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 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
You are broke and divorced. Your predictions failed. Nothing has worked for you. Until you take responsibility for our actions and admit you are wrong, no one is interested in hearing what you have to say as it is all a bunch of b.s. It is like the bottom ranked NFL team expecting that they should be in the Super Bowl.
Watch “Moneyball.” That’s the story. People who have gained a measure of fame and fortune and influence through their association with an old idea don’t want to make way for the new idea. But time only moves in one direction — forward.
My sincere take.
And my best wishes to you.
Rob
I watched the movie. I missed the part where being broke and divorced was a success.
You didn’t watch very closely:
https://www.google.com/search?q=moneyball+clips+youtube&rlz=1CAKDZI_enUS1001US1001&oq=moneyball+clips&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i512j0i22i30l2j0i390i650l5.10073j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:8350fd41,vid:3MjxoaynCmk,st:0
The cool part is that I get to be Brad Pitt!
Rob
We all watched. They are not broke and divorced and they are not pushing hocomania. Notice that they all have jobs as well.
All of the Goons watched and they all agree with the official Goon interpretation. That settles it!
Rob
Which one of those people don’t have a job? Which one’s are broke?
There were regular suggestions that the Brad Pitt character would soon be out of a job, that he was unemployable because he was going with the new exciting, idea rather than sticking with the old worn-out one. Then, when things flipped, he was offered the biggest contract anyone in his field had ever been offered. That’s the way it works. New ideas are worthless until people give up on the old ideas and the new ideas come to be perceived as the only ideas worth having.
Buy-and-Hold is the past, Valuation-Informed Indedxing is the future. That’s the point. If you read history, you would expect Buy-and-Holders to hate Valuation-Informed Indexing. Valuation-Informed Indexing is so much superior to Buy-and-Hold that Buy-and-Hold cannot possibly keep up. Buy-and-Hold claims to be research-based but Valuation-Informed Indexing really is. Buy-and-Hold is waiting to expire while Valuation-Informed Indexing is in the process of being born.
None of the put-downs from Buy-and-Holders mean a thing except to show that Buy-and-Hold is in a desperate place. What matters is what the research says. There was a time when the Buy-and-Holders were in favor of looking at the research. They were right the first time!
Rob
The Brad Pitt character had a job. Even he lost his job, he would then go get another job. His character was successful, you are not. You are nothing like his character. You don’t have one single thing in common with that character.
There were numerous references in the movie to how he was an idiot who was going to lose his job. It was an important theme. The guys who believed in the pre-research stuff hated him as much as you Goons hate me. Research was as much of a threat to them as it is to you.
I think that the research-based strategy will prevail in the end. But we’ll see, you know?
Rob
So you can’t name even one character that was unemployed and broke.
You win, Anonymous. I guess the Greaney study really did contain a valuation adjustment after all.
My bad!
Rob
My Tesla still does not have a microwave oven.
You gotta suffer to sing the blues.
Rob
Do you think your wife and kids enjoyed suffering because of you?
My ex certainly did not. That one is easy.
My older boy told me that he never wished that he had a different dad. He was not even a tiny bit happy about the divorce. But he believes that I am right about stock investing and he admires me for having stood up for what is right. He just would like to see his mother and his father back together.
The younger boy isn’t too emotionally invested in it. He loves his mom and his dad and his brother but he lives his own life and he is happy. It’s not a super biggie for him.
No one enjoys suffering. But say that you were a soldier and you were sent on a mission that put your life at risk. Would you say “I won’t go because it will hurt my family if I get killed?” Sometimes there are bigger things at stake than one’s own family. There are millions and millions of people who will get hurt in the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I think I have a responsibility to do what I can. I can’t just keep my mouth shut given the amount of human misery that we are talking about. I think we all should be doing what we can.
I love my family. But I also love my country, you know? I don’t like having to choose between the two. But we are all dealt the cards that we are dealt. I am happy to praise the Buy-and-Holders to the sky if that would help. The only thing that I am not willing to do is to say that I believe that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment. You Goons are not willing to accept anything less than that. So here we are.
Rob
Oh, I forgot. You ex-wife worked 6 jobs so that the family didn’t have to suffer.
She didn’t work any jobs outside the house until the divorce. She was a stay-at-home mom and homeschooled our two boys.
Rob
She says otherwise. You might want to get stories straight.
We’re divorced and she can say what she wants. Why do I suspect that it may be you Goons who are misreporting things?
If you Goons had not engaged in crininal behavior to suppress the discussion of the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field, I obviously would have brought in hundreds of millions for leading the way from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing and every last person in the United States would be living a better life today. Why do I have a funny feeling that she would have been fine with that?
We need to permit honest posting re the research at every site. It’s not a close call. If we were all thinking clearly, there would be zero controverrsy re that one. I believe that we will achieve the advance in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I sure hope so.
My best wishes.
Rob
You seem to have all this time to watch movies, read books, watch sports and post on the internet, yet you can’t even work 1 job. Meanwhile, your ex-wife has to work 6 jobs. You should be ashamed.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that you should be ashamed that you haven’t done more to persuade Greaney to correct the error in his retirement study. That’s the one that matters. That’s the one that will cause damge to millions of lives in the event that the stock market continue to perform in the future somewhat as it always has in the past.
That’s the one that I am focused on. Once we have corrected the Greaney study, there’s nothing to stop us from opening every site to honest posting re the research. We will have thousands and thousands of people helping us to develop the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept. Millions of people will be living better and freer and richer and happier lives on the other side. I can live with that.
Rob
How many people have gone broke with Greaney’s advice. Zero. How many people would go broke if they followed what you did? Everyone. I don’t know of anyone in the investment community that is worse off versus you.
The research says what the research says, Anonymous. I’m a research guy.
If you believed what you are saying here, you would be happy to permit honest posting re the research at every site. You would be confident that your ideas would prevail in civil and reasoned debate.
I think that Greaney’s study did some good. There were people at the Motley Fool board who would have taken withdrawal rates higher than 4 if they had not been exposed to the Greaney study. But I don’t believe that the Greaeny study is the last word in safe-withdrawal-rate analysis. We have learned new things in the past 42 years and we should be telling people what we have learned.
That’s where I’m coming from re this one.
Rob
What you call research is your opinion of what one guy said. You even stated that Shiller doesn’t say what you say.
I am not aware of Shiller ever having put forward the words “The safe withdrawal rate is not the same number at all times.” So he doesn’t say precisely what I say.
That’s true of anyone who has ever said anything. The standard Buy-and-Hold allocation is 60 percent stocks 30 percent bonds, 10 percent Treasuries. I have heard many Buy-and-Holders say that they go with different allocations. Some go with 70 percent stocks. With some it is 80 percent. Greaney said that he considers 89 percent stocks to be “optimal.” I have never heard anyone say that someone who does not use the standard allocation of 60 percent stocks is not a Buy-and-Holder.
There’s room for individual interpretation in all these matters. It’s through people expressing their individual interpretations that as a community of people we learn together over time. I would like to hear whether Shiller believes that the safe withdrawal rate is a number that changes with changes in valuations. I am confident that he would agree with me on that one. But I would like to hear him say that. I think that we should invite him to the Bogleheads Forum and have people from both sides of the table ask him questions and find out precisely what he thinks on all sorts of questions. I think that would benefit every last one of us. It pains me to think that 21 years have passed and we have not done that yet.
I see the publication of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research as the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. But the publication of it by itself does absolutely nothing. We are today at a CAPE value close to the one that caused the Great Depression. So what good has Shiller’s research really done? If the purpose was to reduce irrational exuberance (I believe that was indeed the purpose), Shiller’s research has failed to achieve its purpose. But I believe that, if we discussed Shiller’s research at every site, that would definitely help us to rein in irrational exuberance. People would engage in market timing when prices got too high and the diminished demand for stocks would bring prices down.
There’s not one of us who knows everything there is to know about stock investing works. Not me, not Shiller, not you, not anyone. We all should be sharing our thoughts. There never should be any intimidation tactics employed to suppress people from sharing their sincere thoughts. That sort of thing holds back the learning process and hurts us all. So I oppose that sort of thing.
That’s where I’m coming from re this matter. I want to feel free to state my honest views when I appear at a discussion board and I want everyone else to feel free to do that as well. I believe that any board that permits intimidation tactics to be employed to suppress people from stating their honest views is a fraudulent enterprise. When people do not feel free to say what they believe, you cannot trust discussions that are held to lead to a good place.
Bogle was widely criticized at one time for advocating indexing (there was a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal saying that indexing is “unAmerican”). I am glad that he stuck to his guns and said what he believed. I learned from that. I believe that lots of others did too. That’s how advances in societies of people are achieved.
I believe that the safe withdrawal rate CHANGES with changes in valuations. I believe that I should be permitted to say that at every site on the internet, without a single exception. And I believe that, if we were all thinking clearly, there would be a universal consensus that it would be a good idea to put that question to Shiller (and lots and lots of others) and see what he thinks about it. There’s a lot of learning to be had by talking about these matters openly and honestly and widely and in detail.
Rob
I am not aware that Shiller said Greaney made an error. In fact, no one but you makes that claim.
Shiller showed that it is an error not to take valuations into consideration when making any assessment about stock investing. Greaney failed to take valuations into consideration when calculating the safe withdrawal rate. If you believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research (I do), then Greaney made an error.
In a world in which valuations affect long-term returns, it is a logical impossibility that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all valuation levels.
Rob
As I said, no one but you has said that Greaney made an error and that includes Shiller.
Lots of people said it. Wade Pfau studied the matter in great depth and concluded that the Greaney study is “dangerous.” John Walter Russell devoted eight years of his life to research on Valuation-Informed Indexing because he was horrified by what he saw people do to block others from learning about the error in the Greaney study. William Bernstein said in his book that the safe withdrawal rate at the top of the bubble was 2 percent, which is a very different number than the number that Greaney advanced in his study. And of course the behavior of you Goons tells any reasonable person that you don’t believe that Greaney included a valuation adjustment in his study anymore than I do.
I do wish you all good things, in any event.
Rob
Give a link to Wade Saying Greaney made an error. JWR is no longer with us and was merely your parrot.
I wish you all good things, Anonymus.
Please take good care.
Rob