Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Your problem is that you don’t care about what other people think and/or believe. You want people to listen to you, but you don’t listen to anyone else. That part of your behavior issue on the boards that got you kicked off. You clearly didn’t even care about what your wife had to say and now you are divorced.
I care about what other people think and believe.
It doesn’t particularly concern me whether people listen to what I say or not. I believe that all investors should have the OPPORTINITY to hear about the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. I don’t see it as my busienss whether they buy into that message or not. It’s fine with me if they do and it’s fine with me if they don’t. It’s important to me that that message not be prohibited at even a single site. I believe that every investor should be able to hear it and decide for himself or herself how to respond to it. I strongly oppose efforts to suppress discussion of the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research. No one should be able to decide for someone else what he or she should be able to hear. Tune out the message of the research for yourself if you like but permit others to decide for themselves how to invest their retirement money after hearing both sides of the story.
The problem is the 42-year cover-up. If there had never been a Buy-and-Hold, we would all be Valuation-Informed Indexers today. We all want the same things, We all want to know how to invest effectively. Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research shows us how, So it’s all good. The only problem is that we did not always know how the market works and people came up with this idea that market timing might not always be required and promted it. Then, when we discovered that long-term market timing is absolutely essential, they felt that it made them look bad that they had gotten it wrong. So the cover-up began. Now that we are 42 years down the road, it sounds really, really bad to acknowledge the realities.
It’s not going to make things better for anyone to extend the cover-up even longer. So I am 100 percent in favor of permitting honest posting at every site. The problem for the Buy-and-Holders is that there has never been any reason to believe that market timing isn’t always required. That was based on the Efficient Market Theory, which was discredited by Shiller’s research. So the Buy-and-Holders have nothing of substance to offer in suutpport of their position. That’s why we see all this urgliness insteasd. If there were any research supporting the ideas that long-term market timing doesn’t work or isn’t always 100 percent required, the Buy-and-Holders would have advanced it many years ago. There’s just nothing there. So we get all this shouting and nastiness. I believe that we should all just move on to the strategy that would help us all to live better and fuller and richer and freer lives. Call me madcap.
That’s where I’m coming from re this one, Anonymous.
Rob
You have a twitter account; you should weigh in on this interesting thread about Dave Ramsey and SWRs.
https://twitter.com/mbontrager5/status/1722478848573329702
I am not going to weigh in, Evidence. It shows how intensely emotional this subject is.
There was a time when I would have weighed in. I had so many bad experiences that at some point I concluded that we are not going to be able to hold open, honest, research-based discussions until we experience another Buy-and-Hold Crisis and people are able to see with their own eyes the downside of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies.
I did not watch the video. I am aware that Ramsey is out there on stock investing. The Greaney study is a model of prudence and good sense comparied to the Dave Ramsey approach to stock investing, according to my recollection. Good for Greaney, you know? I knew that there was something that I liked about that guy!
Rob
“I had so many bad experiences that at some point I concluded that we are not going to be able to hold open, honest, research-based discussions until we experience another Buy-and-Hold Crisis and people are able to see with their own eyes the downside of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies. ”
So it is your unwillingness to participate that is preventing you from contributing, not you being banned from some investment boards.
No. It is the bannings that show the out-of-control emotion that has brought the CAPE value up to 30.
My job is to open every site to honest posting so that we never see a CAPE value like that again. Having 10 percent Valuation-Informed Indexers is not enough to protect those who want to post honestly from you Goons. I think 20 percent might do it. I think that the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis might bring the number to 20 percent. So that’s when I intend to get involved again.
If we were all thinking clearly, there never would have been a single abusive post, much less any of the criminal stuff, much less any board bannings. Things are what they are. I didn’t create the situation. I have tried to make things better. I have done everything that a reasonable person could do.
I have either been banned or been threatened with banning at every large site at which I have participated. There are some that would have permitted honest posting re the research if it had not been for you Goons. But there have not been any where the site administrator was willing to take effective action against you Goons. Is that my fault?
Rob
So you don’t have an excuse for why you won’t do your “honest” posting on the largest segments on the internet, such as Twitter and Reddit. Got it.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Given your successful marriage and enormous retirement account, I guess you have it all figured out and don’t need any help, right?
My mission is to open every discussion board and blog to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research, without a single exception. The very fact that I see that as important shows that I believe that we all need help, that we learn by talking things over amongst ourselves. That’s why I loved that Motley Fool board, because we did that. That’s what it’s all about, in my assessment.
We’re all in this together, Anonymous. We all want the same things. We all want to become more effective investors over time.
Rob
“ We’re all in this together, Anonymous.”
No, we are not. Our situations couldn’t be much different.
“We all want the same things.”
No one wants your Hocomania.
“We all want to become more effective investors over time.”
You are not successful and you show you do to want to be.
Yeah, yeah.
Rob
How would my comments be disputed? It’s just stating facts
It’s a fact that Greaney included a valuation adjustment in the retirement study posted at his web site.
I think I am beginning to grasp it.
Rob
It’s a fact that Teslas do not have microwave ovens and my observation is of similar nature as your Greaney comment.
Um….
Rob
Well, you do realize that the end goal is for a happy and financially secure retirement, right? Did that happen for you?
It’s a fact that Teslas do not have microwave ovens and my observation is of similar nature as your Greaney comment.
Say that someone said on an internet discussion board that he believed that Teslas should come equipped with microwave ovens. Would we see death threats and acts of extortion and board bannings and all the rest? We would not. All of the people who possessed a confident belief that microwave ovens are not needed in Teslas would just let the guy express his opinion and would be okay with anyone buying into it doing so. No biggie.
We saw a very, very, very. very different reaction to my claim 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. A level of defensiveness never before witnessed in the history of Planet Earth. It is very important to Buy-and-Holders that investors not start thinking through the far-reaching how-to implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research.
Why?
To understand the defensiveness, you need to consider what it means to say that bull markets are the product of irrational exuberance rather than of positive economic developments. If that’s so, then bull markets (times when the CAPE level goes above 17) are acts of self-deception. Bull markets are liar’s markets. If we permit honest posting re the peer-reviewed research, it becomes very difficult to keep the self-deception going. People naturally want to invest in their best interest. Let them know that a regression analysis of the historical stock return data shows that the most likely 10-year annualized return at the top of the bubble was a negative number and they are going to lower their stock allocation when the CAPE level reaches those super scary levels.
This makes bull markets impossible!
If investors begin acting in their self-interest, there will be no more bull markets! Stock prices are self-regulating in a world in which honest posting re the research is permitted. Irrational exuberance cannot get very out of control in a world in which investors are able to talk amongst themselves about how much damage it has been doing to investors’ lives going back to the day the first stock market was opened for business. Shiller showed something important. Hence, the Nobel prize.
You Goons will say: “oh , no, we are not being irrational at all!” And you really do follow Buy-and-Hold strategies. So there is a surface sense in which it could be said that you really believe that. But it is all bravado, not a genuine confidence. Your defensive behavior shows that there is a part of your brain that believes that Shiller’s research findings are really just common sense. OF COURSE narket timing is required at all times and works at all times! How could it be different? Market timing is price discipline. There are thousands and thousands of markets and in every single one price discipline is essential. What possible reason could there be for believing that the stock market is the sole exception to the otherwise universal rule?
I believe that price discipline is every bit as important in the stock market as it is in every other market that ever existed. The difference in the stock market is that in the stock market the people making purchases can fool themselves into thinking that they have experienced “gains” by pusing prices up to crazy, unsustainable levels. So they have an incentive to prohibit rational thought about this subject. Research aids rational thought. So research is the enemy in the eyes of all of those who have come to believe that the irrational exuberance portion of their portfolio is real. So these people hate, hate, hate anyone who brings up Shiller’s amazing research findings on internet discussion boards.
I think that, when you hate me, you are really hating that part of your brain that has held on to what common sense tells you must be so, that price discipline (market timing!) is always a good thing. You want to quiet that portion of your brain and I want to let it have its say. It’s a battle between the Get Rich Quick urge and rationality/research. I believe that ratioanlity will prevail in the end because I believe that human progress is a real thing. But we’ll see, you know?
The reaction of the Buy-and-Holders to open discussion of Shiller’s research findings tells the story. People don’t behave like that unless they feel very threatened. Those who treat irrational exuberance as real always feel threatened because it is impossible to have a quiet coinfidence in something that is inherently irrational. When you place your confidence in something irrational, you have a fear that it is going to be taken away ay any moment.
I believe that the primary purpose of investment advice is to help investors overcome their Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge and be as rational as possible in all decisions they make. Sue me. That’s my sincere belief. I want to take away your irrational exuberance. I think of irrational exuberance as the cancer of the personal finance world. I want to help people learn about the cure for canvcer, which has been available to anyone who follows the peer-reviewed research for 42 years now.
My best wishes, etc.
Rob
Well, you do realize that the end goal is for a happy and financially secure retirement, right? Did that happen for you?
I’ve been presented with two options, Anonymous.
I can sell out my fellow community members because I am afraid of what you Goons will do to me if I “cross” you by posting honestly and know that I am in some fundemental sense a creep and have a hard time going to sleep at night for the rest of my days.
Or I can insist on my right to post honestly and have all the wonderful interactions with good and smart people that follow from doing that, like the 16 months in which Wade Pfau and I worked together on this stuff in which he made clear that the time he spent showing that “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” was the happiest time of his life. And I can be confident in my belief that the good work that I have done and will continue to do will be well-compcnsated once we have elected as a nation of people to have the same laws apply in the investment advice field as spply in every other field of human endeavor.
My divorce is the most painful thing that I have ever had to live through. But I do not regret my decision to choose the latter option. I don’t think that we can continue to have a different set of laws apply in the investment advice field from what applies in every other field. If I say that I believe that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment, I am part of the problem. I want to be part of the solution. So I do what I do.
I believe that the Greaney study LACKS a valuation adjustment. I believe that anyone who is giving thought to using that study to plan a retirement needs to be told that. Not telling somebody that is like not telling someone who is thinking of taking up smokng that smoking causes lung cancer. Not this boy, you know? If people want to smoke or follow Buy-and-Hold strategies, it’s their business. But they should be permitted to hear both sides of the story before making a choice that could destroy their life.
I’m with the American people on this one. I believe that honest posting re the research should be permitted. The intimidation stuff just convinces me all the more that the Greaney study really does not contain a valuation adjustment. There would be no need for the intimidation stuff if the study really contained a valuation adjustment. Greaney would just point us to the page of the study containing a valuation adjustment and put an end to it, no death threats required.
Rob
You were never “presented two option”. You decided you just don’t want to work. Simple as that.
Okay, Anonymous.
I natiurally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.
Hang in there, old friend.
Rob