“The Mistake That the Buy-and-Holders Made (Thinking That Market Timing/Price Discipline Might Not Always Be 100 Percent Required) Took Discussion of 70 Percent of What We Need to Know Off the Table. My Aim Is to Get Discussion of That 70 Percent (the Undiscovered Continent of Stock Investong) Going at Every Investing Site on the Internet.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

There is no science in your posts.  Further, investing is mathematical, combined with statistical analysis.

The Bennett/Pfau research shows that an investor can reduce the risk of stock investing by nearly 70 percent by being open to market timing. The reason why that is possible is that it is investor EMOTION that causes high stock prices (if investors were 100 percent rational, they would always price stocks properly). So emotion is BY FAR the most important factor leading to long-term success or failure. The stock investing game is a game in which the investor has to struggle to rein in the emotions that could cause him to persuade himself that for the first time in history market timing might not be 100 percent necessary.

Shiller gave us a powerful metric (CAPE) that we can use to know when to engage in market timing and to what extent to engage in it. So the emotional stuff can to some extent be reduced to numbers. But the numbers stuff won’t do you any good if you are so emotional that you are not willing to look at them. The primary truth about stock investing is that the key to long-term success is gaining control of one’s emotions. Placing too much focus on the math pulls you away from that.

The mistake that the Buy-and-Holders made was to focus too much on the math and not nearly enough on the emotions. If investor emotion is 70 percent of the story, 70 percent of the investment advice that we hear should be aimed at helping us rein in our emotions (that is, helping us to see the need for market timing). The mistake that the Buy-and-Holders made (thinking that market timing/price discipline might not always be 100 percent required) took discussion of 70 percent of what we need to know off the table. My aim is to get discussion of that 70 percent (the undiscovered continent of stock investong) going at every investing site on the internet. We are today 20 years behind where we would have been re our understanding of this subject had we opened every site to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research on the afternoon of May 13, 2002, as I proposed at the time.

You Goons are not going to be able to keep discussion of 70 percent of what investors need to know off the table indefinitely. It is too important to millions of investors that they gain access to such discussions. Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, in any event, you know?

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob