Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
<i>A smart guy once said:
“ Rob, suppose the stock market does drop 65% as you are expecting. It might happen, who knows.
Step 1: Stock Market Drops 65%
Step 2: ??
Step 3: Rob wins $500 million settlement from the Goons, the Goons are sent to prison, the investing public learns about and adopts VII.
What is Step 2? There isn’t one. You will still be in the same position as you’ve been in for the last 10 years. Why didn’t something happen for you after the 2008 financial crisis? You are like the guy who keeps predicting new ends for the world as each previous prediction date passes by.
That is why I’m telling you, from one human being to another, that it is time to move on.”</i>
Step Two is the owner of one large site opening his site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research. It will take guts. You Goons will go after that guy like mad. But a lot of the people who work in this field possess a long-supressed desire to do honest work, to actually help people rather than to destory their lives. My sense from my years of interacting with lots of experts is that just about everyone in this field feels this way. Bogle did. Bernstein does. Kitces does. Tressider does. Shultheis does. Burns does. And on and on and on and on and on.
The leverage here is off the charts. Once a site becomes known as a place where people who post honestly are safe, experts will flock to it. And, the more people there are posting honestly, the more safe it is for new people to join them. The power of you Goons comes from one thing — your ability to isolate those who post honestly, to employ intimidation tactics to stop others from posting in support of the guy or gal who risks career destruction by talking about what the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world.
Support for Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is a mile wide and an inch deep. If Shiller had published his Nobel-prize-winning research in 1961 instead of 1981, there never would have been a Buy-and-Hold strategy, no one would have ever cooked up this loony-tunes idea that the stock market is the only market that has ever existed in which price discipline is not 100 percent required for every market participant. People want to use their life energies to do good work. That’s the way it is in every field other than investment analysis and that’s the way it is in the investment analysis field as well. The problem in this field is that, while the intellectual support for Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is precisely zero, the institutional support for it is huge. For the Buy-and-Holders to come clean, they not only have to acknowledge their initial mistake, which is no big deal, but also the 42-year cover-up of the mistake, which makes them look really, really, really bad.
People don’t want to see their careers destroyed. They want to post honestly but they do not want to see their careers destroyed. The abusive stuff is so off the charts that people decide to let someone else be a hero. But will they be able to continue doing that after the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, when they see millions of lives destroyed. I believe that there will come a time when someone will just not be able to bear it any longer and he will just go ahead and open his site to honest posting. As more people join him, there will be a greater number posting honestly and eventually the isolation stuff will just not have much of an effect anymore. It will become the thing to do to post honestly and the New York Times will publush a series of articles about the long cover-up on its front page and that will be that. We will all be working together to learn how stock investing works in the real world, as we would have been all along if only we had been thinking clearly.
What’s the alternative, Anonymous. The Buy-and-Hold Crisis of 1929 almost caused the entire thing to go under. Are we going to continue risking that? I think that’s too big a risk. I believe that some brave soul will work up the courage to open his site to honest posting after he sees the ocean of human misery that we will see in the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis (I am presuming that stocks will continue to perform in the future somewhat as they have always performed in the past).
P.S. I am confident that Wade will flip back when he sees that it is safe to do so The things he told me in the many emails that we exchanged made clear that those days in which he was posting honestly were the happiest days of his life. Everyone who works in this field will get to experience those feelings in coming days. And everyone who lives in the United States will reap the benefits of learning about the first true research-based strategy.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Everyone on the major boards has heard your story and they don’t buy it. Wade even pointed out how timing failed since the time Shiller came out with his paper. Shiller knew all this ahead of time and warned you about timing the market. You just won’t listen. That is why you are broke and divorced.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do 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.
Rob
Wade knows all this as well. That is why he knows and says you don’t have a step 2. He was trying to help you, but you ignored him. Your ex-wife tried to help, but you ignored her. Your priest tried to help you, but you ignored him. Thousands of others tried to help you, but you ignored them. See a pattern?
Step Two is opening every site on the internet to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research, without a single exception.
That’s it.
It’s as easy and as difficult as that.
We’ll see.
Rob
The internet was open to you for a long time. Everyone heard your message. They just don’t agree with you. That’s the way it goes. You couldn’t accept the rejection and that lead to your behavior problems. Board owners had no choice but to ban you. You can’t go around hijacking threads. You can’t make up false allegations. You can’t dodge legitimate questions and criticism.
I’m so bad!
Everybody knows it too. That’s the thing!
Rob
The point is that you got your message out to the community. Nothing changed for you. Repeating it again on the websites that banned you won’t change a thing.
There are plenty of larger formats out there, like Reddit and Tik Tok. Try those.
Everything will change when all of the sites that I have posted to are opened to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. We have seen thousands of people at those sites express a desire that honest posting re the research in this field be permitted. That’s how ideas grow in popularity. People talk them over and new converts are brought in daily until the new ideas, which started in one person’s mind becomes the dominant idea.
I have a high level of confidence that Valuation-Informed Indexing will take over the world once honest posting is permitted at every site. I think you Goons see that. If you didn’t, you would put so much effort into fighting the idea.
Are you saying that you don’t think the Bogleheads Forum is a large board? Or that the Retire Early board was not a large board back in the days before Greaney and bis Goon Squad burned it to the ground? It sure seemed big enough to me. The problem wasn’t that it was not big enough. The problem was that the site owner did not enforce its published rules. The site administrator there told me that it would be “ideal” if Greaney permitted honest posting on the subject matter that the board was createdto explore. I agree! It would indeed have been ideal! The problem is that I did not have access to the button that would make Greaney go “Poof!” and the site administrator did not want t push it. Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies are popular at times when irrational exuberance has gotten out of control. So it appears for a time that promotion of those strategies are money-makers. Motley Fool did not want to give up the money that Greaney was bringing in to its site.
Do you see?
Rob
People don’t think you are honest. People that are truly honest don’t need to try and convince people of their honesty.
I am the person who pointed out the error in the Greaney retirement study (it lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins). That’s honest.
Some might say that I am TOO honest. I don’t say that. I am ashamed that I wasn’t honest enough to point out the error in the study in May of 1999 instead of waiting until May of 2022. But I believe that there are some who would say that. That’s what Wade was saying when he said “What is Step Two?”. It was a cynical comment. He was sahying that it’s not possible to do honest work in this field and still make a buck. I don’t believe that. Each time someone works up the courage to be honest, it makes it easier for all the rest of us who want to be so to be so. There’s obviously a penalty for doing honest work in this field today. But I think that’s a temporary situation.
That’s why I expect to receive a $500 million settlement payment. That’s the reward for honesty. Once I get that payment, LOTS of people are going to flip to the honest side. At that point, offering honest investment advice will be the cool thing. It’s got to start somewhwere. It doesn’t start by everybody living in fear of you Goons.
Rob
You are one of the most dishonest people I know. You are broke and divorced and it is actually what you deserve for what you have done to people.
I’m such a meanie. How could anyone be so mean?
Rob