Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
What you are trying to do is elevate yourself. You do this by playing three roles. The roll is that of a messianic savior. You portray yourself as someone that is here to save the world from doom. Second, you cast yourself as the leader. You talk about how Bogle, Pfau and Shiller only did their little bit and then how you have taken things to a much higher level by giving the world your “insights” and that your “work” has taken things much further than each of those three. Third, you play the victim. You use the victim card to seek revenge on those that offer up any critic of your words. You use the victim card to cover up your failures (divorce, going broke, etc.). You play the victim card as a cover to the real reasons you are banned. You use the victim card as a cover for the real reasons people avoid you. In this thread, you are the victim of “emotions”.
Avoiding change and avoiding help merely reinforces these points.
I’m just a guy who believes that the American system of government is a good system. Our system permits progress over time. There are of course all kinds of cases where people get things wrong at some moment in time. None of the humans are perfect and so mistakes are always possible. So long as our laws protect us from the sortts of tactics that have been employed by you Goons to supress discussion of the error in the Greaney retirement study (it lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins), mistakes can be corrected and progress is possible.
We have elected as a nation of people not to apply the laws that apply in every other realm of human endeavor in the investment advice realm because the mistake that was made there (the claim that market timing/price discipline is not always 100 percent required for all investors) was so terrible that it is hard to face up to it. I think we need to face up to it. I think we all need to move forward together. I think we will all enjoy living better lives once we do so and that we will never look back in regret at having left the dark ages of Buy-and-Hold thinking (no market timing now!) behind.
I’m not elevating myself. I say that we are all in this together. I believe that all of the people who are afraid to stand up to you Goons would love to be able to do so. I’ve seen that in hundreds of interactions with other people in this field. The most obvious case was Wade Pfau. The 16 months in which he was working closely with me on our peer-reviewed research were the happiest days of his life. He only buckled because he did not see other leaders in the field stand up to Mel Lindauer and his Goon Squad. Had Bogle taken effective action re the Lindauer matter, we would still have Wade advocating Valuation-Infiormed Indexing today and we would all be living better lives as a result. What’s the downside?
I am playing a journalist role. I am getting things out before people so that they can make better informed choices. There will be thousands of people who will help to develop the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept once I have been successful in getting one large site opened to honest posting re the research. I will be thrilled to see them adance hundreds of amazing insights. But, yes, I think it is important to get the ball rolling. We will not see those amazing inisghts until we have opened at least one site to honest posting re the research. Everything follows from, that. So I solider on with work that I view as extremely important because of the insights that will be advanced by hundreds of people not named Rob Bennett.
I hope that works for you, Anonymous.
If you sincerely believed that the Greaney retirement study contained a valuation adjustment, you never would have advanced a single abusive post. You would just show us all where the valuation adjustment is in the study. I mean, come on.
Rob
You are full of crap. You are not doing anything. You are not saving anyone. You are just spinning a bunch of stories to try to make yourself look better. The last 20+ years have been a complete disaster with you and your situation.
I’m bad, Anonymous. Everybody knows it too. That’s the thing.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
“There will be thousands of people who will help to develop the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept once I have been successful in getting one large site opened to honest posting re the research.”
Other than here and ValueWalk are you contributing anywhere else at the moment? Are you actively trying to get published at any site? Why don’t you use X (Twitter) or reddit or other similar sites to promote your ideas?
Because I have seen through personal experience that the resistance is super strong. If we were all thinking clearly, there wouldn’t be ANY resistance. We are all in the same boat. We all want the same things. We all need to know how to invest effectively for the long term. So we should all be happy to learn from each other. Intuitively, you would think that there never would have been a single abusive post.
That’s obviously not the situation that applies. It’s not that I have not made an effective case. It’s that there is a percentage of the population that does not want to hear the case. And there is a larger percentage that is okay with hearing it but that does not feel strongly enough about hearing it to stand up to the abusive behavior of the group that does not want to hear it. I have tried lots of things. I don’t think it makes sense to continue banging my head against the same wall.
So I do two things.
One, I try every day to come to a better understanding of why there is all this self-deception in this area. That’s why I post herel, that’s why I write for Value Walk and that’s why I work on the book. It is my aim to be the #1 expert in the world as to why investors are drawn to Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold/No-Market-Timing strategies. So, when there is a chance to speak, I will be able to deliver the message as well as possible.
Two, I wait for the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. If Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate (I believe it is), then a drop in the CAPE value should be associated with a drop in belief in Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies. So we may see opportunies to move forward when prices crash.
It hurts to continue to try to help and to be rejected over and over again. I don’t want to conitnue to feel that pain. So I am holding back until I see better opportunities for making forward progress.
Rob
“One, I try every day to come to a better understanding of why there is all this self-deception in this area…
Two, I wait for the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.”
So nothing practical then.
“It hurts to continue to try to help and to be rejected over and over again.”
Some people would learn a lesson from that and change the way they go about things.
Others wouldn’t bother.
Can you point to a single time in the last 20 years where you got advice from someone and changed the way you went about presenting your arguments?
I am strongly convinced that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. So, re the basic question, the answer is no.
I certainly listen carefully to what people say re the more peripheral matters. Rob Arnottt was extremely supportive of my ideas on how stock investing works. But he offered one criticism. He said that I portrayed myself as a “victim.” I do think that I am a victim of the cover-up. I think you are too. I think Arnott is a victim. i think that everyone living in the United States is a victim. I thought that the point that Arnott brought up was important enough that I devoted an entire chapter in my book to exploration of it. I wouldn’t say that I changed my presentation of my argument because of what he said. But I gave his point serious consideration. I see it as being an important part of the story.
I always listen. But I believe to this day that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. That’s an objective reality. It’s more than a little hard to fudge that one. And there are people at the Motley Fool board who used the Greaney study to plan thier retirements. I am sure of that. I was there.
There’s one case that I can think of where I definitely changes my presentation a bit. There was one day when I started saying that there are people at the Motley Fool board who would have used HIGHER withdrawal rates had it not been for the Greaney study. That thought hit me as a result of some discussions we had about the prison sentences that may come into play for you Goons. It made me happy to be able to make a point that very much cuts in Greaney’s favor but that is very much an honest point. That was a change. So I say that all the time now. I don’t say that his study contains a valuation adjustment. But I do say that I believe it did some good.
I always listen. But I have never seen anything that has persuaded me even a tiny bit that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment. That one seems very, very, very clear, in my assessment.
Rob
Instead of simply repeating that the Greaney study doesn’t contain a valuation adjustment, have you ever thought of explaining why, in your opinion, it should contain a valuation adjustment?
It is very easy to state that it does not contain a valuation adjustment.
It is much more difficult to explain convincingly why it should contain a valuation adjustment.
You seem much more comfortable taking the easy path.
It should contain a valuation adjustment because peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns was published in 1981.
Rob
Yes, we have laws in place. There are also laws related to false allegations. That is something you should think about, Rob.
Will do, Anonymous.
I continue to this day to believe 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. I first brought attention to that matter in a post that I put to a Motley Fool discussion board on the morning of May 13, 2002.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
No, you are not a journalist. No, you are not saving anyone. You are a glorified internet troll that spends his days trying to make himself look respectable, when he is just a lazy bum that makes up silly stories.
That does it! Now I am fully persuaded that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site truly does contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies at the time the retirement begins!
Rob