Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Most authors deal with emotions and passion. You just can’t function. You can’t deal outside your protected website and ValueWalk.
Please identify one other person who was written a book on the many far-reaching how-to implications of Shiller’s amazing Nobel-prize-winning research findings. There isn’t one. Shiller himself hasn’t done it. He wrote a book on the theory but refrained from exploring the how-to implictions.
That’s why the project is so important and so necessary. The less people talk about this stuff, the harder it is for everyone else who wants to talk about it to do so. The more people talk aboit it, the easier it becomes for everyone else to do so. My aim is to open EVERY site to honest posting re the research. I want every single person on the planet to feel 100 percent free to share his or her sincere thoughts. That certainly includes Buy-and-Holders but it includes Valuation-Informed Indexers as well.
I wish that it wasn’t such a difficult journey. But it is what it is, you know. I doubt that there will be too many saying that they wish that we could go back to the day when we rarely talked about this stuff once we have opened every site to honest posting. If we were all thinking clearly, we would have launched the national debate in 1981!
Rob
Name on other person that has written a book on the far reaching implications of why Teslas don’t have microwave ovens.
The suggestion here is that it is not important to explore the how-to implications of Shiller’s amazing research. I think it is very, very, very important. That’s why I have devoted 21 years of my life to the project.
If we had all been thinking clearly, a national debate on the how-to implicatons of Shiller’s research would have been launched on the day in 1981 when the research was published. We are today 42 years behind in our understanding of how stock investing works as a result of our delay in launching that debate. If we fail to launch it by the close of business today, we will be yet another 24 hours behind where we could have been.
Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize for his work. He must have showed SOMETHING beyond what was known in the 1960s, when the Buy-and-Hold strsategy was being developed. Do you have any thought about what that something might be, Anonymous? I am not looking for theoretical generalities like the claim that “valuations affect long-term returns.” I certainly believe that that is so. But what I want to know is how does knowing that valuations affect long-term returns affect one’s strategic choices in investing? I say that it shows that market timing/price discipline is always 100 percent required. What do you say it shows?
My best wishes.
Rob
“ I think it is very, very, very important.”
Nobody else does. No one has an obligation to agree with you. No one has an obligation to let you post on their websites (just as you block posts). No one has to believe your made up allegations when you offer no direct proof. You are not owed anything, despite your constant delusions of what you think you are owed. You are only owed what someone else has agreed to pay you, not what you think you should get.
The Buy-and-Holders themselves at one time urged investors to look to the peer-reviewed research for guidance re investing. I picked up the idea by reading one of John Bogle’s books.
Rob
No one needs to agree and/or believe your opinions as to what constitutes all of the historical peer-reviewed research and what it actually says and means.
You are free to believe whatever you want to believe, but your entire message is around what you want everyone else to do. You are not free to demand that others give you access to their platform. You are not free to demand that someone change their study to correct some kind of “error” you think this person has made, despite others not agreeing. You are not free to demand that others have to pay you compensation for what you think you should get, when no one has actually agreed to pay you anything. You are not free to make up allegations and expect others to believe it when you have not provided any direct evidence of criminal activity.
It’s not an “allegation” for me to point out that the retirement study posted at John Greney’s web site lacks aan adjustment for the valuaation level that applies on the day that the rettirement begins. Evidence-Based Investing is one of the generals in Greaney’s Goon Army. Evidence said in his famous post from late 2021 that “nobody” truly believes that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment, “including Greaney himself.” I don’t feel that Evidence was making an ellegation. I say that he was stating a simple fact.
Do you think it would have been better if I had kept it zipped re the error in the study? I am ashamed that I did not speak up sooner. A number of people who posted at the Motley Fool board had become friends of mine over the years. They were using the Greaney study for help in planning their retirements.
Do you think I was being fair to Greaney during the three years when I was too afraid of what he would do to me if I pointed out the error to speak up? I feel that I failed him (and the entire Retire Early community) during those three years. I began to feel better about myself when I worked up the courage to post honestly. Which version of Rob Bennett do you like better, the one who sold out his friends to appease you Goons or the one who worked up the couage to do the right thing?
Rob
The comment about “allegations” related to your comments regarding criminal activity. You say Greaney made an error. No one else agrees with that. You even don’t fully quote Evidence as he also states that it is not an error. Again, no one needs to do anything that you say.
http://www.passionsaving.com/investing-discussion-boards.html
Rob
You respond by giving a link to outdated and out of context posts as a response?
Again, no one needs to do anything that you say. Fix your own problems.
I fixed my problem on the morning of May 13, 2002, Anonymous. I felt like a crrp for the three years in which I sold out my friends by failing to point out the error in the Greaney retirement study. Then I pointed it out and I felt better.
Every day since I have learned more about how stock investing works in the real world. I now have enough material from my many investigations to write an entire book on
the subject, I certainly could not have done that on the morning of May 13, 2002. Live and learn, am I right?
I hope that that sounds good to you.
Rob
You fixed your problems, yet you are broke and divorced. Really?
What if I had millions and knew in my heart that I had betrayed my friends because I knew what some internet goon and his pals would do to me if I pointed out the error in his retirement study? Would that be better?
I don’t see it. None of us get everything in life. We choose what’s important to us and we live with the consequences of our choices. I don’t like everything that has done down over the past 21 years. Not by a long shot. But I don’t regret my decision to push the “Send” button on that famous May 13, 2002, post. If I had been calling the shots, there would have been a lot more learning experiences following from my advancing that post than what we have seen. But we have still seen plenty of learning experiences and I think it would be fair to say that we are set up to see plenty more in the days to come. I don’t like every aspect of the story as it has played out. But I feel better about what I have seen from May 13, 2002, forward than I do about what I saw during the three earlier years.
I believe that as a nation of people we are on the right track re stock investing. I obviously do not believe that we have handled everything perfectly. But I believe that we are on the right track. I am proud to have played a role in leading us away from Buy-and-Hold and in the direction of Valuation-Informed Indexing. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investment strategy you prefer to follow, in event event. I would like to think that that might help at least a tiny bit.
Hang in there. old friend.
Rob
Your entire story is all made up. No one has or wants to participate in your delusions.
Okay, Anonymous.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
And when you repeat it, people grow tired of it. That is why you were cut off from the boards. Your ex-wife grew tired of things as well.
I’ve grown tired of Greaney refusing to correct the error in his retirement study and thereby doing harm to more and more people. It’s been 21 years.
Rob
You don’t seem to have grown tired of being broke and cut off from investment community.
“You don’t seem to have grown tired of being broke and cut off from investment community.”
Of course I’m tired of it.
What’s the alternative? To sell out my friends again? Thanks but no thanks, you know?
Rob