Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“Not in one thread, in EVERY thread”
And right there in a single sentence you have demonstrated why you kept getting banned at multiple boards. You can’t accept that your arguments never got any traction so you thought if instead of improving your arguments you would simply repeat them more often you might get your way.
It didn’t work but you never learned your lesson.
My arguments never got traction with a majority of board members. i certainly agree with that much. They consistently got traction with a small percentage of the community (about 10 percent). I don’t like that reality. But I accept that it’s a reality.
I want to see the percentage who believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing to increase. It’s not going to happen if I just keep it zipped when the far more numerous group that believes in Buy-and-Hold just continues to make their points on a daily basis.
I don’t apologize for insisting on recognition of my right to post honesty. Every community member should be advancing his or her honest views. I would never dream of intimidating a Buy-and-Holder into saying something that he or she didn’t believe. Such acts of intimidation are degrading to both parties.
If we make it the rule that Shiller’s research findings need to be accepted by 100 percent of the community before the first person can begin talking about them, we are never going to get there. My take is that, once Shiller’s research was published in a peer-reviewed journal, it became fair game. Any site owner who cannot bear to hear peer-reviewed research discussed at this site should shut down the site. To prohibit discussion of the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research is fraud.
That’s my sincere take, in any event. The lesson that you are trying to teach is not one that I have any interest in learning, Evidence. I had come to view a number of people at the Motley Fool board as friends. I don’t make it a practice to lie to my friends.
Rob
You never got traction with anyone, other than JWR. If you did, you would have people posting here in support of you and your points. Instead, people ignore you.
I got traction with lots of people. Never a majority or anything close to it. But lots of people. My May 13, 2002, post had people saying a”thanks for launching the most important discussion ever held at this discussion board!” That’s traction! And that was just the first day, before all the work I did with John Walter Russell and Wade Pfau and on and on.
Traction has never been a problem. The problem is that the advance from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is very big. They are entirely different ways of seeing what is going on in the stock market. People need to ask lots of questions to become comfortable with the new way of seeing the world. People want to ask those questions. We saw that at every site at which discussions were held. But people hate the insanely abusive stuff that the small number of Buy-and-Holders who are properly referred to as “Goons” dish out. Your willingness to go so low to suppress the discussions that people want to have had given you a veto power over what can be discussed on the internet.
Will people still permit you that veto power in the days and years following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis? I think not. I certainly hope not. I cannot guaranty anything. But I believe that we are fundamentally a good people. If we weren’t;t, Shiller would never have gotten his research published in a peer-reviewed journal or have seen his book become a best-sellter or have been awarded a Nobel prize. If we are fundamentally a good people, we are one day going to figure out a way to overcome the Abusiveness and the criminal behavior of you Goons.
We’ll see, you know. I know which side I want to be standing on when that happens. I am on the side of the research and of common sense and on the side of the American people and I don’t apologize for it. The Goon stuff has zero appeal to me. It’s hurting everyone alive in the United States (including the Goons themselves!) in a very serious way.
Yes, people ignore me. They ignore Shiller’s research too. If they didn’t ignore it, we wouldn’t have the CAPE value that applies today. I think it is a terrible mistake to ignore Shiller’s research. I think we should be talking about it at every site on a daily basis. Ignoring Shiller’s research at a time when the CAPE value is where it is today is like ignoring a hurricane warnings on the grounds that “I’m sure it will all work out okay.” In the past, it has not worked out okay. Buy-and-Hold Crises are terrible, terrible events. The good news is that today that are 100 percent optional events. The bad news is that as a nation of people we have elected to ignore the 43 years of peer-reviewed research showing us how to avoid them. Not this boy, you know?
Where I’m coming from.
Rob
No one ever said it was the most important discussion and if it was as you say, people would be posting over here at your website. It tells you that no one is interested anymore about your “discussions”. Further, if you really wanted to have discussions on the boards, you would go after the very large formats, like Reddit. Instead, you just like keeping up a story line as a cover to your complete and absolute failure.
Okay, Anonymous.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
If you really have supporters, give them a call or send them an email and ask them to come over here in defense of you.
Thousands of them have already done it. If I didn’t have support at every board at which I have posted, you Goons would never have felt sufficiently threatened to engage in criminal behavior. I mean, please give me a freakin’ break. The sort of behavior we have seen over the past 22 years from the Buy-and-Hold side just ain’t normal. It’s desperation stuff.
My sincere take.
Rob
Thousands? Really? Yet you can’t even get one person to post over here to support you.
Not buying it.
If you Goons would follow the published rules of the sites, I am confident that I can increase the percentage of the population that follows valuation-informed stock investing strategies from 10 percent to 20 percent within six months.
Rob
How many years has it been since you have had an actual conversation with anyone from the investment community?
There is a guy from California who liked my Value Wslk columns. He used to write to me to comment on them on a fairly regular basis.
Outside of that, it’s been a long, long time. Probably since Wade Pfau flipped, which was the same time at which I was banned from Bogleheads.
There shouldn’t be any isolation whatsoever for those who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research. You’re trying to make some negative point by bringing this up. And of course it’s true that the isolation is very painful for me. I certainly don’t say different. But I want to end that. I want to see everyone who believes that Shiller’s research is legitimate participating at every site with no worries whatsoever that they will encounter any sort of abusiveness so that we all can learn from them. The extreme isolation that you are referring to just makes me feel all the stronger that we need to open every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. It shows how messed-up things have gotten in the Buy-and-Hold Era. I think we draw opposite sorts of conclusions from the phenomenon to which you are referring.
If everyone who believes that Shiller’s research is legitimate had insisted on his or her right to post honestly going back to the first day, I obviously would have not run into any trouble when I pointed out the error in the Greaney study. In all likelihood, someone would have pointed it out long before I came on the scene. So it seems clear to me that living in fear is not the answer. It’s too many people living in fear that caused this crazy, dangerous situation. So I make an effort not to do that.
Rob
The fact that it has been a long, long time just tells us that you are obviously detached from reality. Further, it means that you are not open to anyone else’s opinion. It is just like a drug addict or alcoholic that doesn’t think that they have a problem. You need to find a 12 step program to bring you back to reality.
I don’t see it that way. I think that stock investing is an important subject. So we should be talking about it. If we don’t talk about the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research, we are not really talking about it.
Rob
Of course you don’t see it that way. It is because you are detached from reality. You can’t see things objectively.
And I’m bad. Don’t forget that part.
My best wishes to you, Anonymous.
Rob
Read again. You are detached from reality. That is something totally different.
We’re all detached from reality at times. That’s why we bid stock prices up to crazy levels. That’s why we need to pay attention to irrational exuberance so that it doesn’t get too out of hand.
Or so Rob Bennett maintains, you know?
Hang in there, man.
Rob
You still don’t understand. You are detached because you don’t have any personal interactions with others in the investment community. As such, your opinions are merely based on whatever mental gymnastics are going on in your mind (you just make it all up).
Do you think it would have been better if I had just kept it zipped re the error in the Greaney retirement study (it lacks a valuation adjustment)?
Rob
The Greaney issue has been discussed and you just use it to divert from the topic. It is your version of just running away from the topic at hand, which you do frequently.
Okay, Anonymous.
My best wishes.
Rob