“If Irrational Exuberance Is a Thing, It Is Obviously a Bad Thing. So We All Should Be Doing All That We Can to Combat It. The Only Way to Combat It Is With Market Timing (Lowering One’s Stock Allocation When Prices Rise to Insane Levels to Pull Them Back Down to Reasonable Levels).”

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 can clear things up.  Just post links of the actual death threats, job threats or other criminal acts.  While you are at it, point out where Shiller said he agreed with your VII timing scheme.  Point out where any expert has said Greaney’s work was in error.

I’ve posted links to the death threats. You Goons just say that they were discussions of gun safety. If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, no advocate of the strategy would engage in discussions of gun safety at a retirement planning board. The purpose of the death threats was to intimidate people who wanted to hear honest discussions of the peer-reviewed research into silence.

The title of Shiller’s book is “Irrational Exuberance.” If irrational exuberance is a thing, it is obviously a bad thing. So we all should be doing all that we can to combat it. The only way to combat it is with market timing (lowering one’s stock allocation when prices rise to insane levels to pull them back down to reasonable levels). Shiller has on several occasions publicly recommended market timing. So he obviously believes in it. He once had a throwaway comment in an interview in which he suggested that his confidence in market timing is not today as strong as it once was. I have said that we should all want to know precisely what he meant by that comment and that the Buy-and-Holders should agree to rein in the criminal stuff long enough for Shiller to appear at the Bogleheads Forum and respond to questions re his views on safe withdrawal rates and on market timing. You Goons have not followed up on that suggestion.

Numerous experts have said that the 4 percent rule used in the Greaney study was in error. Wade Pfau, who was my co-author on peer-reviewed research showing that “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!”, said that the Greaney study is “dangerous.” That’s a pretty darn clear assessment. I say that the dangerous study should be corrected and that Greaney should make moves to compensate the people who have been hurt by it or who are likely to be hurt by it in future days for the losses they have suffered or will suffer.

My best wishes.

Rob