Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Wade Pfau doesn’t promote VII. He promotes a bucket strategy. Rob Arnott and his firm use a weighted stock index system. JWR is no longer with us, so we can’t see what he is recommending. I don’t recall seeing any of these people asking to buy you out or invest with you. If these people really thought you had value, we would have seen something of confirmation in what they did or do with their money and recommendations.
Join with me to work to open every site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research and you’ll see it. You’ll see it from Wade Pfau and from Rob Arnott and from thousands of others. Without honest posting, there is no way to spread knowledge of new research findings and thus no means of correcting mistakes. It is absolutely essential. I think it’s the answer.
I know it is!
Rob
Whose version of “honesty” should be allowed and who decides what they think is honest?
Each community member gets to decide for himself or herself which case is more persuasive. Anyone who engages in abusive posting to limit the ability of community members to hear both sides is responsible for any losses those community members suffer as a result.
Rob
So it appears that the community members decided you were not honest and were abusive and made the decision to ban you and have also avoided you. If they felt the opposite, they would be posting here.
So, if someone puts a gun to your head and demands that you turn over your wallet, and you do so, that shows that you wanted to make a donation to that person all along.
No. It doesn’t work like that.
The reason why we have laws against death threats and extortion and all the rest is that abusive and criminal behavior causes people to act in ways in which they otherwise would not act. If Greaney had followed the published rules of the Motley Fool site, which he agreed to follow before he was given the ability to post at the Motley Fool site, Valuation-Informed Indexing would be the dominant stock investing strategy today.
Ane we wouldn’t have a CAPE value of 31 hanging over our heads today. All of the pain that that number signifies was caused by the abusive behavior of you Goons and by the willingness (because of their own Get Rich Quick impulse) of the Normals (who would never dream of advancing death threats or acts of extortion themselves) to tolerate it. Our Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold impulse makes us all smaller and creepier than we are in ordinary circumstances. Expeets in this field should be doing everythin in their power to help us rein it in, not encouraging us to push it to its farthest limits as a means of turning a quick buck.
I sincerely believe that the retirement study posted at Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. I came to care about some of the people I got to know while posting at the Motley Fool site. So I don’t regret saying what I believed about the Greaney study out loud.
I think this would be a better world if people felt free to post honestly about what the peer-reviewed research teches us all about how stock investing works in the real world at every site on the internet, without a single exception. That would be a less corrupt world and the people who lived in it would live richer and fuller and freer lives (stock investing is not a zero-sum game — the widespread promotion of Get Rich Quick investing strategies leaves us all collectively poorer over time).
Rob
Why can’t anyone else find evidence of these crimes? Why doesn’t anyone else see an error in Greaney’s work? Why did your wife stop believing your stories and get a divorce? Why don’t you have any fans on this board? Why don’t you see that you are the common thread (problem)?
The common thread is the failure to correct the error in the Greaney retirement study (it lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. Say that there is only a 1 in 100 chance that I was right in what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002, that the Greaney study truly does lack a valuation adjustment. If there is a 1 in 100 change that that is so, it is something that we should be discussing at every discussion board and blog on the internet. The purpose of the investment advice field is to help people plan retirements. Get the numbers in a retirement study wildly wrong and you have undermined the entire investment advice project.
My only involvement is that I pointed out the error in a public way and I have not backed down. If it weren’t for the 42-year cover-up, the Buy-and-Holders would be united in insisting that Greaney correct the study immediately. But that would expose the entire cover-up, in which everyone who works in this field is involved to at least a small degree (everyone who works in the field has a responsbility to stay up to date with the peer-reviewed research).
It’s not going to help things to have the cover-up continue for another year or another month or another day. How could it? Extending the cover-up will make things worse.
My sincere take.
Rob
So everybody else is wrong and only Rob Bennett is right……..in your little fantasy world.
Did I adopt the laws against death threats and acts of extortion?
Did I publish peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns and write a best-selling book explaining why irrational exuberance is a real thing and get awarded a Nobel prize for my work in this area?
Did I earn a Ph.D. in Economics and then devote 16 months of my life to researching the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept and conclude that: “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!
As a nation of people we have been getthing this one right in some extremely important ways for 42 years now. That’s each and every one of us. We have done amazing work. We have made amazing strides. No, we have not yet gotten it 100 percent right so that we can discuss the realities of stock investing at every internet site and live richer and fuller and freer lives from that point forward. But we are very close. We have gotten it 20 times more right than we have gotten it wrong. We are very close to achieving the greatest surge of economic growth in our nation’s history.
We are all right and Rob Bennett is on our side. And I expect that we will be getting it even more right in the days following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
YOU haven’t done a darn thing. Just ask your ex-wife.
I worked up the courage to go public re the error in the Greaney retirement study, Anonymous. That’s not nothing. There were people at the Motley Fool board who were using that study for help in planning their retirement. If we were all thinking clearly, there would not be one person who would be objecting to getting the numbers right in retirement studies.
My sincere take.
Rob