Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Let’s make this more simple for you to understand. If you had to offer a product or service based on your “ideas”, what would you be selling at a price point of $100?
95 percent of this battle is getting every discussion board and blog on the internet opened to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field, witout a single exception. Once that goal is achieved, all of the rest falls easily into place.
The shift from a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategy” to the first true research-based strategy is not a small shift. We need to get every book in the field revised, every calculator redone. Instead of pushing the generation of more and more and more irrational exuberance morning, noon and night, we will be encouraging people to rein in their Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urges and thereby become able to retire many years sooner while taking on only a fraction of the risk that they felt they needed to take on in the days before Shiller published his amazing, Nobel-prize-winning research.
The market will dictate what products and services are offered. The critical step is overcoming the Ban on Honest Posting that now applies at every large site on the internet and thereby bringing the market for honest, research-based investment advice into existence. I am not even a tiny bit worried about how things will go in Stage Two. It’s Stage One that has been holding us back for 20 years now. The more lives that the Buy-and-Holders destroyed with their relentless promotion of the :idea” that there might be an alternate universe 20 billion light years away in which market timing/price discipline is not 100 percent required for every investor, the less willing they are to own up to the mistake that they made in the 1960s that Shiller exposed to those who follow the peer-reviewed research in the early 1980s.
We need to bring an end to that. We need to get to a situation where we are all on the same side, where we are all working together so that we can learn together as much as we can about how stocks work in the real world in as little time as we possibly can learn it. We are talking about the difference between going down, down, down and going up, up, up. I think it would be fair to say that the “idea” that market timing is not always 100 percent required is the most dangerous and destructive mistake ever made in the history of personal finance.
Say that permitting honest posting adds $300,000 to the accumulated wealth of every investor over the course of an investing lifetime. I think it would be fair to say that that’s a pretty darn conversative estimate of what is at stake there. Say that it’s only 100 million people who would receive that added $300,000. That’s obviously a lowball estimate. That’s a number far, far, far in excess of the $500 million that I have indicated I would be willing to settle my legal claims for. $500 million is not a small amount of money. It’s a HUGE amount of money. We are not going to have any problem whatsoever figuring out ways to make vast amounts of money from permitting honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. The only problem we might have is figuring out how to count it as it comes pouring in so fast.
I don’t exclude you Goons from that. John Walter Russell and I made an offer to Greaney in the early days to join with him to develop accurate and honest safe-withdrawal-rate research. I think it would be fair to say that Greaney would have the top investing site on the internet today had he taken us up on that offer back then. People are happy to pay for investment materials that offer huge benefits. Shiller didn’t win a Nobel prize for no good reason. This is truly life-enhancing stuff. There’s money to be made here. Mountains of it. At all possible price points. And of course the truly wonderful thing here is that all who get involved are earning that money by doing tremendous good for millions and millions of people (including the Buy-and-Holders, who would get to come clean about the mistake they made back in the 1960s, before Shiller’s research was even available to us).
Valuation-Informed Indexing is Buy-and-Hold corrected for the horrible error that has caused so much human tragedy over the years. It’s good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. It’s not even possible to imagine any downside. That translates into mountains of well-earned profits in this highly lucrative field, in which behaving with integrity is every bit as important as it is in any other field of human endeavor regardless of how you Goons have reacted to the thousands of pleas that honest posting be permitted that we have seen over the first 20 years of out discussions.
My best and warmest wishes.
Rob
“ I don’t exclude you Goons from that. John Walter Russell and I made an offer to Greaney in the early days to join with him to develop accurate and honest safe-withdrawal-rate research”
Do you it yourself. Why does anyone else have to do the work for you? With every post, you only talk about how everyone else is wrong or what other people need to do. You never take any responsibility. You never produce anything. You have nothing to sell. No book…..no reports……nothing. You expect people to pay you just for your opinions? Guess what. Everyone has opinions. There is nothing special about what you are doing. There is clearly no value as value is always determined by the customer…..not you.
There’s huge value. If we hadn’t seen thousands of our fellow community members express great interest in the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept, you never would have advanced a single abusive post, much less any of the criminal stuff. The entire point of the Ban on Honest Posting is to block me and all others who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research from getting customers.
I want to see us get customers. Lots of them. It’s be getting customers that we spread the word re how stock investing works in the real world. You want people to continue to believe in Buy-and-Hold (no market timing now!). We are working at cross purposes.
Rob
“ There’s huge value. ”
There isn’t value just because you think so. There is only value when someone else not only says so, but then pays you. It’s no different from getting a job. An employer has to agree that you can provide value to their company and then they offer you a certain amount of compensation in return for what you say you are going to deliver. You are missing those important elements that constitute value.
If you Goons didn’t see huge value, you never would have advanced a single abusive post. You have advanced many hundreds of thousands of them. If you Goons see off-the-charts value, who am I to question it?
Rob
You still don’t understand the basics. Let’s put this in very simple business terms. You first need to have a product or service to sell. You then need a person willing to buy that product or service. Next, there needs to be an agreement between the buyer and seller as to price of the product or service. If you miss even one of these components, you have no value established.
My only problem is finding a way to reach the millions of investors who have a desire to understand what the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world. You Goon are the only thing standing in my way. The internet offers a great means of reaching those people. But abusive posting, expecially crininal stuff, scares people away. So we need as a nation of people to work up the courage to stand up to you Goons to get to first base.
I believe that it will happen in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, when the price for failing to do so will become painfully clear to all. But we will have to wait to see how things will play out to know for sure. I am going to give it my best shot. I can do no more and I can do no less.
Rob
Wrong. 99% of the internet is open to you. You have made hundreds of thousands of posts already. You still lack the basic elements described above. You don’t have a product or service to sell. You don’t have a single person asking to buy anything from you, despite your hundreds of thousands of posts. You claim to have thousands of people interested in what you have had to say, yet no one of those thousands has offered to pay you even one dime.
Again, it is not what you perceive as value. It is what someone else perceives as value. It is like a guy trying to sell buggy whips. How is there value when no one wants to buy those buggy whips.
Thousands of investors have espressed an interest in the buggy whips. That translates into millions of investors in the general population. But all of these people have heard millions of times that market timing doesn’t. Before they make a decision to buy, they are going to have to be able to ask questions about the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research and talk things over with their friends. That’s what the discussion boards and blog are there for. The published rules of those discussion boards and blogs are there to protect people who want to have those sorts of discussions from the sorts of tactics employed by the Lindauerheads and Greany Goons to block those critically important discussions from taking place.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I believe that we are fundamentally a good people.
Rob
You think they have expressed interest. Everyone thinks others are interested in what they say. What matters is that people are willing to part with their money. No one is offering to pay you for what you have to offer.
We have seen in all play out, Rob. You have your answer. You are broke. You have nothing to sell and no one is beating down your door asking to pay you for anything.
And you’ve engaged in criminal behavior to block people from having the conversations they want to have! That’s amazing! You’ve seen the same thing that I have seen. A huge interest in learning more about research-based stock investing strategies. This is a highly lucrative field. People will buy stuff once they have had all their questions answered. The first step is opening every site on the internet to honest posting. All the rest will follow nicely from there.
It will happen. It affects too many people in too big a way for it not to happen.
Rob
Wrong again. People can have conversations. The vast majority of the internet is open to you and anyone else. You have nothing to sell. No one is coming up and saying “Hey Rob, I want to hire you as an investment advisor”. No one is saying, “Hey Rob, write up a report. I want to buy it”. You lack the basics. You don’t even make an attempt at developing a business. You just expect people to do everything for you.
We’ll see what happens after I have opened every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. I predict tha my business will be a HUGE success. Hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. I think it would be fair to say that you expect the same. Nothing else could possibly explan tje behavior that we have seen from you Goons for 20 years running now. That sort of thing ain’t normal.
Rob
You can’t make a dime with the 99% that is open to you now. An additional 1 % won’t make a difference.
What business? You don’t have a business. It is all a made up fantasy.
You can’t make a dime with the 99% that is open to you now. An additional 1 % won’t make a difference.
Okay, anonymous.
Rob
What business? You don’t have a business. It is all a made up fantasy.
Are you okay with waiting to see how it all plays out in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis?
Rob
We have seen it all play out. It didn’t work out the way you said it would. Even your wife gave up on your fantasy. How much worse does it have to get for you to finally wake up to reality?
The reality is that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. Or at least that is Rob Bennett’s sincere take re the matter.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investment strategy you elect to pursue.
Rob
The reality is that you have been told many times that the Greaney study did not require it.
Calculatng the safe withdrawal rate honestly and accurately requires it. Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns in 1981. Greaney should have checked the peer-reviewed research before posting his own study. He certainly should have noted the 41 years of peer-reviewed research showing the need for a valuation adjustment in his study after the error was brought to his attention (I did this in a post to a Motley Fool discussion board on the morning of May 13, 2002).
Rob