Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Do you don’t have any current friends, you are broke and divorced, yet you think everyone else is at fault and not you. Really?
I don’t think everyone else is at fault. I think we all have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold impulse residing within us which has caused us to make stock investing more risky than it needs to be for as long as there has been a stock market. And that we were blessed to discover the huge missing piece to the stock investing puzzle when Robert Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research in 1981. After seeing how many people were excited to hear about the how-to implications of the new research, I became excited about the life-affirming possibilities of spreading the word all across the internet. So that’s what I am to do.
The nasty stuff advanced by you Goons shows that you too see how big an advance this is. If you didn’t think it was a super big deal, you would just permit honest posting and let people make up their own minds. You’re hurting. And the only way to ease the hurt is for all of us who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research to not permit ourselves to be intimidated and to assure each other that we have each other’s backs. You’re going to feel better about yourselves when we are all living better and fuller and richer lives. I’m sure!
Rob
You’re full of crap and everyone knows it.
Who does your wife blame for the divorce and being broke?
You’re full of crap and everyone knows it.
Um….
Rob
Who does your wife blame for the divorce and being broke?
She believes that I am onto something important with my investing work.
She believes that you Goons should permit honest posting at every site. She is horrified by the death threats and the acts of extortion and all the other garbage.
But she also believes that, since the Normals (the 90 percent of Buy-and-Holders who today believe that market timing doesn’t work but who have no problem with people posting about the 41 years of peer-reviewed research showing that it always works and is always required) have essentially given you Goons veto power over what can be said about stock investing on the internet, I should drop it and find some other way to make a living.
I do not agree. I feel like I was a bit of a sleeze for those three years when I knew that the Greaney retirement study was in error and I kept it zipped because I was afraid of what Greaney and his Goon Squad would do to me if I posted my honest views. I loved the old Motley Fool board. I thought that there was more good information being provided there than you could find at the largest personal finance library in the world. So I felt that I was letting my fellow community members down by living in fear of you Goons.
I also felt that I was letting the Buy-and-Holders down by not pointing out the error in the study. The original idea of Buy-and-Hold was to be research-based. So it makes perfect sense for the Buy-and-Holders to permit honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. So I also felt that I was selling out the Buy-and-Holders (only a tiny percentage of which are Goons engaging in abusive and even criminal behavior) by keeping it zipped re the error in the study.
It broke my heart when Greaney and his Goon squad burned that community to the ground. So I just cannot stand to know that there are millions of people who would love to be making honest contributions today but who are not doing so because of their fear of what the Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads will do to them if they try it. I proposed that we open every site to honest posting on the evening of May 13, 2002. If we had done that, we would today as a nation of people be 20 years farther along in our understanding of how stock investing works than we actually are. I see this as an important subject. So I see that as a big deal. So I soldier on.
I am open to compromises. I told my ex that I would be willing to take on a different full-time job that brought in immediate money in return for a promise on her part to give me emotional support for working nights and weekends to open the internet to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That would be hard. But I could live with myself if I did it that way. I could not sleep at night if I did nothing given how important it is that millions of middle-class investors have some access to honest and accurate and research-based reports on how stock investing works in the real world. I like being able to sleep at night. So I do what I do.
The situation is crazy. I give you that one. But the good news that we have seen over the past 20 years has been 20 times more good than the bad news that we have seen has been bad. So I think it would be fair to say that as a nation of people we are very much on the right track. I am humbled to be able to play a significant role in bringing about what I think can fairly be described as the biggest advance in our understanding of how stock investing works ever achieved in our history (the advance is seeing how critically important it is that every investor practice market timing/price discipline at all times).
Rob
Would you be surprised to know that your ex-wife gives a different story ?
I have a funny feelng that I possess a much better understanding of what she thinks about these matters than you do, Anonymous. It was her infant who was being threatened when I had to tell her that you Goons said that you would be paying visits to our house because I had “crossed” you by pointing out the error in the Greaney study. That shouldn’t have happened. None of this should have happened. The proper response by Greaney when I pointed out the error in his retirement study (it lacks a valuation adjustment!) was for him to correct the study. Problem solved!
Then we would have all spent the last 20 years mining powerful insights on the realities of stock investing on top of other powerful insights on the realities of stock investing. We would not have a CAPE value of 30 hanging over our heads. We would all be living fuller and better and richer lives.
Rob