Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Yes, we have different perspectives.
I don’t think it is a good idea to be broke when we are in our 60’s and retired or near retirement.
I don’t think it is a good idea to let your spouse walk out the door because you won’t get a job to pay the bills.
I don’t think it is a good idea to make up stories about criminal acts because it is morally wrong.
I guess that is all just crazy talk to you, right?
I think it is important that people who make errors in retirement studies correct those errors when they learn about them.
Human beings did not come to Planet Earth with an instruction booklet on how stock investing works. We have been learning over time. We achieved a major advance in 1981. We need to give ourselves permission to talk about it and learn from it.
Yes, I think it is crazy talk to suggest that there is something more important than that. Geting every site opened to honest posting re the research is the top priority and there is nothing in a close second place. That’s definitely how I see it.
Rob
You and I are both in our 60’s so let’s talk about our peers. If you have a guy in his 60’s that has been following buy and hold for the last several decades and he has been successful with his retirement plan the whole time, why would he switch to VII went it has yet to have even one successful outcome? There isn’t one single expert out there that is telling him to switch either. Not Shiller, Not Pfau, no one. You are telling this person to go against what has worked for him and everyone else. Why should he or anyone else in the age category listen to you? You say that peer review research supports you, yet the people you talk about (Shiller and Pfau) do not tell anyone to switch to VII. Add to that, you went broke with your strategy. So how are you going to convince all these 60 year old people?
I saw how people reacted when I talked about what the peer-reviewed research says. People like the idea of following research-based strategies. Probably for the same reason why I like the idea. Following research is RATIONAL. That’s why I was a Buy-and-Holder back in the days when I was one. I became a Buy-and-Holder because I heard that Buy-and-Holders believe in following the research. I think they were right the first time. The Buy-and-Holders LOVED the idea of following the research back in the days before Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns and put the kibosh on Get Rich Quick strategies.
I’m not saying that everyone is going to follow research-based strategies once we open the entire internet to honest posting. I don’t believe that. I’m saying that people should have a choice. They should be able to hear both sides and make up their own minds. That’s how things are handled in every field of human endeavor outside of the investment advice field and that’s how I think things should be handled in the investment advice field as well. I am not able to imagine any possible downside. If anyone ever comes up with an argument against practicing valuation-based market timing, that’s obviously going to come out in a world in which honest posting is permitted. So we are covered even for extreme long-shot possibilities.
There’s a reason why you Goons are so determined to suppress discussion of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research. I think it would be fair to say that the primary reason is that you saw what I saw. Lots of people LOVE the idea of learning what the research says and being able to talk it over. If so many people possess a desire to learn what the research says, maybe there’s something to it. I certainly cannot imagine any downside to permitting them to engage in the discussions they want to engage in.
That’s where I’m coming from re this one, Anonymous. My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
So, a guy that has been successful over 30 years should give consideration to what you think are positive reactions to your posts and your opinions?
Everyone should be open to taking what the peer-reviewed research says into consideration. It is always when irrational exuberance gets wildly out of control when we experience a Buy-and-Hold Crisis. What are people saying when irrational exuberance is out of control? They are celebrating the phone gains, treating them as normal. It is the phony gains that make Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies so popular. The research is teaching us all something important.
Your question is like a drunk saying “I can drive home, I feel absolutely great!” A drunk feels ARTIFICIALLY great. A Buy-and-Holder doesn’t know whether his strategies work or not because he is not willing to subtract for the effect of irrational exuberance. You get different results when you do the calculations properly.
My sincere take.
Rob
Everyone has always been open to the research. What you are referring to is your opinions of the research. You have had ample opportunity to present your opinions. You have done so thousands of times. There are no unanswered questions. The problem for you is that people just don’t agree with you. You just can’t take no for an answer. People just grew tired of you repeating the same things, refusing to answer questions and making up stories (such as criminal acts, calling people goons and referring to John Bogle as a con-man). That type of behavior is unacceptable. We do not have to tolerate it. Thus, you are rightfully banned.
My opinion of Shiller’s research showing that valuations affect long-term returns is that Shiller’s research shows that valuations affect long-term returns. That much would certainly be fair to say.
My best wishes to you, Anonymous.
Rob
And everyone has heard your opinions…….over and over and over and over again. Despite your attempts to attack, distract, avoid, defame, lie, repeat, etc., we are still not changing our minds.
Everyone has not heard them, Anonymous. There are millions of people who have not heard them and who would be thrilled to hear them. And there are others who have heard them and would be grateful to be able to ask questions about them and absorb parts of them into their own thinking over time.
You Goons may not change your minds. That’s up to you. But it is not up to you to decide what others can hear. I believe that there will be a day when the millions who would like to be able to learn what the research says will be able to do so. We’ll see, you know.
My best wishes.
Rob
Yes, they have heard them Rob. Despite your thousands upon thousands of repetitive posts you don’t have a single person coming to this website in support of you, despite the ability for anyone to do so anonymously. What you don’t like is that people have cut you off because they are sick of you. That is their right, just like you block people.
Everyone has heard them and it is not for you to demand that others give you access to their websites to push your agenda. Just like you block people at your website, people can choose to block you.
Yes, they have heard them Rob. Despite your thousands upon thousands of repetitive posts you don’t have a single person coming to this website in support of you, despite the ability for anyone to do so anonymously. What you don’t like is that people have cut you off because they are sick of you. That is their right, just like you block people.
If everyone followed the peer-reviewed research, we wouldn’t have bull markets. Anonymous. We wouldn’t have CAPE value of 32. Stock investors would just earn that 6.5 percent real return that is justified by the economic realities. That works for me.
Some of us are “sick” of hearing about the peer-reviewed research. You Goons are. But you Goons don’t speak for all of us. 10 percent of us LIKE hearing about the research. And the other 80 percent are not yet persuaded that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate but are fine with the idea of hearing about it from the 10 percent who do believe in it. I don’t believe that the 10 percent of Goons have a right to decide things for everybody.
But I do wish you all good things, in any event.
Rob
Everyone has heard them and it is not for you to demand that others give you access to their websites to push your agenda. Just like you block people at your website, people can choose to block you.
Something that we experienced over and over again is the surprise and shock that people felt when they considered FOR THE FIRST TIME the how-to implications of Shiller’s amazing research findings. John Walter Russell devoted eight years of his life to researching those implications after seeing me bring them up at the Motley Fool board and doing some preliminary investigations that proved that my posts possessed merit. Wade Pfau held a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton but he had never before seen these possibilities explored. This is why he was so excited that he could not sleep at night and had visions of being awarded a Nobel prize for the work he was doing with me. He told me that he kept asking himself “Am I missing something?” because he couldn’t understand why no one else had looked into these matters.
He solved that puzzle when you Goons threatened to get him fired from his job if he continued doing honest research re these questions. It’s the intense hostility that a small percentage of Buy-and-Holders feels to the idea of people exploring the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research that is holding all the rest of us back. We need as a nation of people to work up the courage to stand up to you and to hold the discussions that we should have been holding a long, long time ago. I believe that we may see it happen in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
I sure hope so. We’ll see.
Rob
“ If everyone followed the peer-reviewed research, we wouldn’t have bull markets. Anonymous.”
Your opinion is not research. What you want is for everyone to do what you say. Sorry, but this is not a dictatorship. People all run away from you, avoid you and/or block you. You keep telling us how everyone else is wrong, but you never consider that you are the problem.
I want everyone to feel free to express their honest views. I don’t want intimidation tactics employed by the members of Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads to have any influence in what people say about how stock investing works. It’s not just my opinion that Shiller’s research shows that valuations affect long-term returns. It was because he produced this amazing, revolutionary advance in our understanding of how stock investing works that he was awarded a Nobel prize in Economics.
“People” do not run away from me or avoid me or block me. The sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney do. Thousands of our fellow community members have expressed a desire to see every discussion board and blog on the Internet opened to honest discussion of the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That ain’t running away from me. That’s embracing my core message.
I believe that the same laws that apply in every field of human endeavor other than the investment advice field should apply in the investment advice field as well. That’s where I’m coming from re this matter.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob