Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“He never retracted that paper”
He would if anyone ever asked him about it. In fact he’d be mortified, because its conclusion was disastrously wrong. At least he defined his market timing scheme (unlike you) and it would have had the investor in 0% stocks every year except one, going back over 30 years. Anyone following that scheme would have been irreparably crushed by buy-and-hold. Like you were.
As with all market timing schemes, it fell apart almost to the day it got published.
Why don’t you ask him for a follow-up? He was “extremely grateful” to you, so he owes you that much.
I don’t believe that Wade would retract the paper. I think he is very, very proud of it. It could be that he would like to keep quiet about it until the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, when I believe that every site on the internet will be opened to honest posting. I believe that Wade and I will be working together again in those days. So we will do a follow-up then.
The paper shows what the paper shows. It doesn’t make any claims about when the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis is going to take place. It shows that Valuation-Informed Indexing has been far superior to Buy-and-Hold for the entire history of the U.S. market. Do I believe that the stock market may continue to perform in the future somwhat as it has always performed in the past? I do indeed. But that’s opinion. That’s not in the paper. The paper presents the historical return data showing that Valuation-Informed Indexing has always far outperformed Buy-and-Hold. The historical record is not opinion. The historical record is fact.
I believe that every investor on the planet needs to see and discuss that paper before investing one dime in stocks. I believe that it is the most important research done in this field since the 1980s. I believe that when all is said and done Wade may be awarded a Nobel prize for the work he did on that paper. I view it as the most important accomplishment of my life. No apologies whatsoever.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
Rob
Here is YOUR problem. You are a long term unemployed person who lacks any education in the investment world. You have a failed retirement plan that has resulted in a depleted bank account. Your wife, who needs to be provided for, tried to get you to be a provider. You refused, so she divorced you. With that a miserable track record, you still feel like you have the authority to stand here a tell all the other successful people that they are wrong and you are right. You need to get a grip with reality.
I think we should be permitting honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research at every discussion board and blog on the internet, without a single exception. That way people can hear both sides of the story and make up their own minds as to how to proceed with their retirement money.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Rob’s, you’re living 50 miles away from Purcellville, shacking up in a shared room in some townhome. This really is sad. There’s definitely mixed feelings from me, and I suspect the others. I’m glad that you failed to succeed in selling your bad retirement advice to others. It is sad to see this happen to you and your family regardless of that silver lining.
I’ve seen and experienced lots of sad things over the past 20 years, Sensible. I have also witnessed lots of amazing, positive life-affirming things. The bad stuff is very, very, very real. But the good stuff outeighs the bad by a factor of 20. Unforuntately, in the year 2023, one cannot get to the good without going though the bad. I believe that thete will be a day in the future when that will no longer be the case. I have seen on hundreds of occasions the excitement that people experience when things click for them and they see for the first time how stock investing really works in the real world and how much better and fuller our lives will be once we have acted as a nation of people to open every discussion board and blog to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research, without a single excepton.
I have a dream, you know?
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
My best wishes.
Rob
If it was up to me, we would have opened every discussion board and blog to honest posting on the evening of the day that Shiller published his Nobel-prizr-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. There wasn’t even an internet in those days. But people had other ways to communicate. They had books and magazines and speeches and conferences. They could have talked about the amazing and far-reaching implications of Shiller’s research findings at those sorts of venues. And we would be 41 years ahead of where we are today in our development of the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept if we had done that.
It’s like the story of the two economists who are walking on a path when one stoops down to pick up a 20-dollar bill. The other one says: “Why are you doing that? If there were reallly a 20-dollar bill there, someone would have picked it up before we came along.” Except in this case, it’s a 20-trillion-dollar bill. All of the research is done. All that the rest of us need to do to live better and fuller and richer lives is to stoop down and pick it up. I say that we should do that. We are not as a nation of people going to make it to the magic place that Shiller pointed out to us until a larger number of us work up the courage to point out that there’s a 20-trillion-dollar bull sitting on the sidewalk and the sensible thing is to stoop down and pick it up.
That’s pretty much it.
Rob
“I’m glad that you failed to succeed in selling your bad retirement advice to others.”
My view is that each investor should be permitted to decide for himself or herself whether the advice is good or bad. That’s not something that a gang of internet goons should be able to decide for all of us.
Rob
“ It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.”
We have seen in play out. You lost your money. You lost your wife to divorce. You lost your home. How much worse can it get?
The worst will be if stocks continue to perform in the future somewhat as they always have in the past. Given today’s CAPE value, that would mean that we will be seeing another Buy-and-Hold Crisis. In A.A. meetings, they often say that an alcoholic has to hot bottom to develop the motivation to turn himself around. I believe that the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis could be the hitting bottom for the Buy-and-Holders. We would be looking at millions of failed retirements, hundreds of thoudsands of business failures, millions of people losing their jobs, an increase in political tensions. I believe that some Buy-and-Holders might look at all that and conclude: “You know, maybe its time to take a look at the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field and to consider what it is trying to teach us all about how stock investing works in the real world.”
From that day forward, it will be all downhill sledding. I am not able to think of anything that could hold us back. This is a highly lucrative field. So, once we have overcome the Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads, there are going to be a lot of people rushing in to take advantage of the opportunity to redo all the investing advice that exists today and to get it right for the first time. I believe that we will see the greatst surge in economic growth in our nation’s history as a result.
Think about it this way. If this were no big deal, you Goons wouldn’t fight the idea of permitting honest posting so hard. The harder you fight, the more of a threat you see, which means the more power you perceive in the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept. You’ve been at this for 20 years now. That’s a lot of power. I agree with you. I believe that this will change life in a very positive way for millions and millions of people. I believe to this day that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.
My best wishes.
Rob
“ In A.A. meetings, they often say that an alcoholic has to hot bottom to develop the motivation to turn himself around. ”
You have hit the bottom, Rob.
Okay, Anonymous.
Rob