“There Was a Time When We Didn’t Know That Valuation-Based Market Timing Was 100 Percent Required for Every Investor. Now We Do. That’s Been So for 44 Years Now. But We Have Not Changed Our Investment Advice to Reflect the New Research. Buy-and-Hold Is Still a Thing.”

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

Many years ago, you were asked as to how you think things will all turn out. At that time you said the following:

1. There would be a huge crash
2. Congress would hold hearings on the crash
3. The New York Times would have front page articles on the danger of Buy and Hold.
4. The congressional hearings and New York Times articles would bring awareness to you and VII.
5. The financial community would make you the new leader of the community and you would be a highly sought after speaker and author.
5. Legal firms would line up to represent you in future settlement discussions with currently unnamed parties.
6. Minimum expectations on settlement payments would be $500 million.
Have I got l that right?

Is this the leading plan and is there a revised backup plan?

All of those things follow if it turns out that I have been right in what I have been saying for 23 years now — that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment.

There was a time when we didn’t know that valuation-based market timing was 100 percent required for every investor. Now we do. That’s been so for 44 years now. But we have not changed our investment advice to reflect the new research. Buy-and-Hold is still a thing. There are still people who say that the safe withdrawal rate is always the same number,

Getting the numbers right in retirement studies is a big deal.When we fail to emphasize the importance of valuation-based market timing, we all suffer in big ways. Just look at what happened in earlier Buy-and-Hold Crises if you want to get a sense of how bad it can be. We don’t need new research to get to a much better place. The research we need has been available to us for 44 years. The problem is that we have not yet given ourselves permission to discuss the new research on the internet. That’s what I have been proposing that we do for 23 years now.

I have made the comparison to finding the cure for cancer. Finding the cure for cancer would improve millions of lives in very big ways. What’s happened in the investment advice field is the equivalent of finding the cure for cancer and then having people who enjoy huge salaries giving chemo treatment engaging in abusive and criminal behavior to stop knowledge of the cure for cancer getting out.

Getting the word out about what works in stock investing (valuation-based market timing!) is a matter of huge importance for all of us. I think we are going to pull it off. I believe that, once we have all made it to the other side, there won’t be one person saying that they would like to go back to the Buy-and-Hold days, where we all had to suffer the consequences that arrive when the irrational exuberance came to an end. I think that we are all going to celebrate the huge advance we achieved on the day when we elected as a nation of people to open every internet site to honest posting re the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.

We’ll see, you know. I believe to this day that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment. The death threats haven’t persuaded me otherwise. The board bannings have not persuaded me otherwise. The acts of extortion have not persuaded me otherwise. All of the stuff we have seen supports Shiller’s findings. It has been insanely emotional stuff. Buy-and-Hold has made stock investors more emotional than they have ever been before and that aint’t good. I would permit discussion of the peer-reviewed research and let people come to see how dangerous it is to go with a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategy.”

I believe that we are close to achieving a huge positive breakthrough.

Rob