“Some People Have Been Waiting Since the Mid 90s for Stocks to Be Cheap Enough (in Their Opinion) to Buy.”

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

“Trying to guess when prices will shift is a fool’s errand.”

Some people have been waiting since the mid 90s for stocks to be cheap enough (in their opinion) to buy.

If I was a lawyer who had been hired to make the case for Buy-and-Hold, that’s the point that I would be focusing on. Prices have remained high for a very long time. That’s a reason for not being extreme in one’s approach. I recommend that people never go below 30 percent stocks. That way you always participate at least to a small extent in crazy bull markets.

The other side of the story is that, if we had been permitting honest posting re the peer-reviewed research all along, we never could see prices remain so high for so long. That would be a far-better works than the one we have been living in during the Buy-and-Hold Era. We wouldn’t have the crazy roller coaster ride of bull markets followed by bear markets. But we would see a steady return of 6.5 percent real. Reasonable people should be able to agree that that’s plenty good enough. There’s no need for the irrational exuberance garbage except for the greed-based desire to turn a few extra bucks while destroying millions of lives.

There’s no justification for not permitting honest posting re safe withdrawal rates. People who believe in the loony tunes Buy-and-Hold retirement studies and hand in their resignations based on what they come to believe is “100 percent safe” can’t go back in time and reverse those decisions. We all should be speaking up in opposition to those “studies.”

Where I’m coming from.

Rob