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’ll do what I can to get along.”
Not really a plan when you are in your 60’s. It’s now to late to say you will wait to see how it will all turn out. We see how it played out. It failed.
It’s about 500 times better than betraying my friends and then not knowing how I am going to be able to sleep at night, Anonymous. I had posted with a good number of people at the Motley Fool board for three years and had gotten to know them and to care about what happened to them.
Do you see?
Rob
How would you betray your friends? You already said you don’t have any friends. Also, VII failed and buy and hold worked. If you had actually convinced some people to switch to your timing scheme, then you would have betrayed them. Is there a single person from any of the financial boards that is broke (other than you)?
I have friends. I agreed that the thousands of people who have expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted do not post here and you interpreted that as a statement that I do not have friends. If we enforced the laws that apply in every field of human endeavor other than the investingment advice field in the investment advice field as well, all of those people would be posting here. That would be thousands of people. Those thousands would in time persuade thousands of others and in time we would have tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands and then millions.
We have zero problem getting people interested in what the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world (market timing/price discipline is always 100 percent required for every investor — without it, we eventually experience a price crash and an economic crisis). The problem is that the intimidation stuff advanced by you Goons is so strong thqt it scares people and they censor themselves. That’s the only problem we face today. All the rest is amazing advances in our understanding of how stock investing works.
Every person in the United States possesses less wealth today than he or she would have possessed had we opened every discussion board and blog to honest posting back on the afternoon of May 13, 2002, as I proposed at the time. Had we done that, we could have worked together as a nation to pull price down to reasonable levels within a year or two and we would not have seen that nasty Buy-and-Hold Crisis of 2008, which caused hundreds of thoudsands of businesses to go under and millions of people to be thrown out of work and a significant increase in political frictions. Those sorts of things don’t just happen randomly, Anonymous. They happen when irrational exuberance gets out of control, as it did in the days before the 2008 crisis (and as it is today).
Irrational exuberance is a very, very, very powerful negative force. It can bring down entire political systems. And there is ony one way to combat it — through market timing/price discipline. And people do not naturally engage in market timing/price discipline when buying stops. People have a natural love for irrational exuberance. We all want something for nothing. To resist our desire for irrational exuberance, we need to be reminded of its dangers on a daily basis. But the Buy-and-Holders — who are wealthy and powerful and well-connected people — very, very, very much do not want to acknowledge the error they made back in the 1960s (before Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research was available to them) that there might be some alternate universe where market timing/price discipline is not 100 percent require for every investor. We all suffer financially when Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick strategies are heavily promoted and there is a ban on discussioon of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research.
My sincere take.
Rob
What friends? You said no one was talking to you. No friends. No money. No wife. No house. Why would anyone want to follow your path? How could it be any worse?
I have plenty of friends. If I didn’t have plenty of friends, I would represent no threat to you and we never would have seen a single abusive post, much less any of the crininal stuff.
I acknowledge that 20 years of the abusive stuff has been very, very bad. The way it could be worse is that if at some point I had relented and agreed to say that I do not believe that the Greaney retirement study is in error because it lacks a valuation adjustment. Then I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. Then I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. That would be 50 times worse.
I think that everyone in this field will want to follow my path in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. There are lots of good people in the United States. When we all see up close and personal what it means to fail to engage in market timing and thereby to permit irrational exuberance to get out of control and destroy millions of lives, I believe that a good number of us will work up the courage to stand up to you Goons. Each time someone insists on his right to post honestly, it makes it easier for all the others who want to do the same. Eventually, everyone will be doing it and we will all be living better and richer and fuller and freer lives.
It was hard for the first person to say that smoking cigarettes causes cancer. It was hard for the first person to say that we should be concerned about doing damage to the environment. It would hard for the first person to say that sexism is wrong. It was hard for the first person to say that racism is wrong. Sometimes a person has to speak up to be able to continue to live with himself even though there is some personal sacrifice associated with the decision, I am proud of the fact that I eventually worked up the courage to point out the error in the Greaney retirement study. I see it as my finest moment. I am ashamed of the fact that it took me three years to get there.
Rob
No friends
No wife
No savings
No criminal acts
No error in Greaney’s work
No honesty
No sane posts
No valuation adjustment. That’s the biggie, Anonymous.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
“ No valuation adjustment. That’s the biggie, Anonymous.”
Not needed, as you have been told by everyone.
Do you believe that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns is legitimate research?
Rob
You never listen. That is why you are broke, divorced and without friends.
My best wishes to you, Anonymous.
Rob