Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Since your divorce have you had more or less time to work on the book?
The number of hours that I can devote to the project has not changed. But the emotional angst caused by the divorce has showed me down in a huge way. My biggest obstacle BY FAR is the emotional angst that I feel as a result of the divorce and the board bannings and the death threats and the extortion and all the rest. Intellectual work has been 20 percent of this project. Overcoming the emotional angst that follows from telling people research-based truths about stock investing that some very, very much do not want to hear has been 80 percent of the “work.” The core “job” here is overcoming that emotional angst and getting words down on paper that can be used to help millions of others overcome their own emotional angst.
Buy-and-Hold was developed by people who believed (based on the Efficient Market Theory) that investors are engaged in the rational pursuit of their self-interest, that stock prices reflect economic realities. Shiller showed that investors are at times highly emotional and that it is not possible to get any of the numbers used in an investment analysis right without taking the emotional realities (reflected in the CAPE value) into account. The Buy-and-Hold “idea” the market timing/price discipline is not required is pure emotion. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the first model for understanding how stock investing works that permits consideration of the factor (investor emotion) that is 70 percent of the story.
The board bannings and all the rest result from this conflict between emotion and reason. People who make the case for permitting reason to have a place in the investment advice field are going up against powerful, entrenched interests who very much do not want millions of middle-class investors to learn how important it is to take valuations/investor emotion into consideration. So we are made to feel like social pariahs. There are millions of people who want to hear what we have to say. But there are a larger number of very determined people who want very, very much to supress us. So it becomes painful just to give voice to simple truths (it’s not possible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate without taking the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins into account — who ever would have thought it?!!!). So I’ve experienced a great deal of emotional angst and it has held me back a great deal for a long time now. The divorce is just one part of that but it is of course the most crushing, painful part of it.
Rob
This is a book that you have been working on for 15 years. If you have emotional issues that keep you from completing something in a reasonable timeframe, then you need to get professional help. Quitting your job, losing your money and getting a divorce are also signs that you need professional help.
Do U.S. stock investors need professional help, Anonymous?
Today’s CAPE value is 28. In earlier Buy-and-Hold Crises, we have seen the CAPE value fall to 8. That translates into a loss of about 70 percent of the wealth now held in stock accounts. Is there some reason why as a nation of people we have permitted stock values to rise to these insane levels?
The obvious reason is the Ban on Honest Posting about the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. If we had been reminding stock investors of the critical importance of market timing/price discipline on a daily basis at every discussion board and blog, stock, we never would have experienced this bull market. Which means that we wouldn’t need to worry about experiencing the next bear market or the next economic crisis.
It’s the ban on honest posting that is the crazy thing, not my difficulty in getting my book completed. That book is 80 percent finished. That’s 80 percent more than anyone else has managed in the 42 years since Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winnng research showing that there is precisely zero chance of a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy ever working for a single long-term investor. The normal situation when someone points out an error in a retirement study is for that person to be praised to the skies for the good work he has done. And, indeed, I have been gratitfied by the effusive praise that I have heard from thousandfs of our fellow ciommunity members. But, yes, the social isolation that I have had to suffer as a result of the abusice and in some cases criminal behavior of you Goons has held me back. So be it, you know. I oppose the abisive behavior and I have said so on nunerous occasions. I solder on despite it because I care about the people who are affected by the Buy-and-Hold Crises that inevitably follow when large numbers of investors become persuaded that it not necessarily required for all stock investors to always practice market timing/price discipline.
Do you think it would have been better if I had kept it zipped re the error in the Greaney retirement study. Please keep in mind that there were people at the Motley Fool board who were making use of the Greaney study in the construction of their retirement plans. And please keep in mind that I had become friends with a number of those people during the years in which I posted in that board community.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Drug addicts and alcoholics don’t think they have a problem and blame others for their failures. Get professional help.
I am not the one engaging in anti-social behavor, Anonymous. I have nt advanced death threats. I have not engaged in acts of extortion. My “crime” was to point out the error in the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site (it lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on thre day the retirement begins).
Does it hurt that I have been banned at every large investing site on the internet because of the abusive behavior of the Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads. It does. If we were all thinking clearly, there wouldn;t be one person on the planet who supported the ban on honest posting. I believe that we may see a change in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, when we wll all get to see up close and personal what follows from the relenetless promotion of a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold stock investing strategy (no market timing/price discipline now!).
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
For your story to be true, it would involve the mass conspiracy of thousands and thousands of people for well over a decade of time, with your ex-wife also participating in this mass conspiracy………..or……………you are just like the drug addict/alcoholic who blames everyone else.
It’s a conspiracy of ignorance, Anonymous. At the time when the Buy-and-Hold strategy was being developed, Shiller’s Nobel-prizr-winning research has not yet been published. So people just did not know how important it was for all investors to practice market timing (to keep irrational exuberance under sontrol). There really is research showing that short-term timing doesn’t work. The people developing Buy-and-Hold just jumped to the unfortunate conclusion that perhaps long-term timing wasn’t 100 percent required either. Then, when Shiller amazing research was published,there was already an entire industry in place devoted to the promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy. So there was a cover-up. The longer the cover-up continues, the harder it becomes to bring it to an end. Once people have gone on the records saying that they don’t think that market timing/price discipline is 100 percent required, they don’t want their clients finding out that that ides was discredited by th peer-reviewed research over 40 years ago. What sort of “expert” falls 40 years behind in his reading of the peer-reviewed research in his field?
It won’t get easier by us seeing the cover-up continue for another 24 hours. Anoither 24 hours of cover-up will make it that much harder for us as a nation of people to come clean.
If honest posting had been permitted ar every site going back to the early days of the internet, would there be even a single person today who still believed in Buy-and-Hold? I think there might be a few. But the number wouldn’t be anything close to what we see in reality today. And the CAPE value wouldn’t be anythig close to the one that applies today. We wouldnt all be looking at the prosepct of yet another Buy-and-Hold Crisis. The peer-reviewed research is not our enemy, it is our friend.
My sincere take.
Rob
Do you say that Wade Pfau, Robert Shiller, your ex-wife, the people at Bogleheads, Mike Piper, etc are all ignorant, while you alone at the only “informed” one. Got it.
Not even close. All of the people that you mention have a great desire to do honest work in this field. Once we have opened every site to honest posting, they will be offering amazing contributions on a daily basis that will benefit all of us.
The key thing is to apply the same laws that apply in every field other than the investment advice field (no death threats, no entortion, no demands for unjusified board bannings, etc.) in the investment advice field as well. That’s the answer. I am sure of it.
There are many intelligent and kind people who want to help us all. And we are fortunate enough to live at the first time in history when all of the research needed to make sense of stock investing is available to us. All that we need to do to make an enormous leap forward in our understanding of this critically important subject is to rein in the abusive and in some cases criminal behavior of you Goons.
We are basically one step away from achieving a turning point in U.S. history.
Do you see?
Rob
So instead of those a people being ignorant, you are calling them all liars. Got it.
I say that as a nation of people we are struggling to move from a time when we did not have the research availanble to us that we needed to make sense of stock investing to a place where we can openly discuss and learn from the wonderful breakthrough research of the past 42 years. It is natual that people would be afraid to speak openly about their beliefs when they see that others have had threats of career destruction and death threats directed at them for committing that terrible “crime.” I believe that there will be a day when the same laws that apply in every field other than the investmnt advice field will apply in the investment advice field as well and we will all be able to live fuller and better and richer lives as a result.
An encouraging way to look at this is to see that the reason why this transition has been so difficult is that the matters under examination are so terribly important. If getting stock investing right didn’t matter, no one would ever have advanced a single abusive post. This stuff matters! And the advance that we have achieved over the past 42 years is breathtaking!
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours!
Rob
Like I said, you are calling them liars…..yet it is also a conspiracy since they are all in on it.
We all have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge residing within us, Anonymous. That much is certainly so.
You could say that we’re all drug addicts or that we are all gambling addicts or that we are all sex addicts because we all have the potential to fall prey to those horrible addictions. The Bennett/Pfau research shows that it is nothing inherent in the nature of stocks that requires that they be a high-risk asset class. The risk for which stocks have become known over the years is the product of the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold impulse that resides within us all. Now that we have 42 years of peer-reviewed research showing us how to overcome that urge (through market timing/price discipline), the days of risky stock investing are over once we pull together as a nation of people to open every discussion board and blog to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research, without a single exception. I recommend doing this by the close of buisiness today, if not a good bit sooner.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Was your ex-wife a drug addict, gambling addict or sex addict. Just asking since you brought it up and made the claim.
My claim was that we all have the potential to become such things. It is in our nature to engage in self-destructive behavior.
The nistake that the Buy-and-Holders made was to assume the oppotiste, that we are all always 100 percent rational when buying stocks. If that really were so, market timing/price discipline really would not be required becase stocks would always be priced properly. It was a huge advance when Shiller showed with uis Nobel-prizr-winning research that none of that is even a tiny bit true, that irrational exuberance is a very real thing. So of course market timing is always 100 percent required to combat it.
One of the things that helps us all not to become drug addicts or gambling addicts or sex addicts is that it is common for people to point out the negatives of these sorts of self-destructive behavior. The problem in the investment advice realm is that the Buy-and-Holders go nuts whenever anyone points out how destructive it is to create a mountain of irrational exuberance. The Buy-and-Holders count irrational exuberance gains as if they were real. So they don;t like it when people like me tell invesors that they need to subtract their irrational gains when calculating the safe withdrawal rate.
Think how many more drug addicts we would have if there were a time when people had come to believe that a drug addiction is a very good thing — that it makes you feel good or some such nonsense. Then, when it was discovered through subsequent study that drug addiction is actually a bad thing, these people sent out goon squads to threaten to murder the loved ones of those who pointed out the realities, Drug addiction is a bad thing and should be discovered. Just as failing to pratice market timing/price discipline is a bad thing and should be discouraged.
If we all practiced market timing, there could never be another bull market. If there never was another bull market, there could never be another bear maarket, If there never was another bear market, there could never be another Buy-and-Hold Crisis. It all ties together. We should be permitting honest posting re the peer-reviewed reserch at every site, without a single exception.
Rob
So all these people are either stupid, liars or addicts and that you are the victim. Even your ex-wife was in on it.
I’m not the only victim, Anonymous We are all victims of our ignorance of how stock investing works that existed prior to 1981. We are all in this together. We all need to know how stock investing works.
And we are all part of the nation of people that achieved huge advances over the past 42 years. I didn’t enact laws making the tactics emploed by you Goons to block people from learning what the peer-reviewed research says. We enacted those laws as a nation of people. And we set things up so that Shiller could get his research published in a peer-reviewed journal and so that libaries all over the country would carry his book and so that he woulc be awarded a Nobel prize. We arefundantally a good people.
Nothing could be more clear.
Rob
None of us are victims. We know we are all responsible for our own outcomes. You just can’t accept responsibility for your outcomes and just want to blame others, including your ex-wife.
I believe that we are all blessed and that we are all victims.
We are all blessed because we are fortunate enough to be alive at the time when the last key piece of peer-reviewed research needed to click the investing puzzle into place is available to us.
We are victims because we do not today have the ability to discuss that research at every site because the advance in understanding achieved through it is so huge that it makes the Buy-and-Holders feel bad for people to learn that they did not always know everything there is to know about this subject.
I have hopes that we will pull together to work out the problems in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis and from that day forward we will just be blessed and will no longer be victims.
Rob
No, we are not victims. We accept responsibility, but you don’t.
Okay, Anonymous.
Rob
What percentage of fault do you accept for being broke? What percentage of fault do you accept for your divorce?
I don’t accept any fault for the financial issues. There is no way that any reasonable person could have anticipated the crazy circumstances that apply here. It is absolutely essential that we get every site opened to honest posting. I was placed in circumstances in which I developed a deep understanding of the problem and an appreication of how many people would like to see the possibility of honest posting opened to all of us. I don’t think there is anyone who loves his or her country who would not have done everything in his or her power to help out once he or she became aware of the realities that apply. I didn’t ask to be in this situation. I was pulled into it because of a set of very strange experiences.
I blame myself a tiny bit for the divorce. I spend a lot of time thinking about whether there were things I could have said or done that could have taken things in a better direction. I don’t blame my ex. She was a victim of extremely strange circumstances as well. We were both placed undewr pressures that no married couple should need to endure. Planet Earth is not paradise. There are hard things that happen to all of us. This was my super hard thing. One of the reasons why I would like to see every site opened to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research so that other married couples are not placed under these sorts of pressues, Every Buy-and-Hold Crises that have had to endure as a nation has brought on many failed marriages. Since 1981, the Buy-and-Hold Crises are optional. All that we need to do to bring an end to them is to encourage market timing/price discipline at every site. I would like to see us start doing that and I feel that it is my responsibility to do what I can to help out.
Rob
You quit your job and refused to work. You are 100% to blame for being broke and divorced. This whole thread would show any new reader as to how insane you are acting.
How many people do you think were hurt in a serious way in the 2008 Buy-and-Hold Crisis?
How many do you expect will be hurt in a serious way in the Buy-and-Hold Crisis that todays’s CAPE value shows us we should be expecting to arrive in the next year or two or three?
Rob
“ I don’t accept any fault for the financial issues. ”
“I blame myself a tiny bit for the divorce”
You quit your job and refused to work. That forced your wife to get 6 jobs to cover the bills. You are 100% at fault for the financial issues and 100% at fault for the divorce.
Who’s at fault for the fact that the error in the Greaney retirement study has not been corrected in the 21 years since I brought it to his attention?
Rob
“ Who’s at fault for the fact that the error in the Greaney retirement study has not been corrected in the 21 years since I brought it to his attention?”
Why don’t you ask the people at the Bogleheads forum. Oh, wait. They won’t talk to you. Why don’t you ask Wade Pfau……uhm…….oh, that’s right, he won’t talk to you. Maybe you can ask Shiller. What’s that? He won’t talk to you either. Hmmmmmmmm………maybe you can ask your wife………….oh, what………she divorced you, so that might not be a good idea.
I would like to see all those people talking openly about the realities of stock investing at every site, Anonymous. That’s the entire point of The Siller Revolution. Irrational exuberance can no longer survive once the investors who created it start behaving rationally. The rational thing is to discuss the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research at every site.
Each time someone works up the courage to post honestly, it makes it easier for all the rest of us. Each time someone capitulates to you Goons and self-censors himself, it makes it harder for all the rest of us.
Rob
“ I would like to see all those people talking openly about the realities of stock investing at every site, Anonymous.”
They can. They have not been banned for bad behavior like you. They also don’t lie like you do.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all good things, in any event.
Rob