Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“ You are not the mother of our discussion boards and blogs.”
The collective community has been having to take on the mother role because of your childish behavior. The investment community (that includes the board owners) decide what we talk about and they have spoken. These board owners have this right, just as you block people on this board.
If the site owners truly believed that honest posting re the past 42 years of peer-reviewed research should be banned, they would put language to that effect in their published site rules. They went along with bans only because the abusive behavior of the Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads threatened to destroy their sites. I was there.
I believe that a lot of people are going to see why it is important to pemit honest posting re the peer-reviewed research in the days following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. At that point, I believe that we may be able to persuade one site owner to stand up to you Goons. As people flood to that site as the only place offering sound investment advice, support for the idea of permitting honest posting re the research will spread.
Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, you know? We’ll see.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person in any event.
Rob
The Bogleheads are all over there waiting for you to teach them about how stock investing works. Where are you?
You are being sarcastic. But the sarcasm is misplaced. The point of all of the boards is for each person to teach what they have learned over the years and for each peron to learn from what others have learned, If you go by the published rules of the Bogleheads Forum, that is what the forum is supposed to be about, I would of course be thrilled to participate in discussions there aimed at serving the purpose of the forum.
As you know, there has never been open discussion of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research findings at that forum. In the past, the defenisveness and hostility from a number of community members there re Shiller’s research findings have been off the charts. Others enjoyed discussions of Shiller’s work a good bit, If it ever appears to me that the defensiveness and hostility have dissipated to the point where constructive discussions could take place, I will of course want to help out in any way that I can. I believe that we will see that happen in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
My best wishes to you,
Rob
I am not being sarcastic. Go post there.
I’ll take a pass, Anonymous.
If I ever see an indication that the Goon position re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field has changed, sure, I’ll give it a chance. But there obviously has been no change in the posts that you Goons put to this blog. So it’s more than a little hard to believe that the Goon segment of the Bogleheads Forum community has gone through a big change. You Goons seem to act in concert.
If there comes a time when you come to realize how you benefit from permitting people with different views to express their thoughts, all the good stuff will happen. I believe we will see that day in the days and years following the onset for the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, I hope that we can all become good friends at that time. The research is there for all of us to benefit from. We are all in this together. We all need to know how to invest our retirement money effectively for the long run.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
So you want people to agree with you as a condition. You are really not serious . You just want to keep the story going so that you don’t have to get a job. Your wife knew that and that is why she divorced you.
I want people to agree that the published rules of the various sites and the laws of the United States should be followed as a condition. It’s the only way that the discussions will be constructive and will lead to a good place. The published rules of the sites and the laws of the United States are there for a reason. They serve us well in all fields other than the investment advice field. I believe that they would serve us well in the investment advice field as well.
Rob
The only one not following them is you.
Okay, Anonymous.
Please take good care.
Rob
“ If I ever see an indication that the Goon position re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field has changed, sure, I’ll give it a chance.”
So people you call names have to agree with your opinion as to what one guy said is a requirement for any investment forum. Really?
I sincerely 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. So that’s what I say when the topic of safe withdrawal rates turns up in discussions held on the internet. Does that not make perfect sense?
Rob
I believe that you repeat that line about Greaney as a cover story for not getting a job. Does that not make perfect sense?
Not to me, Anonymous.
I want to be able to live ith myself. There were people at the Motley Fool site who used the Greaney study to plan their retirement. I know this. I was there. I had joked around with those people. I thought of those people as friends.
Rob
Look at the comments section. You don’t have any friends.
You have had to engage in extraordinary measures to separate me from thousands of people who want to be friends with me. The fact that you feel a need to resort to such measures reveals the weakness of the case for the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy.
Buy-and-Hold is what sells. Valuation-informed Indexing (Buy-and-Hold corrected for the error uncovered by Shiller’s research findings) is what works.
Rob
If you had friends and they were scared, they could post anonymously. Your story doesn’t hold water.
Even if you post anonymously about the realities of stock investing, you have still separated yourself from the pack, Anonymous. Irrational exuberance is vulnerable stuff. If people talk about it, the Pretend Money goes “Poof!” People do not want to be separated from the pack. That was put in us by evolution. So even anonymous posting does not solve the problem.
When every site has been opened to honest posting. I think that will solve it. The more that people see others doing it, the more comfortable they are going to feel doing it themselves.
Rob
You said there are “thousands”. How would that be separated from the pack?
The first 21 years of our discussions show that about 10 percent of the population of U.S. stock investors believe that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns (that the stock market is NOT efficient/rational) is legitimate research. That’s MILLIONS of people. But there are ten times as many people who believe that Buy-and-Hold is a legitimate strategy, that market timing/price discipline is not always 100 percent required for every investor (that the stock market IS efficient/rational). So the people who believe this are a small minority. They are not an insignificant minority. Millions of people are a lot of people. But the number is small enough today that the minority feels a need to zip it when it comes to discussions of whether or not market timing.price discipline is always 100 percent required for investors who want to keep their risk profile stable over time.
There are other issues where we permit people who hold beliefs held by only 10 percent of the population to express those beliefs openly. But the belief that market timing/price discipline is always 100 percent required for all stock investors is a belief that causes a particularly great amount of anguish among the majroity of people who hold the majority belief, that market timing is not required, that market timing doesn’t work, that the number on their portfolio statement provides an accuratre and real and lasting indication of the value of their stock holdings. People use their stock holdings to finance their future lives. It affects them in hundreds of ways, one of those ways being that it affects whether they have saved enough to retire or not.
So it is extremely upsetting to them to learn that there is 42 years of peer-reviewed research showing that the number on their portfolio statement (a number that according to current practice is NOT adjusted for the amount of irrational exuberance present in the stock price at the time that portfolio statement is developed) is wildly off the mark. So the 90 percent for 42 years has suppressed discussion of the far-reaching how-to implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research findings. A social taboo has developed prohibiting discussions of these matters. I violated that social taboo when I questioned whether we should be considering the effect of valuations when calculating the safe withdrawal rate. Hence the many board bannings.
I believe that as a nation of people we need to do away with the taboo on honest discussion re these matters. Today’s CAPE value is 30. That’s scary. The stock market is priced today for an ocean of human misery to be delivered in the next year or two or three in the event that stocks continue to perform in the future somewhat as they have always performed in the past. Shiller’s research is powerful, amazing research. But it has not achieved results in the practical realm. If we took Shiller’s research seriously, we never again could as a nation of people permit the CAPE value to reach such a dangerous level. We have elected as a nation of people to ignore the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research and to continue to invest in ways that cause periodic (about once every 40 years) economic collapses.
I believe that we should as a nation of people give ourselves permission to openly discuss what the research shows us all about how stock investing works in the real world at every discusion board and blog on the internet, without a single exception. You Goons would prefer that Greaney not need to correct the error he made in his retirement study (it lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins). Thus, you would like to see the taboo on honest discussion of Shiller’s research to continue and we are working at cross purposes. That’s the conflict. That’s been the conflict going back to the morning of May 13, 2002. You refuse to permit honest posting and I refuse to say that I believe that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment (and of course I believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research contains a valuation adjustment).
Anyone who says that market timing/price discipline is required when buying stocks separates himself from the pack by doing so. I believe that, to advance in our understanding of how stock investing works beyond what it was in 1980, we need as a nation of people to overturn the taboo and give ourselves permission to explore the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s amazing research. I have separated myself from the pack. I have violated the taboo. Hence, all of the horrible consequences that have been visited on me, which you Goons make reference to and celebrate in nearly every post that you advance. I feel that to capitulate to your demands that I keep it zipped re the error in the Greaney study would just make matters worse. I feel that everyone, Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers alike, should be posting honestly. So I have elected not to capitulate. I continue to post honestly and to say that I believe that the Greaney study LACKS a valuation adjustment, intimidation tactics be darned.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
I believe you waste a lot of time making the same posts on this board as an excuse/cover story for not getting a job. Repeating the same posts for 2+ decades is not an accomplishment. It is just hocomania.
Whatever, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you all good things.
Rob
“ The stock market is priced today for an ocean of human misery to be delivered in the next year or two or three in the event that stocks continue to perform in the future somewhat as they have always performed in the past. ”
You have made predictions like that many times in the past and you were always wrong. Instead, you went broke and provided even more proof that your timing scheme doesn’t work.
Are you able to identify any strategic change that was necessitated by the publication of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. I say that it requires market timing/price discipline for every investor. You obviously do not share that belief. Can you say what strategic change IS required by Shiller’s research finding? Does it have any practical significance whatsoever?
Rob
I look at outcomes. You are busy trying to deflect your failures through word salad.
Okay, Anonymous.
Research looks at historical outcomes. The difference is that research looks at all outcomes, not just those in the present day or the recent past.
Rob
And outcomes show that buy and hold has always worked and market timing has never worked. You should know better than others as you went broke from timing.
Are you able to identify any strategic change that follows from Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning finding that valuations affect long-term returns?
The Nobel prize makes sense if he showed that market timing is always 100 percent required for all investors. That’s a big change from the belief that was widely held in the days when the Buy-and-Hold strategy was being developed. But, if there is no strategic change that follows from Shiller’s research, I have a hard time understanding why he was awarded a Nobel prize.
Rob