Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“ It was Shiller’s finding that valuations affect long-term returns, not mine. ”
So Shiller gets the $500 million since he did the work.
Shiller did amazing work. You certainly won’t hear me say any different.
But do you know what has happened in the years since Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research? We have seen the highest CAPE values in our nation’s history in those days!
We know intellectually today how stock investing works, thanks to Shiller. But that intellectual knowledge will do us no good until we secure the ability to talk about it on every discussion board and blog on the internet. We all have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge residing within us. We need to be reminded daily of how dangerous it is. For Shiller’s work to have practical value, we need to open every site on the internet to honest posting re the past 41 years of peer-reviewed research, without a single exception.
My sincere take.
Rob
Since this is Shiller’s work, he should determine if other website need to do discuss it more. He should also be the one getting any proceeds based on his work, not you. You haven’t done a thing.
What happens to our economic system and to our political system affects all of us, Anonymous. Every last one of us should be doing everything in our power to get every site on the internet opened to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. There shouldn’t be an iota of controversy re that one. Yet there has been a great deal of controvery for 20 years running now. The controversy is not going to die down by me agreeing not speak out. That would make things worse. We need more people speaking out, not fewer.
Shiller deserves all the credit in the world. Obviously. But Shiller didn’t point out the error in Greaney retirement study in a post that he put to a Motley Fool discussion board on the morning of May 13, 2002. That wasn’t nothing. There were people who used that study to plan their retirements. And I was the co-author of the Bennett/Pfau research, which I think can fairly be characterized as the most important research published in this field in 30 years. You Goons didn’t go after Wade for no good reason. And I created five unique calculators with lots of help from John Walter Russell. John and I discovered that the correct safe withdrawal rate for those who retireed in January 2000 was 1.6 percent. Shiller didn’t do that. I wish he had. He would have saved me a lot of abuse had he done that. I think it would be fair to say that the reason why he didn’t do it is that he did not want to be put through that sort of abuse.
We all need to do what we can, Anonymous. Working together, we can make the world a much better place than any of us imagined it could be back in the Buy-and-Hold days. If we were all thinking clearly, we would get to work at the close of business Tuesday, if not a good bit sooner. If Greaney had corrected his study on the afternoon of May 13, 2002, we would today as a nation of people be 20 years ahead of where we are in our development of the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept. If we wait until the close of business on Wednesday, that would be one more day of delay. To what good purpose?
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
All I see is that Shiller did work, Greaney did work, Wade Pfau did work and JWR did work. You haven’t done any work other than to criticize the work of others, despite having no education or experience to be making critical observations. Just throwing stones at people is not work.
Okay, Anonymous. I do wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow, in any event.
Rob
Well, it is the truth. They did the work, right? Their name is on it, right? You admitted that Wade wrote the paper. You admitted that JWR made the calculators (as you are not a numbers guy). Shiller must have done the work as he got the Nobel prize. Greaney did his work as well. All you have really done is given us your “commentary”.
All of the people you mentioned did amazing work. Greaney got an important number wrong in his study. But there are a lot of people at the Motley Fool board who would have taken even higher withdrawal rates if not for his study. So even Greaney did some good (along with a lot of bad). The others (Shiller, Pfau, Russell) are flat-out heroes. So no argument with any of that.
But take a look at today’s CAPE value. It’s 28. Shiller’s amazing research has not gotten the job done. We all have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge residing within us. Our addiction to Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold investing strategies is every bit as strong as the addictions that some have to alcohol or drugs or sex or gambling. To overcome that addiction, we are going to need to open every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. The Bennett/Pfau research shows that market timing is 70 percent of what it takes to achieve long-term stock investing success. So 70 percent of what we hear from investment experts should be telling us ways to avoid getting sucked in by the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold garbage. We’re not even close to that today. Shiller’s research, as amazing as it is, cannot bear good fruit until we decide as a society to begin applying the same laws in the investment advice field that we apply in every other field of life endeavor.
My job is to open every site on the internet to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. All of my “commentary’ is aimed at achieving that goal. People have a hard time accepting that there could be 41 years of oeer-reviewed researcb that cannot be discussed. The purpose of my commentary is to explain how it happened. People need to hear that explanation to make sense of things and to help us all make it to the other side, where we all deep in our hearts want to be. That’s journalism. Good journalism has great value. My journalism work will make the valuable work done by the three people you mention (and the good portion of the work done by Greaney) bear good fruit not just in a theoretical sense but in a practical real-world sense. After we have opened every site to honest posting, we will have THOUSANDS of people doing good work in this field. As people become less and less afraid of what you Goons will do to them if they post honestly, people will develop and share more and more powerful insights. There’s huge leverage in the work that I am doing. I am proud to have been able to have played the role that I have played.
My best wishes.
Rob
“ All of the people you mentioned did amazing work. ”
While we can debate as to what is amazing and what is not, you are admitting that THEY did the work and you did not. You are just some guy telling us your opinions on other people’s work. That is it.
Okay, Anonymous.
Rob