Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
How hard is it to understand. We have money. You don’t. That means we don’t have to do anything and you do. Fix your own problems because we are not lifting a finger for you.
How much of the money you have is real and how much of it is pretend?
Do you even care to know?
That’s not my problem. That’s your problem. Fixing that problem would not be lifting a finger for me, it would be lifting a finger for you.
That’s what I believe, Anonymous. There are no two sides here. We are all on the same side.
Rob
I can spend it, so it is clearly not pretend. How much can you spend of your $500 million windfall?
You’re saying that you can spend the amount cited as the value of your stock portfolio and that therefore that amount is not pretend. If the entire amount of the stated value of your portfolio at a time when the CAPE is what it is today is real, then what the heck is irrational exuberance? Your view of how stock investing works leaves no room for consideration of irrational exuberance. I believe that irrational exuberance is real. I believe that your view of how stock investing works is dated. It is 44 years out of date.
Rob
Silly me. I guess I just have to pretend like you do that I have a $500 million windfall coming and then magically I will be rich like you.
Whatever you elect to do, I wish you the best of luck with it.
As for me, I believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. So that’s what I say when the subject of safe withdrawal rates turns up in discussions held on the internet.
My best wishes.
Rob
Is Greaney broke? No
Is Wade Pfau broke? No
Is Robert Shiller broke? No
Is Evidence broke? No
Is Rob Bennett broke? Yes………I wonder why? Hmmmmmmmm…………
I know why, I pointed out the error in the Greaney retirement study (it lacks a valuation adjustment). If the 4 percent rule goes down, the entire Buy-and-Hold strategy goes down. Shiller published the Nobel-prize-winning research discrediting it in 1981 and the cover-up has continued for 44 years now, doing a lot of harm to millions of people. So there is a strong feeling among a lot of wealthy and powerful and well-connected people that this thing has to be kept under wraps.
But that only makes it worse. It can only get worse and worse, never better. So I think it would have been better just to come clean on the afternoon of May 13, 2002. If Greaney’s study contained a valuation adjustment, he would have pointed us to it on the first day.
I don’t want to be broke. But I don’t want to stab my friends in the back either. And I don’t want anyone else to feel that they need to stab their friends in the back. LOTS of people would like to see every site opened to honest posting re the research. But someone has to lead the way. I guess I was elected. Once we get to the other side. no one is going to want to go back. It makes no sense to have one set of laws for every field of human endeavor other than the investment advice field and then a different set of laws for the investment advice field. I mean. come on.
If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, there never would have been a single abusive post, much less 23 years of them.
Rob
So, what you are saying is that no one but you claims that Greaney made an error. Again, why are YOU broke? Why isn’t anyone willing to pay you a dime?
Everyone knows that he made an error. YOU know that. If you believed that his study contained a valuation adjustment, your next post would contain a link to the page in the study containing it.
The cover-up has been going on for 44 years. We should have talked this all through in 1981. After a 44-year cover-up, it is very hard. It only gets harder to wait longer. But it is very hard.
There’s a movie called “The Insider” about a man who knew that the tobacco industry was lying in testimony to Congress about research that showed that smoking causes cancer. All of the same tactics that have been used to suppress what I say and what all the people who have posted in support of me say were used to keep the public in the dark about the dangers of smoking. Do you think It would have been better if that cover-up were still going on? I do not. I think we needed to bring it to an end. I think we need to bring the Buy-and-Hold cover-up to an end as well.
The longer it continues, the worse it is for each and every one of us.
Rob
There was a movie called “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest “. It was about people needing mental healthcare. You could star in a real life reboot.
Yeah, yeah.
Rob
“ I believe that your view of how stock investing works is dated. It is 44 years out of date.”
Silly me. I need to follow the new investment strategy that makes me go broke and forces my wife to divorce me.
And that avoids bull markets and bear markets and economic crises.
Stocks provide an average annual return of 6.5 percent real without any of the Buy-and-Hold garbage. The roller coaster ride nonsense became optional in 1981. Nobel-prize-winning research breakthroughs make a difference.
Rob
“And that avoids bull markets and bear markets and economic crises.”
And avoids working a job that provides an income to support the family.
Take away the abusive stuff and that’s not so.
There’s a good reason why we have laws to protect us from the sort of things we have seen go down as part of the effort to suppress discussion of what the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research teach us about how stock investing works in the real world. Those laws protect each and every one of us. They show that we are basically a good people.
Rob
“ Take away the abusive stuff and that’s not so.”
You need to help us out here, Rob. Where can we buy those special goggles that will help us see all these abusive posts that you seem to be able to read, but we are unable to find?
Take a look at the Greaney retirement study and see if you can find a valuation adjustment in it. I pointed out the error on May 13, 2002. It’s not possible that we could go 23 years without seeing a correction without enduring a whole big bunch of funny business.
Rob
Take a look at my Tesla. It doesn’t have a microwave oven. That must be an error.
That’s what we’re up against.
If we decide as a nation of people in the wake of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis that we would like to bring an end to bull markets and bear markets and economic crises, the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research is sitting there waiting for us. I say “go for it.”
Emotion (marketing) vs. reason (research),
Rob