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’ve answered your question.”
No you haven’t. You haven’t said why you can’t do both at the same time when there are plenty of hours in the day. You seem to have time to post here, on ValueWalk, Twitter, etc. you seem to have time for watching movies, baseball, etc. Yet you have chosen to put your wife and her concerns last when there is plenty of time to address that as well.
I post here to respond to questions and comments re the material in the book. It obviously makes the book a better product the more I know about the subject matter.
I write a column every week for Value Walk. Again, doing that enhances my understanding of the subject matter of the book.
I spend very minimal time on Twitter. I I push that little “retweet” button re some articles that I happen to come across that I think might be worth reading.
I do watch movies and I do watch baseball. The book is not an intellectually difficult project. It is an EXTREMELY difficult emotional project. That’s why no one else has written this book in the 41 years since Shiller published his amazing, revolutionary, Nobel-prize-winning research findings. Bernstein could have written it. Kitces could have written it. Shultheis could have written it. Freakin’ Shiller could have written it. Lots of others. Why has no one else written it? Why has this job been left to me? Because it is an emotionally harrowing experience to tell millions of people something that they very, very, very much do not want to hear, that their stock portfolio is not worth anything close to what they have been led to believe it is worth. It’s a very hard job. Watching a movie or a baseball game gives me some emotional relief. So, yes, I do that.
I wish that I were Superman. I wish that I did not need the emotional relief. The book would have been completed years ago if that were the case. But you know what? I am close to finishing the book. Most of these others haven’t even started writing it yet, so far as I can tell. So I am not going to get too down on myself for doing some things that I need to do to obtain the emotional relief required to bring this important work to a successful conclusion. I’ll finish the book. It will be out there for anyone who cares to learn the true story. I’ll do what it takes to get to the finish line, including watching a few movies and a few baseball games. No apologies.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
The list of people and things to blame is long:
Emotions
Goons
Board owners
Wade Pfau
Shiller
Bernstein
Greaney
Taylor
Jack Bogle
And on and on and on.
Everyone else and everything else is to blame.
And the list of things to applaud is even longer:
Robert Shiller
Wade Pfau
John Walter Russell
Thousands of our fellow community members who put their necks on the line to urge that honest posting be permitted
The peer-review concept
The idea that research should be consulted when forming one’s investing strategies (an idea popularized by Buy-and-Holders!)
John Bogle (who taught me to question the safe withdrawal rate studies by observing that Reversion to the Mean is an “Iron Law” of stock investing
And on and on and on and on and on.
Yes, we are all to blame. Humans are imperfect creatures. We all have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge residing within us which has made stock investing a risky budiness for as far back as stock markets have been in operation. But that’s less than half of the story. The other side of the story is that we all also have within us a common sense urge which tells us that we had better continue doing research even after many of us have come to believe that we have it all figured out and that we had better enact laws against death threats and acts of extortion that otherwise might be employed to silence the discussion of the new research findings that we all need to live better lives in the future than we have ever been able to live in the past.
You Goons have been able to supress discussion of the error that Greaney made in his retirement study for 20 years because you appeal to a weak part of human nature that really does exist and really does have power over all of us. But Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize because there are strong parts of human nature that really do exist as well. I’m with Shiller. I think irrational exuberance is a real thing, I think that market timing/price discipline is an absolute essential in the stock investing realm and I think that we all should be talking about the far-reaching how-to implications of Shiller’ amazing research at every discussion board and blog on the internet, without a single exception.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, dear Goon friend.
Rob
“ Yes, we are all to blame.”
No one, other than you, is to blame for you not finishing your book. No one, but you, is to blame for your lack of retirement savings.
I don’t agree, Anonymous.
I would have a mountain of retirement savings if I had never had a single abusive post directed at me, much less any of the criminal stuff. There are millions of people in the Uniteed States alone who need to know how to invest effectively. A critically important part of the story is the 41 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns and that, therefore, market timing/price discipline is 100 percent required for investors who want to keep their risk profile constant over time. As Wade Pfau concluded after spending 16 months of his life studying my ideas on stock investing, “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!”
And I of course could have finished the book sooner if I were able to get feedback and support every day from all of my friends on the discussion boards and blogs at which I have been banned because I pointed out an error in a retirement study posted at John Greany’s web site, I mean, come on. The thousands of people who have expressed a desire that every site be opened to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research are the people that I need to promote the book until it catches fire in a big way!
My best wishes to you.
Rob
How would you have mountains of savings? You don’t have anything to sell. People aren’t just going to hand you money. You had a job, but you chose to quit.
I’m selling an idea — the idea that it is better to invest in stocks pursant to a research-based strategy rather than following a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold approach. People who sell ideas make noney in dozens of different wayys — books, magazine articles, tapes, consulting, speeches, and on and on and on. But they can’t make a penny without first obtaining widespread credibility as someone with something important to say. If I had scores and scores of sites linking back to me and recommending my work on a daily basis, I would have that. That’s what you Goons stole from me with your relentless abusiness toward anyone who dares to “cross” you by suggesting that honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed should be permitted at every site on the internet, without a single exception.
The fact that you have been willing to devote 20 years of your life to seeing that people not be able to learn what the last 41 years of research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world reveals the power of the new ideas and their huge profit potential. If the ideas were not worth a bare minimum of $500 million, you would never have devoted so much energy to holding me back, I mean, come on.
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.
I naturally wish you all good things.
Rob
Not one single person has paid you for your “ideas”. Your story has no basis,
Thousands have said that they would like to see honest posting re the peer-reviewed research permitted at every site, without a single exception. That’s out of the tiny percentage of the population that has been exposed to my message. Open every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research, as U.S. law provides, and the thousands beocme tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands and then millions and then tens of millions and then hundreds of millions.
When you have hundreds of millions of people thanking you for being the first to explain to them how stock investing actually works in the real world, money-making opportunities follow. Getting past the abusive and in some cases crininal behavior of you Goons has been very, very, very difficult. But that’s pretty much the entire battle here. Once me and millions of middle-class investors who need access to my work get past you Goons, me and hundreds of others will soon be making so much money promoting the first true research-based investment strategy that we won’t be able to keep count of it as it pours in. I mean, come on.
And you Goons of course see that as clearly as I do. Hence, your behavior over the past 20 years. If Greanery truly believed that he had included a valuation adjustment in his “study,” we never would have seen a single abusive post, much less any of the criminal stuff. Evidence nailed that one.
My sincere take.
And my best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Let’s make this more simple for you to understand. If you had to offer a product or service based on your “ideas”, what would you be selling at a price point of $100?
95 percent of this battle is getting every discussion board and blog on the internet opened to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field, witout a single exception. Once that goal is achieved, all of the rest falls easily into place.
The shift from a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategy” to the first true research-based strategy is not a small shift. We need to get every book in the field revised, every calculator redone. Instead of pushing the generation of more and more and more irrational exuberance morning, noon and night, we will be encouraging people to rein in their Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urges and thereby become able to retire many years sooner while taking on only a fraction of the risk that they felt they needed to take on in the days before Shiller published his amazing, Nobel-prize-winning research.
The market will dictate what products and services are offered. The critical step is overcoming the Ban on Honest Posting that now applies at every large site on the internet and thereby bringing the market for honest, research-based investment advice into existence. I am not even a tiny bit worried about how things will go in Stage Two. It’s Stage One that has been holding us back for 20 years now. The more lives that the Buy-and-Holders destroyed with their relentless promotion of the :idea” that there might be an alternate universe 20 billion light years away in which market timing/price discipline is not 100 percent required for every investor, the less willing they are to own up to the mistake that they made in the 1960s that Shiller exposed to those who follow the peer-reviewed research in the early 1980s.
We need to bring an end to that. We need to get to a situation where we are all on the same side, where we are all working together so that we can learn together as much as we can about how stocks work in the real world in as little time as we possibly can learn it. We are talking about the difference between going down, down, down and going up, up, up. I think it would be fair to say that the “idea” that market timing is not always 100 percent required is the most dangerous and destructive mistake ever made in the history of personal finance.
Say that permitting honest posting adds $300,000 to the accumulated wealth of every investor over the course of an investing lifetime. I think it would be fair to say that that’s a pretty darn conversative estimate of what is at stake there. Say that it’s only 100 million people who would received that added $300,000. That’s obviously a lowball estimate. That’s a number far, far, far in excess of the $500 million that I have indicated I would be willing to settle my legal claims for. $500 million is not a small amount of money. It’s a HUGE amount of money. We are not going to have any problem whatsoever figuring out ways to make vast amounts of money from permitting honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. The only problem we might have is figuring out how to count it as it comes pouring in so fast.
I don’t exclude you Goons from that. John Walter Russell and I made an offer to Greaney in the early days to join with him to develop accurate and honest safe-withdrawal-rate research. I think it would be fair to say that Greaney would have the top investing site on the internet today had he taken us up on that offer back then. People are happy to pay for investment materials that offer huge benefits. Shiller didn’t win a Nobel prize for no good reason. This is truly life-enhancing stuff. There’s money to be made here. Mountains of it. At all possible price points. And of course the truly wonderful thing here is that all who get involved are earning that money by doing tremendous good for millions and millions of people (including the Buy-and-Holders, who would get to come clean about the mistake they made back in the 1960s, before Shiller’s research was even available to us).
Valuation-Informed Indexing is Buy-and-Hold corrected for the horrible error that has caused so much human tragedy over the years. It’s good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. It’s not even possible to imagine any downside. That translates into mountains of well-earned profits in this highly lucrative field, in which behaving with integrity is every bit as important as it is in any other field of human endeavor regardless of how you Goons have reacted to the thousands of pleas that honest posting be permitted that we have seen over the first 20 years of out discussions.
My best and warmest wishes.
Rob
In short, you don’t have anything to sell. As such, it is all made up.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours in any event, Anonymous.
Rob
“ That’s a number far, far, far in excess of the $500 million that I have indicated I would be willing to settle my legal claims for.”
What legal claims have you filed? Anyone can say they have a claim. Getting an attorney to take a case and then actually winning a case is totally different. I can sit here and say you owe me $10 Billion. So what? It is no different than what you are doing.
I have a funny feeling that, in the event that stocks continue to perform in the future anything at all as they have always performed in the past, there will be lawyers lined up around the block in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
Fair enough?
Rob
Your “funny feelings” resulted in you going broke and getting a divorce.
Only because of the way the Buy-and-Holders reacted to my (accurate) claim that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. We need as a nation of people to pull together to find ways to rein in the Get Rich Quick urge that resides within all of us. That’s the answer.
I am sure.
Rob
What does the buy and holders reaction to your faulty claims about Greaney have to do with you quitting your job and getting divorced?
What business/income did you establish prior to your inaccurate post about John Greaney and then how did that decline after that inaccurate post?
It is my intent to continue to say that the retirement study posted at John Greaney;s web site lacks an adustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what stock investment strategy you elect to follow.
Rob
So you didn’t have a business and/or income when you made your faulty comments about Greaney. More puzzling is how you blame buy and holders for your divorce. Buy and holders agreed with your wife that you needed to get a job and provide for her.
Irrational exuberance is a good thing! Nothing could be more clear.
Rob
Having a fully funded retirement account, an income, a house and a solid marriage is a good thing.
And living in a nation that is not experiencing an economic crisis is a good thing. If we permit honest posting at every site, we get to have ALL of the good things. That’s the path that gets my vote.
Rob
Let’s us know when you finally decide to post honestly (truthful).
Will do, Anonymous.
Please take good care.
Rob