Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“Stocks are today priced to deliver another Buy-and-Hold Crisis within the next year or two ot three.”
You have been saying that for at least a year or two or three.
Unfortunately for you even if it does happen it will be too late. You don’t seem to have enough money to take advantage of low stock prices.
You just make terrible assumptions.
You assumed that selling 1 report on soapbox meant you would continue to make money in a similar manner.
You assumed that when you said back in the day that you would be willing to flip hamburgers if necessary you wouldn’t have to make good on that promise.
You assumed that the market would drop low enough while you still had money that you would be able to load up on stock at bargain basement prices.
You assumed that if you wrote a book (which you did) you would be able to earn much more than you did with your soapbox report.
You assumed that if you started to write a second book that you would get it finished at some point.
You assumed that your wife would put up with your catastrophically unproductive internet trolling career instead of getting a real job.
You assumed that if you kept repeating the same arguments that got rejected repeatedly you would eventually find someone to agree.
You assumed that if you offered to go back to work, but spend every evening and weekend trolling the internet that would be acceptable to your wife.
(I haven’t said anything about the $500 million assumption because I am fairly sure not even you believe that.)
All those assumptions were wrong.
They have added up to a failed retirement.
I’m still willing to flip hamburgers if that’s what it takes. I would rather flip hamburgers than sell out my friends.
I have found thousands of people to agree with my arguments:
Investing Discussion Boards Ban Honest Posting on Valuations!
When every site has been opened to honest posting, the number will be in the millions. That translates ino moutains of money for the person who developed the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept. I have a 20-year head-start on everybody else. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. Robert Shiller wasn’t awarded a Nobel prize because he has a nice haircut.
Rob
“I’m still willing to flip hamburgers if that’s what it takes. I would rather flip hamburgers than sell out my friends.”
Would you rather flip hamburgers or get divorced? It looks like you chose divorce.
I hate being divorced. Hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. But, yes, I chose being divorced over selling out my friends. A person needs to be able to sleep at night. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I agreed to say that I believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.
The fact that things have reached this point shows how hot an issue this is. Permit honest postong on a single issue at a single site and the entire Buy-and-Hold house of cards will come tumbling down.There’s a lot of people who make money working in this field. There’s a lot of people who have invested their retirement money pursuant to Buy-and-Hold strategies. So there’s a lot of resistance to the idea of permitting honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. And yet it’s also important for people to get the numbers right in retirement studies. So we have this weird state of affairs where we have the intellectual knowledge needed to invest effectively but where we have not given ourselves permission to talk about what we know on the internet.
The fact that the penalty today for posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates is divorce shows that safe withdrawal rates matter and that we should all want the people who do the studies to get the numbers right, not the opposite. Safe withdrawal rates matter. All of this stuff matters. We should be permitting honest posting.
My sincere take.
Rob
What does your opinion about John Greaney have to do with getting a job? Everyone has opinions, but do we all stop working just to repeat the same things for twenty years?
I am today performing the most important job in the United States — telling people about the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s amazing, Nobel-prize-winning research. Any time that I spent flipping hamburgers would be taking time away from doing the most important job in the United States today.
The divorce thing came up because of the abusive posting of you Goons. That kept me from earning an income doing the most important job. Once we work up the coutage as a nation of people to do something about the abusive posting of the Buy-and-Hold goon squads, all of the bad stuff goes away. Knowing how stock investing works for the first time in history is wonderful. Having people willing to talk about the far-reaching how-to implications of Shiller’s research is wonderful. Having the internet available to us to spread the word far and widely quickly is wonderful. The only thing holding us all back from getting to live fuller and richer and happier lives is our fear of you Goons. We need to get over that. We need to get down to the business of applying the same laws in the investment advice field as we do in all others fields of human endeavor.
My sincere take.
Rob
Taking 5 minutes a day to cut and paste from previous posts keeps you from getting a job? No one is going to take you seriously and now that your wife dumped you, you have even more time on your hands. You can’t use the book as an excuse anymore since you have been talking about that for at least 10 years.
I sincerely believe 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. Do you think it would be better if I just kept it zipped re that one?
Rob
It took you about 1 minute to repeat the same nonsense yet again. Even doing that every day doesn’t keep you from getting a job. There are 168 hours in a week. If you deduct 40 hours for work and 64 hours for sleeping, you still have 64 hours left. That is plenty of time.
Since you aren’t even working and you aren’t married, what the heck are you doing with over 100 hours of free time a week? You don’t even create any new content. It is a couple quick cut and paste jobs of previous posts and that is it.
Once we have as a nation of people worked up the courage to open every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research, work product will be judged by millions of non-goons. I can live with that.
If we all were thinking clearly, there never would have been a ban on honest posting in the first place. Whatever it takes to overcome it, that’s what it takes. It’s critically important work. Saying that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment after all to sppease you Goons is not the answer. I am sure.
Rob
You didn’t address the point. All you did was just repeat more of the same old talking points. You have 100 free hours a week and you don’t do anything other then spend a few moments to cut and paste old posts. Why are you afraid of getting a job?
When I have finished my book, I expect to take on paid employment. My expectation is that I will not do it before then. Finishing the book is 500 times more important than any income I could earn with paid employment. So I direct my energies to the higher priority.
I hope that works for you.
Rob
And now you jump back to the book as an excuse. You have been telling everyone about the book for over 10 years. Not buying that lame excuse any more.
You’re not required to buy it, Anonymous. Go live your life and be happy, you know? You have my best wishes.
Rob
“ You’re not required to buy it, Anonymous. Go live your life and be happy, you know? You have my best wishes.”
You are the one asking everyone to “buy it” because you want the everyone on the internet to open up their websites to post your delusions. Don’t make comments if you don’t want responses.
I want every site owner on the internet to open their site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That’s for sure. That’s the entire project. I don’t want there to be a single exception.
I don’t ask that any of them become Valuation-Informed Indexers. It’s fine with me if they do. It’s fine with me if they do not. I can obviously learn from other Valuation-Informed Indexers. I can also obviously learn from Buy-and-Holders. An argument could be made that we are all better off with a bit of a mix. So I wouldn’t say that I have a need for anyone to buy into what I am saying on the issues of substance.
The only thing that I need people to buy into is the process question — Should honest posting re the peer-reviewed research be permitted? If we were all thinking clearly, there would not be one person entertaining any doubts re that one. People can obviously make mistakes in any field. If we adopt a view that in the investment advice field, discussions of mistakes cannot be permitted, then it becomes impossible for there ever to be progress in that field. I am in favor of progress. So I think we all should favor discussion of the 42 years of peer-revieewed research showing that the Buy-and-Holders made a mistake when they came out with the idea that market timing/price discipline is not always 100 percent required when buying stocks.
Rob
“I want every site owner on the internet to open their site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That’s for sure. That’s the entire project. I don’t want there to be a single exception.”
You don’t. Why should anyone site owner open up their own website to you when you don’t do the same? The answer is that you don’t have to open up your site to what others want to post and they don’t have to open up their site to what you want to post. Your version of what you think is honest is just your opinion. You are not a dictator. You are also not the sole decision maker on what constitutes the body of peer-reviewed research. Your version is merely your interpretation of what one guy said. Same goes for your claim about a being an author of another guy’s paper.
Are you okay with seeing how it all plays out in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis? Strategies that push irrational exuberance to the max are a lot less popular after the pretend gains go “Poof!”
We’ll see, you know? I believe that we should have been permitting honest posting all along. If we had, the CAPE value would never have gotten so high as to bring the safe withdrawal rate down to 1.6 percent. If we always permitted honest posting re the research, prices would self-regulate and the safe withdrawal rate really would always be a number somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 percent. I could live with that.
Rob