“People Use Retirement Studies to Plan Retirements”

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

“ The problem in the stock market is that honest posting re the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research is banned at every internet site.”

Every internet site? What is YOUR definition of the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research (what studies have you included in that definition). Please elaborate more on your claim.

Robert Shiller publiushed peer-reviewed research in 1981 showing that valuations affect long-term returns. That research revolutionized (that word appears in the subtitle of his book) our understanding of how stock investing works.

Learning that revealed to us what makes stocks risky (irrational exuberance) and how to combat it (valuation-based market timing). It’s the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. We should be talking about the how-to implications of Shiller’s research at every site. We will all be able to retire years earlier once we give ourselves permission to talk about what the peer-reviewed research shows.

It’s a logical impossibility that the safe withdrawal rate is always the same number in a world in which valuations affect long-term returns.. If we were all thinking clearly. there would not be even one person who favored a ban on honest posting at even a single site. We should all want to see the authors of retirement studies get the numbers right. People use retirement studies to plan retirements. I know this from personal experience. I saw people doing it at the old Motley Fool board.

Rob