Set forth below is the text of a comment that I posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
It is not just me. It is the everyone else. Stop asking all of us to do things for you. We don’t need or want to give you unfettered access to our websites. Stop harassing us with your threats. Get a job and stop leaching off of others.
It’s only the Goons (who make up 10 percent of the populations of the board communities) who have a problem with the idea of permitting honest posting re the peer-reviewed research at every site. The 90 percent of Normals are fine with it.
It doesn’t make them jump up and down to hear that their portfolios are worth only 50 percent of what they thought they were worth. But they are interested in hearing the other side of the story. They ask a lot of questions and, if they didn’t see any abusive posting follow in the wake of those questions, they would ask a lot more.
The boards were not formed as marketing vehicles for Buy-and-Hold. They were formed to help people learn how to invest effectively.
Valuation-Informed Indexers should have the same access as Buy-and-Holders, nothing more and nothing less. That’s what the published rules of all the sites (and the laws of the United States!) provide for and that is how it should be played.
That’s where I am coming from re this one in any event, Anonymous.
Rob
“ The boards were not formed as marketing vehicles for Buy-and-Hold. ”
The boards were not formed as your marketing vehicle either. The owners can decide for themselves as to what they want on their boards, just as you decide about your website. You block posts. Why can’t others?
It’s dishonest. There was great interest at the Motley Fool board in Valuation-Informed Indexing. Hundreds of people there expressed interest in being able to hear more about it. If you count recommendations of posts as expressions of interest, the number was in the thousands. The publushed rules of the site prohibit the tactics that the Greaney Goons used to suppress discussion of the error in the Greaney retirement study. Someone who just showed up one day and didn’t know the entire history would think that the reason why no one ever pointed out the error in the study was that there was no error, not that peopke had been intimidated by death threats and acts of extortion and so on.
Say that stocks continue to perform in the future somewhat as they always have in the past. In that event, we will be seeing millions of failed retirements as a result of this cover-up. All of the people who suffer losses have claims for damages against the site owners who failed to enforce their publushed rules in a reasonable manner because they weee afraid of what the Greaney Goons would do to them if they enforced the rules in a reasonable manner. It would be better to permit honest discussion of the peer-reviewed research. That’s what we do in every field of human endeavor other than the investment advice field. It works in all the other fields. I am confidence that it would work in the investment advice field as well.
If a site owner feels strongly tjat he does not want to see any discussion of the past 42 years of peer-reviewed research at his site, he should say that in the published rules of the site. That way serious people would know not to trust the information provided at the site. What the sites owned by Buy-and-Holders do is to promote the site as a place for people who believe in using the peer-reviewed research as guidance (Greaney did this all the time) buy ban discussion of the 42 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. That’s fraud, Anonymous.
There’s no problem with the site owner telling people what he personally believes. That’s healthy and good. But all site owners should permit discussion of peer-reviewed research that was awarded a Nobel prize. That’s so obvious that I feel I am insulting the intelligence of people reading by even stating it. OF COURSE honest posting re the research should be permitted! The only reason it isn’t is that the 42-year cover-up is such a horrible thing that the Buy-and-Holders don’t want people to know about it. And the longer the cover-up goes on, the worst it looks. The only way to get to a better place is to open every site to honest discussion re the research.
That’s where I am coming from re this one, in any event.
Rob
So you want to decide what is honest and what fits your definition of peer reviewed research and that other board owners then have to allow what you want on the boards, yet block people from posting things on your board that doesn’t fit your definition.
When the author of peer-reviewed research is awarded a Nobel prize for it, everyone who believes that that research is legitimate should be permitted to discuss it at every site.
That’s where I’m coming from, Anonymous.
Rob
You can try to put lipstick on a pig with how you try to paint a picture, but no one is falling for it. It is you that is banned for your behavior. Shiller and his opinions are not banned.
I’ve asked this question numerous times and have never heard a response. Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize for his work. If his research was so important that he was awarded a Nobel prize, there have to be many far-reaching strategic implications that follow from it. Can you identify several important strategic changes that you have made as a result of Shiller’s amazing research showing that valuations affect long-term returns? How did the understanding of how stock investing works that applied in the days when Buy-and-Hold was being developed change as a result of the publication of Shiller’s amazing research?
Rob