Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
No, they are not doing a thing different. They continue to just buy and hold like always. You even state that. You don’t like the fact that they keep buying and holding.
I would like to see every U.S. investor working together to get the CAPE value down to a less scary level. I think we should have public service announcements telling people that “only you can avoid Buy-and-Hold Crisis.’ I don’t see a Great Recession or a Great Depression as being any less of a national tragedy than a hurricane. So I think we should be united in opposition to bull markets as much as we are to hurricanes. We should protect people from them.
So it’s fair to say that I don’t like it that many investors keep buying and holding. But, in the market continue to perform in the future anything like it always has in the past, they will indeed stop doing that. How do you think price crashes happen? Millions of people who swore on a hundred Bibles that they will always hold see something that causes their inner doubts to break through and they sell like mad. Then all their friends (also self-decribed Buy-and-Holders) follow their lead. You look up one day and see that $10 trillion of wealth has been destroyed. Then, surprise, surprise, the economy contracts and collapses. Who ever would have thunk it?
I would just permit honest posting re the peer-reviewed research and skip the rollar-coaster ride to poverty. I don’t see that the irrational exuberance garbage adds anything, It helps our Wall Street Con Men friends to turn a few extra bucks. Yippie, you know? They could make a perfectly fine living in a world in which honest posting re the peer-reviewed research was permitted. I personally think they would do better in the long run. People would love a stock market that didn’t blow up the economy every 40 years or side. The roller coaster ride is a huge waste of time and effort (and MONEY), in my assessment.
Get Rich Quick! Buy-and-Hold! Irrational Exuberance! The 4 Percent Rule! Economic Crises!Failed Retirements! Bull Markets! Big, Big Gains, A Lot More than 6.5 Percent Real! Board Bannings!
Yucko.
Rob
You’ve spent far longer crying about being banned from (mostly now-defunct) bulletin boards than you did actually participating. Everyone else has moved on. It’s time you do the same.
What is there to move on from? The peer-reviewed research shows how the stock market works. The stock market is still there and it still works as it always did. It’s the Buy-and-Holders who should have moved on from their claim that valuation-based market timing is not required when Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns.
Rob
“ What is there to move on from? ”
Why would you have to ask that question? You are the one making the demands. You are the one that keeps repeating the same garbage. It is not us….it is you.
“I would like to see every U.S. investor working together to get the CAPE value down to a less scary level.”
In other words you want me to sell you* some stocks at half the current market value. Why should I do that when there is someone else willing to pay me twice as much?
* full disclosure, I am not sure if you are currently in a position to buy any stocks.
It’s not a demand for me to say that I sincerely believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. It’s an honest statement.
Rob
In other words you want me to sell you* some stocks at half the current market value. Why should I do that when there is someone else willing to pay me twice as much?
What I want is for the market value to reflect the real value. For that to happen, we need to open every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. We all benefit when we do away with the thrill-ride aspect of the stock investing experience.
Rob
Value is determined by the buyer, just like everything else. If you don’t agree with the value proposition, then don’t buy the stock. Simple as that. No one has to do a darn thing for you.
To properly determine value, the buyers need to be able to engage in discussions of the peer-reviewed research. Why do you think we produce peer-reviewed research if not to better inform ourselves of the realities of stock investing?
You wouldn’t be doing something “for me’ if you permitted honest posting re the research. You would be doing something for me and for you and for every fellow community member and for every citizen of the United States. We all have a stake in seeing that stocks are priced properly.
You’re saying that I shouldn’t buy stock that is not priced properly. If I am participating in a discussion forum at which people need to know how much stocks they should be buying and I have good cause to believe that a retirement study that is being promoted there lacks a valuation adjustment, should I tell my fellow community members about that? Or should I just keep it zipped?
Would you consider it “doing something for me” to permit me to post honestly re whether the study contains a valuation adjustment or not? The published rules of all the sites permit honest posting. It doesn’t seem to me that following the published rules is doing anything remarkable. It’s just doing what would be 100 percent expected.
You agreed to follow the published rules before you were permitted to post. Why did you agree to follow the rules if you are not willing to do so? Do you feel that you are “doing something for me” when you honor your word? My view is that you are doing something for you and for all your fellow community members as much as you are doing something for me.
Please remember that I too agreed to follow the published rules. I feel that I am betraying my fellow community members if I know about an error in a retirement study being promoted at the discussion forum and I fail to say anything about it. Do you agree that that’s pretty darn cowardly behavior?
Rob
We have read the peer-reviewed research. We know that buy and hold will work and that is why we went in that direction. We know that market timing doesn’t work. Thus, we have secure retirements and you are broke. We believe in honest posting. You are not honest. That is one of just many reasons why you are banned.
No, Rob. We are not going to do one single thing for you, so stop demanding that we do.
If you want to find the coward. Look in the mirror.
I don’t intend to demand anything. You are going to do what you want to do regardless of anything that I say, in any event.
I do intend to continue to say that I believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. That’s my sincere belief and getting the numbers right in retirement studies is a big deal. In the event that Greaney’s study lacks a valuation adjustment, he has put millions of retirements at risk of going bust by his unwllingness to correct the error (after getting the Greaney study corrected, I intended to take the matter to other sites and get every Buy-and-Hold retirement study corrected and indeed achieve the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing as the dominant stock investment strategy).
I wish you well in all your future endeavors, Anonymous. I like to think that that might help at least a tiny bit.
Rob
Greaney doesn’t need to change his study just because of your faulty understanding. If you don’t like it, do you own study. No one has to give you access to your site. They can ban you just like you ban posts.
Fix your own problems and stop asking everyone else to do something for you.
I 100 percent think that every site on the internet should permit (and encourage!) honest posting re the past 43 years of peer-reviewed research. If we were all thinking clearly, there wouldn’t be even on person who had any doubts re that one. We are all in this together. We all need to know how to invest our retirement money. We all have a stake in making sure that the CAPE level never reached the scary levels where it stands today.
I’m not going to stop asking others for help because the only way we are ever going to as a nation succeed in getting the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage buried 30 feet’s in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things, is to get everyone pulling the oar in the same direction. We’ve done a great job in getting laws enacted that protect us all from the tactics employed by the sorts of individuals who have put up posts “defending” Mel Lindauer and John Greaney. Now we just need to get those laws enforced in the investment advice field in the same manner as they are enforced in every other field of human endeavor.
At least we are close to seeing the biggest economic advanced in our nation’s history. There’s a lot more good news here than bad news. That ain’t nothing.
Where I’m coming from.
Rob
We are not going to help you spread dishonest posting. That is one of many reasons why you are rightly banned.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.
Rob
In the end, we all have to take responsibility for our own outcomes. Stop blaming others for your mistakes.
I don’t see how that comment relates to anything that has been said (over a 22-year time-period!). I don’t believe that it was a mistake to say that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. Every iota of evidence that has been accumulated over the 22 years points in that direction.
And, given that the evidence is so strong, I don’t think it was a mistake for me to work up the courage to point out the error. There were people at the Motley Fool board who were using the Greaney study for help in planning their retirement. I know this. I was there.
Rob