A Rich Life

The Old Ideas on Saving & Investing Don't Work -- Here's What Does

“What If Bogle Had Assured Pfau That He Would Take Care of Lindauer? That Would Have Changed the World.”

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

Rather than discuss any of your theories (which have, in practice, failed spectacularly) you’re discussing having been banned from websites that mostly don’t even exist anymore while refusing to post on the far more popular websites that exist today. Believe me, YouTube and reddit will not ban you for your investing theories. You’re free to post to all even remotely prominent sites except for Bogleheads (which is a pretty small website in the grand scheme of things).

Bogleheads is not small in terms of its influence. The people who post there are smart and well-informed. The vast majority are Buy-and-Holders but the majority are open to hearing the other side of the story.

It’s not an accident that I met Wade Pfau at Bogleheads. He liked all the same thing about it that I liked. And lots of people there liked him. Lindauer didn’t. But lots of people did.

It’s also not an accident that Bogle put up a post there saying that he had come around to believing that there are circumstances in which market timing can work. Bogle was searching for a compromise. His statement was not quite an endorsement of Valuation-Informed Indexing. But it was a very positive sign. Had we explored Bogle’s statement in some depth, we could have changed the world.

What if Bogle had assured Pfau that he would take care of Lindauer? That would have changed the world.

Those who posted in defense of Lindauer held us back just as those who posted in defense of Greaney held us back at the Motley Fool board. But that board has huge potential. I see it as pretty much the perfect place to spread the word re Valuation-Informed Indexing. I certainly do not have majority support there or anything even remotely close to it. But there are smart and well-informed people there who would be dynamite in their efforts to spread the word if only we could make progress in reining in the abusiveness of the Lindauerheads.

Please mark me down as being pro-Bogelheads (but anti-Lindauerheads).

Rob

Comments

  1. What if Rob Bennett stopped living in the land of make believe. He might then be able to join the normal world for a change.

  2. If I sincerely believed that the Greaney retirement study contained a valuation adjustment, I would say that that’s what I sincerely believed.

    Rob

  5. The rest of us are focused on successful retirement planning and don’t really care much about your silly word games.

  8. The abusive posting has hurt me in a very serious way. I don’t believe that that will continue indefinitely, however. I believe that we may see it brought to a full and complete stop in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I then expect to reap huge financial benefits from my development of the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept over the past 22 years.

    It’s not the way I would have preferred to see things go. But there’s a saying that all’s well that ends well. I certainly would not have felt good about myself if I had failed to speak up about the error in the Greaney retirement study (it lacks a valuation adjustment). Being able to sleep at night is a priceless advantage. Being able to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning is a priceless advantage.

    I wish that I had spoken up sooner, you know? I had a lot of good times at the old Motley Fool board. I wouldn’t want to have missed out on those fun times. But I never felt right about not speaking up. It always made me feel creepy. Those days are very much in the past today.

    Rob

  9. People disagreeing with you is not abusive posting. You haven’t done a thing in well over 20 years to earn a dime.