Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Your entire approach for the last 20+ years is that you feel you are 100% right and that everyone else is not only wrong, but must be compelled to listen to you. Any opposing view is labeled as hostile by you.
The fact is that people will always gravitate towards what works based on observing outcomes. If you had a successful track record, with superior outcomes, you wouldn’t have resistance. You don’t have that, so there is no reason for anyone to support your position.
My view is that there are two academic models for understanding how stock investing works and every investor should be regularly exposed to both and permitted to make up their own mind as to which one to follow. I believe that the same laws that apply in every field of human endeavor other than the investment advice field (no death threats, no extortion, etc.) should apply in the investment advice field as well.
In terms of outcomes, you will get very different impressions if you look only at recent history vs. looking at the peer-reviewed research, which looks at the entire history of stock investing. Valuation-Informed Indexing has of course been far superior to Buy-and-Hold over the entire history of the market. Buy-and-Hold looks better if you look only at outcomes from the recent past, in which we have experienced the most out-of-control bull market in U.S. history. I don’t believe that you can assess the out-of-control bull market accurately until you see the millions of lives that will be destroyed in the Buy-and-Hold Crisis that will inevitably follow from it. The reason why I like peer-reviewed research so much is that it takes you out of the current moment and permits you to see how things play out over the long term.
I believe that I am right in the things that I say or else I wouldn’t say them. One of the things that I love about internet discussion boards in which honest posting is permitted is that they provide a means to become aware of the areas in which you are off base on something. I don’t believe that I am off base re my famous claim 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. The death threats, etc, have not persuaded me that I am wrong re that one. To the contrary, I view them as further evidence that I am right. If Greaney truly believed that he had included a valuation adjustment in the study, he would never have engaged in criminal behavior and risked going to prison. He went down that road out of desperation. There really is no valuation adjustment in the “study.”
Rob
“There really is no valuation adjustment in the “study.””
Is there a single person who thinks there is?
You are putting your finger on an important issue with that question, Evidence.
I don’t believe that there is a single person who sincerely believes that the Greaney retirement study contains a valuation adjustment. You have in recent days declared openly that you do not believe that it does. Greaney has not done that. But he would not permit you to say that the study lacks a valuation adjustment if he truly believed that it does contain one. I don’t believe that Greaney truly believes that his study contains a valuation adjustment either.
So what is all the fuss about? We are all in agreement!
Not quite.
I want to be able to TALK ABOUT what it means that the study lacks a valuation adjustment. Millions of people used the 4 percent rule (advanced by the Greaney study and other Buy-and-Hold retirement studies) to plan their retirements. Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research shows that it’s not possible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate without taking valuations into consideration. So those millions of people took on far more risk with their retirement plans than they were intending to take on, I want to see people talking about these matters at every site on the internet so that we can get those studies corrected and so that we can help people take on only the amount of risk that they want to take on in the future.
Greaney does not want those conversations to take place and you don’t either Why? Because he knows that discussion of the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s research will cause people to lose confidence in his retirement study (and in all Buy-and-Hold retirement studies, to be sure). He sees that as a bad thing, I see it as a very, very, very good thing. If his study is not able to persuade people on an internet on which honest posting re the peer-reviewed research is permitted, his study is indeed “dangerous,” just as Wade Pfau concluded.
You now acknowledge that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment because you see how silly it makes you sound to maintain otherwise. Good for you. That’s an important step forward. I wish that you had been saying that back in May 2002. But you are still not willing to say that the study needs to be corrected, that it is not possible to know what the safe withdrawal rate is today without taking today’s CAPE value into consideration. So you and I remain at odds.
Greaney just wants the issue to go away. He doesn’t care whether his study in in error or not. All that he cares about is that he not be required to correct it, that he not have to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” I would like to see Greaney and indeed all Buy-and-Holders say those words because the only way possible to advance in one’s knowledge of any subject is to acknowledge that there once was a time when you did not know everything there is to know about that subject.
I believe that the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research is the most important 41 years of peer-reviewed research in the history of investment analysis. So I very much want to hear the Buy-and-Holders (including Greaney) to say the word “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” or at the very bare minimum the words “I’m” and “Not” and “Sure.” When every Buy-and-Holder is able to say at least the words “I’m” and “Not” and “Sure,” we will as a nation be able to experience one of the greatest learning experiences ever experienced in our nation’s history.
I have asked you on numerous occasions whether you believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns is legitimate research? You have on numerous occasions declined to respond to that question. I can’t help but wonder why.
Rob
“ I want to be able to TALK ABOUT……..”
You had your chance. You ignore others, don’t answer questions, you refuse to provide evidence behind your criminal accusations, etc. in short, you misbehave. That is why you are banned. You are also discredited because your predictions have failed, your investment strategy has failed and you are broke.
You are the one that needs to say the words “I, Rob Bennett, have been wrong this whole time”. Unless you do that, you will sit here for your remaining days spewing the same garbage and the world will ignore you.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all good things regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow, in any event.
My best and warmest wishes to you, old friend.
Rob
Let’s say you pass the age of 70 years old and we see that VII is still trailing buy and hold and you haven’t received a dime of your expected $500 million windfall. Will you finally admit you were wrong?
I am 65 today and we have 150 years of historical return data available to us today. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows that Valuation-Informed Indexing has been a FAR superior strategy to Buy-and-Hold for that entire time-period. What you are proposing is an EXTREMELY far-fetched scenario.
It’s like asking “Say that we learn that driving drunk is a really good idea — will you finally be willing to make drunk driving a regular habit? I don’t know, you know. I like to think that I am an open-minded person. But the idea that drunk driving or failing to exercise price discipline when buying stocks could ever be a good thing are good idea is pretty darn far-out-there thinking. I would want to look an evidence very carefully before putting my retirement money at risk with a pure Get Rich Quick approach.
I believe that there’s at least a chance that stocks will continue to perform in the future at least somewhat as they always have in the past. It will be interesting to see how things play out in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
Rob
The entire history shows that a 4% SWR has always worked. The history shows that market have always recovered from drops an$ have gone on to new highs. The history shows that Buy and Hold works. Stop driving drunk, Rob.
The entire history does indeed show that a 4 percent withdrawal has always worked, That same history show that there were some valuation levels at which a 4 percent withdrawal was super safe and other valuation levels at which a 4 percent withdrawal was insanely risky. Why lie about it? Why not just tell people the straight story?
The history does indeed show that the market has always recovered and gone on to new highs. That same history also shows that adjusting one’s stock allocation in response to big valuations shifts takes away just about all of the risk of stock investing and permits you to retire many years sooner. Again, why lie about this matter? Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is the biggest advance ever seen in this field? Why not tell people about it every chance we get?
Buy-and-Holders don’t engage in market timing/price discipline, Anonymous. Buy-and-Hold destroys human lives. When it becomes popular enough, it brings down entire economies. Not this boy, you know? I wish you all good things. But come on.
Rob
If you had better outcomes with VII, people would listen, but you don’t. If you had proof of death threats, people believe you, but you don’t. In fact, it looks to be made up based on what we read. If you behaved yourself, you wouldn’t be banned, but you refuse to do so.
People did listen. That’s why Greaney freaked out. If lots of people hadn’t listened, you Goons would never have insisted on a single unjustified board banning. When people work this hard to stop lots of other people from learning about something, there’s always a reason. I mean, come on.
If “behaving myself” means saying that I 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, please count me out. Find someone else, you know? I want to be able to sleep at night.
Rob
Every board banning was justified. It had nothing to do with your made up jihad with Greaney. It has been explained over and over again, yet you ignore it.
Okay, Anonymous.
Please take good care, in any event.
Rob
Last I checked, you are the broke guy here. Not a great track record.
I’m broke because for 20 years now I have refused to post dishonestly re the numbers that people use to plan their retirements. I’m proud of it. It’s my unwillingness to post dishonestly that gives me the credibility that i need to lead us all from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. If everyone else in this field refused to post dishonestly, we would have a CAPE value of 32 today. No apologies whatsoever.
If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, no one would go broke as the result of posting honestly re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. If Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick were a real thing, people would be rewarded for honest posting re the numbers that people use to plan their retirements.
My sincere take.
Rob
“ I’m broke because for 20 years now I have refused to post dishonestly re the numbers that people use to plan their retirements.”
Explain how that has anything to do with you not getting a job and earning an income. How would anything be different for you just by letting you continue posting the same nonsense prior to banning? You weren’t making any money prior to bannings. The only income you had after you stopped working, was a small amount of money from the Motely Fool soapbox, which was discontinued.
There are hundreds of millions of dollars to be made by posting honestly about how stock investing works according to the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research, Millions and millions of people invest in stocks. Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold, the most heavily promoted “strategy” is the OPPOSITE of what the peer-reviewed research shows is what works (the research shows that price discipline/market timing is 100 percent critical and the Buy-and-Holders say that, you never know, there might be some alternate universe 10 billion light years away in which price discipline/market timing isn’t 100 percent required.
Only 10 percent of the population today follows a Valuation-Informed Indexing strategy. The reaction to my stuff showed that we could get that up to 20 percent and then to 40 percent and then to 80 percent just by permitting honest posting at every internet site. I have been the lead voice for doing that for 20 years now. There never would have been a single abusive post, much less any of the criminal stuff, if you Goons hadn’t seen with your own eyes the huge potential for research-based strategies to make money. People don’t behave that way when they believe that there is some rational case that can be made for their preferred strategy.
My claim that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks a valuation adjustment is not “nonsense.” Even Evidence-Based Investing has recently acknowledged that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment. Evidence has no bias against Greaney. He is one of the generals in Greaney’s Goon army.
Rob
You have made hundreds of thousands of posts on hundreds of websites, yet haven’t earned one dime from all of that. Giving you more access doesn’t change the math. 10 times zero is zero. 100 times zero is zero. 1000 times zero is zero. You have to demonstrate that people are willing to pay you for what you have to offer.
People have been pushing the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold stuff for years. It’s going to take a little time to get Valuation-Informed Indexing up from 10 percent of the population to 80 percent of the population. You showed with your behavior that you don’t believe that the first research-based strategy can be stopped without resorting to criminal behavior. If the Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads don’t believe that Buy-and-Hold can be defended without criminal behavior, why should any reasonable person be willing to risk his retirement money on it? Not this boy, you know?
If Greaney truly believed that he had included a valuation adjustment in his retirement study, he would have put it forward many years ago. I mean, come on.
Rob
“ People have been pushing the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold stuff for years. It’s going to take a little time to get Valuation-Informed Indexing up from 10 percent of the population to 80 percent of the population.”
You have been pushing VII for 20 years without making a dime off of it and now you are 65. Not only is it too late, but when it hasn’t worked for 2 decades, it is clear it is not an issue of just more time.
I think it is an issue of people seeing how many lives the relentless promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy can ruin in the next price crash. We’ll see, you know?
I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I said that I believed 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. So that one is out.
I wish you all good things.
Rob
Let’s look at this yet another way. You have this website and you have your weekly column on ValueWalk. Neither one generates any material income, despite your ability to post anything you want. Further, you don’t sell any products on this website. Why? Therefore, if you are merely regurgitating the same stuff elsewhere, what’s different for you that suddenly generates an income? What are you selling? Who are you selling it to? How much are you charging? It’s like opening up a store, but you have nothing on the shelf.
“ I think it is an issue of people seeing how many lives the relentless promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy can ruin in the next price crash”
Yet that is what you are pushing. You expecting a $500 million windfall, similar to playing the lottery. Buy and Hold is the opposite. It is methodically putting away a percentage of money over a lifetime of work, consistently, month after month, year after year, without risky timing schemes
Let’s look at this yet another way. You have this website and you have your weekly column on ValueWalk. Neither one generates any material income, despite your ability to post anything you want. Further, you don’t sell any products on this website. Why? Therefore, if you are merely regurgitating the same stuff elsewhere, what’s different for you that suddenly generates an income? What are you selling? Who are you selling it to? How much are you charging? It’s like opening up a store, but you have nothing on the shelf.
There’s no point in putting things for sale in a store if there are people standing at the front door threatening to murder anyone who dares to enter and ask questions about the goods that they are thinking of buying. The first step to getting to a good place is applying the same laws that apply in every field other than the investment advice field in the investment advice field as well.
It’s all downhill sledding from there. There are mountains and mountains of money to be made telling people the straight story about stock investing. Not just by me. By thousands of people. If there is one thing that we have learned from the first 20 years of The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Debate, it’s that most people who work in this field are positively longing for the day when they will be able to offer honest investment advice without putting their careers or the lives of their loved ones in jeopardy by doing so.
I think we are all going to make it safely to the other side of The Big Black Mountain in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, Anonymous. I have seen two many brave and smart and kind people putting their lives and their careers on the line to believe otherwise. We need more of that to break through. If we are a good people, we will see more of it following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I believe that we are fundamentally a good people. We wouldn’t have seen thousands of people express a desire that honest posting be permitted if that were not so.
Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is hanging on by a thread. The criminal behavior is a sign of desperation. There’s no other possible explanation for it.
Rob
“ I think it is an issue of people seeing how many lives the relentless promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy can ruin in the next price crash”
Yet that is what you are pushing. You expecting a $500 million windfall, similar to playing the lottery. Buy and Hold is the opposite. It is methodically putting away a percentage of money over a lifetime of work, consistently, month after month, year after year, without risky timing schemes
Buy-and-Holders disdain market timing. So they have no means of exercising price discipline when they buy stocks. That’s like driving a car without brakes, Sooner or later prices get so high that the market collapses. The price collapse causes people to lose so much money that consumer spending contracts, bringing down the entire economic system. In one case, we even saw a Great Depression. Not this boy, you know?
Take away the thing about market timing not always being required for every investor, and I’m a Buy-and-Holder, just like you, Anonymous. All the rest checks out. But that thing about market timing not being required is the worst mistake ever made in the history of personal finance. It causes an ocean of human misery every time it catches on. We all need to pull together as a nation and insist that honest posting be permitted at every internet site so that we can warn people about how dangerous it is to have a stock market in which most investors are failing to exercise price discipline when buying stocks.
My sincere take.
Rob
“ There’s no point in putting things for sale in a store if there are people standing at the front door threatening to murder anyone who dares to enter and ask questions about the goods that they are thinking of buying.”
What?????? When and where was anyone threatened from buying anything from you?
Everyone paying attention noticed the posts about “gun safety,” Anonymous. If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, you would never see any intimidation tactics. If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, the Buy-and-Holders would welcome questions about the methodologies used in their retirement studies. The behavior of the Buy-and-Holders over past 20 years tells the tale that needs to be told.
We are close.
Rob
You finally admit it was a post on gun safety. At no point was anyone ever threatened. Why did you make up the threat?
Please take good care, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you all good things.
Rob
Here is a similar thread on Bogleheads:
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=269041
Notice that no one calls it a threat. Financial boards are a community and everyday topics are covered, yet no one makes up silly stories like you. This is yet another example of your bad behavior and why you are banned.
The purpose of the gun thread at the Motley Fool board was to intimidate people who were trying to work up the courage to stand up to Greaney. I had pointed out the error in the Greaney study and he had flipped his lid and everyone could see that he was losing control. And then this thread appears talking about guns and bullets and how to put them to us solving problems you face.
Why hasn’t the study been corrected? That’s the question that any reasonable person would be asking. That’s the substance question that should be the focus on any discussion of this matter.
And of course the gun safety thread was not the only time Greaney advanced a death threat. There was another thread where Galeno (Greaney’s right-hand man) said that he was going to come to my house with a baseball bat. “Let loose the dogs of war,” Galeno said. Some of the more ethical members of the community announced at that time that they would be leaving the board because they no longer felt right about participating in a corrupt enterprise. Greaney heartily endorsed the threats. He thought it was funny. That’s what we are dealing with here. And of course there were the threats made to silence Wade Pfau that were made at a later time. Wade and I performed that research to help millions of people. We should be able to reach those millions of people with it. There should be no “controversy” over that.
If Greaney truly believed that he had included a valuation adjustment in his study, he would have welcomed questioning of it. There never would have been any freak-out.
Rob