I’ve posted Entry #663 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called At What Point Does a Mistake Become a Scam?
Juicy Excerpt: But I don’t believe that the error was deliberate. The people who developed the Buy-and-Hold concept would have had to have been monsters to make a conscious choice to cause so much human misery and my impression of just about all of the Buy-and-Holders who I have gotten to know a little bit well is that they are all smart and good people. I think it was a mistake.
It is both. You are making mistakes and you are running a scam. That is why you are in the position you are in now: Broke and divorced. Grow up and get a job.
Um….
Rob
You think it is good to be broke and divorced?
I think it is good to be honest, Anonymous. I honestly 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.
Rob
I honestly believe that you know that Greaney’s study does not need an adjustment, but you need to keep a story going as a cover up to your failure and an excuse to not get a job.
Do you believe that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns is legitimate research?
Rob
Robert Shiller?? You mean the guy that told you to not use CAPE to time the market? Is that they Robert Shiller you are referring to?
Shiller of course never said that. In fact, he published a paper in 1996 urging market timing because of the high CAPE value that applied at the time. If you wanted to know more about Shiller’s views on how investors should go about market timing, you would invite him to appear at the Bogleheads Forum and have both Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers ask him detailed questions about the matter.
I have advanced that idea scores of times, Not once have you taken me up on it. I wonder why.
Rob
If a guy opened a business and it never generated a profit in over 20 years and he was broke, do you think that guy should still keep his business going or should he close it and do something else that would actually make money and pay the bills?
If his business was to sell pills that cure all forms of cancer overnight and the pills had been tested by 42 years of peer-reviewed research and had passed every test and the only reason why he had not made millons and millions is that the owners of the owners of chemotherapy centers did not want people to learn that there was now a better way to treat cancer and had engaged in criminal behavior to block people from learning about the pills, I would say that he should keep his biusiness going. He owes it both to himself and to the world. The world has been looking for a cure for cancer for a long time and, when we get to the point where the only thing holding us back is the members of chemotherapy goon squads who engage in abusive and criminal behavior to hild back progress, I think that we need to have people of courage make that final push. If there are lots of people who want the easy cure for cancer, we as a nation of people need to find a way to provide them with access to it.
That’s where I’m coming from re this one, Anonymous.
Rob
If you cured cancer (or the equivalent of that), you would not be broke. It seems you are selling snake oil and not a cancer cure.
Okay, Anonymous.
I don’t believe that I will be broke in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. But it’s not possible to say with certainty. We’ve never before been through a situation like this. We will all just have to wait and see.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow in any event. I like to think that that might help, at least a tiny bit.
Rob
You sound like the guy who plays the powerball lottery that expects to win every week. Unfortunately, your odds are less than that guy.
Okay, Anonymous.
Please take good care. old friend.
Rob