Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the dicussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
You are broke and divorced, but somehow have convinced yourself that you think you have things figured out.
I do not believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains a valuation adjustment. I am not the only person who has come to that conclusion. Many people have looked at it. Not one has been able to identify a valuation adjustment in the study. That includes a guy who posts under the screen-name “Evidence-Based Investing.” Evidence is one of the generals in Graney’s army of Goons. Evidence advanced a post in late 2021 saying that “nobody” truly believes that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment, including Greaney himself. I think that Evidence nailed in with that one.
The thing that has to be figured out is, why is there even one person who has not insisted that the Greaney study be corrected immediately? That’s the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge that resides within all of us at work. We all like the idea of getting something for nothing and the stock market offers us an amazing opportunity to obtain it. Just push prices up beyond their fair-value level (a CAPE value of 17) and you can pretend that you are closer to having enough for retirement than is really the case. There’s a rub. however. If the irrational exuberance is exposed, people lose confidence in it and sell stocks and prices go down and the irrational exuberance disappears. So those who have an inclination to post honestly about what the peer-reviewed research tells us all about how stock investing works in the real world need to be supressed to keep the scam going. That’s me. I’m a threat to today’s CAPE value of 29. Every investor who longs to believe that Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is a real thing has a motive to want to see me banned from every investing site on the internet.
The Bennett/Pfau research shows that reining in irrational exuberance is 70 percent of what it takes to achieve long-term success as a stock investor. So 70 percent of an investment expert’s job is to encourage market timing, which is the only tool we have available to us to rein in irrational exubernce before it gets out of control. LOTS of people want to tell the truth about this stuff. If they didn’t, Shiller’s book would not have become a bestseller and he wouldn’t have been awarded a Nobel prize for his work. But most people are frightened by death threats and by threats to destroy their careers if they do honest work. If we all want to invest more effectively than was ever possible in the days before Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research, the first step is opening every site on the internet to honest posting re the past 41 years of peer-reviewed research.
I would not be either broke or divorced if you Goons had not directed abusive and criminal behavior at me and at others who worked with me to get the word out about what the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world. We need to apply the same laws in the investment advice field as apply in every other field of human endeavor. It’s important to get the numbers right in retirement studies. People use retirement studies to plan retirements. A failed retirement is a serious life setback.
My sincere take.
And my best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Can you please document and post any threats that you and/or Wade received?
I pointed out the error in the Greaney retirement study in a post that I put to a Motley Fool discussion board on the morning of May 13, 2002 (it lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins). 20 years have passed. The Greaney study has not been corrected to this day. Is that documentation enough for you?
Rob
In short, no you don’t have any proof of threats.
Okay, Anonymous.
Please take good care.
Rob
You’re pathetic, Rob.
Yeah, yeah.
Rob
Well, you can prove that the entire Bogleheads community is wrong by providing links to the actual threats. Thousands have all looked, but can’t find them. Prove everyone wrong with direct evidence.
The Greaney study is direct evidence, Anonymous. Either it contains a valuation adjustment or it does not. There are people who used that study to plan their retirement.
Rob
Rob,
If you want people to take you seriously and invite you to a proper discussion, you have to stop acting like a clown and drop the silly games.
Got it, Anonymous. I believe to this day 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.
My best wishes.
Rob
And you deserve every single board banning when you refuse to listen to others and block posts.
We disagree, Anonymous.
The thing that I most loved about Buy-and-Hold in the days when I was a Buy-and-Holder was the idea that it was rooted in peer-reviewed research. When new research is published, it needs to be incorporated into one’s understanding of the subject matter. I have included everything that is in Buy-and-Hold in Valuation-Informed Indexing with the sole exception of the claim that market timing is not required. I left that out because there is now 41 years of peer-reviewed research showing that it is a false claim.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
It doesn’t matter if you disagree. This is not a dictatorship. The community decides and your nonstop repetitive spin and lies just validates those that had to take the extreme step of banning you. What is ironic, you complain about the banning, yet delete posts on a large scale. You have no right to criticize others when you do it yourself. You, like everyone else has the right to do that.
I think it matters.
No, it’s not a dictatorship. And the community decides. The community wants to hear both sides.But the community does not want to be exposed to all the nasty stuff that you Goons bring to the table. So, to get what it wants, the community is going to need to work up the courage to stand up to you Goons. I expect that it will happen in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, when it becomes more clear to all what the consequences are that follow from failing to stand up. We’ll see.
Rob
All hail “Rob the dictator”.
To say “we should be open to hearing what the peer-reviewed research says” is not to be a dictator. I was once a Buy-and-Holder. The thing that drew me to the strategy is that it was promoted as being a research-based strategy. Research is a quest for truth. Yes, following research can sometimes mean having to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” because new research can teach us new things. But it is not a dictator demanding that you follow the new path. It is your own desire to live in the truth that pulls you in the new direction. There is a part of the Buy-and-Hold minset that craves truth. If that were not so, the Buy-and-Hold concept would never have been promoted as reseaech-based.
Deep down we want the same things, Anonymous. You won’t acknowledge it but it is so. You just don’t like the scary part of acknowledging that there was a time when as a people we did not know everything there is to know about stock investing, so we got some important thing wrong. But, if you had never come to stake your life on those wrong understandings, you would be perfectly happy to learn about the research-backed understandings today. You became dogmatic before all the research had been published. That’s the story here. The new research was not put out to make you feel bad. It was put out to help you to come to a better understanding of an important subject.
Rob
Why should anyone allow you the courtesy of posting whatever you want your their website, when you don’t allow people to post what they want here?
The purpose of the boards and blogs is to help people understand how stock investing works in the real world. Permitting discussion of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research advances that purpose. Death threats do not. Acts of extortion do not. Thousands of acts of defamation do not. Demands for unjustified board bannings do not. Research is a positive. Abusive and criminal stuff holds us back.
Rob
And none of those things that you allege (make up) have been posted or even attempted to be posted here and you know that.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all good things, in any event.
Rob