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 say that it needed a valuation adjustment.”
And no one else is saying that. Are you the dictator of the investing world? Do you even pay attention to why everyone says you are wrong? Of course not. Perhaps the fact you are ignoring that, while pushing your timing scheme is fraud.
Lots of people have said it. Shiller’s research was published in a peer-reviewed journal and was considered so important that he was awarded a Nobel prize. I have had numerous top-name experts tell me that my stuff is top-notch material. We have seen thousands of our fellow community members express a desire that honest posting re the peer-reviewed research be permitted at every site. Wade Pfau described the Greaney study as “dangerous.” The Wall Street Journal had an article saying that the Buy-and-Holders are telling only half the story and describing the idea that stocks are always the best asset choice as “hooey.” William Bernstein, who is a confirmed Buy-and-Holder, said that the Buy-and-Hold safe withdrawal rate studies were off by two full percentage points at the top of the bubble.
I am going to continue saying that it is not possible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate accurately without taking valuations into consideration. A 4 percent withdrawal is not always “100 percent safe” (Greaney’s phrase) and we shouldn’t lie to people about the numbers they are using to plan their retirements. A failed retirement is a serious life setback.
My sincere take.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
I have yet to see Shiller say anything about Greaney. Further, there are no “thousands”. It’s made up. If you had that kind of support, we would see that in your comments section.
Shiller has never said directly that the Greaney retirement study is in error. But he has said that valuations affect long-term returns. That’s his entire career. It was because of that finding of his that he was awarded a Nobel prize. The Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment. So, if Shiller’s research is legitimate, the Greaney study is in error. Shiller told us what we need to know to understand that the safe withdrawal rate cannot possibly be the same number at all valuation levels.
The thousands are real. When I say that there are thousands of people who have expressed a desire that every site be opened to honest posting re the past 41 years of peer-reviewed research, I am including people who did that by giving a recommendation to a post that said that. It’s a smaller number that advanced those words themselves. But, yes, it is thousands who have expressed support for the idea.
That’s not anything close to a majority of the people who have visited our boards. It’s roughly 10 percent of the population of our boards that in some manner has expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted. It’s also only about 10 percent who have participated in Goon behavior, who have either been extremely abusive or even outright criminal in their reactions to seeing others express a view that Shiller’s research is legitimate.
That vast majority are “Normals.” If you ask a Normal whether honest posting should be permitted, he will say “yes.” But, if you ask a Normal whether someone who has become “controversial” because he has expressed a view that Shiller’s research is legitimate should be removed from board discussions, the Normal will usually be okay with that. The Normals want the disruption brought to the table by the Goons to go away and, because the majority view is that Buy-and-Hold is a good strategy, it is the people who are saying that Shiller’s research is legitimate that are perceived as causing the disruption. Buy-and-Hold was here first. It is the amazing breakthrough in our understanding of how stock investing works that is threatening (in the eyes of the Goons) to bring on change.
The Goons are not open to change and the 10 percent that believe that Shiller’s research is legitimate are already on board with permitting honest posting but are not large enough in number to get the job done. So it all comes down to the Normals. I believe that the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will cause enough human misery that a number of Normals will come to question Buy-and-Hold and will switch to a position that honest posting will be permitted. Once that happens, it’s over.
From that point forward, the criminal stuff will no longer be tolerated and even the highly abusive but not quite criminal stuff will cause those who employ it to lose lots of points. So at that point the debate will be on substance. And all of the evidence supports Valuation-Informed Indexing. So, once honest posting becomes possible, the thing can only go one way. You Goons obviously see that (intellectually but not emotionally). If you didn’t see that Valuation-Informed Indexing was going to prevail in a reasoned debate, you never would have been so opposed to permitting reasoned debate in the first place.
Every death threat, every demand for an unjustified board banning, ever act of defamation, every act of extortion is a clear sign that the intellectual case for Valuation-Informed Indexing is stronger than the intellectual case for Buy-and-Hold. Buy-and-Hold is what sells (during an out-of-control bull market). Valuation-Informed Indexing is what works (in the long run).
My sincere take.
Rob
There is nothing in your post that refutes my points. You know that, so you deflect by repeating your false claims of criminal acts.
Okay.
Rob
You are always welcome to post any links to support your claims, yet you don’t. I bet that if Shiller made a post saying he agreed with you, you would provide a link to that.
Every post that has ever been put to this blog supports my claim that the Buy-and-Holders have resorted to criminal behavior to block millions of middle-class investors from learning about the error (the idea that market timing does not always work and is not always required) at the core of their strategy. I pointed out the error in the Greaney retirement study (it lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins) in a post to a Motley Fool discussion board on the morning of May 13, 2002. The normal thing would be for Greaney to correct the error within 14 hours of the moment that he learned of it. The reality is that he has not corrected the error to this day.
There’s zero chance that something like that could happen without a lot of funny business, including criminal behavior. It’s too bizarre. If we were all thinking clearly, the national debate that I have been trying to launch for 20 years now would have begun in 1981 and we would have been looking at Buy-and-Hold in the rear-view mirror for many years now, It will be interesting to see how things go in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
Rob
It is all funny business on your part. YOU are the one making the claims. No one else is.
I’m definitely making a claim that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment and that he should have corrected it within 24 hours of the moment that he became aware of the error.
There were people at the Motley Fool board he used that study to plan their retirements. Some of them had become friends of mine over the years.
Rob
There is nothing to correct. There are no criminal acts. You have no followers. You have no fans. You have no job. You have no $500 million windfall. Everything is a big nothing.
Okay, Anonymous.
I wish you all good things.
Please take good care.
Rob