Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Gee Rob, you finally convinced all. I have alerted all the goons around the world and instructed them to open up the entire internet, including all of the investment boards, with orders to give you full access to every site and board.
That sounds good, Anonymous.
Please understand that the right to post honestly needs to apply to everyone, Valuation-Informed Indexers and Buy-and-Holders alike. My strong hunch is that you are playing games again with this comment. But if you were sincere about it, it would represent a huge advance for the people of the United States. We all very much need to know the true and lasting value of our investment portfolio. Effective financial planning is not possible without access to that critically important information.
My best wishes, as always.
Rob
Here is a nice little blast from the past regarding Rob’s support:
Rob Bennett said: “Here is the URL for an article at my site at which 101 community members expressed a desire that honest posting on the Big Fail of Buy-and-Hold be permitted at all internet boards and blogs, Eugene.”
And, here is some of what those exact same 101 community members said subsequent to the quotes that Bennett cherry-picked and took out of context:
5/17/02 “Hocus’ quote… sounds good in theory, [but] Bernstein…points out the problem. While stock valuations are STILL very high historically, there are a number of reasons that they MIGHT stay that way. In the end, no one can predict with any real certainty what will happen over the remainder of our collective lives. Diversification and prudent (4%ish) withdrawals are really the best that you can do.
06/21/02 “There certainly are differences for those who attempt to ER with a small portfolio. Let’s compare two ERs who are both single with no kids. #1 has a portfolio of $2 million and #2 has $500k [like hocus did]. #1 has a lot more options than #2….
9/3/02 “…hocus himself comes across as confused, maybe even clueless, about various aspects of the SWR studies that I thought almost all of us had nailed down…”
11/22/02 “I disagree with the trash talking but I have some empathy for those who grow frustrated with hocus’ style…”
2/14/03 “Topics that don’t agree with the “wisdom” of the collective are great, but I wouldn’t expect people to embrace them with open arms until you show them that those ideas are better than the current ideas.”
4/14/03: ” Hocus has a THEORY, which by the way, no one knows what it’s based on, and it has never been laid out with any detail or precision. However, Intercst does NOT have a THEORY, Intercst says *if events in the future are no worse than in the past*, then X, Y, and Z…. That’s no THEORY, that’s having the facts on your side.”
07/26/03 “There are now several posters on the main FIRE board who are disgusted at your recent behaviour. They simply don’t post here because being moderated by you is distasteful to them, especially in light of your recent behaviour. You still seem to think that you are some kind of SWR God. It is laughable.Valuation has been discussed by any number of people, myself included. It is not a field pioneered by you, Rob. Your arrogance is remarkable.”
04/12/04 “I don’t understand how to change the SWR calcs to reflect your two risks. Is your hypothesis just this: “If I retire when the market valuation (S&P500 p/e ratio?) is below x, then my SWR can be y%; if the valuation is above x, then my SWR should be z%” ?”
11/14/04 ” >… good summary of the conundrum that is Hocus.”
11/14/04 “Mrs. Hocus! The poor woman, day after day, watching this guy tilting at windmills, flailing away at his computer keyboard, collecting publishers’ rejections slips (if indeed there are any to be collected). My heart goes out to her.”
12/18/04 “I quit posting on that site as a direct result of hocus being allowed back in ”
2/4/05 ” I still find it hard to believe he made $15,000 from his soap box report. For some reason he sent me the darned thing to peruse and I could never get past the first paragraph or two… reasonably sure Hocus killed of Soapbox since no one would buy a second paper after getting suckered into buying his”
03/23/05 “No kidding beachbumz, we’re seeing the “Dumb Hocus” in this thread like I’ve not seen him before. “Smart Hocus” please come back, we miss you”
5/24/05 “Good job intercst! I’m ALSO completely confident that you will make more money off Hocomania than [he] will earn from his “so called” writing (read: manic-depressive word farts). In fact, you will make more PER MONTH than [Hocus] will make PER YEAR.”
3/18/06 “LOL! Man, Hocus could turn out the copy couldn’t he? I think people recc’ed his posts just because they were so long. Heck, later on after Hocus went nuts I’d give him a rec just for putting my name in bold in one of his posts…. Not like I actually read 90% of what he wrote anyway.”
05-24-06 “I guess I am just thinking out loud that maybe this guy isn’t wrong…even though he can’t seem to easily articulate why he is right.” Mel Lindauer could not help but chime in: “…[Hocus has] now started writing responses to his own posts (his #31 responds to his own #28), even though he fails to answer direct questions from others…”
05/26/06 “Rob, I suspect you will always be an outsider…. Rob… You would probably accomplish more and open more minds with less incendiary talk about flawed theories/hypotheses and spend more time on actual alternative hypotheses that may offer a better approach in solving the SWR problem.”
06/04/06 “I’ve also put Hocus on ignore. He uses lots of words to say very little. Try it yourself…”
06/04/06 Hocus – An Irritant? “As way of disclosure, let me say that I tend to skip through most of Hocus’s posts because they are long winded….”
06/17/06 “Do good fathers voluntarily place their kids in financial hardship?”
06/04/06 “Had I stumbled across all those hoco-posts right off, I would have left immediately… people like me owe the diehards a debt of gratitude… polarization of the board [is what] Hocus is aiming for…”
06-03-06 “Apparently Rob is now trying to rewrite the Vanguard Diehards forum history with his remarks at #54. [Rob] would have folks who don’t know any better think that he was one of the original founders of this forum…. he had nothing at all to do with the founding of this board. In fact, he showed up about seven years too late for the founding party. And I thought his dream was to be a non-fiction writer? With such a vivid imagination, perhaps he should reconsider that choice. Regards, Mel”
06/04/06 “i have an old barn that needs a lightning rod. are you available Rob? Wink”
06/04/06 “… put hocus on ignore if he bothers you… I did. I also, put on ignore several posters who inevitably crop up when hocus makes a statement, and those 3 or 4 posters who appear to be his alter egos. I assure you, it makes reading these thread a whole lot easier. Petrocelli”
07/07/06 “…valuation at time of retirement has a big impact on the long term withdrawal rates so not to run out of money. Now how I deal with that information is my challenge.”
08/05/06 “Saying it is so doesn’t make it so. Please remember these words, as they apply to you to. Rob, so far you have managed to convince me that the SWR is 4%. Since you seem to have a different definition of SWR that the rest of us, would you please provide a simple definition of your term?… To me, your advice is very destructive to quality retirement.”
08/31/06 “I simply don’t agree with his ideas.”
09/29/06 [resetting asset allocation based on current valuations?] “In the end, I would say the “I don’t know, I don’t care” setting works best for me.”
10/31/06 “valuations clearly do affect SWR in theory, but, as Paul points out, as a practical matter any type of set formula may do more harm than good.”
01/20/07 “It’s hogwash. It appears an awful lot of work has been put into this house of cards. But the foundation is shaky…. the whole thing falls apart after about 5 minutes of analysis because it is a misapplication of stats. WERman, PhD”
2/19/07 “For those who may not have the energy to endure a thread of people tiring of Hocomania, here are a few highlights: [snip] I would say that he has gone off the deep end, but that doesn’t sound quite right to me. He has spent so much time in the deep end that I doubt he knows very much about where the shallow end is anymore. What I find fascinating is that there is always someone who appears on every board saying that Hocus is being treated unfairly. Almost universally, that is followed by someone else who says they once felt the same way until they too were Hocused. It is incredible how he is able to wear out his welcome at every single place he goes to.
2/20/07 raddr-Site Admin: “My preemptive banning of the Troll Twins is starting to look more and more like the best decision I have made since I decided to retire in 2001, lol.”
02/20/07 “Rob: We’re similar… Yet, our experience on the Vanguard Diehards board has been very different: No one has ever accused me of hijacking a thread… The responses to my posts are mostly cordial….no one has me on their “ignore” list…if I am able to attend Diehards VI, I think I would be welcomed rather than turned down.”
02/24/07 “I think that just not mentioning [hocus] is probably a good policy”
03/14/07 “I think pretty much the only problem with the other forum was that personal attacks were freely permitted, and hocus was allowed to run rampant… Regards, Dr. Jim”
4/10/07 “Actually, hocus as banned because of the fuss he made at another board. TMF let him rage uncontrolled here for months, but the minute he let off at another board, they canned him.”
08/01/07 “I recreated Al’s defunct E-R.org status forum and, for what its worth, pre-banned hocus and jwr, along with anyone named “rob”. Apologies in advance if you wanted to use the username ‘robxxx’ and aren’t a nutjob. There will be no new board generals on my watch…”
09/05/07 “Hocus does not have my permission to use my words or stories anywhere, ever.”
There’s a lot of emotion evidenced in those words, Anonymous. For all of us to become better investors, we need to think about where that emotion is coming from and how we can work together to rein it in. The bottom line is that, in the first 22 years of our discussions, not one Buy-and-Holder has been able to post a link to the page in the Greaney retirement study that contains a valuation adjustment. I wonder why.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
So disagreeing with you is called emotion? Did your wife leave you because of emotion?
There are always differences of opinions on the boards and people can work through those friendly differences. With that said, there seems to be unanimous agreement by board owners that you have behavior issues that they have not been able to overcome and felt the only option was to ban you. Also consider the fact that for the first time in history of the financial community, there were boards developed to specifically address your behavior issues. Are we to believe that all these thousands of people are wrong and you are right?
The vast majority disagrees with me. We wouldn’t have a CAPE value of 33 if that were not so. But 10 percent of the population of investors agrees with me. If we were thinking clearly, we would all want to hear from those people and we would not want to do anything to suppress them from stating their sincere beliefs as strongly as they believe them. That 10 percent brings something important to the table.
I am highly confident that, if we permitted honest posting re the peer-reviewed research at every site, we could get the percentage that believes that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research up to 20 percent within six months of discussion. Working together, I believe that we could cut off any future bull markets before they get going.
That’s where I’m coming from re this thing, Anonymous. My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
You keep claiming 10% of the population agree with you. That would be add up hundreds of thousands of people. How is this even believable? You can’t get even one person to post here anonymously in support of you.
If 10 percent did not agree with me, we never would have seen a single abusive post, much less any of the criminal stuff. It’s the fact that 10 percent want to know more about Valuation-Informed Indexing that makes it such a threat to Buy-and-Holders.
Once that 10 percent becomes 20 percent, we are home free. The thing will just grow and grow and grow. We are all very close to achieving the breakthrough that will permit us to live better and richer and fuller and freer lives. The only different between you and me is that I very much look forward to that day while you very much want to keep people from learning what they need to learn for us all to get there.
Rob
Rob
And we haven’t seen any abusive post or criminal activity. You make the claims, but then you never provide proof of your claims. On the other hand, we have seen you be very abusive to other people. You admit calling people names and you admit to referring to the beloved Jack Bogle as the biggest con-man.
I’m one of those who loves John Bogle. It was by reading Bogle’s book that I learned about the error in the Greaney retirement study. Bogle said in his book that price reversion is an “iron law” of stock investing. If prices revert, then the safe withdrawal rate cannot possibly be the same number at all valuation levels.
Am I a con-man? I knew about the error in the Greaney study when I first posted to the Motley Fool board in May of 1999. I didn’t go public with what I knew until May of 2002. Not exactly a profile in courage.
We are all struggling to make the shift Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold thinking to research-based/Valuation-Informed Indexing thinking. Bogle struggled while he was alive and I struggled in the days prior to May 13, 2002, and all the rest of us struggled in the past or are still struggling today. I wish that we were further along. But there’s another way to look at it. Think of how much we have achieved. I prefer to look on the bright side. I don’t say that Bogle was perfect in every way. But I am deeply grateful for his many important contributions.
Does that help?
Rob
You love John Bogle, but call him a con-man. Your Greaney crap was debunked a LONG time ago, yet you like to live in the past hoping you can somehow undo what has been done. No Rob, we are all not struggling. My guess is that you are just grasping at straws here since you have hit rock bottom (over 60, broke and divorced). It is too late in the game, so I don’t know what you can do anymore. What I can say, is the path you chose has had a horrible outcome for you.
I love myself and I call myself a con man too, Anonymous. We all have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge residing within us. The reason why Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize is that his research promises to show us how to overcome it. My job is to get every internet site opened to honest posting re the research so that we can see those amazing research findings providing us all amazing benefits.
Does all of that not make perfect sense?
Rob
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/22/investing/tech-stocks-surge-higher-as-nvidia-rallies/index.html
“A good day for 401(k)s: S&P 500 and Dow hit new highs as Nvidia fervor takes hold of Wall Street ”
It is a good day for those who have invested in the US economy.
For those that haven’t, not so much
It’s not a good day when a market already flooded in irrational exuberance takes on even more irrational exuberance. That’s the difference between Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing. Buy-and-Holders cheer on irrational exuberance because their core belief is that investors are rational and therefore price increases are justified by good economic news. Valuation-Informed Indexers understand that gains that are caused by investor emotion rather than by the economic realities hurt investors. Irrational exuberance is a negative.
My sincere take.
Rob
“ It’s not a good day when a market already flooded in irrational exuberance takes on even more irrational exuberance. ”
You have been saying that for over 20 years and that didn’t work out all that well for you.
I’ve been saying the same thing for over 20 years. That much is certainly so. By “not working out,” you mean that stock prices have not yet fallen hard (with the exception of a few months in late 2008 and early 2009). That much is so as well. The difference between us is that you see that as a good thing for stock investors and I see it as a very bad thing for stock investors.
I think that the best thing for stock investors is for stocks to be priced at their fair value. Any movement away from the fair-value price is a bad thing. For prices to remain this far away from their fair-value level for this long is the worst of all possible worlds. It makes financial planning very difficult when investors have little idea of the true value of their holdings. And of course it is always a painful experience when prices return to their fair-value level, as they always do.
I hope that helps at least a tiny bit.
Rob
No. “Not working out” means that your retirement plan did not go as you said it would. Do you think it is a good thing to have a depleted retirement account when you are 60’s? Are you not responsible for that, just like everyone else is responsible for their own situations?
I’m responsible for it. But no reasonable person could have anticipated that I would see 22 years of abusive behavior, including a number of criminal acts, directed at me because I pointed out an error in a retirement study that some guy was pushing at a discussion board at which I posted. I mean, holy moly!
Am I not responsible for posting my sincere views on subjects that I address at discussion boards and blogs? It sure seems to me that I am. I have asked responsible parties to take effective action re you Goons, I have been doing that since June 2002. This situation is not my doing.
What are my responsibilities when I see a super weird situation like this? I sure don’t want to see the people of this country having to endure yet another Buy-and-Hold Crisis. Do you? What do you propose that I do about it? My take is that I should do everything in my power to see that every internet site is opened to honest posting re the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research in this field? Does that not make perfect sense? Do you have any better ideas re how to deal with this matter?
That’s where I’m coming from re this one, Anonymous.
Rob