Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“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
“I’m proud of myself for having the courage to write it.”
If you could summon the courage to publish it, that would enable more people to benefit from its contents.
I submitted the article to a web site that focused on publishing controversial stuff that cannot be published elsewhere. They did not accept it. That’s the problem.
It’s not going to change the world is a few people read that article. Hundreds of thousands of people have read Shiller’s book. That didn’t change the world. Today’s CAPE value is the CAPE value that brought on the Great Depression. The publication of Shiller’s book, as wonderful as it is, has had very little practical effect, not much more than zero. There’s no reason to believe that me getting my article before a few people would be any different.
What we need is to open every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research, without a single exception. That would make a difference. Not overnight. 90 percent of the population today believes that valuation-informed market timing is not 100 percent required. That’s not going to change much within five days of us opening every site to honest posting. Perhaps we could get the percentage down to 89 percent, something like that.
But in time opening every site to honest posting would make a difference. People who don’t believe in valuation-based market timing could ask questions about it. In time, they would come around. People rarely change their minds because of a single article that they read. They need to ask questions, they need to ponder, they need to see how other people react to the same information. That’s how the human mind works. It’s a gradual process. No one article or book can do the job. We need to open every site to honest posting re the research, without a single exception. That will change the world in a very positive way. Over time.
I very much want to finish my book. I view it as a very important project. But I don’t think that finishing the book by itself is going to bring about change. If Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate (I believe it is), then there is going to come a day when we are going to see another Buy-and-Hold Crisis. People will be less complacent about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold at that time. At that time, a well-done book might make a difference for a small number of people. If one of those people happens to own a web site and opens it to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research, that could make a huge difference.
That web site would become known as the place to go to for honest, research-based discussion of stock investing and people who see value in that would flock to it. The site would grow and grow. People would notice that and set up additional such sites. Eventually, it would be possible to make money offering honest, sensible, research-based investment advice. The thing would take off like a rocket. Life would get better and better and better for all of the people living in the United States. The long national nightmare would come to an end.
Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, you know? We’ll see how it goes in the days following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, Evidence.
Rob
“I submitted the article to a web site that focused on publishing controversial stuff that cannot be published elsewhere. They did not accept it. That’s the problem.”
You control this website, you could publish it here.
You have a reddit and twitter account, you could link to the article from those accounts.
You have a ValueWalk column, you could link to and discuss it there.
There are other websites that you could go to.
Giving up after a single website rejected you seems weak.
Rob,
It is clear that you cannot see past your own bias. You see yourself as the sole decider as to what is honest (not to be confused with truthful) and that only you have the correct interpretation of all the research. It even extends into your personal relationships when you discuss the interactions you have with current and former family members. No one is able to reason with you. Instead, you only want people to see things your way and block any attempt by others to have their opinions considered. This is why you are in the predicament you are in today. No, you are not saving the world. You have merely harmed yourself and close family members and shut yourself from other normal relationships. That is it. There is nothing of value in any of that. Only destruction.
I haven’t given up.
Finishing the article persuaded me that I now possess a strong enough grasp of the material to write a book. I am close to finishing that book. When I finish the book, I will send it to a small number of people. I believe that it may get some traction in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. That would be super, That is what I hope will happen.
I haven’t given up for 22 years. And I am not shy about advancing my thoughts re these matters. I love doing that. I love sharing and I love hearing reactions. But I don’t believe that this is something where you can put an article out there and expect people to change their views quickly as a result. It just doesn’t;t work like that. Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research in 1981. Todays’s CAPE value is one of the worst we have ever seen. It just doeen’t work like that.
Getting good information out there is wonderful. I think that’s amazing. But the resistance to good information in this field is HUGE. As a nation of people, we love Get Rich Quick, we love Buy-and-Hold. We need people to examine WHY Shiller’s research is ignored, WHY Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold is so popular. That’s what I try to do in my book. The writing of the book is the project that matters most.
Rob
Okay, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.
I sincerely believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. I believe that today even stronger than I believed it on the morning of May 13, 2002, although I checked many times before working up the courage to advance my fateful post of that morning.
Rob
“ Getting good information out there is wonderful. I think that’s amazing. But the resistance to good information in this field is HUGE. ”
There again, it is all about what YOU think and when others have a different opinion, you use negative words like “resistance”. You just want people to agree with you and you don’t like the word “no”.
I don’t believe that there should be any intimidation. I would like to see everyone feel 100 percent safe saying precisely what he or she believes. 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. If we were all thinking clearly, there would not be any “controversy” re that. In we were all thinking clearly, there would be 100 percent agreement that honest posting re the peer-reviewed research should be permitted at every site.
Will the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis cause a move in the right direction? I believe that it might. But we are just going to have to wait to see how things play out to find out for sure. In the meantime, I am working on a book that aims to describe in some depth how we have come to find ourselves in such a horribly messed-up place (a CAPE value in the 30s!) at a time when we should all be living happier and freer and richer and fuller lives than we ever imagined possible during the Buy-and-Hold Era.
My best wishes.
Rob
You’re just repeating the same posts that have been answered and debunked thousands of times. No one has or will change their mind after all this time. You just need to deal with it. The world doesn’t change just for you.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all good things.
Rob
“ I do wish you all good things.”
No you don’t, so why say it?
“Finishing the article persuaded me that I now possess a strong enough grasp of the material to write a book. I am close to finishing that book. When I finish the book, I will send it to a small number of people. I believe that it may get some traction in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.”
I guarantee that your article will get no traction if it never gets published.
I guarantee that your book will get no traction if you send it out to a “small” number of people.
“ I do wish you all good things.”
No you don’t, so why say it?
First of all, I do wish you all good things. I say it because I feel it.
Second of all, given that I feel it, It’s a good idea to say it. We all want the same things. We all want to become better investors. We are all in the same boat. The thing that has been holding us back for 22 years is that you Goons believe that, if someone follows a different investment strategy, they are your enemy. I do not believe that even a tiny bit. I believe that Buy-and-Holders can learn from Valuation-Informed Indexers and that Valuation-Informed Indexers can learn from Buy-and-Holders. So anything that I can do to make the interactions more freindly and repectful, I want to do.
Rob
We’ll see what happens, Evidence.
If the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis causes people to have more skepticism re the Buy-and-Hold story, the article will be published and we will all be off to the races. If the article is published, orders for the book will start rolling in and the roll will gather momentum over time. I can’t force things.
I believe that I am telling a story that is very, very, important to millions of people. But, for the story to get out, we need people to stand up to you Goons. A few have done that. But not enough to get the job done. Either that will change in the days following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis or it will not. Those are the two possibilities. I’m obviously hoping (and expecting) that it will change.
Rob
“ I believe that it may get some traction in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. That would be super, That is what I hope will happen.”
It is your hope, just like everything you have placed hope in. It hasn’t gotten any real traction in well over 20 years. At some point, hope gives way to facing reality. It is long past the time for you to look at reality based not only on the passing of over 2 decades, but given your age, you have minimal choices to at least salvage something for whatever meager retirement fund you might be able to scrap together. You even destroyed your earnings history for social security benefits, so I can’t think of how you could be in any worse situation.
It has gotten TONS of traction. Not enough to overcome you Goons, that much is so. But enough to show that, had it not been for the abusive behavior of you Goons, Valuation-Informed Indexing would have taken over the world a long time ago. Had it not been for the abusive behavior of you Goons, Valuation-Informed Indexing would today be the dominant model for understanding how stock investing works. It would have supplanted Buy-and-Hold. That ain’t nothing!
I have seen some amazing things happen. John Walter Russell was the most respected numbers guy in the Retire Early community. He devoted eight years of his life to researching my ideas without receiving a penny of compensation. Wade Pfau came to me and asked if it would be okay if he published peer-reviewed research on the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept. Then he concluded that it checked out completely. He was so excited by what he found that he was talking about receiving a Nobel prize for his work. We have seen THOUSANDS of our fellow community members express a desire that honest posting re the research he permitted. That’s traction.
The only hold-up has been the abusiveness and the criminal behavior of you Goons. And that abusiveness actually tells the same story, just in a different way. If you Goons hadn’t seen how much interest there is in the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept, you would have no problem with it. You wouldn’t just say: “So what? Let people invest how they want to invest.” The fact that you see it as such a threat shows that you appreciate that there are MILLIONS of investors who would like to learn what the research really says. Your behavior is a back-handed compliment but it’s a compliment all the same.
Or so I sincerely believe, in any event.
Rob
There is no traction, Rob. Look at this site. You have total control, yet you can’t get anyone on here to support you. Not one of those “thousands” are here and you throw out silly stories about threats as an excuse. It is all made up. Even your ex-wife wouldn’t support you. She filed for divorce. That speaks volumes.
Woe is me, Anonymous.
Please take good care, old friend.
Rob
Being broke is your 60’s……….it is much worse than “woe is me”.
Being broke is your 60’s……….it is much worse than “woe is me”.
Betraying your friends in your 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s is worse than that
My sincere take.
Rob