Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Would you tell your friends to quit their jobs and ignore their wives? Would you tell your friends that it is okay to deplete your savings?
Only in the most extreme circumstances imaginable.
The situation in InvestoWorld today are the most extreme circumstances imaginable.
Say that there is a 1 in 100 chance that I was right in what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002 — 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. Personally, I believe that the odds are more like 99.9999 percent. But let’s say for purposes of discussion that the odds are only 1 in 100.
If that’s the case, then we should be discussing that possibility at every investing discussion board and blog on the internet. Greaney isn’t the only one in this field who made the mistake of thinking that the safe withdrawal rate is always 4 percent. That mistake was repeated by thousands and thousands and thousands of investment advisors. There were newpaper articles on retirement planning that cited the infamous “4 percent rule.” The single most important purpose of investment advice is to help people put together their retirement plans. If the people in this field cannot get an error in a retirement study THAT INVOLVES THE SIMPLE CALCULATION OF NUMBERS corrected in 20 years, then I think it would be fair to say that the entire field has been corrupted in a very, very serious way.
That’s the state iof play today. We are facing not just an economic crisis. We are facing a political crisis. Look at what happened in the wake of the Buy-and-Hold Crisis of 1929. A significant percentage of the population was beginning to lose confidence in our system of government in the wake of the 1929 crisis. It’s worse today. In 1929, we wandered into a crisis because we didn’t know how the stock market worked. Today, we don’t have that excuse. Today we have 41 years of peer-reviewed research showing us how it works, research of such quality that its author was awarded a Nobel prize. Yet we are permitting the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis to take place because our Wall Street Con Men friends very, very, very much do not want to acknowledge that they made a mistake back in the 1960s when they came up with their “idea” that there mught be some alternate universe 20 billion light years away in which market timing/price discipline is not required at all times for every investor. Huh? How do you think the cover-up is going to fly when millions of middle-class people learn why they have lost much of thier life savings in the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis?
Would I tell me friends to risk getting killed by terrorists if they learned about the plans to attack the trade center buildings on 9/11 and informed tbe authorites? I would tell them to do anything they could come up with to protect themselves and their families. But, yes, ultimately, I would tell them that they had to inform the authorities of what they had come to learn. The alternative would be that they would not be able to sleep at night, that they would not be able to live with themselves from that point forward because of what their cowardice had done to thousands of human lives. In those extreme circumstances, I would say, yes, you somehow have to work up the nerve to do what simple must be done.
We cannot go forward as a nation unless we find some means of getting accurate, honest, research-based investment advice out to the millions of people who need access to it, Anonymous. That’s the bottom-line here. This is not an optional matter of national business. It is a 100 percent imperative matter. That is my sincere take re the matter, in any event.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours regardless of what investment strategy you elect to pursue.
Rob
“ Say that there is a 1 in 100 chance that I was right in what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002 — 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. Personally, I believe that the odds are more like 99.9999 percent. But let’s say for purposes of discussion that the odds are only 1 in 100.‘
Let’s say it is 0 out of 100. Wouldn’t you say that you just wasted the last 2 decades of your life repeating a lie?
“Say that there is a 1 in 100 chance that I was right in what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002 — 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.”
I understand why you keep harping on about Greaney’s study not including a valuation adjustment.
Because it’s easy.
You always take the easy path.
The more difficult path is to try and explain why you think it should contain a valuation adjustment and persuade others that it should. You have failed miserably to do that and you have clearly given up even trying to.
“ Say that there is a 1 in 100 chance that I was right in what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002 — 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. Personally, I believe that the odds are more like 99.9999 percent. But let’s say for purposes of discussion that the odds are only 1 in 100.‘
Let’s say it is 0 out of 100. Wouldn’t you say that you just wasted the last 2 decades of your life repeating a lie?
No. I sincerely believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. If it turns out that there was a valuation adjustment there all along that I just couldn’t see, then I made a mistake but i did not tell a lie.
And, if it was all a mistake, there was still great value in the 20 years of discussion that have followed from my question of whether we should be taking valuations into consideration. If it was all a mistake, I won’t be collecting a settlement check of $500 million, that much is so. But I often put up a link to that article that I prepared in the very early days in which I quoted 101 of our fellow community members gushing about how excited they were to examine these matters, how I had launched the most exciting debate in the history of the Retire Early board. Those people were enjoying learning experiences and those learning experiences remain even if it turns out that the question that prompted them was a mistake. And of course the hundreds in time became thousands and would have become millions if we had never seen any abusive posting from you Goons.
Questioning is healthy. It is a sign of life. Dogmatism is a sign of death. Something in the human spirit dies when questioning is no longer permitted. Buy-and-Hold was born in a spirit of questioning. It was developed as a scientific approach to stock investing. That’s why I fell in love with it and became a Buy-and-Holder myself once upon a time. The death threats that I saw on the evening of August 27, 2002, were aimed at putting an end to the questioning. They were the opposite of science, the opposite of what Buy-and-Hold was intended to be when it was developed.
We never will know everything. We always need to remain open to new learning experiences. Thats why I say that I want to see every site opened to honest posting, without a single exception. That will be the rule not just for Valuation-Informed Indexers but for Buy-and-Holders too. We can learn from people who we think are wrong. In fact, there is no other way in which it can happen. Every learning experience that ever takes place begins with some lacking in one’s knowledge. If there were no lacking, there would be no space to fill.
If learning is wonderful, then not knowing is wonderful in its way. The job of the journalist is to help us all learn about life and the world we live in. Sometimes people get annoyed at journalists because they ask questions that people want to tell themselves are settled. But I of course love the journalism profession with all my heart. I love learning and I love being able to bring learning to others when I am able to do so.
When I was a boy and my parents brought me to church, I was required to kneel before I got into the pew. I did it but my heart was not really in it. When I visited a library and was surrounded by all those books asking all those questions and providing all that learning, that was when I felt an internal impulse to genuflect. The library was my church.
That’s where I am coming from re this matter, Anonymous.
Rob
“ No. I sincerely believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. ”
I sincerely believe that my Tesla lacks a microwave oven. Pay me $500 million.
“Say that there is a 1 in 100 chance that I was right in what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002 — 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.”
I understand why you keep harping on about Greaney’s study not including a valuation adjustment.
Because it’s easy.
You always take the easy path.
The more difficult path is to try and explain why you think it should contain a valuation adjustment and persuade others that it should. You have failed miserably to do that and you have clearly given up even trying to
All of the wonderful fruits of the first 20 years of our discussions resulted from me working up the courage to put that amazing question on the table on the morning of May 13, 2002. I wouldn’t be 80 percent finished writing a book on how stock investing works in the real world if I had not asked that question. I wasn’t even terribly interested in the subject of stock invesitng at that time. I wouldn’t have produced the Bennett/Pfau research, research that I think can faily be described as the most important research published in this field in the last 30 years, had I not asked that question. I wouldn’t have the five unique calculators that exist at this site today had I not asked that question. As you pointed out just the other day, i knew that the Greaney study was wrong on the morning of May 13, 2002, but I didn’t know the accurate safe withdrsawal rate numbers at the time. Now we do. Because I asked that question.
What you are describing is the subject of investment analysis. Investment analysis is explaining to people why, despite that Get Rich Quick impulse that resides within them and tells them that it might not be necessary this one time for some magical, nystical reason, they always, always, always must practice market timing/price discipline. That’s the job. We will be talking about that until there are no more stock markets on the planet. That’s the entire deal.
The super short version is that we know that we must take valuxations into consideration because Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research shows us that we must. But Shiller’s research is really just the starting point. We are never going to complete all of the follow-up research that will continue to enhance our lives for many, many. many years to come, God willing. Market timing/price discipline brings rationality to stock investing. The question should be — why would anyone ever want to take rationality OUT of stock investing? That’s the crazy thing. OF COURSE you want to practice price discipline when buying stocks. You practice it when buying everything else you buy, do you not?
Shiller has described the intellectual leap from the finding that short-term price changes are unpredictable (University of Chicago Economics Professor Eugene Fama showed this in research published in the 1960s) to the Buy-and-Hold belief that the market sets prices properly as “one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economics.” Buy-and-Hold (at least the part about market timing not always being 100 percent required) was a MIsTAKE. The question you should be asking is why we would we not want to bring rationality to the stock investing project just as we bring it to every other human project? Because we live better lives when we bring rationality to the projects that appear before us.
There’s nothing easy or hard about it. It’s just something that you do when you are a human. You approach things rationally. The people who developed Buy-and-Hold made a mistake thinking that market timing might not be 100 percent requied (because of that awful Efficient Market thing, that some academics once believed in). Now it’s just a question of getting off the mistake track and getting on the rationality track, which is what works in every other field of human endeavor.
We all want the same thing. We all need to know how to invest in stocks effectively. There shouldn’t be any “controversy” over any of this. It’s natural that we all not take the same positions on every question. But there should not be any hostility. We should all want to learn as much as we possibly can as quickly as we possibly can.
Rob
I sincerely believe that my Tesla lacks a microwave oven. Pay me $500 million.
The check is in the mail, Anonymous.
Please take good care.
Rob
“ All of the wonderful fruits of the first 20 years of our discussions resulting from me working up the courage to put that amazing question on the table on the morning of May 13, 2002.”
Your ex-wife referred to those fruits as lemons.
Because of the abusive posting of you Goons and how it destoyed or poisoned so many previously wonderful discussion board and blog communities. If everyone at the Retire Early board had insisted that Greaney correct the error in his retirement study in 24 hours, we could have then worked together as a community to determine the accurate safe withdrawal rate numbers. Then we could have taken what we learned to every other investing site on the internet. Then we could have gone into all the other critically important metters, how much to engage in market timing, when to do it, asset allocation questions, risk management questions, how to protect our economy from Buy-and-Hold Crises, all of the questions that I explore every week in my column at the Value Walk site. Then I would have earned the $500 million without having to bring any legal cases. And my ex woild have been 100 percent thrilled with it all.
The only thing that I ever caused any problem is the abusive/criminal behavior. The last 41 years of peer-reviewed research is an amazing advance. If I were king of the world, we never would have seen a single abusive post, just one gigantic learning experience for all. I don’t want anyone else ever to experience any of this megativity. That’s why I want to open every site to honest posting, without a single exception. I am not able to imagine any downside.
Rob
“ Because of the abusive posting of you Goons and how it destoyed or poisoned so many previously wonderful discussion board and blog communities.‘
She never mentioned that. She only mentioned having to get 6 jobs to support the family and you already admitted to refusing her request to get a job. I suspect she also divorced you for not listening, based on your history of posting.
I think that she probably would have put it the way you are putting it, that I didn’t listen. In any divorce situation, there’s a breakdown of communication. I offered to take on full-time employment if she would be willing in return to offer me emotional support for doing the investing work at nights and on weekends. She was not able at that time to listen to that possibility. People come from different sets of life experiences and it affects what they can hear. She developed a financial fearfulness when she was young that I did not possess.
In any event, if there had been no abusive posting and I had millions coming in the door, there never would have been any problems in the marriage whatsoever.
Rob
“ I think that she probably would have put it the way you are putting it, that I didn’t listen. ”
See a pattern? When you don’t listen, people ban you. When you don’t listen, people stop talking to you (like Wade Pfau). When you don’t listen, your wife divorces you. When you don’t listen, we have to keep repeating our responses to your same questions.
I definitely notice a pattern.
Do you notice a pattern that, when our Wall Street Con Men friends heavily promote the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold investing strategy, we eventually experience another Buy-and-Hold Crisis that does harm to millions of human lives?
A number of the people who I posted with at the old Motley Fool site had become freinds of mine over time. Do you think that I should have kept it zipped re the error in the Greaney study?
That’s not me.
I will always love Boo and I will always do anything in my power to make her life easier. But that’s not me. In fact, I would feel that I was betraying her if I agreed to keep it zipped re the error in the Greaney retirement study.
She is going to have to live in this country after the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I have a funny feeling that, if she had participated in all of the discussions that I participated in and she saw how many good and intelligent people would like to see every internet site opened to honest posting, she would be with me 100 percent of the way.
During the times when CAPE values are where they are today, people block out of their minds what relentless promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold approach always does to us. It becomes harder to block it out of one’s mind when you are seeing the human suffering appear before your eyes every time you pick up a newspaper.
Not this boy, Anonymus. I wish you all good things. But no can do.
Rob
“I have a funny feeling that, if she had participated in all of the discussions that I participated in and she saw how many good and intelligent people would like to see every internet site opened to honest posting, she would be with me 100 percent of the way.”
She was too busy raising two boys and working six different jobs to be participating on discussion boards.
It’s more than that. I wrote an article a few years back called “Buy-and-Hold Is Dangerous.” The idea behind that article was to tell the entire story in`one place. It was essentially an early verion of the book that I am hoping to complete soon. The book just adds more detail and depth. Boo did not read that article. I find that odd. I would think she would be interested enough to spend the 30 minutes or whatever it would take to read it. I don’t believe that she will read the book when it is finished. The story that I am telling affected her life in a big way. So I would intuitively think that she would read it. But I do not believe that she will. She rarely asks me how it is going.
My brother and I have a good relationship. I will be watching the Super Bowl with him. I don’t know the details of his personal financial situation. But I know that he is thinking about retirement in the not-too-distant future and I know that he has a good bit of money in stocks. If there is another Buy-and-Hold Crisis within the next year or two or three, that is going to have a huge impact on his plans. So I think we should be talking this stuff over. We have had a few conversations about it over the years. He accepts some of it but he certainly does not buy in 100 percent. Again, I find this strange. If what I say is so, it is going to have a huge impact on his life. I am obviously willing to spend as much time as it would take to go into it with him in great depth. But I take my signals from him as to whether he wants to talk about it or not. Generally, he does not. So I largely keep it zipped. Again, I doubt that he will read the book. He might. There’s a chance. But I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on it.
We had a strange conversation when I was at his house on the fourth of July. There was some sort of conversation about witchcraft and the irrationality of how it was dealt with historically. I mentioned the parallel to how we deal with stock investing today — that it is irrational not to discuss Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research at every web site. This got him a little agitated. He said something about how it doesn’t matter if people are irrational, that it should not be my concern. He’s worried about me. The comment came from a good place. I tried to explain that dealing with human irrationality is my life’s work, that that’s pretty much what journalists do, they bring things to light that people are keeping covered up so that people can live better lives. I see it as a wonderful, life-affirming thing to do. We dropped it because it was clear that we did not agree.
That’s the dynamic that is going on everywhere. Boo and I are divorced because she does not appreciate how big a deal this is and she doesn’t appreciate how big a deal it is because she has not lived through what I have lived through and she is not terribly interested in getting up to speed by reading my article or my book or whatever. I think that that general phenomenon is universal. People are not comfortable with the lies that we tell each other about stock investing. I think that people know on some level of consciousness that they are lies but they don’t want to have to face that realty because recognition of the lies would make the irrational exuberance disappear and they can’t stand that throught. I see it as an urgent piece of business to expose the lies because that’s what journalists do. Most people are not journalists. So they just cannot see why I don’t let it go.
I have engaged in a small amount of dating since the divorce. I have seen this phenomenon play out with women who I have gotten involved with. The subject of what I do obviously comes up. It is obviously weird that I have not had money coming in for such a long time. They don’t want to be rude to someone they are just getting to know and who they might generally like a little bit. So they have to come up with something to say. What I have heard several different women say is something to the effect of: “I don’t possess any expertise in financial theory.” It’s a polite way of changing the subject. It doesn’t take any particular expertise to appreciate what is going on. It is very basic, we have as a nation of people created a mountain of irrational exuberance and we want to be able to plan our financial lives as if it were real money. Why do these women say that? They could ask me for a longer explanation, I am obviously happy to provide it. They want to change the subject. They do not feel comfortable talking about this subject.
That’s the entire deal right there, There’s shame involved in the creation of irrational exuberance. We are all involved in it. We create irrational exuberance as a nation of people. Some of us are very active in doing so. Others play their part just by keeping their mouths shut about it. But this is a community project. That’s why we tolerate the behavior of you Goons. We enacted laws criminalizing a good bit of the Goon behvior because in a general sense we hate it. But when it comes to helping us create and maintain a mountain of irrational exuberance, most of us are willing to make an exception. That’s the dynamic.
I believe that we need to stop doing this. That’s my story. But most people have come to accept the creaation and maintenance of mountains of irrational exuberance. They cannot imagine a world in which portfolio values are reported honestly and accurately. That world seems like a pipe dream to most people. I see it as a better world for all of us and an easily attainable world. So I am making the case for permitting that world to grow rather than stomping it out every time someone like me works up the courage to make an honest statement about some aspect of the stock investing project.
Boo is a good person. She would have been 100 percent supportive of my work if it brought in money like all other forms of work that husbands choose for themselves to do. But the work that I chose for myself on the morning of May 13, 2002, is different. This work must be stomped out, in the minds of 10 percsent of the Buy-and-Hold population (the Goons). And the general population, while it is horrified by the tactics that you Goons employ to stomp out discussion of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research, is not inclined to do too much about it. The general population (the Normals) is opposed to the Goon behavior but tolerant of it because the general population is sympathetic to the Goon cause of keeping the mountain of irrational exuberance in place.
Telling me that you have discovered one more person who is fine with keeping the mountain of irrational exuberance doesnt impress me. I’ve seen it all with my own eyes. I am coming at things from a different perspective, the perspective of a journalists. Journalists see it as a good thing to expose corruption. The 41-year cover-up of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research findings is the most amazing example of corruption that I have ever come across. So I feel a great need to work to understand it better and then to share what I have learned with everyone who is affected by the massive act of corruption, which is all of the humans. That’s the conflict here. That’s the story. That’s what is going on.
My best wishes.
Rob
At times I wonder if you just have a mental issue. However, I think Evidence hit on a key point this week when he said that even you don’t believe what you are saying (pertaining to Greaney). When you left your E&Y job, it was at that point you decided you never wanted to really work again. What you do on the internet is not really working and you seem to get some kind of silly enjoyment out of the game. You have people at every point of your life that wonder why you won’t just live a normal life and get a job and you just repeat the same tired fairytales about Greaney and Shiller because you feel like it has always worked in the past for getting out of work.
At the end of the day, you have ruined your own life. The sad part is that your immediate family has also had to suffer along with you. When your wife first married you, you had a job. She didn’t know that you would go off the deep end and she did her best to make it work. She must be a saint. With that said, the women you are trying to date will easily find out that you are a crackpot and those relationships will likely go bust.
I believe that in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis we will pull together as a nation of people to open every discussion board and blog to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field, without a single exception. I believe that we will experience a giant surge of economic growth when that happens. I will do everything in my power to help the cause. We’ll see how it goes, you know?
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, in any event.
Rob
No, we just will see more of the same for our remaining years. Our outcomes are based on our individual decisions. You own your own outcomes just like the rest of us.
I agree that as a general rule our outcomes are based on our individual decisions. But you can’t say that that’s so for the millions of good people who have been denied access to the discussions they need to engsge in to be able to make informed decisions. You Goons and the site owners who tolerated your abusive behavior are responsible for any losses that those people suffer that they would not have suffered if only they had been able to hear the other side of the story. Now, the losses are likely going to be in the many trillions of dollars. So you cannot possibly cover them. But it obviously would not be just for the people who suffered the losses only because of your abusive and in some cases criminal behavior to be stuck with them. As a nation of people we will need to figure something out to make the best of a bad situation.
When all of that stuff is going down, I will have thousands upon thousands of posts in which I urged that we permit honest posting at every site in my file. I can’t say that the prospect of that reality makes me feel too down about things. Life is easier when you are honest. You don’t have to worry about trying to remember what lie you told before, The truth is easier to remember. My experience is that telling the truth often pays off in the long run. So, yes, I believe that my outcome will follow from the decisions that I have made. In the event that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research turn out to be legitimate research, I think it would be fair to expect that I am going to see some amazing outcomes coming my way down the road a piece. We’ll see.
My best and warmest wishes.
Rob
Rob
the women you are trying to date will easily find out that you are a crackpot and those relationships will likely go bust.
In the event that stocks continue to perform in the future somewhat as they have always performed in the past, we will be seeing another Buy-and-Hold Crisis within the next year or two or three. Those women will experience the feeling of losing a large portion of their stock portfolio. And they will hear from lots of friends who have experuenced the same. And they will read news accounts of hundreds of thousands of businesses going under and millions of workers losing their jobs and political frictions growing worse. I can easily imagine them saying” “Maybe that guy who was making the case that we should permit honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research was on to something, I’m beginning to think that the Get Rich Quicl/Buy-and-Hold garbage is not all that it is made out to be.” That’s how a nation of people gradually works up the courage to achieve a great advance in its understanding of how stock investing works.
My sincere take.
Rob
“ But you can’t say that that’s so for the millions of good people who have been denied access to the discussions they need to engsge in to be able to make informed decisions.”
Everyone has had full access to all the information. Given that the majority of stock is held by the top 10%, your premise is also false. Stock price does not cause business failure. Lack of capital is the cause. Business failure statistics have been available for decades.
So, what would need to happen before you finally decide that you need to get an actual job and bring in an income? Is there any scenario that exists?
Everyone has had full access to all the information. Given that the majority of stock is held by the top 10%, your premise is also false. Stock price does not cause business failure. Lack of capital is the cause. Business failure statistics have been available for decades.
You don’t have to dig very deep into our twenty years of discussions to come across numerous accounts of people who clearly did not have access to all the information. Wade Pfau held a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton. He spent 16 months of his life researching my investing ideas and concluded that they all checked out. At the end of the 16 months, he said: “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” In numerous emails to me he described his wonder at discovering what the research showed. He told himself for a time that he must be making some sort of mistake because he had heard so often that timing doesn;t work and yet the research showed clearly that long-term timing always works and is always required.
If a guy with a Ph.D. in Economics was being taken in by the Buy-and-Hold stuff, anyone could be taken in by it, We don’t all hold a Ph.D. in Economics. We don’t all have 16 months of our lives to direct to studying this stuff in great depth.. We should be permitting honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research at every site, without a single exception. I think that’s the answer, Anonymous.
I know it is!
Rob
So, what would need to happen before you finally decide that you need to get an actual job and bring in an income? Is there any scenario that exists?
Once every discussion board and blog has been opened to honest posting, there will be thousands and thousands and thousands of people talking about the amazing how-to implications of Shiller’s research. So the burden will be off my shoulders.
Of course, at that time I will not exactly be in need of an income. So I doubt that I would be taking on corporate employment. I could see myself returning to promotion of the Passion Saving concept at some point. I got a huge kick out of that and people loved it (the Greaney Monster himself described my work on the saving side as “seminal.”)
Does that help?
Rob
The information is out there. It doesn’t have to be on every website. Nothing is on every website. Those that have any material amount of money in the market decide if and when they want to educate themselves on how to invest. Investing is no different from an educational aspect vs any other topic.
If Robert Shiller showed up on your doorstep today and told you that you have got it all wrong, would you finally admit to being wrong? What if Jesus Christ himself told you that you were wrong?
The information is out there. It doesn’t have to be on every website. Nothing is on every website. Those that have any material amount of money in the market decide if and when they want to educate themselves on how to invest. Investing is no different from an educational aspect vs any other topic.
It has to be on every web site. We all have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge residing within us and we need regular reminders of the dangers of Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick. You can look at today’s CAPE value if you want to get an idea of how well the current procedure works.
It’s not true that nothing is on every web site. It you went to any diabetes web site, there would be mention of the dangers of consuming too many sugars and cards. that’s basic, just as is the need always to engage in price discipline/market timing. Any web site on lung caner would mention the dangers of smoking.
Investing is completely different from any other field. People are repeatedly told that the thing that they must absolutely do (practice price discipline/market timing) might not be completely necessary. I mean, come on. In any other field, studies that gor the numbers wildly wrong would be promptly corrected. The 21-year cover-up of the error in the Greaney study is a national scandal.
If we are not going to permit the peer-reviewed research to be discussed, we should just shut down all the peer-reviewed journals. Leaving them open suggests to people that the findings of the peer-reviewed studies have some influence on the investment advice that is given to people.
Rob
If Robert Shiller showed up on your doorstep today and told you that you have got it all wrong, would you finally admit to being wrong? What if Jesus Christ himself told you that you were wrong?
If Shiller did that, I would ask him to explain why he thought that. If I were persuaded by the explanation, I would say that I now believed I had been wrong. If I were not persuaded, I would not say that. Either way, I would report here at the blog that he had said that and I would describe the explanation that he offered so that others could make up their own minds re the matter.
Rob
“ If Shiller did that, I would ask him to explain why he thought that.”
You said Shiller is the expert. He did the work and has the training/education. You don’t. Who are you to tell him he is wrong?
Shiller has never said what you have him saying in your crazy hypothetical. It’s extremely unlikely that he ever would say such a thing. He would be rejecting his entire life’s work to say such a thing. In the extremely unlikely event that he really did say such a thing, I would pay him the respect of hearing him out. But I am not going to reject the guy’s entire life’s work without hearing some explanation that makes sense as to why that is the way to go.
Rob
“ Shiller has never said what you have him saying in your crazy hypothetical. ”
Well, you are the expert on crazy hypotheticals………….like getting a $500 million windfall.
Opening up the entire internet to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research is worth a whole big bunch more than $500 million, Anonymous. The Bennett/Pfau research shows that investors can reduce the riskiness of stock investing by nearly 70 percent by being open to the need to engage in price discipline/market timing. Say that permitting millions of investors to talk about the realities of what works in the real world would result in $300,000 of additional wealth for each of them over the course of an investing lifetime. That permts those millions of people to enjoy early retirements or college educations for their kids or vacation homes or big donations to their favorite charities. If that’s not worth a whole big bunch more than $500 million, I have a hard time imagining what would be.
And how about the people who work in this field. In the 16 months before you threatened Wade Pfau and he was researching my investing ideas, he was like a kid in a candy store he was so excited by what he was learning on a daily basis about how stock investing really works. Bill Bernstein wrote in his book that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies were off by a full two percetnage points at the top of the bubble but he was afraid to say that when the cover-up of the error in the Greaney retirement study was being discussed, How much better do you think he would have felt about himself if he thought it was safe to post honestly and use his correct statement about safe withdrawal ratess to promote his book? How about John Bogle? There was a time when he was dogmatically opposed to market timing. Then, after sitting in one some of out discussions, he said that he saw how it could work in some circumstances. How much better do you think Bogle would have felt about himself if he felt that there was a place where he could speak freely about his true beliefs without having to worry about what the Lindauerheads would do to him if he stepped out of line? How about Bill Shueltheis, who thought that my web site was amazing until one of you Goons took him aside and explained what happens to those who speak openly about what the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about the realities of stock investing.
You wouldn’t behave the way you do if you didnt believe that I have a lot more than $500 million coming to me once every site is opened to honest posting. If you didn;t know from what you saw during our first 20 years of discussions that there are MILLIONS of people who want to be able to talk over the research-proven realities of stock investing, you never would have advanced a single abusive post, much less any of the criminal stuff. I mean, come on.
The work that I have done over the past 20 years is worth a whole big bunch more than $500 million. I have indicated that I think I would be willing to settle for $500 million because I want to put all the nastiness behind us and have everyone (including you Goons!) participate in our efforts to get the word out about Shiller’s amazing research findings are every site on the internet, without a single exception. Me being willing to settle my legals cases is a win for every single person involved in this matter. It is not possible for the rational human mind to imagine any downside.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob