A Rich Life

The Old Ideas on Saving & Investing Don't Work -- Here's What Does

“The Side Pushing the Death Threats (the Buy-and-Holders) Are Also the Side Pushing the Pure Get Rich Quick (No Market Timing!) Approach to Stock Investing.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

All the information is out there.   Your real issue is you want to say whatever you want on someone else’s website.  Just like Twitter and Facebook decide on content, no one has to give you full and unfettered access to their website.  Courts have ruled extensively on this.

When I point out that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment, people lose confidence in the findings of the study. Greaney saw that happening at every site at which I did it. Everyone doesn’t lose confidence in the study in one moment, It takes time. People have heard the message that market timing is not required thousands of times. To become persuaded that it is always required and always works, they need to hear the research-based message thousands of times. That’s how change happens. If we open up every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research, we will get to where we need to be.

No one has to give me full and unfettered access to their site. But each site owner should administer the published rules for posting at the site. If the site prohibits death threats, then those advancing death threats should be removed when they appear. That is what is missing. The side pushing the death threats (the Buy-and-Holders) are also the side pushing the pure Get Rich Quick (no market timing!) approach to stock investing. Get Rich Quick strategies are popular during out-of-control bull markets. So the site owners are willing to tolerate behavior that they would not tolerate in other circumstances. The Get Rich Quick element of the Buy-and-Hold strategy gives it a huge benefit from a marketing standpoint.

Will that benefit hold up in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis? I do not believe it will. I think that enough people are going to be pissed about the money they have lost to insist that the site owners permit honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. We don’t need 80 percent for that to happen, My guess is that we need 20 percent and we already have 10 percent. We’ll see how it goes.

There should be widespread alarm about a CAPE value of 31. There is not widespread alarm today because people have not yet personally experienced the downside of such a CAPE value. Shiller’s research shows them what it is and Shiller’s book tells them what it is. But it is something different to see what it means for stock prices to get totally out of control in a personal way. If it matters to enough people, we will see a huge advance and I doubt very much that we will ever go back to Buy-and-Hold. If it doesn’t matter to people, then we will not see the advance that Shiller’s research promises and we all will live lesser lives as a result. I think we are a good people. I think we are going to move forward. But we’ll see.

I am not capable of saying that I believe that the Greaney retirement study contains a valuation adjustment in any event.

My best wishes to you.

Rob

Comments

  1. What will your jury say when they the large stack of posts that you deleted. I saved them all. What will your jury say, when they see your false claims of criminal acts. What will your jury say when they see you constantly promoting a timing scheme that has never worked.