“Expertise Will Not Mean What It means in Other Fields in This Field Until We Open Every Internet Site to Honest Posting re the Last 41 Years of Peer-Reviewed Research. If the Buy-and-Holders Cannot Bear to Be Questioned, Their “Expertise” Is a Pretty Darn Flimsy Thing.”

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

First you say you need to be an expert, then you say it is better not to be one.

The idea that market timing is not required was the dominant expert view in the 1960s, when Buy-and-Hold was being developed. Then in 1981 an expert (Shiller holds a Ph.D.) published peer-reviewed research showing that the market is not efficient and that timing is required for investors seekling to maintain a constant risk profile over time. People who had developed reputations as “experts” in earlier times have suppressed discussion of the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research for 41 years now. Who are the true experts? The people still following a model discredited by 41 years of peer-reviewed research? Or the 10 percent of the population that believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research?

I read Shiller’s book. I understand that there is precisely zero chance that the safe withdrawal rate could be the same number at all valuation levels. Does that make me an ‘expert”? Reading a book does not make me an expert in the way that that word is ordinarily used. But it puts me far ahead of the many people who to this day believe in Buy-and-Hold strategies.

Expertise will not mean what it means in other fields in this field until we open every internet site to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. If the Buy-and-Holders cannot bear to be questioned, their “expertise” is a pretty darn flimsy thing. True experts don’t advance death threats or engage in acts of extortion. Nor do they keep quiet when they see others around them doing so. True experts encourage challenged to their thinking, especially when the challenges are rooted in 41 years of peer-reviewed research.

I am the strongest critic of the “idea” that market timing is not required alive on Planet Earth. If that makes me an expert, then I’m an expert. And proud of it. I sure ain’t a Buy-and-Holder (although I of course have great respect for the Buy-and-Holders for the many important contribtuons that they made that have stood the test of time).

I hope that helps at least a tiny bit.

Rob