“Research Doesn’t Always Take You Where You Thought It Was Going to Take You.”

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

“ 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.”

No “interest in learning “ means you won’t listen to anyone. You don’t want a discussion. You just want people to listen to you and then agree with you. You don’t have any friends and there isn’t this any traction in what you say or you would have some people posting over here in support of you.

It’s been a hard stretch of road, Anonymous. I’ll give you that one.

Please remember that it’s our Buy-and-Hold friends who made it a core principles of their approach to follow the peer-reviewed research in making stock investing decisions. That’s where I got it from (thank you, John Bogle!).

Research doesn’t always take you where you thought it was going to take you. It seems to say one thing for one stretch of time and then new research is published telling a very different story. That’s called “learning.” It’s a good thing. Obviously there is a price to be paid in that you need to say those awful words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” to unlock the benefits of the learning experience. In the end, though, you end up far ahead and cannot even understand why you hesitated to say them.

I’m the true Buy-and-Holder here. That’s what I believe deep down. I stopped saying it because it seems too crazy to have so many Buy-and-Holders yelling at me and to have me saying that I am the true Buy-and-Holder. But that’s the core reality. It’s a Buy-and-Hold principle to take what the peer-reviewed research says into account when making stock investing decisions.

My best wishes to you.

Rob