Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
And outcomes show that buy and hold has always worked and market timing has never worked. You should know better than others as you went broke from timing.
Are you able to identify any strategic change that follows from Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning finding that valuations affect long-term returns?
The Nobel prize makes sense if he showed that market timing is always 100 percent required for all investors. That’s a big change from the belief that was widely held in the days when the Buy-and-Hold strategy was being developed. But, if there is no strategic change that follows from Shiller’s research, I have a hard time understanding why he was awarded a Nobel prize.
Rob
Setting aside the last 20+ years, what single accomplishment have you achieved in the last 5 years?
I had a huge accomplishment in early 2019, when I finished my article “Buy-and-Hold is Dangerous.” Finishing that article told me that I now possessed a sure enough grasp of what happened with Buy-and-Hold to be able to write a book about it.
I haven’t finsihed the book. But I am getting closer. My new target date is July 1, 2024. Each time I finish another chapter, that’s another accomplishment. And there are a lot of finished chapters! So making continued progress on the book is a regular thrill.
We need a book that tells people how stock investing works. The title of the book is “Investing for Humans.” That’s a bold title. Has there never before been a book showing humans how to invest in stocks? The incredible reality is thaat there has not ever been one. Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that market timing is 100 percent required was not published until 1981. So, before that, we just didn’t know. And since 1981, we have as a nation of people been too afraid of upsetting the Buy-and-Holders to explore the far-reaching how-to implications of Shiller’s amazing research. When I saw Buy-and-Holders endorsing death threats to suppress discussion of the error in the Greaney retirement study, I concluded that someone needed to do something about this exceedingly strange situation and that the universe had selected me for the job. So I got down to business. And here I am!
Anything that move the book project along is a major achievement. And there have been a lot of those over the past five years and the past 20 years. My strong inclination is to just keep doing what works.
My best wishes, etc.
Rob
That’s it? Really?
That’s it, Anonymous.
You make light of it because you are a Goon and that’s the Goon thing to do. I am as far on the other side of the spectrum of possibilites that a person could be. I believe that the question of when we will decide as a nation of people to open every internet site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is the most important public policy question before our nation today. The work that I have done has been very, very difficult. But I also believe that it is very, very important. However difficult it is, I need to keep at it until it pays off for each and every one of us.
Say that each time someone says “there might be an alternate universe where market timing is not 100 percent required for every investor, you never know” $10,000 worth of wealth is destroyed. And say that each time someone says “it would make sense to permit honest posting re the peer-reviewed research at every site” $10,000 of wealth is created. Consider how many times that first statement has been made and you can see why we are likely to lose trillions and trillions in the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. And consider how many times the latter statement will be made once every site has been opened to honest posting and you can see why we are likely to see the greatest surge of economic growth in our nation’s history once we make it together to the other side of The Big Black Mountain erected by our Wall Street Con Men friends.
We all need access to honest, accurate, research-based investment advice. We don’t need that quite as badly as we need oxygen or water. But we need it badly. Our lives will be better in countless ways once we come to love ourselves enough to permit ourselves to discuss the far-reaching how-to implications of Shiller’s amazing research findings at every internet site.
That’s my sincere take re these matters, in any event.
Rob
I look at outcomes Rob. You are broke and haven’t done anything of value.
I think there was great value in pointing out the error in the Greaney retirement study. People use retirement studies to plan retirements. There were people at the Motley Fool board who thought that the Greaney study was legitimate research. I know this. I was there.
Rob
Which expert has publicly stated that Greaney made an error.
Answer:No one.
Wade Pfau said that the Greaney study is “dangerous.”
Yes, I know that you Goons threatened to send defamatory emails to his employer in an effort to get him fired and he agreed to stop saying it so that he wouldn’t lose his job. That’s extortion. That’s a felony. That means prison time.
If you have to commit felonies to keep people from learning about the error made in a study, it’s not a good study. That’s where I’m coming from re this one.
Rob
Provide a link to Pfau’s comments. I only see where he said you are causing him harm.
Anyone who cares to know whether the study contains a valuation adjustment can check for himself. Wade said it but you don’t need to hear Wade day it to know that it is so. Wade hadn’t said it yet on the morning of May 13, 2002, when I worked up the courage to say it.
I would like us to get to a point where we can hear everyone saying it all the time. That’s what this is all about. I should’t have held back saying it for the three years in which I knew it but didn’t say it. And one one else should ever hesitate to say it. Getting the numbers right in retirement studies is important.
Rob
Do you can’t provide a link to anyone else but you saying Greaney made an error. Got it.
And you can’t provide a link to the page in the study containing the valuation adjustment.
Rob
Why should I or anyone provide a link to what is not needed? You have been told this thousands of times, but you ignore it. Yet another reason why you are banned and broke.
Okay, Anonymous.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
“I had a huge accomplishment in early 2019, when I finished my article “Buy-and-Hold is Dangerous.” ”
Is that article available anywhere?
Can you provide a link?
It’s not available anywhere. If we had opened every site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research on the afternoon of May 13, 2002, as I proposed at the time, it would be available everywhere and we would all be living better and freer and fuller and richer lives today.
Learning is a plus. Blocking learning is a negative. That’s my sincere take, in any event.
I believe that everyone will get to see the article in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I’m proud of myself for having the courage to write it. I believe that we findamentally a good people and that there will come a day when everyone who has an interest in reading it will be able to do so.
If the only way that the people who advocate Buy-and-Hold believe that they can maintain confidence in it is to deny people access to challenges to it, Buy-and-Hold is a gravely flawed strategy. That’s my sincere belief. I was once a believer but I never would have been if I knew then what I know now. I was a Buy-and-Holder because I liked it that it was described as a research-based strategy! I’ve learned in the days since that Buy-and-Hold is the opposite of what I was looking for!
Valuation-Informed Indexing is the first true research-based strategy.
Rob
“Blocking learning is a negative.”
So why are you blocking access to this article? You could publish it on this site.
There is a movie (“The Insider”) about the research scientist who told the truth about how the tobacco companies were lying in their congressional testimony about how smoking cigarettes causes cancer. All of the same things that have happened to me happened to him. He was made an outcast, he suffered financially, he lost his marriage, he was threatened, etc. Eventually he got the word out and changes were made in our laws to rein in the power of the tobacco companies to do harm to millions of people as a means of turning an easy buck and we got the rate of cigarette addiction down a good bit. People were afraid to tell the story of how cigarettes cause cancer in that day just as they are afraid today to tell the story of how retirement studies that lack valuation adjustments eventually cause failed retirements.
Would that man’s efforts have had the effect they did if he only shared what the resrarch said with his close friends?
The aim is to get the word out. Shiller’s research is amazing. But today’s CAPE value is scary. Shiller’s research cannot supply the benefits we all need to see it supply until we open every site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research. It’s nice that we now know intellectually how stock investing works. We are going to continue to make the same horrible mistakes that have caused so much human misery in the past unless we work up the courage to stand up to you Goons and open every site to honest posting re the research. That’s what our discussions are all about.
I wish you all good things.
Rob