Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
There are millions of smart and good people who believe that Buy-and-Hold is a sound strategy. I do not agree with them. But I very much believe that they should be permitted and encouraged to participate in all discussions. They have important things to contribute and we all need to hear what they have to say.
I believe that the contributions of Valuation-Informed Indexers are also valuable and that they too should be permitted and encouraged to participate in all discussions.
That’s where I’m coming from re this one, Observer.
Rob
People will follow and take advice from those that have been successful. They want to know how these people have become successful and then they will try to duplicate those efforts in order to get similar results. What have you done that people would want to copy? Why would anyone desire your outcome and then follow your steps?
I believe in going by peer-reviewed research rather than temporary perceptions of success. Irrational exuberance creates temporary success. It looks good for a time but it doesn’t last. The peer-reviewed research tells you the real story, what really works in the long-term. Irrational exuberance/temporary success hurts you in the end. It deceives you as to where you really stand, making effectice financial planning impossible.
Rob
You are going by your opinions and not the actual research.
Why do you think Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize?
Rob
Shiller said that you should not time the market with CAPE. I have never seen him say anything that he was wrong and that people should time the market. He obviously seen your comments on the internet and has never spoken out as to agreeing with you.
Shiller has advocated market timing in a very public and very formal way. He issued a paper in 1996 saying that he believed that, because of the high CAPE value of the day, investors who failed to lower their stock allocation would come to regret not doing so within 10 years. If that’s not market timing, I don’t understand what market timing is.
Then obvious thing to do to resolve this matter is to invite Shiller to the Bogleheads Forum and have both Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers ask him to describe in detail his views on market timing. I have been proposing this for years now. You have never taken me up on the suggestion, for obvious reasons.
Rob
Shiller has already said that you shouldn’t time the market. I gave you a link, but you won’t post it. Shiller is welcome at the Bogleheads forum. You are not. Funny that you say that you are banned about your opinions on market timing. If what you said was true about Shiller, wouldn’t he be banned? You make some comments like this that are inconsistent. You need to keep a notebook on your lies because you have trouble keeping them straight.
If you invite Shiller to the Bogleheads Forum and assure him that there will be no acts of intimidation, I am highly confident that he will say that the safe withdrawal rate is not always the same number and that market timing/price discipline is always 100 percent required for every investor. I’ve been recommending that you do that for many years now.
Rob
Shiller has already addressed market timing. You don’t like the answer. The only one banned is you. Shiller is welcome any time. You make up stories about criminal acts, yet you can’t back it up with any links showing the criminal acts. Even your ex-wife grew tired of your lies and decided to finally kick you to the curb.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.
Rob
Rob,
You have claimed that your marketing timing scheme will outperform the market (buy and hold). If that was the case, why didn’t your original $400K nest egg grow into a multi-million dollar retirement nest egg and, instead, is now $0? When you were off track in your 2005 update, you said you were still confident your would not only catch up, but also surpass the market in the coming years and that never happened and now your are broke. Why aren’t you sitting on millions with your timing scheme? What did you do wrong? Did the goons hack your account? Did your ex-wife mismanage it?
A market in which investors are permitted to inform themselves of what the peer-reviewed reseach says is obviously going to outperform a market in which investors are stuck going with an understanding of how stock investing works that was developed in the 1960s, long before Robert Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns and that therefore there is zero chance that investors who fail to adjust their stock allocation to reflect new valuation levels could ever maintain the same risk profile over time. New knowledge enhances life for all of us, in the investment advice field just as in every other field of human endeavor. We should all be grateful that we live in a better world than the one in which the Buy-and-Hold strategy was developed and that we all get to live better and fuller and richer and freer lives than what we imagined was possible back in the Buy-and-Hold Era.
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
You said that you now how the market works, so your timing scheme should have worked. Now you say the market isn’t working like you want it to work and that you were expecting everyone to just fall in line with how you want them to buy stock and since they didn’t fall in line with how you demanded, then they are to blame.
Today’s CAPE value is 31. Is that how you think the market should work?
My view is that we should all be working together to pull that CAPE value down to a more reasonable level. There should not be any abusiveness or intimidation. I would like to see cooperation and celebration (when we are succedssful in pulling the CAPE value down). I believe that the more outspoken we all are in pointing out the dangers of Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick investment strategies, the fewer investors there will be following those strategies.
I compare the situation with what we have with smoking. There was a day when there were no laws requring that cancer warnings be placed on packages of cigarettes. A greater percentage of the population smoked in those days.The cancer warnings worked. I think that warnings about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold would work in the same way. I think they need to be ever-present so that we don’t fall back into bad habits of generating more and more irrational exuberance, I would like to see warnings every day at every site. I am not able to imagine any possible downside.
Does that help?
Rob
It is all about YOU and what YOU want. Facts don’t matter to you. You think you can make up pretend stories and through out false accusations at people. This is why YOU are broke.
Okay, if you want it to be all about YOU, here is what YOU have to live with as a result of your actions:
YOU are broke. YOU are divorced. YOU lost your home. YOU are banned.
It is all about YOU and what YOU want. Facts don’t matter to you. You think you can make up pretend stories and through out false accusations at people. This is why YOU are broke.
Okay, if you want it to be all about YOU, here is what YOU have to live with as a result of your actions:
YOU are broke. YOU are divorced. YOU lost your home. YOU are banned.
It was ME who said that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. For 21 years now, it has been about ME saying that.
But there’s another way of looking at it. You could say that it’s been about Greaney failing to correct the error. You could say that it’s been about Greaney claimed that a 4 percent withdrawal is always safe. That part wasn’t me.
Rob
How did Greaney make you quit your job? How did Greaney force you to sell your stocks? How did Greaney force your wife to divorce you? How did Greaney make you lose you house?
His general badness.
Rob