A Rich Life

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

“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.”

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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:

“ 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

Comments

  1. If you think your book will save the world, why are you wasting your time posting on the internet?

  2. I always want to remain open to hearing thoughts coming from people on the other side of the table, Anonymous. I of course get it that you Goons have zero good intent. That became evident on the afternoon of May 13, 2002. But I absolutely believe that you yourselves follow Buy-and-Hold strategies. There’s a mountain of evidence supporting that conclusion. And I have never seen any evidence of a lack of intelligence on the Buy-and-Hold side. So we have smart people following a strategy that has been discredited by 41 years of peer-reviewed research. Huh? What the f?

    It is my job to figure out that puzzle. Listening only to people who agree with me is not going to get me there. I wish that you Goons would be more honest and balanced in your comments. That would be a huge help. But I do not think it would be smart for me to refuse to interact with you at all. I call you out on the b.s. abusive stuff. I do that all the time. But I also listen closely for the grains of genuine insight mixed in to your comments from time to time. I feel that it’s worth wading through all the muck to get to those little nuggets of gold if capturing those nuggets of gold enhances my understanding of this unfortunate moment in U.S. history in some way.

    I believe that my book will play a role in taking us all to a much, much better understanding of how stock investing works than we have ever possessed up until this time, that’s so. But the publication of the book is not going to do that by itself. For us as a nation to achieve that advance, we are going to have to give ourselves permisson to TALK about the book and of couese about the peer-reviewed research findings at the core of it. As a nation we are going to have to overcome the social taboo against acknowledging the importance of market timing (price discipline!) that has been holding us all back for 41 years now.

    You Goons are the primary advocates of suppression of discussion of what the peer-reviewed research teaches us all. So I think it makes sense to listen to what you have to say when you are able to present it in a way that is not 100 percent abusive intimidation garbage. There are times when you are not able to quite meet that standard. But there are also times when you do.

    I hope that helps at least a tiny bit.

    Rob