.”
And there you have it. You are not really interested in a discussion. This is EXACTLY why you are banned.
I am not interested in posting dishonestly.
I have no problem with there being others who post other views. And then the people listening in can hear both sides and make up their own minds. I view it as a discussion when people from both sides are posting their honest views.
I don’t view it as an honest discussion when only one side is permitted to post its honest views. That’s a faux discussion It misleads people because they don’t realize that there are lots of people who disagree with what is being said but who are afraid to express their sincere take because of the penalties they have seen imposed on those who disagree with the majority view.
I do wish you all good things in any event.
Rob
The problem is that most people equate the word “honest” with truthful. You don’t. Further, you disregard anything said by someone else. Thus, it is really not a discussion.
Okay, Well, I honestly believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. People can decide for themselves whether that is the truth by checking the study. But I am going to continue posting my honest views in any event.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
You are not asking the right question. The Greaney study does not need it, just like my car doesn’t need a microwave oven. As we all learned in statistics class, you don’t risk adjust past results.
So you’re saying that if someone drives drunk three times in his life and gets in a serious accident on each of those three occasions but doesn’t quite die on any of them that it becomes reasonable to conclude that driving drunk is “100 percent safe.” Hey! You can’t risk adjust past results!
I don’t buy it. Once we learned that valuations are the most important risk factor (Shiller showed this in peer-reviewed research published in 1981), it became imperative to take valuations into consideration in any risk assessment analysis. So please mark me down as saying that we should open every internet site to honest posting re the past 40 years of peer-reviewed research.
No drunk driving for this boy. Call me madcap!
Rob
You still don’t get it, nor do you want to. As a result, you will continue to suffer.
There’s a concept in the Catholic church in which the suffering that you endure here on Planet Earth reduces the amount of time you spend in Purgatory. At the rate I am going, I am going to be able to slip right into The Good Place in no time flat!
Rob
Your purgatory is self imposed.
I’m lucky that you’re not God, Anonymous. But my best wishes go out to you in any event.
Rob
“ There’s a concept in the Catholic church in which the suffering that you endure here on Planet Earth reduces the amount of time you spend in Purgatory.”
If that is the case, your wife and kids won’t have to spend even one minute in Purgatory.
That’s not an unreasonable comment.
Rob
“ That’s not an unreasonable comment.”
Yet you have done nothing to address that, even though they asked you to get a job.
I haven’t agree to post dishonestly re safe withdrawal rates or re any other critically important investment-related topic. That much would certainly be fair to say.
It’s not only my wife and children (and me!) who have suffered as a result of the 20-year cover-up of the error in the Greaney retirement study. Everyone alive in the United States today has suffered.
It was a CAPE value of 33 that brought on the Great Depression. Today’s CAPE is 37. So we could be seeing a repeat. Are you able to imagine a scenario in which someone living in the United States would not suffer in a serious way if we saw a Second Great Depression? I sure am not.
That of course include my family. And it includes hundreds of millions of others. Those people matter too. My job is to keep everyone’s well-being in mind to some extent. You Goons are going to suffer. It is my sincere belief that you will be going to prison once people are able to see with their own eyes how much your massive act of financial fraud has hurt us all. As strange as it may sound, I believe that I have a tiny bit of an obligation to keep your prison sentence as short as possible. I do that by getting the word out about the realities of stock investing (so that the economic crisis will be less severe and the anger at you will not be quite as great).
I have been saying that we need to open every discussion board and blog to honest posting re the past 40 years of peer-reviewed research for many years. Is that not the obvious answer to every problem we are facing in the stock investing realm. That would help my family and you Goons and every person who loves in the United States at the same time. That’s why I advocate the idea.
Are you able to imagine some possible downside?
Rob
“ My job is to keep everyone’s well-being in mind to some extent.”
You are not saving anyone. It is all delusional thinking. Since you brought up the Catholic faith, you know that it is your responsibility to first provide for your family and the Bible is clear about work.
https://www.christianity.com/bible/bible-verses-about-hard-work-85
In particular, look at 1 Timothy 5:8
This has been posted before, but you deleted. It doesn’t make it go away. You either believe what the Bible says or you don’t. A $500 million fantasy is not providing for your family.
The commandments are in the Bible. The commandments say that we should obey legitimate civil authorities. If I say that I believe that the Greaney retirement study contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins, I am obviously committing financial fraud. That’s a crime in the United States. A felony. That means prison time. Thanks but no thanks.
Rob
It is not financial fraud, it is you choosing to disobey the scriptures on your responsibility to work and provide for your family, by cooking up a story.
Okay, Anonymous.
I am going to continue to say that I do not believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.
I am willing to do anything I can to try to get your prison sentence reduced a bit. But I am not willing to commit any felonies myself. That one is not a close call.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
There is no fraud, but you are bringing it up as a smokescreen. Even if there was some instance that someone else was doing something fraudulent, it has nothing to do with your responsibilities to your family. For example, if my neighbor is running a Ponzi scheme, it would be my responsibility to report it to the authorities and then they take it from there. I am still responsible for providing for the family. My neighbors actions do not relieve me of that responsibility. You are directly disobeying scripture when it comes to working and providing.
Okay, Anonymous. I do wish you all good things. But nothing on the wrong side of the felony line for this boy. No can do.
Rob
So your fine with being disobedient to God’s word.
I believe that, when I die and have to stand before God, I will be held to account for my behavior her on Planet Earth. Yes, I have come concerns about my failure to provide financially for my family for many years. I do not say that that’s not a concern. I have spoken to more than one priest re that matter. I have had long, searching conversations/confessions with them about it. I have had two who felt that I have behaved in a way that is more wrong than right and I have has two who have felt that I have behaved in a way that was more right than wrong. I have been referred to books and Bible passages and things like that and I have read those books and Bible passages in the most open and humble spirit that I was able to muster. Nothing that I have read or heard has persuaded me that it would be okay for me to know about the horrible suffering that millions of souls are likely to experience in the event that stocks continue to perform in the future somewhat as they have always performed in the past and to do nothing to help.
The most basic commandment of all is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If the tables were turned and there we someone out there who had the knowledge needed to help me avoid that kind of pain, I would want that person to go to a little bit of trouble to get the message to me. So I do what little I am able to do to get the message out to the millions of lives that are today in the balance presuming that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research.
There’s a chapter in my book with the title “My Mother Speaks From the Grave About the Horrors of Buy-and-Hold Investment Strategies.” My mother was born in 1917. So the Great Depression had a big effect on her life. She had to drop out of school in the eighth grade so that she could go to work in a factory and her family would have money for food. She went on a date when she was at the age where she should have been a senior in high school an d the boy was a freshman in college and he asked her what school she attended. When she told him the real story, she had to experience the look of disappointment and shock in his eyes.
That’s Buy-and-Hold! That’s the science of stock investing, according to our Wall Street Con Men friends. It’s all about putting the possibility of turning a quick buck above the lives and hopes and dreams of millions of people. I can’t live with myself if I find myself in circumstances in which I can do something about it (I didn’t ask to be placed in these circumstances!) and I fail to do anything about it. I am the one who has to be able to live with my conscience, not you. I do what I have to do. As I have observed before, I can do no more and I can do no less. I can’t control whether people listen or not. That’s up to people. But it’s up to me whether I work up the courage to say something or not. I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep at night if I didn’t work up the courage to say a little something in these circumstances. So that’s what I do. The rest of it is out of my hands.
I am far from the most religious person in the world. I believe in God. I go that far. I believe that God gave me the mother He gave me in preparation for this experience. I believe that He wanted me to hear her stories so that I would know what to do when the time came for me to make my decision. I can’t prove it. But it is hard for me to accept that it is just coincidence that I had the mother that I had and that then the day came when I was required to make the choice that I have been required to make.
I believe that God knows everything that is in my heart. He knows how much I have thought about this matter so that I would know the choice that is in accord with His wishes for me. He knows whether I am acting out of selfishness or pride or out of a desire to use my talents to carry out His will. I believe that I will be okay in His eyes when my day comes. I feel confident that I would not be okay in His eyes if I came up with some rationalization for letting down millions of good people and putting my own personal comfort above the need to do something to help them. So I play it the way I play it. I can do no more and I can do no less.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Here is where things fall apart. You decided to stop working well before your cooked up battle with John Greaney and then subsequent jihad with the so called goons. Using all this “financial fraud” ask your excuse is not even valid. It seems more like a cover story as to why you won’t work. There is clearly enough time in the day to bring home a paycheck and keep going with your internet trolling. Of course you know all this, so you won’t allow this to be posted.
My plan was 100 percent safe. I saved enough so that I could leave the corporate journalism work that I was doing and do the independent journalism work that I longed to do. The earnings from the money I had saved was enough to fill the gap that would exist for a few years while I was getting the internet writing business off the ground. And in the end I would end up earning much more because the independent journalism would have more value to the world and so I would naturally be better compensated for it.
All of that worked like a charm. There is no way that any sane person could have anticipated the level of abusiveness that we have seen from you Goons. So the delay in bringing in money has indeed created problems. But the other side of the story is that the delay shows how important it is to our entire society that this Buy-and-Hold thing be addressed. The number of Goons in our world is small — it’s about 10 percent of the Buy-and-Holders who are Goons and I believe that off the internet it’s probably a good bit less than that. So how did that 10 percent come to possess a veto over what can be discussed on the internet. It’s because the 90 percent of Normals have some Goon deep within them too! They would never advance death threats. But when it’s the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “idea” under discussion, they are sympathetic to what the Goons are trying to do and tolerate it even though they don’t actually approve of it.
How does a society overcome a problem like that? We all need to know how stock investing works. But we all very, very, very much do not want to know. We like getting something for nothing. Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold appears for a time to give that to us. So we are not about to permit honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. Peer-reviewed research is the enemy! It’s very hard to develop confidence in a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategy” in a world in which the peer-reviewed research showing that it can never work is being openly discussed. No one can make money giving sound advice in such a world. So how does the society that has developed a taste for Buy-and-Hold ever work itself out of the trap.
I believe that there are two things that need to happen. One, the bull market needs to collapse. Then people can see with their own eyes the horrors of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold. Seeing it with your own eyes generates a much stronger impression than reading about it in peer-reviewed research. And, two, you need to have a journalist who can tell the tale of how many people fell under the spell of Buy-and-Hold with a great deal of detail and depth and compassion and completeness. People need to understand this stuff well before they will be able to overcome the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold inclinations that reside within each and every one of us. To understand it, we need a guide. Surface warnings that Buy-and-Hold might not lead to a good place are not going to do the job. People need to hear the story from someone who has seen it from every possible angle and who can answer every possible question in some detail.
I have lived the story. So I think that I can do the job. We’ll see. But that’s the idea. I have spent more time in Goonland than any human being who has ever walked Planet Earth. That makes me the world’s leading expert on the dangers of the Buy-and-Hold “strategy.” That’s where I am coming from, in ant event.
Rob
“My plan was 100 percent safe.”
Then it wouldn’t have failed. No 4% withdrawal rate has ever failed. You have one definition of “safe” for Greaney and another for yourself.
Your rationalization for not supporting your family is despicable, and it’s impossible to believe that two priests (or anyone) would endorse your behavior. Nevertheless, I congratulate you for finally saying something that you haven’t said before. It’s been years since that happened.
You can’t say that something has succeeded or failed until the story is over. When I collect my $500 million settlement check, I don’t think that there will be too many saying “oh, that’s a failure!” The long delay that I have experienced in collecting compensation for the work that I have done is a drag, I’ll give you that much. But you can’t reasonably conclude that it was a failure until we see how things play out in the days following the next price crash.
No plan calling for a 4 percent withdrawal has ever failed. But there have been times when valuations were so high that a plan calling for a 4 percent withdrawal were not even a tiny bit safe. I think that my friends at the various boards needed to know that so that they could make their own decisions as to what to do with their retirement money. So I told them. I offer no apologies for doing so. I feel better about myself knowing that I finally worked up the courage to do that. I view that famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002, as my finest moment.
If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, no one would feel that he had to work up courage to speak honestly about its dangers. If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, the Buy-and-Holders would welcome challenges to their thinking. The fact that so many of them flip out when their “strategy” is questioned tells me that it’s not a strategy that I want to have anything to do with. Call me madcap.
My best wishes.
Rob
“ My plan was 100 percent safe. I saved enough so that I could leave the corporate journalism work that I was doing and do the independent journalism work that I longed to do. The earnings from the money I had saved was enough to fill the gap that would exist for a few years while I was getting the internet writing business off the ground. And in the end I would end up earning much more because the independent journalism would have more value to the world and so I would naturally be better compensated for it.”
Wrong, it was never 100% safe. You only had $400kin savings and you did not have an established independent journalism business. You admit in this paragraph that you were “getting it off the ground” and we all know the statistics of small business failures. How is that “100% safe”? Further, your update in 2005 showed that you were off track, but you stated that you would make it up in the stock market with VII ( which never happened). It has been 17 years since your 2005 update of being off track and you haven’t done anything to fix that.
You blame everyone else for your problems, but have done nothing to fix it yourself. You just don’t want to work.
“ You can’t say that something has succeeded or failed until the story is over. ”
That’s what every lottery player says and they have much better odds of a payoff versus you.
The reality is that the story is over. You are now at the average age of retirement. This is when it has to be in place. You have nothing in place and now it is too late.
The timeline doesn’t add up. Your whole story is based on your not so famous May 2002 post in which you were embarrassed about John Greaney. That is 2 years after you left your job.
5 years after you left your job, you admitted you were off track from your plan, yet you did nothing. For the following 17 years you still did nothing. It is now 22 years after you left your job, yet you have not taken any action to support your family. There is zero justification for not doing even one thing to bring in a paycheck.
If a Greaney follower went short of money for one day, you’d call that a failure. You’ve been living in poverty for years, with no end in site. That’s a failure, bud. By the reckoning of your family and any sane person. Your fantasies about the future don’t change the train wreck you’ve caused.
The timeline doesn’t add up. Your whole story is based on your not so famous May 2002 post in which you were embarrassed about John Greaney. That is 2 years after you left your job.
I left my corporate employment in August 2000. I put forward my famous post pointing out the error in the Greaney retirement study on May 13, 2002. In the interim, I was working on my book on saving strategies.
I left my job to do independent journalism. Preparing the book was an independent journalism project. I always fully expected to return to posting at the Retire Early board. I had built it into the most exciting discussion board on the internet. I certainly did not intend to walk away from it. Stock prices had gone down a bit and Greaney had freaked out and started attacking all our best posters. So I had to step in an do what I could to save the board.
The board community spoke in a loud and clear voice that it believed that my post questioning the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies was the most important post in the history of the board discussion. Most community members wanted honest posting to be permitted. You Goons did not and one could say that there is a sense in which you “won.” I see your victory as a temporary one. People still need access to honest and accurate retirement studies. I believe that that need will become clear enough in the days following the next price crash that enough of us will work up the courage to stand up to you to make amazing things happen.
We’ll see.
Rob
If a Greaney follower went short of money for one day, you’d call that a failure. You’ve been living in poverty for years, with no end in site. That’s a failure, bud. By the reckoning of your family and any sane person. Your fantasies about the future don’t change the train wreck you’ve caused
I don’t agree, Miasma. I believe that I was a failure in the days when I was afraid to speak up and tell my fellow community members what I really believed re whether or not Greaney had included a valuation adjustment in his retirement study. I believe that I became a success on the morning of May 13, 2002, because that’s the day when I finally began standing up for my fellow community members.
The hundreds of powerful investment insights that I have been able to mine in the 20 years since wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t experienced that huge success on the morning of May 13, 2002. I will be finishing a book on stock investing within the next few months, That book is the product of thousands of successes that I have enjoyed over the past 20 years. None of them would have been possible if I hadn’t reached a point where I just felt that I could no longer live with myself if I didn’t begin posting honest, Greaney goon squads or no Greaney goon sqauds.
Wade Pfau studied my stuff with great intensity for 16 months and concluded that: “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” If that’s failure, I can only pray that I experience more and bigger failures in this life.
My best wishes.
Rob
“ You can’t say that something has succeeded or failed until the story is over. ”
That’s what every lottery player says and they have much better odds of a payoff versus you.
The reality is that the story is over. You are now at the average age of retirement. This is when it has to be in place. You have nothing in place and now it is too late.
I think that the Buy-and-Holders had the answer in their early days. The way to make stock investing as little like playing the lottery as possible is to use the peer-reviewed research as guidance. Buy-and-Hold has over the years become the opposite of what it started out as. Now Buy-and-Hold is this thing that says “we must never permit anyone to post about the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research no matter what. The last 40 years of research shows that we didn’t know everything there would ever be to know about stock investing back in 1980. So we must do whatever we can, including engaging in criminal behavior, to block millions of people from learning what they very much want to know and very much need to know.”
I believe in the original Buy-and-Hold vision, Anonymous, Valuation-Informed Indexing is what Buy-and-Hold was intended to be when the Buy-and-Holders were starting out. I kept all the elements of the strategy that have stood the test of time and I ditched the one element (no market timing!) that did not pass the test.
Nothing is perfect. But I think that the best that we can do on this planet is to remain open to learning what the peer-reviewed research is trying to teach us.
Rob
5 years after you left your job, you admitted you were off track from your plan, yet you did nothing. For the following 17 years you still did nothing. It is now 22 years after you left your job, yet you have not taken any action to support your family. There is zero justification for not doing even one thing to bring in a paycheck.
Would my receipt of a $500 million settlement payment change your mind on your belief that I have not done one thing, Anonymous?
If my work did not have great value, Wade Pfau would never have concluded that: “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!”
If my work did not have great value, we never would have seen thousands of our fellow community members put their lives on the line by saying that they love my stuff and that they believe that I should be permitted to post honestly.
If my work did not have great value, Rob Arnott would not have said that my stuff checks out and that he hoped that I would stick to my guns.
If my work did not have great value, John Bogle would never have advanced a post in which he acknowledged that he could see circumstances in which market timing would produce good results (he had earlier said that he did not think market timing could work).
If my work did not have great value, you Goons would never have committed a single criminal act to keep people from being exposed to it.
I mean, come on.
Rob
“ If my work did not have great value, Wade Pfau would never have concluded that: “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!”
If my work did not have great value, we never would have seen thousands of our fellow community members put their lives on the line by saying that they love my stuff and that they believe that I should be permitted to post honestly.
If my work did not have great value, Rob Arnott would not have said that my stuff checks out and that he hoped that I would stick to my guns.
If my work did not have great value, John Bogle would never have advanced a post in which he acknowledged that he could see circumstances in which market timing would produce good results (he had earlier said that he did not think market timing could work).
If my work did not have great value, you Goons would never have committed a single criminal act to keep people from being exposed to it.”
None of that is work. It is a bunch of made up crap. Why didn’t you do something to make money?
I am a journalist and I am involved today in the most important journalism project of my lifetime. This is bigger than Watergate. Do you know how much money the Washington Post has made as a result of Watergate. It put them on the map as one of the most important papers in the United States and they have been making money from having that reputation ever since.
Well, this is bigger. Watergate brought down a President. What do you think most people care more about — who is President or whether their retirement goes bust or not? The vast majority care more about their retirement surviving. This is Issue #1 for most people. And we have had leading figures in the field show that they very much want to tell the truth about the matters but they are too afraid of what you Goons will do to them if they do so to do it. John Bogle is a giant in this field. He put up a post at Bogleheads saying that he could see how market timing could work in some circumstances. This is a guy who has said on hundreds of occasions that market timing doesn’t work. In ordinary circumstances, that would be front-page news in every newspaper in the country. But Bogle was too scared of Lindauer to say it on more than one occasion. So the cover-up remained in place even with the leading advocate of Buy-and-Hold implicitly acknowledging that it is all a big pile of smelly garbage.
An investment strategy that cannot get the numbers that people use to plan their retirements right is an investment strategy that needs to be buried 30 feet in the ground where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things. Fair enoughh?
That’s certainly my sincere take re this terribly important matter.
I’m with Bogle. We should all be looking at the peer-reviewed research for guidance. Both the peer-reviewed research from 1980 and before AND the peer-reviewed research from 1981 forward. That’s Valuation-Informed Indexing. It sure ain’t Buy-and-Hold. It’s the OPPOSITE of Buy-and-Hold. The entire point of looking at the peer-reviewed research is to AVOID the trap of falling for Get Rich Quick approaches.
Stay the Course! (in a meaningful way, NOT in the Buy-and-Hold way)
Rob
Journalists don’t quit their jobs. They still bring home a check. Secondly, there is no scandal. You have made it all up as a cover story for not working.
If the laws that apply in every field of human endeavor other than the investment advice field applied in the investment advice field as well, I would have been bringing in huge checks for the entire 20-year time-period. Getting the numbers right in retirement studies is a big deal. I potentially helped millions of people with my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002. I believe that the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will be turning that potential value into real value.
Good journalists don’t walk away from the biggest story in the nation in which they live, that much is for sure.
Rob
Everyone thinks they could have made millions and/or billions at something. It remains a fantasy until it actually happens. In the meantime, people have to earn a living and provide.
You need to bring yourself back to reality.
Okay, Anonymous.
In the crazy reality in which I am living today, the Greaney retirement study lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. So long as that is what I see, that is what I am going to say I see.
My best wishes, etc.
Rob
It is only a crazy reality because you have made it crazy. All this nonsense just because you don’t want to work.
Okay, Anonymous.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
When you told Wade this story about getting $500 million, he told you that it was crazy. You ignored him as well.
I told Wade that thought that the research that we did together would win him a Nobel prize. There’s a sense in which he dismissed that idea too. He certainly acted like he didn’t think it would happen. But the idea that the work was of huge importance was stirring around in his head. He said that there were time when he couldn’t sleep because he would lie awake thinking of all sorts of amazing implications to our work. He mentioned that he thought that Shiller really would be awarded a Nobel prize (this was before that happened). He didn’t say it the way that I said it. But he saw something of great importance there too.
It takes time to let in that you are doing work that is going to change the world in a very positive way. I didn’t think on the morning of May 13, 2002, that Valuation-Informed Indexing was going to replace Buy-and-Hold. I didn’t say on the morning of May 13, 2002, that it was the relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold that served as the primary cause of the 2008 economic crisis. I didn’t say on the morning of May 13, 2002, that bonds are more risky than stocks to the informed investor. These are things that come to you after you spend some time studying this stuff.
That’s why I say that we need to open every discussion board and blog to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. Learning is done by building one block of knowledge on top of another. For 20 years, we have as a society held back from acknowledging that errors in retirement studies need to be corrected within 24 hours of when they are discovered. If Greaney had corrected his study on the afternoon of May 13, 2002, LOTS of people would be saying today that bonds are the more risky asset class and that we can bring economic crises to an end by opening the internet to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. We sure wouldn’t have a CAPE value of 35 today if Greaney had promptly corrected his study, as we all should have insisted he do.
There were people who said that I was “crazy” to say that the Greaney study was in error when I first said it, You don’t hear too much of that today. Even Evidence, one of the lead Goons, now says that “nobody” truly believes that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment, including Greaney himself. People’s views change as they learn more about a subject. To get the learning process going the way we all need it to go, we need to open every site to honest posting.
That’s my sincere take, in any event.
Rob
“Even Evidence, one of the lead Goons, now says that “nobody” truly believes that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment, including Greaney himself. People’s views change as they learn more about a subject.”
No-one had to learn more about that subject because everyone knew from the start that it didn’t contain a valuation adjustment.
Are you willing to identify the date on which you first called on Greaney to correct the error in the study?
Rob
“Are you willing to identify the date on which you first called on Greaney to correct the error in the study?”
You asked me that before and I answered. Your inability to engage in constructive debate is one of many reasons why you are repeatedly banned from investing discussion boards.
When you answered before, you did not supply a date on which you first called on Greaney to correct the error in the study. You said that you did not believer there was an error.
That’s the problem. I believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns is legitimate research.
Rob
“That’s the problem.”
It is the problem.
One group of people think there is an error.
Another group of people think there is no error.
The first group consists of you.
The second group consists of everyone else who has looked at the issue.
The first group has made no headway in about 20 years towards convincing the second group.
That’s not even a tiny bit true. Wade Pfau described the Greaney study as “dangerous.” The Wall Street Journal ran a story saying that many people no longer believe in the 4 percent rule. There was an article in The Economist saying the same thing. And of course we had thousands of our fellow community members expressing a desire that honest posting be permitted.
I never convinced any of you Goons. But there were lots of people who either were convinced or were open to participating in discussions that would led to them being convinced. The thing holding us back is the criminal behavior. Your use of criminal behavior shows your desperation. It shows that you Goons don’t believe that Buy-and-Hold can be defended in the Year 2002 in a place where civil and reasoned discussion of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is permitted. Guess what? I agree with you re that one.
I do wish you all good things in any event, Evidence.
Rob
“That’s not even a tiny bit true.”
There is not a single example in the historical record where a 4% inflation adjusted withdrawal rate failed. If you had any evidence that it did fail you would have produced it by now.
There are numerous cases in the historical record in which valuation levels were so high that a retirement plan calling for a 4 percent withdrawal was not safe. It serves no good purpose to lie to people about this matter. People use retirement studies to plan retirements. I saw this happen at the Retire Early board. Many community members there believed that Greaney’s study was legitimate research.
Rob
“ My plan was 100 percent safe. I saved enough so that I could leave the corporate journalism work that I was doing and do the independent journalism work that I longed to do. The earnings from the money I had saved was enough to fill the gap that would exist for a few years while I was getting the internet writing business off the ground. And in the end I would end up earning much more because the independent journalism would have more value to the world and so I would naturally be better compensated for it.”
How was it safe? Your savings was only $400k and you did not have a reliable stream of income from independent journalism.? When you were off track in 2005, why didn’t you make adjustments in the plan? When you admitted that your savings were depleted, why didn’t you get a job then? There is nothing safe at any point during the last 22 years.
I needed to make about $20,000 a year from the journalism work. I had made nearly that much from sales of my Soapbox.com report before even leaving my full-time job. And I was planning to write three new Soapbox reports each year. If I made $20,000 from each of them, that’s a lot more than $20,000 total. I would not only have earnings from the three new reports each year but from all of the earlier reports. And publicity for each report would help sell all the others.
Soapbox went out of business. But then I used the time freed up to write my book on saving, which would have made 10 times the amount of money if it hadn’t been for the criminal behavior of you Goons. There were a good number of bloggers who were writing on the sorts of saving strategies that I advocated who became millionaires. That’s where I would have been but for the criminal behavior of you Goons.
And then my investing work turbocharged the entire thing. I had no competitors in the investing realm (I still do not). And my work in that area was endorsed by multiple big-name experts as well as hundreds of ordinary investors.
It was all very safe except for the behavior of you Goons and the tolerance of it by site owners, something that no sane person could possibly have anticipated.
Rob
You just proved my point. You did not have a successful track record from journalism. You only had one report with a small amount of revenue versus a teliable stream of having multiple successful reports. Further, you have no track record of established book sales. No goons have kept you from anything. You have admitted that your current book delays are because of your own “emotional” issues. When Soapbox went out of business, why didn’t you go out and get a job. That was an early sign that a change was needed.
Why didn’t you stop committing criminal acts when I called you out on it?
Why didn’t you insist that Greaney correct his study when it became clear that it did not include a valuation adjustment?
Why didn’t you tell all your Goon friends to knock off the funny business when you saw them engaging in extortion re Wade Pfau?
We’ll see what a jury has to say about all this in the days following the next price crash, Anonymous. We’ve all known that that was where it was headed for a long time now.
I naturally wish you all the best of luck with it. But that’s as far as it goes for this boy. I don’t feel even a tiny bit comfortable crossing to the wrong side of the felony line myself. I will continue to say that the Greaney retirement study lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.
Rob
“ Why didn’t you stop committing criminal acts when I called you out on it?
Why didn’t you insist that Greaney correct his study when it became clear that it did not include a valuation adjustment?
Why didn’t you tell all your Goon friends to knock off the funny business when you saw them engaging in extortion re Wade Pfau?
We’ll see what a jury has to say about all this in the days following the next price crash, Anonymous. We’ve all known that that was where it was headed for a long time now.”
When you make up crap like that, you look worse than the tinfoil hat crowd.
Get a job.
My best wishes to you, Anonymous.
Rob
“But then I used the time freed up to write my book on saving, which would have made 10 times the amount of money if it hadn’t been for the criminal behavior of you Goons. There were a good number of bloggers who were writing on the sorts of saving strategies that I advocated who became millionaires. That’s where I would have been but for the criminal behavior of you Goons.”
If your book had been any good you would have made money.
But it wasn’t.
So you didn’t.
The book (“Passion Saving: The Path to Plentiful Free Time and Soul-Satisfying Work”) is amazing. I have never once heard a non-Goon who took a look at it say different.
That includes Greaney. I developed the book from my interactions with thousands of highly effective savers on the Retire Early board. In the days before I put up my famous post pointing out the error in the Greaney retirement study, Greaney had an introduction to the material at that board posts in which he advised newcomers to read all of my material before turning to the rest of the material at the board because it is “seminal” on the subject of how to achieve financial independence early in life. After Greaney launched his Campaign of Terror against anyone who posted honestly re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research on stock investing, there were several community members who asked that he permit me at least to post on saving issues because they loved my Passion Saving work so much. Greaney of course refused. He understood that, if people saw my saving work, they would fall in love with it and in time look at the investing works as well and then his study would go down.
A jury can be showed all these materials. The saving book is top-notch. It would have made me a mountain of money if not for the criminal behavior of you Goons Each jury member can look at it and make their own decisions. I expect to finish the investing book in late June and the investing book is even better.
Wish me (and all of us!) luck!
Rob
I have to agree with Evidence. If your book was any good, it would have made you money. People vote with their dollars.
Okay, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.
Rob