“I Have Never Experienced the Tiniest Problem Convincing People. That’s Been So at Every Site at Which I Have Ever Posted. I’ve Obviously Never Been Able to Convince the Buy-and-Hold Goons. But the Goons Make Up Only About 10 Percent of the Population of Buy-and-Holders. “

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

If you are unable to convince people about VII in a face to face interaction, how do you expect to be successful in investment forums that are less personal?  Further, how do you expect to be able to sell books/reports on VII if you fail to even convince people about VII in personal interactions?

I know from experience. I have never experienced the tiniest problem convincing people. That’s been so at every site at which I have ever posted. I’ve obviously never been able to convince the Buy-and-Hold Goons. But the Goons make up only about 10 percent of the population of Buy-and-Holders. I don’t feel any need to convince them.

The issue is whether the Normals (non-Goon Buy-and-Holders) will work up the courage to stand up to the abusive and in some cases criminal behavior of the Goons. Once they do that, we all enjoy an amazing learning experience. Good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. There needs to be civil, reasoned debate for people to be able to learn. We need to apply the same laws that we apply in every field other than the investment advice field in the investment advice field as well.

But you Goons of course know that. I you had not seen with your own eyes the widespread interest in learning more about this subject than what we knew in the days when the Buy-and-Hold strategy was being developed, you never would have demanded a single ban on honest posting.

The question on the table is — How will the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis affect people’s attitudes about whether something should be done to rein in the abusive and criminal behavior of you Goons. If more Normals speak up, we are on our way. If most of us continue to live in fear, we will continue to see the ocean of human misery that always follows a time in which the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy is widely promoted.

I believe that research-based Valuation-Informed Indexing strategies will become dominant in days to come. But I’m not God, I cannot see into the future. We’ll see. I know that I do not feel even a tiny bit comfortable saying that I believe that the Greaney retirement study contains a valuation adjustment. So I am going to continue to make the case for permitting honest posting re the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research at every site, without a single exception.

My best wishes to you and yours.

Rob