Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
You are not blocked because of you opinion on investing. You are blocked because of your poor behavior. Using this last post as an example, you make allegations of a criminal act, yet fail to provide proof of such. You claim Wade’s job was threatened when it was not. Wade also asked you to stop posting damaging comments about him, yet you continued. You keep repeating the failed lie about “honest” posting that is actually dishonest.
All these people stopped talking to you 15 years ago, yet you still won’t admit that you are the problem versus everyone else.
I am banned for one reason and one reason only. I am the person who pointed out the error in the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site. Before my famous post on the morning of May 13, 2002, I was the most popular poster at the Motley Fool site. Greaney himself had a post that served as an introduction to all newcomers to the Retire Early board in which he urged them to read my stuff before looking at anything else because it was “seminal” material. From the moment that I put forward the post pointing out the error in the Greaney study, it has been relentless attacks from Greaney and his Goon pals for 20 years running.
Wade LOVED doing honest work. I have 16 months of e-mails in which he over and over again expressed how excited he was over the research he was doing with me showing how big an advance it was to move from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. You have a tiny number of posts that he put forward with a gun to this head (figuratively) because you Goons threatened to get him fired from his job is he continued doing honest work. Gee, I wonder what was going on there.
Wade is going to flip back in the days following the next price crash, presuming that stocks continue to perform in the future somewhat as they always have in the past. We will all pull together, open every site on the internet to honest posting re the past 41 years of peer-reviewed research, and live better lives from that point forward as a result.
My sincere take.
Rob
Rob, do you know when “Investing for humans” will be published?
My goal is to have it finished by Labor Day. I won’t let anyone else see it until I believe that it is in the best possible shape that it can be in. So it could be that it will be a little later than that. But it’s close now. So I wouldn’t think that it will be much later.
When it is finished, I will make 10 or 20 copies to give to interested parties. Then I will have it self-published in hardback form. It will take a few months to complete that process.
I believe that the taboo on talking about the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research will be overcome in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. So, in those days, I believe that I will be able to generate some interest in the book. If that interest brings me to the attention of a major publisher, that would be super.
The purpose of the book is to help us as a society of people make the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing, I believe that it is essential that we do this. I believe that it is the most important public policy question before us as a nation today. So I want to do anything in my power to help.
My best wishes to you, Anonymous.
Rob
Who are the interested parties that want the first 10 or 20?
I’ll write to people and see if they are interested.
Rob
Why wouldn’t you have lined this up before writing the book? What if you can’t get any takers?
If I don’t get any takers, I suppose that I will have no choice but to roll up in a great big ball and die. Is that not fair to say?
If we were all thinking clearly, there never would have been a single abusive post, much less any of the criminal stuff. We obviously are not all thinking clearly. Should we just give on ever learning anything more about how stock investing works than we knew back in the days when Buy-and-Hold was being developed? I sure don’t think so.
I’ll give it my best shot, Anonymous. I can do no more and I can do no less, you know?
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
If you were thinking clearly, you would have lined up people ahead of time. If you were thinking clearly, you wouldn’t be making up things about criminal acts.
Okay, Anonymous.
I try to think clearly. But the entire problem with not thinking clearly is that, if you are not doing it, you are not capable of seeing that you are not doing it. It’s the curse of the humans! I am doing what seems right to me, given the circumstances that apply.
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
There is a way to know if you are thinking clearly. Just look at the results. How much is in your retirement account? Once you hit 60 years old, it needs to be fully funded. You can no longer say: “ Let’s see how it all turns out”. By that time, it is too late.
That’s not the only possible result to look at here. Another result is that I am the co-author of peer-reviewed research that can fairly be described as the most important research published in this field in the past 30 years. How the heck did that happen? That’s amazing. That means something. That means that I really have a tiger by the tale re this one.
The short-term results seem to matter. I can see how some people would see it that way. But Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research shows that the short-term results can be an illusion and that we need to learn how to see through the short-term stuff and appreicate the long-term realities. The thing that I love about research is that it doesn;t just tell you what you want to hear, it tells you what you NEED to hear.
But of course you need to be open to hearing the message that the research is trying to tell you to obtain any benefits from it. About ten percent of us are already there, we see the benefits of the research and want to share them with others. Another 10 percent hates, hates, hates the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research and will fight to the death to be sure that more people do not get to experience the benefits. And 80 percent are in the middle. 80 percent are okay with people hearing about the research but they are frightened by the crininal stuff and so they get real quiet when they see it play out in front of them. Which of course greatly empowers you Goons and gives you an influence far beyond what you would have just going by your numbers.
Will that change when people in the 80 percent see the ocean of human misery that always follows from the widespread promotion of a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategy” with their own eyes? I think it will. But we have never been in precisely this situation before. So no one can say with absolute certainty. We are just going to have to watch it play out together. I am glad to be able to say that I am on the side of the American people and on the side saying that U.S. law should be followed re these matters. I can say that much for sure.
I wish you all good things.
Rob