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 still don’t see a single person that told you that you had a good plan and that it worked.
Say that there is a 1 in 100 chance that I was right in saying 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 (those 100 comments indicate that the odds are a lot higher than 1 in 100). If that’s so, then investors should be talking about what I said in my famous post of May 13, 2002, at every site on the internet.
The core job of an investment adviser is to help people plan their retirements. If the Buy-and-Holders got the numbers wildly wrong in their retirement studies, then the issue that I have put on the table is the most important public policy issue before the United States today.
There’s hundreds of millions of dollars in the development and promotion of the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept. It’s impossible to overstate how much leverage there is with this.
I’d say that that’s a pretty darn good plan. And, if you Goons didn’t believe that I was right about the Greaney study, you wouldn’t oppose honest posting so strongly. If you truly believed that the Greaney study contained a valuation adjustment, you would have posted a link to it many years ago. There’s a sense in which every abusive comment that you advance is yet another endosement of the merit of my plan.
Fair enough?
Rob
Say that there is a 1 in a 100 chance that Tesla vehicles do not have a microwave oven. If that is so, everyone should be talking about my famous post of January 15, 2023 on every website in the world.
There’s hundreds of billions of dollars in the development and promotion of microwave ovens in Tesla vehicles. It’s impossible to overstate how much leverage there is with this.
If you didn’t think this mattered, you wouldn’t get so upset when you see someone posting in accord with Shiller’s research findings. You feel as strongly about this as I do.
Maybe stronger. If it’s stronger, then may God have mercy on your soul, you know?
Rob
No one is getting upset. We are just pointing out that you are really bringing up a “nothing burger”. You have been told this thousands of times.
Getting the numbers wrong in a retirement study is not a nothing burger, Anonymous. There were people at the Motley Fool board wbo used the Greaney study to plan their retirement. He should have thanked me for pointing out the error and apologized to the people who he hurt with his study.
And your behavior shows that you are very upset about what Shiller’s research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world. You want to believe that the number on your portfolio statement is real. You talk about it all the time. You think it shows that you are smart. You take pride in it. You find the concept of irrational exuberance upsetting.
I think we need to get this stuff right. Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research revolutionized our understanding of how stock investing works and we need to as a nation of people give ourselves permission to talk about it at every site.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Just think of the severe harm you would have caused to people’s retirement if they had listened to you back in 2002. They would have missed out on HUGE market gains and would have been retirement much later or not at all. You should be embarrassed by how bad you have missed everything.
I have been saying since 2002 that we should permit honest posting by both Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers at every site. Had we done that, we would have had plenty of people making the case for Buy-and-Hold as the irrational exuberance grew even more out of control and did even more damage to even more human lives. A large number of community members would have chosen the Buy-and-Hold path and a large number of community members would have chosen the Valuation-Informed Indexing path.
That’s as it should be. It is not your place to deceive people into following the investment strategy that you favor. You should make your case. That part is good. But you should also permit those who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research to make their case. And then all the people listening in get to decide for themselves what to do with their retirement money.
My sincere take.
Rob
“ It is not your place to deceive people into following the investment strategy that you favor.”
Back at you. When you post on the internet (such as ValueWalk, twitter, etc) do you disclose to people that your retirement plan failed? Do you disclose to people that you are broke? Don’t you think you should be honest with people?
I’m honest. My book opens with a discussion of my divorce. I want people to know why they hear so much about Buy-and-Hold and so little about the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research. Sure, during the transition period from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing, the people who dare to “cross” the Buy-and-Holders by telling people what the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research says are made to pay a financial price for doing so. But that’s temporary and not the thing that is of primary concern to millions of middle-class people. What peoole want to know is what to do with their retirement money. The last 42 years of peer-reviewed research tells them that. There should be no penalties for telling people about what the research says,
My sincere take.
Rob
You don’t have a book out yet. You have never disclosed to readers on Twitter, ValueWalk, etc that your retirement plan failed and that you are broke. That is not being honest. I don’t know of anyone that would ever take financial advice from a broke person.
Okay, Anonymous.
I don’t know of anyone who would ever take financial advice from someone who posted in “defense” of someone who got an important number wrong in a retirement study posted at his web site and then failed to correct the error for 21 years.
The difference is that it will always be viewed as a bad thing to fail to correct an error in a retirement study but people will come to understand in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis that the time-period in which people were penalized for telling people what the peer-reviewed research says was an odd time because the advance achieved in Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research was so huge that it was hard to take in all at once.
I feel better being me. But you do you, you know? I certainly wish you the best of luck with it.
Hang in there, old friend.
Rob
The reason you are cut off from the rest of the world is because of how you have framed things. Your approach is to tell people how your are right and that you are here just to educate people. In your mind, everyone else is wrong and those that don’t agree with you are criminals. Your expectation is that people are to agree with you and to consider you as the expert. Further, you feel that many people agree with you, but they have to lie because they are afraid of your critics, even though they could just be anonymous. You say you are open to discussion, but that isn’t really true. Instead, people need to simply agree with you and let you say whatever you want, even if is their own website.
I view the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field as the expert. I’m just some guy who figured out how to get a comment posted to the internet who has argued for 21 years now that we should be permitting honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research at every site, without a single exception.
I think I am right. But I am fine with other people saying different things and thinking that they are right. That leaves it to all the people listening in to decide for themselves which case is more convincing. The way it should be.
People who advance death threats and acts of extortion are engaging in criminal behavior. We will have to decide as a nation of people in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis what to do about that criminal behavior. My job as a journalist is to tell both sides. The Greaney retirement study was an advance over what came before it. It helped people. But it was not the last word in safe-withdrawal-rate analysis. It does not contain a valuation adjustment. That’s my take.
I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow, Anonymous.
Hang in there.
Rob
“ But I am fine with other people saying different things and thinking that they are right. ”
No, you are not fine with what other people say. You call them names and call them criminal. You ignore their opinions and/or block their posts. You frame your comments as “honest” and by default others must be lying. Your frame your opinions as peer reviewed research. You try and elevate your post by saying it is “famous”, when it is not.
I’m so bad. Why do I have to be so bad?
Rob
“ I’m so bad. Why do I have to be so bad?”
You tell us. Why did you fail to get a job instead of going broke? You clearly knew it was happening for a long time, yet you didn’t lift a finger to get a job. Why did you let things get so bad with your wife? The same solution was just simply get a job. None of us can figure it out and then you ask the question as to why you are so bad. You tell us.
Bruce Springstein nailed it:
“Don’t ask me why I did what I did.
“Sir, there’s just a meanness in this world.”
Rob