Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
<em>“It’s in the interest of every investor for stocks to be priced properly”
The proper price for a stock is the market price that ensures a willing buyer and a willing seller.</em>
What if there is an internet-wide prohibition on the discussion of important research? People need access to good information to be able to make sound decisions.
Do you believe that there is no such thing as overvaluation or undervaluation?
Do you believe that irrational exuberance even exists?
Why have peer-reviewed journals if we are not going to permit the product of peer-reviewed journals to be discussed?
Rob
The proper price for anything, including stocks, is what a buyer is willing to pay for it. If you don’t like the price, don’t buy it.
Peer-reviewed research has always been allowed on every investment website that I have seen. Bad behavior, such as not answering questions, lying and/or name calling, is typically not tolerated. You were banned for very good and legitimate reasons. You continued lying about why you are banned just supports your banning even further.
We are in complete agreement that the proper price for stocks is what buyers are willing to pay. We disagree on the question of whether those buyers should be permitted to hear about and discuss the 43 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there are times when buyers let their emotions get the better of them and agree to pat crazy prices for stocks. The way that we gain control of our Get Rich Quick impulses is to become aware of them and talk them through. Ignoring them (pretending that there is some magical, mystical alternate universe in which valuation-based market timing is not 100 percent required for every long-term investor) is the worst of all worlds. Following that approach permits irrational exuberance to get out of control and cause great harm to all of us.
My sincere take.
Rob
They have heard about it. You admitted it has been discussed thousands of times. You just don’t like the answers you have been given and you don’t like the fact that people disagree with you.
Why should people have to continue to discuss something that has already been discussed 10’s of thousands of times? Heck, once it has been answered, then that should be it.
The general question has been discussed thousands of times. I agree with you re that one. But there has never once been any true intellectual engagement with Shiller’s research findings from the Buy-and-Hold side. Not once have you Goons been willing to say that you believe Shiller’s research says if it doesn’t say that valuations affect long-term returns. You suggest that you believe that it doesn’t say that when you fail to insist that Greaney correct the error in his study. But you never even say that directly. You just go about your business as if Shiller’s research didn’t exist.
I am fine with you making a choice to ignore Shiller’s research findings in the formation of your personal stock investment strategies. I am not fine with you engaging in abusive and in some cases criminal behavior to suppress discussions of the Shiller research findings that thousands of our fellow community members have expressed a desire for. Each community member has a right to decide for himself or herself whether the safe withdrawal rates is always the same number or is a number than changes with changes in valuation levels.
It doesn’t bother me even a tiny bit that the majority does not agree with me. I like a lot of the people who disagree with me. I consider them friends. But I think it was creepy of me not to mention the error in the Greaney study during the first three years in which I posted at the Motley Fool board. I believe strongly that the community has a right to hear both sides of the story, As someone who believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research, I believe that I have an obligation to the community to post honestly re the matter.
If I agree not to post honestly, I am screwing over my friends just to get you Goons off my back. Yucko to the maximum degree, you know? Not this boy.
Rob
Now you admit you don’t like the answers given to you by the buy and hold crowd. They don’t have to agree with you. They will also say that you never have engaged in an intellectual way. It doesn’t matter. You gave your opinion and they gave their opinion. End of story. No one has to let you go on and on and on. It is not criminal to ban you from posting just like you ban posts on this board. It is the right of each board owner to decide on the content of their website.
All site owners should be willing to enforce their published site rules in a reasonable manner. When one side in a debate employs death threats and acts of extortion and acts of defamation to intimidate people on the other side, the debate and the site itself comes to lack integrity. Site owners should be on the side of those who follow the site rules even in cases where there is a short-term profit to be made by looking the other way when they see abusive and criminal tactics being employed.
I have never made it a practice to “go on and on and on.” I made an observation that the Greaney retirement study lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins, That generated thousands of questions from people who described the debate as the most exciting and important one ever held at the forum. I responded to thos questions. That’s perfectly normal and appropriate behavior.The thing that pulled everything down was the ugliness from the Goon side of the table. The site owners should have removed you Goons once you became highly abusive and disruptive and certainly when you crossed the felony line.
There are good reasons for our site rules and for the laws of the United States that rein in how abusive posters can become in”defense” of their views. Those rules and laws need to be enforced in a reasonable way if we all are to advance in our understanding of how stock investing works over the course of time. We did not know it all back in the 1960s, when Buy-and-Hold was being developed. Those of us who have followed the peer-reviewed research have learned a great deal over the past 43 years. We should be talking about what we have learned at every site, without a single exception.
Rob
Site owners can make decisions about content for any reason they want, just like you do.
You make accusations of death threats, extortion, criminal acts, etc., but refuse to provide links to any of these activities. If this was a court of law, you would have to provide direct evidence. You don’t because it has already been proven that you make up these accusations.
Site owners have decided to ban you and it appears to be for very good reason. Setting that aside, they don’t even need to have a reason. They can do whatever they want with their private websites. Meanwhile, you can do whatever you want to do with your website. There is no double standard.
Please mark me down as saying that the integrity of the discussions held at the various sites matters, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.
Rob
Please mark the rest of the world down for saying that we will not participate in your fantasy world. We are not doing a thing for you. We are not interested in your hocomania. We are not interested in you polluting the investment forums. We are not interested in your market timing scam. Fix your own problems.
Okay, Anonymous.
My best wishes to you.
Rob