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 one said you had to buy stocks. You can choose to stay broke. The rest of us can decide to pay what we want. We don’t need a broke guy telling us what to do.
You obviously are free to do whatever you please. Anonymous.
If I am part of a discussion board community in which someone advances a study purporting to reveal the safe withdrawal rate but the study lacks a valuation adjustment, I am obligated to point out the error to my fellow community members. They are all free to ignore the study because of the error or to ignore the error and use the study for guidance. No one is free to engage in abusive and criminal behavior in an effort to suppress the discussion of one of the points of view. Both the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold and the research-based./Valuation-Informed Indexing points of view should be expressed and each community member should be free to decide on his own which point of view to adopt as his own.
That’s where I’m coming from re this one, in any event. I of course appreciate the huge short-term marketing benefits of recommending a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy. But I don’t see the investment advice field as being solely about what turns a quick buck. The people who participate on our boards and blogs are real human beings, not pieces of plastic on a chessboard. There were people at the Motley Fool board who believed that the Greaney retirement study was a legitimate piece of research. I know. I was there.
Do you think it would have been better if I had kept it zipped re the error in the Greaney retirement study?
Rob
Should other board owners be obligated to allow you to peddle your failed timing scheme? Should other board owners be obligated to let you lie and tell stories on THEIR websites? Of course not. We should thank board owners for maintaining decorum on their websites.
Every site owner should permit honest posting re the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. The question is an absurd one.
It’s clear from the first 22 years of discussions that the majority of site owners would prefer to permit honest discussions. The problem is that to do so would expose the 43-year cover-up and that makes all Buy-and-Holders (which today make up 90 percent of the population) look bad. So the site owners “feel funny” about going there.
We obviously have no choice but to go there eventually. Every Buy-and-Hold Crisis that we have experienced in U.S. history has been a terrifying experience. It’s not a sane choice to just continue to experience them now when there is 43 years of peer-reviewed research making them optional. If we are going to go there sooner or later, it is better to go there sooner. Continued delay hurts every single person involved (you Goons even more than the rest of us — the rest of us are not looking ahead to long prison sentences). So I always advocate that we open every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research within the next 24 hours.
I also try to be careful to note that we need to open every site to honest posting “without a single exception.” You never know where the next powerful research-based insight is going to come from. We certainly do not want to leave anyone out!
My best wishes, etc.
Rob
Since you are unable to make honest (truthful) posts, board owners have had no choice but to ban you. You spend all your time trying to tell other people what they should do, when you don’t do a thing to fix your financial failure.
Once every site has been opened to honest posting re the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research, the financial future of the Bennett’s is set for many generations to come. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. I challenge anyone who has experienced a Buy-and-Hold Crisis to say otherwise.
I mean, come on.
Rob
Challenge accepted. Not only is Valuation Informed Indexing not the biggest advance in the history of personal finance, it’s not an advance at all. It’s another in a line of tired (and failed) market timing schemes peddled by a deranged man who, as a direct result of his market timing scheme, has no money.
Okay, Sensible.
My best and warmest wishes to you, in any event.
Rob
Is there anyone in the investment community with a worse track record than you? Shouldn’t you be the one seeking out advice versus trying to give it?
I’m the one who pointed out the error in the Greaney retirement study on the morning of May 13, 2002. Is there anyone one else who did that at that time.
Radiology Doctor came close. He had a post a few months before mine in which he said that the Greaney study was “analytically invalid.” He didn’t spell things out as clearly. He didn’t specifically say that Greaney got the numbers wrong because he failed to consider valuations. But he came awful close.
Wade Pfau said the Greaney study is “dangerous.” But he did that only after working with me. I give him lots of credit. But it’s harder to be first.
John Walter Russell did lots of amazing stuff after seeing my post. But he always said that seeing my stuff got him started.
Shiller published his research in 1981. That was long before I came on the scene. But there is no entry for “safe withdrawal rates” in his book. He came forward with the big idea. But he has been reluctant to discuss many how-to implications.
Bogle said that Reversion to the Mean is an “iron law” of stock investing. That’s how I figured out that the Greaney study was in error. But Bogle didn’t spell it out. He told people what they needed to know to figure it out for themselves. But he did not himself state things plainly and clearly.
Bernstein said that the safe withdrawal rate was 2 percent, not 4 percent, at the top of the bubble. I think Bernstein comes the closest. But he kept it zipped at the Bogleheads Forum when The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate was waging all around him. So how many people did he actually help? Only those who read his book with a good bit of care. And there’s a lot of Buy-and-Hold stuff in his book that wouldn’t be there if he had worked through the implications of what he said about safe withdrawal rates.
I believe in saying things as clearly as possibly. Given the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge residing within all of us, I don’t think it works to play it any other way. Today’s CAPE value shows that. I think we should be charitable in our assessments of the work of the Buy-and-Holders. They did lots of great stuff and we all make mistakes and we could use their help in making the transition to Valuation-Informed Indexing. But we should also be clear about all the stuff that they got wrong, which is a lot. This stuff is too important not to get the wrong stuff corrected. And the Buy-and-Holders definitely don’t seem inclined to correct their errors when those who discover them are less than clear in how they point them out.
My sincere take.
Rob