“There Is Today Zero Intellectual Support for Buy-and-Hold. What Keeps Buy-and-Hold Going Is the Mountain of Institutional Support that Buy-and-Hold Enjoys.”

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

Well, the goons didn’t make you quit your job and your wife and priest pleaded for you to go back to work.  The investment community told you it was a bad idea to quit. Who else can you blame for your unemployment?

It wasn’t me who published Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. That was Robert Shiller.

Once such research exists, everyone in the United States needs to know about it. Our political system cannot survive unless people find out about it. Say that stocks perform in the future somewhat as they always have in the past. In this event, millions of people are going to experience crushing losses. How do you think that they are going to feel when they learn that there was 41 years of peer-reviewed research that would have showed them what they needed to do to avoid those losses and that there were thousands of people who would have been thrilled to help them out except they lived in fear of what a gang of internet goons would do to them if they dared to “cross” them by posting honestly. Continuation of the 41-year cover-up benefits no one.

So why does it continue? It coninues because the 10 percent of the population that believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research lives in fear of you Goons and of the negative reactions of Buy-and-Holders in general. There is today zero intellectual support for Buy-and-Hold. There is support for every aspect of Buy-and-Hold except the injunction not to engage in market timing/price discipline. But there is zero support for that one and that’s the most important thing (it is price discipline that permits markets to function– the stock market is like every other market in that respect). What keeps Buy-and-Hold going is the mountain of institutional support that Buy-and-Hold enjoys. If you point out the error that was discovered 41 years ago, the “experts” who have been either participating in the cover-up or at a minimum tolerating it, go into freak-out mode. When something this important has been covered up for 41 years, the people who have engaged in the cover-up or tolerated it look very, very, very bad.

Which is good for no one. Millions of investors are left without sensible, research-based investment advice. And the experts are at risk of civil and criminal penalties ‘sin the days following the inevitable Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I don’t want to be a part of that, Anonymous. I want to help every single person involved (including you Goons!) by opening every site on the internet to honest posting re the past 41 years of peer-reviewed research. I cannot do that by myself. But I can do what one person is able to do. I can post AS IF the same laws that apply in every field of human endeavor other than the investment advice realm applied in the investment advice realm as well.

There is a saying that one should become the change that one is seeking to achieve. That is what I seek to do. I sincerely believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s site lacks a valuation adjustment. So I say that. That’s what everyone should do. If everyone did that, people would have lost confidence in the Greaney study many years ago and Greaney would have either corrected the study or deleted it. We can never get to the place where deep in our hearts we all want to be until a larger percentge of the 10 percent who believed that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research work up the courage just to say what they believe regardless of what you Goons do in response. I only get one vote. As one person who believes that Shiller’s research is legitimate, I can only do so much. But I endeavor to actually DO that. I can do no more and I can do no less.

My best wishes.

Rob