Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
It you add up all the viewers from each of those formats, it would easily be in the millions. Even taking a more conservative number, it would still be in the hundreds of thousands and not just a handful of people. Certainly with that large of a number, you can most often find a small percentage of people that will become a follower/believer in almost all cases. Yet you don’t even have one single person that is willing to support you, despite you spending 20 years of your life creating an enormous footprint on the internet. You clearly haven’t had an issue of getting your message out there. It is simply a fact that you just don’t have people willing to support the message as you haven’t changed minds. Thus, it is not a message exposure issue. It is an acceptance (lack thereof) issue.
I’ve had 10 percent of the population of investors show intense interest in my ideas about stock investing at every discussion board at which I have posted. That’s been so going back to the first day. If the interest in Valuation-Informed Indexing were not super strong, you Goons would never have sought a ban on honest posting at even a single site. You see the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research as a huge threat to Buy-and-Hold because the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research IS a big threat to Buy-and-Hold. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the superior strategy. And it’s not even a remotely close call.
My sincere take.
Rob
“ You see the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research as a huge threat to Buy-and-Hold because the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research IS a big threat to Buy-and-Hold. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the superior strategy. And it’s not even a remotely close call.”
Do you really read and understand what you post? You act like a dictator that tells us what constitutes the last 42 years of research (which is really your opinion of what one guy said). You declare that your strategy is superior. Everyone needs to just zip it and fall it line. This yet another reason why you are banned. You don’t want a discussion. You are not open to what anyone else says. Look at how well that worked in your marriage (you are divorced). Look at your finances (you are broke).
I strongly believe that Valuation-Informed Indexing is far superior to Buy-and-Hold. That part is so.
I don’t even a tiny bit want Buy-and-Holders to “zip it.” The reality is entirely to the contrary. I do want discussion. I do not want to see acts of intimidation, I want to see civil and reasoned back-and-forth debate that everyone can learn from.
Today’s CAPE is 30. I think that people all across the United States should be working together to get the CAPE down to 17. I think we should be encouraging market timing to make that happen. The Buy-and-Holders act shocked when anyone suggests ways to encourage market timing. That’s the problem. If market timing was regularly discussed in positive ways, no one would be surprised to see it encouraged. We have this ban on honest posting re the peer-reviewed research in place and no one knows why. So it always comes as a shock when someone urges more market timing.
Once the taboo on honest research-based posting has been lifted, it will become commonplace for people to hear advocacy of market timing. It won’t be a big deal any more and our discussions will be normalized. At that point, there won’t be a need to mention it that often because the market timing option will always be in people’s minds. We won’t need Rob Bennett to observe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment because it will be the first thing that everyone will look for when they hear about a retirement study.
If someone wants to say that they don’t believe that Shiller’s research is legitimate or whatever, I’m fine with that. I think that’s healthy. I think that’s good. I think that our problem is that the Buy-and-Holders have not been able to find any flaws in Shiller’s research. So they can’t make an effectve case that it is not legitimate research. The only thing that they can think of to do (other than just to acknowledge that Buy-and-Hold has been discredited, which would be the best course of action, in my assessment) is to suppress discussion of the how-to implications of Shiller’s research. That’s the thing that I object to. What a dictator!
I don’t see mysself as a dictator. I see it as dictator-like behavior to continue to suppress discussion of the how-to implications of Shiller’s research even after thousands of our fellow community members (including a number of big-name experts) have expressed a desire that honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research be permitted at every site. You’re being a dictator by calling me a dictator. That sort of thing discourages people from saying that they agree that market timing is absolutely imperative. People self-censor when they hear things like that.
The Buy-and-Holders should encourage challenges to their thinking. If the strategy is a good one, it will prevail in civil and reasoned debate. I don’t believe that the strategy is a good one. I think it is dangerous. I think the idea that market timing is not alwys 100 percent required for every investor was a mistake that never would have been advanced in the first place had Shiller’s research been published at an earlier time in history.
I think that the entire problem is that the Buy-and-Holders have been acting like dictators for 42 years now. The support for Buy-and-Hold is institutional (the experts in this field don’t want to acknowledge their mistake) rather than intellectual. Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research blew up the intellectual case for Buy-and-Hold. Now it’s just a case of enough of us working up the courage to say that publicly so that we can all move on to the far superior strategy.
That’s where I’m coming from re this one, Anonymous.
Rob
“ I don’t even a tiny bit want Buy-and-Holders to “zip it.”
Sure you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t delete the vast majority of posts.
Your posts do show you as a dictator. You declare that your opinion of one guys study is 42 years of peer review research. You put the label on there for a reason. That means that all the other research/work by everyone else is not valid, in your opinion. In fact, Wade Pfau looked at market timing since the time of Shiller’s paper and found out that it didn’t work, so think about the harm that would have been caused by anyone retiring right now in their 60’s. They would have come out worse. There is no disputing that as we can all look at the market returns since that time.
If the only stretch of time that ever existed was 1996 through 2023, I would agree that market timing doesn’t work. But that’s NOT the only stretch of time that ever existed. We have records of stock price changes going back to 1970. Everyone who has ever looked at all the data has conclued that market timing works. I believe that the data tells the story. Market timing always works and market timing is always required.
If that’s so, then we are likely going to see another Buy-and-Hold Crisis within the next year or two or three. A 100 percent optional Buy-and-Hold Crisis. If we had been encouraging people to engage in market timing all along, the CAPE value would not be where it is today and we wouldn’t have the threat of another Buy-and-Hold Crisis hanging over our heads. The CAPE value would be where it should be. It’s our job to keep it in a good place with market timing.
All of your comments suggest that you think that today’s CAPE value is a good thing. You brag all the time about the size of your portffolio, which suggests that you think the numbers on your portfolio statement reflect reality even though they are not adjusted for today’s insane valuation levels. The reason why market timing has not worked for the past 27 years is scary — we have as a nation of people permitted stock prices to remain at crazy high levels for a longer time during this bull market than we did at any earlier time in U.S. history! I feel that you see that as a good thing. I see it as a very, very bad thing.
I would like to live in a world in which market timing is always practiced by all stock investors and in which the CAPE value never rises much above 17. A world in which there are no bull markets or bear markets or Buy-and-Hold Crisis. A world in which the return on stocks is something close to 6.5 percent real every year. A world of great returns but with none of the dangerous insanity that has become so common during the Buy-and-Hold Era.
That’s where I’m coming from re this one, Anonymous.
Rob
“ If the only stretch of time that ever existed was 1996 through 2023, I would agree that market timing doesn’t work”
And there it is. It didn’t work. Anyone retiring today would have failed. Meanwhile, buy and hold has always worked.
Okay, Anonymous.
Please take good care.
Rob
Someone who retired today would be making a mistake to sell all of his stocks. So he would still be hurt by the price crash built into today’s crazy price (the product of Buy-and-Hold thinking).
Rob
Every market timer following your advice would have already had a wrecked retirement right now and there is no fixing that.
If you truly believed that, you would want to see every discussion board and blog opened to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research because it would show the superiroity of Buy-and-Hold.
Rob
The boards are already open to all other that, but our definition of honest is that posts are based on truth and facts.
I believe that posts rooted in a belief that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research should be permitted.
That’s where I’m coming from re this one.
Rob
Your opinion of Shillers work is not research.
Okay, Anonymous.
Rob