Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“ That shows me that there are two schools of academic thought.”
Who are you to determine how many schools there are? You are not an expert in the field, nor do you have any formal training. You are not part of a consortium of thought leaders.
What you believe doesn’t matter one bit.
The reaction we have seen from people who have been exposed to my thinking says a lot.
We have had thousands of our fellow community members express a desire that honest posting re the peer-reviewed reseaech be permitted. That woildn’t happen unless there was something important in what I am saying. It is possible that I do not have everything 100 percent right. That’s a possibility for anyone who offers an opinion on anything. But the fact that thousands have expressed a desire that honest debate be permitted shows that we should as a nation of people permit the debate.
Then there are the people who started out as Buy-and-Holders and became converated to Valuation-Informed Indexing as a result of my words. The Wade Pfau story is an amazing story. This guy told me a numbeer of times that he just couldn’t get over what his research was showing him. He kept asking himself: “Am i making a mistake?” Because he had heard so many times that market timing doesn’t work but his research was showing him that market timing ALwAYS works and is always 100 percent required. We should have permitted Wade to tell us all what he discovered with his research and encouraged him to do more research re Valuation-Informed Indexing.
Then there was John Walter Russell, who thought this was so important that he devoted eight years of his life to researching it without ever receiving one dime of compensation. And then you have Rob Arnott, who said that everything that I say about stock investing checks out (he served as editor of the Financial Analysts Journal for four years) but that he had seen so much absuive stuff directed at him from Buy-and-Holders because he had “crossed” them by telling the research-based truth about stock investing that he couldn’t afford any more controversy in his life.
Then we have you Goons. Death threats ain’t normal. Extortion ain’t normal. Demands for unjustified board bannings aint’s normal. You Goons are in great pain. It’s because you are trying to defend the indefensible. It is a cultural norm in our society to permit breakthrough research to be discussed. If we don’t discuss such research, the breakthroughs serve no good purpose. But you Goons dont want millions of people to learn about the better way to invest in stocks. So you are reduced to abusive and in some cases criminal behavior to keep the history train from moving forward. I think we all should elect to give you a break by opening every site to honest posting.
That’s where I am coming from re this one, Anonymous.
Hang in there. old friend.
Is Greaney an expert in the field? Why is it that he gets to tell people that a 4 percent withdrawal rate is always “100 percent safe” but none of the other non-experts is permitted to ask qustions about the methodology he used in his study? I am a non-expert who sincerely believes that he failed to include a valuation adjustment in the study. I was wrong to not point that out three years sooner than I did. There were people who used that study to structure their retirement plan.
Rob
“ The reaction we have seen from people who have been exposed to my thinking says a lot.”
Yep. It is dead silence. No one is interested. Even your ex-wife didn’t agree with your thinking. That is why she is your ex.
If the reaction had been dead silence, you Goons would never have advanced a single abusive post. It was the strong positive reaction to hearing about the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research that you saw as a threat to the belief that most people have in Buy-and-Hold.
My ex was fine with the investing stuff. I don’t think that she had a strong opinion one way or the other. She did not like it that there was not money coming in for so long a time, that’s all. And it wasn’t that she was money hungry. I think that she viewed it as a moral failing. She has a strong work ethic (as do I). The language that she would use in our arguments was “you don’t work.” I of course have a very different perspective. I believe that the work that I am doing in trying to get every internet site opened to honest posting re the research is the most important work being done in the United States today. But that was her complaint. She thought that I was probably on to something re the investing ideas. But she didn’t care enough about the subject to study it in detail and to find out for sure. It’s not her thing.
It’s not really my thing either. I got pulled into it by circumstances. My attachment to the subject is through my interest in understanding human psychology. It’s an amazing puzzle to me that people have 42 years of research available to them that would permit them to invest with much less risk and to retire many years earlier and they won’t give themselves permission to talk about it because that would require them to acknowledge that there once was a time when they didn’t know everything there is to know about this important subject. That blows my mind. The potential for enhancing millions of human lives just by permitting a discussion is off the charts. So I feel compelled to do what I can to see that that happens as soon as possible. The investing stuff is seconary or even tertiary for me. What mattets to me is the journalism question — permitting people to have the discussions they want to have — and the human psychology question — the incredible ability we humans possess to engage in self deception, even when it does us great financial harm.
Rob
Your ex-wife is right. You don’t work. You did not get pulled into anything. You made the decision to come up with a narrative and that is it. No one has asked you to do anything. Instead, you created your silly stories as a cover for not getting a job.
My coinscience asked me to do something, Anonymous. If I sincerely believed that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contained a valuation adjustment, I would say that that’s what I believe. My sincere belief is that the Greaney study LACKS a valuation adjustment. That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter.
Rob
You quit your job long before your Greaney story. There is no excuse for not financially providing for your wife and family. Nothing wipes out that moral and biblical obligation. You put your ex-wife into a very bad position now and even though you got divorced, that doesn’t remove the obligation from a moral perspective.
Why is it that I always seem to have so much trouble honoring those biblical obligations! I’m just a bad boy!
Please take good care, Anonymous. Hang in there.
Rob
“ Why is it that I always seem to have so much trouble honoring those biblical obligations!”
So, it is a joke to you? You somehow find it funny and decide to be sarcastic? I don’t think your family finds it funny.
Ask your priest………oh, wait, you told him that he is wrong as well.
I Timothy 5:8
“And whoever does not provide for relatives and especially family members has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.“
I do find it comical, Anonymous. I point out an error in a retirement study and that makes me “worse than a nonbeliever.” I’ll have to say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Mary’s super quick!
My best wishes, etc.
Rob
No one but you finds it comical. Mocking the Bible is not comical. Forcing your ex-wife had to take on 6 jobs just to get by is not comical. It is also unfortunate that your boys had to grow up in that kind of environment. I think that if board owners and participants at the various boards knew this background, you would have been kicked off long before it actually happened.
I’m just bad plain and simple! Everybody knows it too. That’s the thing.
Why did that poor woman marry me in the first place, you know? Surely there were signs re how bad I am.
Rob
I guess vows and responsibility go out the window whenever it is more convenient for you. Do you inform people of this when you post “honestly”?
Everyone knows that I’m bad, Anonymous. I see no need to remind them. A guy who would point out the error in the Greaney retirement study, that’s a pretty darn bad guy, you know? It doesn’t get too much badder than that. I mean, come on.
Rob
Keep in mind that you quit your job long before you made up your story about Greaney. Check the timeline.
I quit my job on August 1, 2000. I pointed out the error in the Greaney study on May 13, 2002.
Do you think it would have been better if I had just kept it zipped? Do you understand that there were people at the Motley Fool board who used the study to plan their retirement? Do you get it that I had come to consider some of those people friends?
Rob
You just made my point. You are not unemployed because of your jihad against Greaney, yet you continue to use that as an excuse.
All of the people who suffer failed retirements and get thrown out of work and see their businesses go under in the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will be so pleased to hear that.
Rob
“ All of the people who suffer failed retirements and get thrown out of work and see their businesses go under in the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will be so pleased to hear that.”
Which is another made up story and was not even part of your story when you quit your job.
Um….
Rob
I guess that means Shiller and Pfau should quit their jobs and let their families suffer as well, right?
I strongly believe that Shiller and Pfau and all of the others (they number in the millions — 10 percent of the population of investors is millions of people) should do more than they have done. Each time one of us agrees to silence ourself to appease you Goons, it makes it harder for all of the others who would like to do honest, research-based work in this field. Each time one of us works up the coutage to “cross” you Goons by doing honest work despite your intimidation tactics, it makes it easier for all the others wanting to do the same. The Step Two that Wade was looking for is the decision of all of those who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research insisting that the same laws that apply in every field of human endeavor other than the investing advice field apply in the investment advice field as well.
The other side of the story is that, if Shiller had plainly stated in his book that, given his research findings, mrket timing.price discipline is required for every investor who wants to keep his risk profile constant over time, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to find a publsher for his book and I and all the others who have learned so much about this subject by reading his book would have missed out on that fantastic learning experience. Perhaps if Wade had spoken out in clear terms at an early stage of our investigations, we never would have had that amazing Bennett/Pfau research paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. Wade and Shiller did not play it precisely as I would have liked to see them play it. But the did great, courageous work. I consider both of them heroes to their country for having shown the courage to do that they did do.
I would like to see them do more. But I am of course sympathetic to the situation in which they (and all of us) find themselves in, We all have to do the best we can in difficult circumstances and look forward to the day when not one person will think twice about advancing his or her honest, research-based views about this important subject matter. I think we will get there. We are close. I believe that one more Buy-and-Hold Crisis will push us all over the line and not one of us will ever look back in regret at leaving the Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick stuff behind. I believe that that probably includes most of you Goons. I believe that the horrors that you will see during the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis in the event that the stock market contunues to behave as it has always behaved in the past will cause you to stop and reflect a bit on the position you have taken re these matters.
We’re all in this together, Anonymous. We all need to know how best to invest our retirement money for the long term.
Rob
Rob
“ I strongly believe that Shiller and Pfau and all of the others (they number in the millions — 10 percent of the population of investors is millions of people) should do more than they have done.”
So you expect all these people that have jobs should do more, but you have been unemployed for well over 20 years and you don’t feel that you should have to get a job.
I believe that everyone in the United States should be working together today to get every discussion board and blog opened to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research. The next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will do great harm to all of us if we fail to prevent it. So we should all be doing everything in our power to prevent it. I am just doing myself what I am urging all others to do. It would be hypocritical of me not to do that.
Rob
REAL men take care of their families. You are a child that sits around telling stories. Grow up.
I’m bad through a through, Anonymous. That was established a long time ago. It was established at the moment I advanced a post questioning the accuracy of the numbers in the Greaney retirement study. I mean. come on.
Wishing you all the worst that life has to offer.
Bad Rob