Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“But for so long as there is a ban on honest posting re the peer-reviewed research, investors cannot set the price properly. “
There is no ban on honest posting, a quick google search finds many articles and discussions about Shiller’s CAPE
https://www.google.com/search?q=shiller+cape
The following are a selection
Reddit https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=shiller%20cape
Forbes https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/shiller-pe-ratio/
FT https://www.ft.com/content/65c8076b-19a2-4f23-a88e-e89c2edcc859
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/us-market-shillercape-ratio-update-its-flashing-what-owen-cfa-/
Bogleheads 🙂 https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=315911
and endless others of varying degrees of worth
In terms of a ban what we have is you being banned from some sites because of your behavior at multiple sites.
You could still participate at Reddit if you wanted to.
But you won’t. Your choice, not anyone elses.
Has the error in the Greaney retirement study been corrected? It lacks a valuation adjustment. I pointed out the error in a May 13, 2002, post to a Motley Fool discussion board.
If we can’t get an error in a retirement study corrected in 22 years, then what the heck good does it do us to have any of these investing sites? People invest in stocks to finance their retirements. If we can’t get the numbers in retirement studies right, we are in a pretty bad state.
People MENTION CAPE. Do they do anything with it? Do they put it to use?
Do you see efforts to pull people together to bring the CAPE value down? We pull together to reduce carbon emissions, do we not? I think it would be fair to say that high CAPE values have caused an awful lot of human misery over the years. How many effort have you seen lately to get the CAPE value down? I am not aware of any.
One of you Goons recently linked to an article in which there was a boast being made about a price increase in the headline. “It was a good day for investors” or something along those lines. Really? We are already at an insane level of overvaluation and we are celebrating even higher prices?
Not this boy, you know? I’ll be more impressed by your articles mentioning the CAPE concept when I see efforts being organized to bring the darn thing down to a reasonable level. I see the sort of thing that you are pointing to as being weak tea. We need a heck of a lot more than that at a time when the CAPE is 34. I get the impression that you Buy-and-Holders think of irrational exuberance as a good thing. I see no urgency re efforts to attack it whatsoever.
I OPPOSE irrational exuberance. I guess that’s why I am guilty of “bad behavior.” I like to think that I have not left any doubts in anyone’s mind re my position on irrational exuberance.
Holy moly!
Rob
If you could post at Bogleheads right now knowing that people can look up your history and see that you went broke and your wife left you? Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?
Not even a tiny bit. It would make me proud for people to learn that for 22 years I had been posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates and re the dangers of Buy-and-Hold. If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing,obviously none of the stuff that you are referring to would have happened. If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, all Buy-and-Holders would welcome honest posting re the research.
The only embarrassing part would be that people would learn that it took me three years to work up the courage to point out the error in the Greaney study. Of course re that I could point out that many others failed to point out the error. I am in pretty darn good company. The Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge doesn’t just exist within me, it exists within all of us. It is part of our vulnerable human nature.
That was easy. The entire drama of this thing is that to advance in our understanding of how stock investing works, we need to work up the courage to acknowledge the weakness in human nature that has been making stocks a risky asset class for as far back as there has been a stock market open for business.
Rob
Rob
Funny how only Rob Bennett is smart enough to figure out how stock investing works. Funny how no one else wants to get rich from investing like Rob and, instead, want to lose all their money with buy and hold. Everyone else is just too stupid, while Rob is the only smart guy in the room to figure our all this stuff.
It’s called IRRATIONAL Exuberance, Anonymous. By definition it cuts against what the research says. The research points us in the direction of what is rational.
Today’s CAPE value tells you that the majority of investors are behaving irrationally today. But it’s not just me trying to rein in the irrational stuff. Shiller’s book was a best-seller. He was awarded a Nobel prize. The arc of history points toward rationality in stock investing. We are closer than we have ever been before.
Rob
The entire investment community has irrational exuberance and only Rob Bennett has a rational mind. Even Shiller is not smart enough to put it all together. Only Rob Bennett has figured out all the details.
It’s not only Rob Bennett. It’s Rob Bennett plus the thousands of our fellow community members who have expressed (either through posts or through recommendations of posts advanced by others) a desire that honest posting re the peer-reviewed research be permitted at every site. That group makes up about 10 percent of the community of investors that posts at the various boards. Buy-and-Holders are far away the majority.
But of course that would change if every board and blog were opened to honest posting re the research. as I have been advocating for 22 years now. Every new idea starts with one person and then spreads as new people hear about it and ask questions about it and come to be persuaded of its merit.
Shiller is smart enough. That’s why he published a paper in 1996 advocating market timing. If word got out that the abusiver stuff was going to be reined in, Shiller would be happy to address all these issues. I have suggested scores and scores of times that you Goons invite Shiller to the Bogleheafds Forum to address whether it is possible to calculate the Safe withdrawal rate without taking valuations into consideration. I am confident that he would do it if you would give him strong assurances that there would be no abusive stuff.
That’s the key toe everything. It’s the abusive stuff (including some criminal stuff) that has been holding us back for 22 years now. It would be an amazing learning experience for Shiller to address the safe withdrawal rate matter. I am not able to imagine any possible downside.
Rob
Because everyone but Rob Bennett is dishonest. Otherwise, Shiller and all those other thousands Rob refers to, would be all over the internet demanding that Rob Bennett should take over every board out there.
The vast majority don’t even know that there is an issue. I was a Buy-and-Holder for several years. It’s not because I was dishonest. It’s because I believe in research and the Buy-and-Holders said they believed in research. So I figured that Buy-and-Hold was for me. I flipped on the evening of August 27, 2002, when 200 Buy-and-Holders endorsed Greaney’s death threat. That’s pure emotion. Letting your emotions run away with you is the OPPOSITE of following the research. Following the research is a reason-based approach.
It’s obviously dishonest that the Greaney retirement study has not been corrected in the 22 years since the error in it (it lacks a valuation adjustment) became public knowledge. The RESULT is dishonest. But not everyone who has talked about the 4 percent rule is dishonest. The vast majority are just repeating something that they held from someone else. If we permitted honest posting re the research at every site, most of those people would eventually come around.
If you think about it, the entire idea of a bull market is dishonest. If stocks were priced at their fair-value level (a CAPE of 17), that would be honest pricing. Any overvaluation or undervaluation is dishonest. By definition. If stocks are overpriced (as they are today), they are not priced properly. Shiller’s research permits us to achieve honest pricing. That’s a huge advance. The Bennett/Pfau research shows that we can reduce the riskiness of stocks by 70 percent just by permitting honest posting re the research.
But we can’t move forward unless our Buy-and-Hold friends can learn how to pronounce the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” That’s what’s been holding us back for 22 years now. Anytime research is produced, there’s a chance of learning something new. Anytime something new is learned, people who developed their views before the new research was published need to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” If we are not going to insist that the Buy-and-Holders acknowledge their mistakes when new research brings them to light, we should just shut down all the peer-reviewed journals. These serve no purpose if no one is ever permitted to learn things that wren’t known back in the 1960s, when Buy-and-Hold was being developed.
Rob
Shiller doesn’t say what you say. That means that he is either dishonest or he is just too stupid compared to you. Clearly, Rob Bennett should get a Nobel Prize since he has done more than Shiller.
We would all be much better off agreeing with Rob and being broke and divorced versus having our own opinions, having millions in retirement and staying married to our spouses.
You could drop the abusive stuff and see what he says.
We both know you’ll never do it. And we both know why.
Rob
We would all be much better off agreeing with Rob and being broke and divorced versus having our own opinions, having millions in retirement and staying married to our spouses.
I think you would be better off following research-based strategies.
I have been opposed to the abusive stuff going back to the first day. That stuff is pure poison. Obviously.
Rob
Everyone but Rob Bennett is abusive. Anyone that does not agree with Rob Bennett is automatically abusive.
There are millions and millions of Normals who believe in Buy-and-Hold and who are non-abusive themselves but who tolerate the abusive behavior of you Goons. By tolerating the abusive behavior, they give you Goons veto power over what can be spoken on the internet. The big question is whether those people will begin speaking up when they lose a large percentage of their life savings in the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. If even a small percentage of them begin speaking up, we will all be on our way to a far better place than the place where we have been residing during the Buy-and-Hold years. It’s that place that produced today’s CAPE value.
Yes, we will someday have accurate safe withdrawal rates studies. I believe that. Thousands of Normals have already expressed a desire to at least be able to take a look at them and to talk about them and those thousands that we have run into on the internet represent millions in the real world. I believe that they will eventually get what they want. I believe that you Goons have been able to exercise a power far, far greater than what you could attain in ordinary circumstances. We’ll see.
Rob