“The Last Thing That a Buy-and-Holder Wants to Hear Is What the Research Says. Research and Buy-and-Hold Cannot Co-Exist. They Are Opposites.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

Well, the “nothing” part you got right.  You lost you money, your house and your wife, so you have nothing.  Good job, Rob.

The solution can be found by pondering the deep meaning of the title of Shiller’s book — IRRATIONAL Exuberance.

Stock investors are humans. Which means that they are emotional creatures. Which means that in some respects they are highly IRRATIONAL.

What you are describing is the way that the rational mind would expect things to play out. But stock investing ain’t rational. So it doesn’t work that way in this field. In this field, irrational Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies are popular, rational research-based strategies cannot even be discussed at any large sites. That’s the core reality.

Say that it weren’t so. Say that investors were rational, which is what I need to be the case for my work to become popular. Then what?

If that were the case, today’s CAPE value would not be 32. The CAPE value tells you why I am banned. Today’s stock investors are trying very hard to believe in a fantasy, that their stock portfolio is worth two times what it is really worth. I am trying to pop a hole in the fantasy baloon. I am pointing out what the peer-reviewed research says. That’s why I am banned at so many places. The last thing that a Buy-and-Holder wants to hear is what the research says. Research and Buy-and-Hold cannot co-exist. They are opposites.

Will it change after the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis? We’ll see, you know? I sure hope so. We will all begin living richer and fuller and freer and better lives once we open out minds to hearing about the dangers of going with a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy. We are not there today. We have seen great interest in going down that path on the part of thousands of investors during the first 21 years of our discussions. But we are not quite there yet.

That’s where I’m coming from re this matter, Anonymous.

My best wishes to you.

Rob