Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“ My best wishes to you and yours.”
You say that, but then you call us all goons, tell us we are going to prison and hope we all go broke.
Tell us again as to who is making the abusive posting.
I call you Goons because you behave in a Goon-like manner. That’s a big part of the story. If you behaved nornally, people would not be afraid of you and we could all have the discussions about the research that our boards were formed to facilitate. If I don’t mention the Goon thing, I am leaving out an important part of the story. Without the Goon stuff, everyone would have learned what the research says many years ago and today’s CAPE value would not be 31.
I believe that there are going to be some people going to prison. I have done everything in my power to keep the prison sentences as limited as possible. Surprisingly enough, however, you Goons often do not listen to me. There’s only so much I can do.
I do not hope that you go broke. I do think we are going to experience another Buy-and-Hold Crisis within the next year or two or three. But we are all going to suffer as a result of that, even people who do not have any money in stocks (because millions of people will lose their jobs in a Buy-and-Hold Crisis).
Anyway, I do wish you all the best.
Rob
So if we need to talk about labeling people when we post, we should refer to you as delusional and a psychopath.
You should say what you believe, Anonymous.
I believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment and I believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term return is legitimate research. My views about short-term market timing (making guesses as to when prices will move up or down) are precisely the same as those of the Buy-and-Holders. I believe that the Buy-and-Holders made a mistake in thinking that long-term market timing also doesn’t work and isn’t required. At the time they made that call, Shiller’s research had not yet been published. So they took a shot on the dark. That shot in the dark turned out to be wrong. The best thing to do when you learn that you have made a mistake is to acknowledge it and move on with your life.
I encourage my Buy-and-Hold friends to acknowledge their mistake so that we can all get about the business of perfecting the first true research-based strategy, Valuation-Informed Indexing. Long-term market timing is price discipline. No market can survive without price discipline. We have suffered terribly several times in the past for our failure to exercise price discipline when buying stocks and I think that we should all be grateful that we now live at a time when bull markets and bear markets and economic crises are all optional because of what we have learned about how stock investing works in the real world from Shiller’s amazing Nobel-prize-winning research. We need to as a nation of people give ourselves permission to discuss that amazing, life-affirming research at every discussion board and blog on the internet, without a single exception.
You are going to behave as a Goon behaves regardless of what I say. So I have to accept that unfortunate behavior as a reality of life. What matters in the long-term is how the Normals (the 90 percent of the population that today follows a Buy-and-Hold strategy but that believes that every site should be opened to honest posting re the research) react to the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, which today’s CAPE level suggests may be arriving within the next year or two or three. Those are the people I write for. Those people need to know how stock investing works and want to know how stock investing works. They are good people. They are smart people. They will suffer terribly in the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, in the event that stocks continue to perform in the future somewhat as they always have in the past. I believe that the Normals will make the right call.
We will see. I don’t feel that I can say for certain given that there has never before been a situation quite like this, where the evidence for something all points in one direction and where the Get Rich Quick inmpulses of millions of people pull them in the opposite direction for a time. I know that I cannot say that I believe that the Greaney study contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. I know how it made me feel about myself when for three years I kept it zipped re the error in the Greaney study even though I knew what harm might come to friends I had made at the Motley Fool board because of my lack of courage to stand up to you Goons. I have felt better about myself as a person since the morning of May 13, 2002, despite all of the ugliness that you have so forcefully and relentlessly dished out. Being able to sleep at night is important to me. I have regretted much of what I have seen go down. But I have never for one second regretted the call I made when I advanced that fateful post.
I wish you all good things, you know? That I can do. So that I do. I cannot say that I believe that the Greaney retirement study contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. So that I do not do.
I believe that Buy-and-Hold is the past and that Valuation-Informed Indexing (which is identical in every way to Buy-and-Hold except that it corrects the error that the Buy-and-Holders made when they suggested that long-term market timing might not always be 100 percent required for every investor at all times) is the future. But I am not God. Its theroetically possible that I am wrong. We will just have to wait and see how it all plays out in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Sadly, your response is in line with the labels I mentioned.
I understand.
I wish you the best of luck with whatever investment strategy you elect to follow all the same.
Rob
You currently have a presence on two large platforms: Twitter and YouTube. Even with that exposure, you have not gotten any traction. You have made thousands of posts on the major investment boards as well and you have no traction there either. Thousands upon thousands (probably in the millions) have seen your posts, yet you have no traction. You don’t even have one supported on this website, which you control.
How do you think you will see anything different be delivering you same exact message to the same people on the same boards (including those that have banned you)?
Thousands, yes, but I seriously don’t think it’s been millions.
How does any new idea become known and over time come to dominate the world? It always starts with one person, the person who had the idea. He tells a second person. The two of them then tell two others. And then it’s 40. And then 400. And then 4 million. Like that. It’s the only way it has ever been done. Because it is the only way that it ever could be done.
Shiller had the idea, not me. In 1981. It’s been 42 years now, The new idea (that market timing is always 100 percent required) is so important and valuable an idea that it should have taken over the world by now. It has not. But the fact that we have seen thousands of people express a desire that honest posting re the peer-reviewed research be permitted shows that 10 percent of the population believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate. How do we get it to 20 percent and then 40 percent and then 80 percent? We open every site to honest posting re the research. That changes everything.
Valuation-Informed Indexing will not become domninant on the day we open every site to honest posting. Most people are still going to be Buy-and-Holders. But if discussion of a new and better approach is permitted, over time more and more people will be exposed to that better way. And over time, gradually and slowly but also surely, more and more people will become Valuation-Informed Indexers. That’s the way it always happens. That’s the only way it ever could happen.
It doesn’t mean much that 90 percent of investors are Buy-and-Holders today. Most have never heard about Valuation-Informed Indexing, So they don’t know any better. Or, if they heard about it, they did not have a chance to ask questions about it and to explore it in depth. People aren’t going to make a change in something as important as how they invest their retirement money without first asking lots of questions and seeing what sorts of answers come back. There are not going to be instant coversions. But there will indeed be conversions. Over time. If honest posting re the research is permitted.
It’s essential that we go that way because that is the only way that as a nation of people we can ever advance in our understanding of how stock investing works. We all benefit from that. So this is something that we should all want. There is no downside. So we should all be working together re this one. We should all be friends.
My sincere take.
Rob
It you add up all the viewers from each of those formats, it would easily be in the millions. Even taking a more conservative number, it would still be in the hundreds of thousands and not just a handful of people. Certainly with that large of a number, you can most often find a small percentage of people that will become a follower/believer in almost all cases. Yet you don’t even have one single person that is willing to support you, despite you spending 20 years of your life creating an enormous footprint on the internet. You clearly haven’t had an issue of getting your message out there. It is simply a fact that you just don’t have people willing to support the message as you haven’t changed minds. Thus, it is not a message exposure issue. It is an acceptance (lack thereof) issue.
I’ve had 10 percent of the population of investors show intense interest in my ideas about stock investing at every discussion board at which I have posted. That’s been so going back to the first day. If the interest in Valuation-Informed Indexing were not super strong, you Goons would never have sought a ban on honest posting at even a single site. You see the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research as a huge threat to Buy-and-Hold because the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research IS a big threat to Buy-and-Hold. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the superior strategy. And it’s not even a remotely close call.
My sincere take.
Rob
If you REALLY had 10% showing “intense” interest, you would still have some followers on your website. 10% would easily be 10’s of thousands of people, yet you don’t have even one single person. There is ZERO interest in what you have to say. To quote you: “ it’s not even a remotely close call”.
By the way, your opinion of what one guy said is not “peer-reviewed research”.
Okay.
Please mark me down as saying that I sincerely believe that Robert Shiller published peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. Please also mark me down as saying that the first 21 years of our discussions on whether honest posting re the peer-reviewed research should be permitted at every site have shown that there is very strong interest among stock investors in learning what the peer-reviewed research in this field tells us all about how stock investing works in the real world. It’s not anything close to a majority at this point. But it will become a majority not too long after we open every site to honest posting. It is my belief that we need to do that by the close of business on Monday, if not a good bit sooner.
I naturally wish you the best of luck with whatever investment strategy you elect to follow, in any event.
My best and warmest wishes to you.
Rob
“By the way, your opinion of what one guy said is not ‘peer-reviewed research’.”
Do you think that I should lie about my belief? Should I say that it appears to me that the Greaney retirement study contains a valuation adjustment even though my sincere belief is that it lacks one?
I think that getting the numbers right in retirement studies is an important matter. I think that I should say what I sincerely believe. I think that we all should follow that practice.
Rob
Your problem is that you don’t care about what other people think and/or believe. You want people to listen to you, but you don’t listen to anyone else. That part of your behavior issue on the boards that got you kicked off. You clearly didn’t even care about what your wife had to say and now you are divorced.
I care about what other people think and believe.
It doesn’t particularly concern me whether people listen to what I say or not. I believe that all investors should have the OPPORTINITY to hear about the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. I don’t see it as my busienss whether they buy into that message or not. It’s fine with me if they do and it’s fine with me if they don’t. It’s important to me that that message not be prohibited at even a single site. I believe that every investor should be able to hear it and decide for himself or herself how to respond to it. I strongly oppose efforts to suppress discussion of the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research. No one should be able to decide for someone else what he or she should be able to hear. Tune out the message of the research for yourself if you like but permit others to decide for themselves how to invest their retirement money after hearing both sides of the story.
The problem is the 42-year cover-up. If there had never been a Buy-and-Hold, we would all be Valuation-Informed Indexers today. We all want the same things, We all want to know how to invest effectively. Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research shows us how, So it’s all good. The only problem is that we did not always know how the market works and people came up with this idea that market timing might not always be required and promted it. Then, when we discovered that long-term market timing is absolutely essential, they felt that it made them look bad that they had gotten it wrong. So the cover-up began. Now that we are 42 years down the road, it sounds really, really bad to acknowledge the realities.
It’s not going to make things better for anyone to extend the cover-up even longer. So I am 100 percent in favor of permitting honest posting at every site. The problem for the Buy-and-Holders is that there has never been any reason to believe that market timing isn’t always required. That was based on the Efficient Market Theory, which was discredited by Shiller’s research. So the Buy-and-Holders have nothing of substance to offer in suutpport of their position. That’s why we see all this urgliness insteasd. If there were any research supporting the ideas that long-term market timing doesn’t work or isn’t always 100 percent required, the Buy-and-Holders would have advanced it many years ago. There’s just nothing there. So we get all this shouting and nastiness. I believe that we should all just move on to the strategy that would help us all to live better and fuller and richer and freer lives. Call me madcap.
That’s where I’m coming from re this one, Anonymous.
Rob
“ I care about what other people think and believe.”
The evidence is to the contrary.
Okay, Anonymous.
Rob
I guess it is all one big mass conspiracy targeting Rob Bennett.
I certainly wouldn’t put it that way.
Humankind did not come to Planet Earth with a book of instructions telling us how stock investing works. We have had to learn on the fly. Fortunately for those of us alive today, the biggest advance in our understanding was achieved 42 years ago, when Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. If only he had published that research in 1961 instead of in 1981, there never would have been a Buy-and-Hold and no one would have ever even considered the possibility that long-term timing might not always be 100 percent required for every investor. But there was a gap there when the Buy-and-Holders has to take a wild guess as to how things worked and they happened to guess wrong. Now there’s embarrassment over the mistake that they made and a widespread feeling that, since the cover-up has been going on for 42 years, it’s best just to let it continue indefinitely.
Is that a conspiracy?
The vast majority of Buy-and-Holders don’t even know about the error they made. The vast majority of Buy-and-Holders follows Buy-and-Hold strategies themselves. Are they engaging in a conspiracy against themselves? Does that not seem a little far-fetched?
I think that the best way to describe the situation we face is that it is a conspiracy of ignorance. We have achieved this huge advance which will begin enhancing the life of every person on the planet as soon as we give ourselves permission to talk about it. It takes some courage to do that because there is a group that is intensely hostile to the idea of people learning about the advance. They have seen how excited people get about it when they hear about it and so they cannot stand for people to hear about it. If you want to say that that group (you Goons) are participating in a conspiracy, fine. It would be fair to say that. But you Goons make up about 10 percent of the population of Buy-and-Holders. The vast majority have a desire to learn about the research-based realtiies. They are just afraid of what they have seen coming from the Goon side of the table.
I believe that we will work it out as a nation of people in the days and years following the onsent of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I sure hope so!
We’ll see, you know? I hate it that we have delayed our ability to enjoy all the benefits of the advance for 21 years now. That’s an awful reality. But the good we have seen over the first 21 years of our discussions has been 20 times more good than the bad that we have seen has been bad. I remain confident that we will as a nation of people work it all out in an amazingly positive way down the road a bit.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
“ I think that the best way to describe the situation we face is that it is a conspiracy of ignorance. ”
Everyone is a stupid idiot, other than Rob Bennett.
Thousands have expressed a desire to be able to learn about the research, Anonymous. They’re not stupid idiots if they possess a desire to learn.
And please recall that I was a Buy-and-Holders once upon a time. I don’t think that that made me a stupid idiot. I was a Buy-and-Holder because I had heard that Buy-and-Holders believed in using the peer-reviewed research as guidance on how to invest. I think the Buy-and-Holders got that one right. So I don’t think it made me a stupid idiot that I once thought it was a sound strategy.
Rob
I guess you just want mindless robots that will just agree with you.
I wouldn’t learn anythiing from interactions with mindless robots
There are millions who believe in Buy-and-Hold. They should all be posting their honest throughts at every discussion board. And there are millions who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research (10 percent of the population of investors is millions of people). They also should be posting their honest throughs at every site. It is through the interactions of the believers in the two schools of academic thought on how stock investing works that as a nation of people we find our way to the truth over time. For so long as the views of those in one of the two schools are suppressed we delay our progress toward the place where deep in our hearts we all want to be.
My sincere take.
Rob