Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“ Have you written a book on the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing? Has anyone else? ”
There is a reason no one else has written a book on VII. No one wants to be known for writing a book that will lead others to a disaster. What do you think people will say when they found out the author of such a book went broke while trying to push this timing scheme?
I’ve been in social situations where I meet someone new and I tell them my story, the board bannings and the divorce and my inability to build my internet writing business and so on. I have never seen a negative reaction, People generally don’t know what to make of it. They have never heard of something like this.
About 50 percent of the time they will ask me something about investing. Most people do not feel secure in their understanding of stock investing. So they ask me to share my unconcentional take on the subject. I always go to pains to explain that Valuation-Informed Indexing is just common sense. We consider price with every other purchase we make. All that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research tells us is that we should buy stocks in precisely the same way that we buy everything else — with price in mind. That’s the entire deal. There’s nothing more to it than that.
When I was a boy, whenever my family visited someone’s house, there would be ashtrays in the living room. It was considered a basic social nicety to provide ashtrays for the smokers who were visting. Most people do not place ashtrays in their living room today. No one would dare to light up a cigarette in someone else’s house without asking. If you did ask, they would probably suggest that you step outside to have your smoke.
That is a huge change. That change in social practices has caused the percentage of people who smoke to drop. When you put out ashtrays, you are sending a message that smoking is fine. When you ask people who do it to leave the house to have their smoke, you are sennding a message that it is not fine.
That’s what I am trying to achieve in the investment advice field. If people are not going to engage in price discipline when buying stocks (market timing!), I think we all should be sending a message that that’s not fine. A failure to engage in market timing hurts humans and other living things. We should all be doing what we can to see that people make better choices.
The people who hear my story don’t change their stock allocation overnight. They think over what I tell them. They ponder it. Some probably change their allocation down the road a bit after reading up and talking it over with their friends and so on. Others just forget what I told them and get on with their lives. The usual reaction is interest in the story. It’s common for people to offer a few words of sympathy for what happened to me. I have never had anyone say:” I will never consider market timing because of what I just heard.” I cannot recall one time in which someone said something like that.
If you had told people not to smoke in the early 1960s, you would have seen a somewhat bewildered reaction. That wasn’t the social norm at the time. Now it is. We need to make it the social norm for people always, always, always to engage in market timing (price discipline). Once that idea is nornalized, once there is no taboo re discussing the importanve of market timing, we will all be living better and richer and fuller and freer lives and there won’t be anyone suggesting that there might be some alternatve universe in which everything works the opposite of how it has alwsys worked here on good old Planet Earth and market timing is not 100 percent required for every investor.
Ordinary people do not hate me for telling the truth about stock investing. Thats’s a Goon thing. Ordinary people would not have elected to walk the path that I have walked, I am very much an outlier in that regrard. But people don’t hate me for it. In the days following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, peiple will thank me for it, they will say that they wish that they had listened more carefully. All of the bad stuff that has happened to me has happened because I walked straight into the fury behind this giant taboo against telling the truth about stock investing. I of course believe that we all need to start telling the truth about this important subject. So I soldier on.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
“ I’ve been in social situations where I meet someone new and I tell them my story, the board bannings and the divorce and my inability to build my internet writing business and so on. I have never seen a negative reaction, People generally don’t know what to make of it. They have never heard of something like this.”
Of course you never had a negative reaction in these situations. People do not like to be confrontational in a face to face social situation. They are being polite. What has happened AFTER these social situations? Have they gone on to long lasting friendships/interactions?
There’s nothing special about them. In most cases, I do not interact with the person again. In a small number of cases, we become friends over time.
Rob
So, with these “small cases”, are they wanting to know more about VII and follow your investing advice?
There are one or two cases where I have been asked follow-up questions. “How’s that investing thing going?” In most cases, no, the conversation moves to other areas. I don’t bring it up and the other party doesn’t bring up.
My general impression is that the average person does not feel that he or she knows a lot about investing. Most people are perfectly open to learning new things. But there is no intense desire to know new things. They pick up some knowledge and they go with that. Most people seem more or less content with the results they have obtained. There’s a tiny bit of anxiety that they don’t understand thing well enough. But no sense of panic. Just a vauge feeling that “it would be good if I understood things better.”
Rob
If you are unable to convince people about VII in a face to face interaction, how do you expect to be successful in investment forums that are less personal? Further, how do you expect to be able to sell books/reports on VII if you fail to even convince people about VII in personal interactions?
I know from experience. I have never experienced the tiniest problem convincing people. That’s been so at every site at which I have ever posted. I’ve obviously never been able to convince the Buy-and-Hold Goons. But the Goons make up only about 10 percent of the population of Buy-and-Holders. I don’t feel any need to convince them.
The issue is whether the Normals (non-Goon Buy-and-Holders) will work up the courage to stand up to the abusive and in some cases criminal behavior of the Goons. Once they do that, we all enjoy an amazing learning experience. Good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. There needs to be civil, reasoned debate for people to be able to learn. We need to apply the same laws that we apply in every field other than the investment advice field in the investment advice field as well.
But you Goons of course know that. I you had not seen with your own eyes the widespread interest in learning more about this subject than what we knew in the days when the Buy-and-Hold strategy was being developed, you never would have demanded a single ban on honest posting.
The question on the table is — How will the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis affect people’s attitudes about whether something should be done to rein in the abusive and criminal behavior of you Goons. If more Normals speak up, we are on our way. If most of us continue to live in fear, we will continue to see the ocean of human misery that always follows a time in which the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy is widely promoted.
I believe that research-based Valuation-Informed Indexing strategies will become dominant in days to come. But I’m not God, I cannot see into the future. We’ll see. I know that I do not feel even a tiny bit comfortable saying that I believe that the Greaney retirement study contains a valuation adjustment. So I am going to continue to make the case for permitting honest posting re the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research at every site, without a single exception.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
“ I have never experienced the tiniest problem convincing people.”
If that is the case, you would have people coming to this board in support of you. They can come here for your information for free. If you can’t get interest with free information, how do you expect to get interest from people when it involves money?
I have zero concern about convincing people. It won’t happen in two days. People have lots of questions. It takes time for people to get their minds around a new way of thinking about how stock investing works. But it is clear as clear can be that most people want to know how stock investing works and most people come around in time if they are able to get their questions answered.
Within six months of the day we decide as a nation of people to open every site to honest posting re the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research, we will have increased the percentage of the population that believes that market timing/price discipline is always 100 percent required for every investor from 10 percent to 20 percent. I am sure.
Rob
“ I have zero concern about convincing people. It won’t happen in two days. People have lots of questions. It takes time for people to get their minds around a new way of thinking about how stock investing works.”
This in complete opposite of what you just said. You stated previously in this thread that you have convinced people at every site you are participated.
If you have really convinced people at every site you have participated, where are they? Why have they never come over here where they can post anonymously and get your information for free?
People have demonstrated a strong interest at every site and some people have been persuaded at every site where there was at least a brief time-period in which honest posting re the research was being permitted. But people absolutely hate the abusive stuff. When they see that, they get quiet and the learning process stops.
The people of the United States will never become educated about what the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world until a good number of us work up the courage to rein in the abusive and criminal behavior of the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney. There are good reasons for our laws against death threats and extortion and defamation. We need to apply those laws in the investment advice field in the same manner as they are applied in every other field.
Rob
“It won’t happen in two days.”
or in two decades, if your track record is anything to go by.
You’ve got me re that one, Evidence.
Rob
Following the links back I came across this comment in September
“My current estimate (hope?) is that I will be able to begin the copy editing/proofing stage of the process at the turn of the new year.”
Have you reached the copy editing/proofing stage of the process?
If you haven’t convinced anyone in well over 2 decades, how much longer should we all be waiting around to “see how it all play out”?
Have you reached the copy editing/proofing stage of the process?
No.
The book is divided into 12 parts. Parts One, Two and Three have been complete for several years. Parts Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine and Eleven are in good shape. I am going to want to add littls bits and subtract little bits but those Parts are in generally good shape. They should not require too much more time.
At the beginning of 2022, I had almost nothing done on Parts Four, Ten and Twelve. I spent all of 2022 on Parts Four and Ten and all of 2023 on Part Twelve. I will finish Part Twelve by the end of this month. So I now am very close to having something down on paper for every section of the book.
I am certainly not at the proofing staage. I am not even at the copy editing stage. I don’t need to do anything with Parts One, Two and Three. But some of the changes that I made in later Parts will require me to do some rewriting for sections that are in decent shape but not entirely in a polished state. Sometimes doing that requires some new transitions that can slow things down. I hope that there is not too much of that. But there will probably be some of it.
Then comes the copyediting and then the proofing and then I need to work with a graphics person on developing a cover and then to the printer.
The content of the book is top notxh (in my view, of course — I am sure thaat you Gooins will have a different assessment). The one big problem is that it is too long. I would like to be able to cut out some large sections. Now that I know how the last sections will go, I think it might be possible to do that. It doesn’t take too much time to delete. So I don’t expect that to slow things down too much.
That’s where things stand. I am super proud of the book, The hardsst part is being fair to the Buy-and-Holders. I obviously believe that the idea that market timing is not requied is the biggest mistake ever made in the history of personal finance. But I am a big fan of everything else that the Buy-and-Holders did and I of course want to give them their due. It’s difficult to write things in a balanced way. I don’t want to pull any punches re the dangers of failing to encourage market timing/price discipline but I consider myself a Buy-and-Holder at heart and I of course want that to come through. I believe that the finished product will reflect that mixed perspective.
I’d be grateful if you would wish me luck in my efforts to bring the thing home. Evidence. I understand that you are going to say that you hate the thing. But I believe that it will help lots of people and I believe that, if you opened your mind a little bit, it could help you as well. It would make me happy if that is how things turned out in the end.
Rob
If you haven’t convinced anyone in well over 2 decades, how much longer should we all be waiting around to “see how it all play out”?
I’ve convinced thousands, Anonymous. If you had not seen me convince thousands, you obviously would never have insisted on a ban on honest posting at even a single site. I mean, come on. That ain’t normal.
Rob
“ I am certainly not at the proofing staage. I am not even at the copy editing stage.”
That doesn’t sound like you will be done in July. It doesn’t even sound like you will be done in 2024, despite your claims over the last few months.
We’ll see.
Rob
“ I’ve convinced thousands, Anonymous.”
You seem to change your position on that many times, Rob. You said that you don’t have people posting here as it will take time to convince them. Now you say again that you have convinced them. If that is the case, where are these people? They can post here anonymously, but they don’t. When I pointed this out before, you said you needed to convince people. Are you going to switch back to that again?
You saw the same things I saw, Anonymous.
There are millions of people who possess a desire to know how stock investing works in the real world. according to the peer-reviewed research in this field. But very few are willing to stand in the face of the insane abusiveness coming from you Goons. So you have held us all back now for 21 years. I believe that we will break on through to the other side in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
Rob
“I’d be grateful if you would wish me luck in my efforts to bring the thing home”
Me wishing you luck won’t help.
You have been given lots of advice over the years from many people and you have ignored it all.
The book is just as far from being completed as it ever was, but you can’t admit that to yourself because that would mean these last few years have been a complete waste.
You can’t get a job because that is an admission that your “early retirement” was a failure.
You can’t open a discussion board at this site because the lack of people who would participate would show you have no following.
You can’t publish your “Buy and hold is dangerous” article because it would just attract ridicule and questions that you can’t or won’t answer.
You just need to say those three little words.
Okay, Evidence.
I do wish you all good things, in any event.
Rob