Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Just tell people what you really want. What you want is for all the sites in the world to be open to your posts so that you can increase your popularity. Your ambition is to be one of the leading, if not the top, investment experts in the world. With this fame, you thought you would become rich by becoming a sought after speaker and perhaps selling books and other materials.
The real problem is that you don’t have any education or expertise in this area, a personal failed track record (you are broke) and your market timing performance has been trounced by buy and hold (your expected crashes never happened).
All that you describe sounds 100 percent good to me. I enjoy using my talents to help others and I of course think it’s find that in cases in which those talents produce an exceptional work product that I would be well-compensated for the work I do.
I agree with you that I don’t possess any particular expertise in the stock investing realm. It could be argued that in today’s world that’s a plus. I have spoken to many, many experts in the field who have evidenced a desire to do honest work but who hold back from starting things clearly because they worry what will happen to their careers if they do so.
The perfect example is William Bernstein, He stated in his book that the safe withdrawal rate at the top of the bubble was 2 percent, not 4 percent. That’s what I say. So Bill could have obviously been a big help to me and the thousands of other community members who have evidenced a desire that honest posting re the peer-reviewed research be permitted. He posted at the Bogleheads Forum on numerous topics. But, when the Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Debate was raging there, he never once advanced a post expressing his view that the Greaney retirement study gets the numbers wildly wrong. It’s not just Bill Bernstein, His story is the story of pretty much every expert in this field in the Buy-and-Hold Era, in my assessment.
I’m a journalist, not an investment expert. This is a huge story, one of the most important stories there is to tell in the United States today. We are talking about something that would help millions and millions of people to live richer and fuller and freer lives and all it would take is for a small number of people to insist on their right to post honestly re the peer-reviewed research. I offer precisely zero apologies for doing everything in my power to get us all to the better place where deep in our hearts we all want to live. I have compared the situation to the one that would exist if a pill were discovered that cured every form of cancer and the people who earned six-figure salaries offering chemotherapy engaging in abusive and criminal behavior to block the millions of people who wanted to learn about a cure from gaining access to discussions about it.
I am in favor of finding a cure for cancer and I am in favor of learning for the first time in history how stock investing works in the real world. I want everyone on the planet to know about Shiller’s amazing, Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns and about how to use it to invest in stocks far more effectively than it was possible to do in the days before that research became available (at least theoretically) to all of us. If there has been a more important journalistic endeavor than that that has come around in the course of my lifetime, I sure am not able to imagine what it might have been.
I wish you all good things. But I sincerely believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.
Rob
“ I’m a journalist, not an investment expert.”
Then you should not be giving out investment advice. You clearly don’t know what you are talking about as you are broke.
This is just defensiveness. I don’t believe that you see a valuation adjustment in the Greaney retirement study any more than I do.
I saw people at the Motley Fool board using the Greaney study to plan their retirement. Do you think it would have been better if I just kept it zipped re the error in it? Really?
I didn’t feel good about myself keeping quiet. I feel better about myself as a person since I worked up the courage to say something. No I haven’t enjoyed the abusive stuff. But I feel better about myself having been honest with my friends.If all of us who doubt whether the study contains a valuation adjustment spoke up, this wouldn’t;t be an issue. There would be no “controversy.” The same laws that apply in every field other than the investment advice field would apply in the investment advice field as well. I believe that that would be a far better world.
Humans make mistakes. It’s something that happens. When it happens, the mistakes need to be acknowledged and corrected. For that to happen, we need to permit the mistakes to be identified and discussed. My sincere take.
You sure don’t need to be any kind of an expert to see that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment. He gives the game away when he says that the safe withdrawal rates is always 4 Percent. If the study had a valuation adjustment, it would come up with different numbers at times of different valuation levels, not always the same number. Why does this investing stuff have to be so darn complicated?
Rob
Rob
I wouldn’t take medical advice from someone that is not a doctor, so why would I (or anyone else) take investment advice from someone that is not an investment expert?
Telling you the truth is not abusive.
Instead of sitting around telling the rest of us what to do, you should be trying to fix your own problems. Your broke.
Okay. Please just mark me down as saying that I sincerely believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment.
Not a doctor. Not even on TV.
Rob
Please mark me down as saying a broke guy should be getting a job instead of giving our investment advice.
Please consider yourself officially so marked down, Anonymous.
I wish you all good things.
Rob
Shiller, Bernstein, Pfau and your ex-wife all agree that you should be getting a job instead of handing out investment advice.
Shiller, Bernstein and Pfau would love, love, love to live in a world in which they felt 100 percent free to speak honestly about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold. They have made that clear in numerous comments.
I believe that we are going to get there in not too much more time. I certainly am going to do what I can to make it happen. We’ll see how it goes, you know?
Rob
They do speak honestly. You just like what they say.
They speak honestly at times. But they are too hesitant about it for the message to break through to people who very much want to believe in Buy-and-Hold because their retirements are built on it.
Shiller is honest when he says that valuations affect long-term returns and when he writes an entire book on the subject of irrational exuberance. But why not include a sentence in his book saying that the Buy-and-Hold studies get the numbers wildly wrong? That’s pretty basic. That’s pretty darn important.
Bernstein was honest re the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies getting the numbers wildly wrong. But there’s a lot of stuff in his book that was heavily influenced by the Buy-and-Hold mindset. And how often did he repear the thing about the safe withdrawal rates being 2 percent at the top of the bubble. I am only aware of him saying it that one time, in his book. That was is important enough to merit thousands of mentions. People use retirement studies to plan retirements.
The research that I co-authored with Wade is the most important research published in this field in 30 years. So full props to him for his courage. But why flip to the Goon side? It’s because he needed to hear that other people in the field had his back. “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” That’s good to know. But what percentage of investors know it today? We need to open every site to honest posting to get the word out.
My sincere take.
Rob
I have always seen them speak honestly. You just can’t handle it when ANYONE won’t agree with YOU.
The only one that got any numbers wildly wrong is you. That is why you are broke.
Yeah, yeah.
Rob