A Rich Life

The Old Ideas on Saving & Investing Don't Work -- Here's What Does

“Everyone Should Question Valuation-Informed Indexing. Everyone Should Also Question Buy-and-Hold. It Is By Questioning Our Ideas and the Ideas of Others That We Learn. And Learning Is the One True Free Lunch in This World.”

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

“It is my view that the length of time that re have remained at high prices is the biggest piece of evidence suggesting that I might be wrong. ”

Might? I think you now realized you have been wrong all this time. It is time for you to give your “I was wrong” speech.

Everyone should question Valuation-Informed Indexing. I stand by that one 100 percent.

Everyone should also question Buy-and-Hold. I stand by that one 100 percent too.

It is by questioning our ideas and the ideas of others that we learn. And learning is the one true free lunch in this world. So I am a big-time advocate.

I don’t think i should offer any apologies. Because I have always said that people shouldn’t believe in Valuations-Informed Indexing just because I advocate it. I have always said that anyone who does that has a screw loose. And because I have raised a lot of good questions about Buy-and-Hold. Which is good for Buy-and-Hold. Those questions can either cause Buy-and-Holders to make needed adjustments, which would be a plus. Or it can cause Buy-and-Holders to come to a stronger belief in Buy-and-Hold because they have seen it survive more challenges, which would also be a plus.

So there is nothing to apologize for. Asking questions is a good thing for everyone concerned. I am here to help. So I ask questions. I ask the hardest questions that I can think of. And I offer no apologies whatsoever for doing so.

It is your best friends who challenge you with questions about your beliefs, Anonymous. True fact.

Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, in any event.

Rob

Valuation-Informed Indexing #455: Neither Buy-and-Hold Nor Valuation-Informed Indexing Are Truly Subject to a Testable Hypothesis

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I’ve posted Entry #455 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Neither Buy-and-Hold Nor Valuation-Informed Indexing Are Truly Subject to a Testable Hypothesis.

Juicy Excerpt: There’s only one question that matters — are stock price changes caused by a rational assessment of economic developments or by swings in investor psychology? If price changes are caused by a rational assessment of economic developments, you can trust the numbers on your portfolio statement — they are rooted in economic realities. If price changes are caused by swings in investor psychology, they cannot be trusted to report accurately your accumulated wealth. Investor psychology can change on a dime and most of your life savings can be transformed into so much cotton candy to be blown away in the wind.

“All of the Women Who Have Accused Jeffrey Epstein of Sexual Abuse Crimes Need to See Mental Health Professionals Too, According to Epstein.”

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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 question is — Why haven’t you gone to prison YET? Why are we talking about it? If it had happened years ago, we wouldn’t be talking about it. Why hasn’t it happened?”

No, the question is why haven’t you sought help from a mental health professional? Why hasn’t your family insisted that you get help?

All of the women who have accused Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse crimes need to see mental health professionals too, according to Epstein.

I’m not impressed. I’m going to go with what the jury says.

My best wishes to you.

Rob

“There Is a Huge Resistance to the Idea of Acknowledging What the Last 38 Years of Peer-Reviewed Research Teaches Us About How Stock Investing Works in the Real World. Acknowledging the Far-Reaching Implications of Shiller’s “Revolutionary” (His Word) Research Findings Means Rewriting Every Investing Book in the Bookstores. It Means Rejiggering Every Calculator on the Internet. It Means That Lots of Powerful and Wealthy People Who Make Their Careers As Investment Experts Will Lose Status and Lots of Currently Non-Powerful and Non-Wealthy People Will Rise Up to Take Their Place.”

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

“It doesn’t matter what you say you see or what I say I see. ”

It does matter. You have made a series of accusations saying that people made death threats and job threats. Serious accusations require proof. If those accusations are true, then those people that made such threats need to be dealt with. However, if your claims are not proven, then you need to get some help as that is abnormal behavior and cannot be tolerated.

I have said that there have been death threats. I have said that there have been job threats.

There is a mountain of proof. It is impossible for the human mind to imagine how there could be more proof.

If you want absolute proof, check the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site. If that study does not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins, how do you think that happened? It happened because there is a huge resistance to the idea of acknowledging what the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing works in the real world.

Acknowledging the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research findings means rewriting every investing book in the bookstores. It means rejiggering every calculator on the internet. It means that lots of powerful and wealthy people who make their careers as investment experts will lose status and lots of currently non-powerful and non-wealthy people will rise up to take their place. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. That’s why it has been so hard for us as a society to take action re the criminal acts that are the only thing keeping the massive act of financial fraud going at this point.

But we’re close. One more price crash that remains in place for a few years will do it, in my assessment. I am confident that at that time you will not have any problem finding lots and lots and lots of people willing to supply you with THOUSANDS of links proving that the criminal acts took place.

A few weeks ago there was no proof that Epstein committed crimes, in the minds of many. Today there is. Things change, Anonymous.

We all want the same thing. We all want to know how stock investing works in the real world. So I think that we all are going to pull together following the next price crash and get that darn Greaney study corrected and then do of the other good stuff that inevitably will follow from taking on that one. But you are not going to come clean just because that’s what I believe. You are going to have to be taken away on handcuffs for the new realities to hit. Epstein was still keeping evidence of his crimes in his house when he was arrested and a warrant for a search was obtained. The humans have a hard time letting this sort of thing in. The humans who are the type to commit criminal acts have a particularly hard time.

So be it, you know? If there is ever anything that I can do to help you out, please just let me know and I will be on it. No felonies, though. That’s the exception. That one doesn’t fly with this boy. No freakin’ way, no freakin’ how. Not a close call. Non-negotiable.

My best and warmest wishes to you.

Shocked-by-the-Epstein-Stuff Rob

“Irrational Exuberance Disappears in a Crash. It Just Goes “Poof!” And, When Fantasies Disappear, People See Things That They Didn’t See While the Fantasies Had Influence Over Their Vision.”

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

No, Rob, I have not seen any threats to Wade’s job. I, and others, have asked for links to that and to those death threats you have claimed, yet you have provided no evidence. Yet here you are again with your abusive talk about prison and your name calling.

It doesn’t matter what you say you see or what I say I say. What matters is what millions of middle-class investors say they see in the days following the next price crash.

Price crashes change what people can see, Anonymous. Or at least they can change what people say they see. Irrational exuberance disappears in a crash. It just goes “Poof!” And, when fantasies disappear, people see things that they didn’t see while the fantasies had influence over their vision.

I will do what I can to help you out. That much I can offer. I will not necessarily be able to persuade the millions of investors who suddenly will be able to see things that they couldn’t see before now that the fantasy stuff has disappeared for them. I do not have control over what those millions say or do. Perhaps you’ve noticed.

Fantasies giveth and fantasies taketh away. The way it is. Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize because he showed with peer-reviewed research the power that fantasies have over stock investors. We are today living through the stuff that he talks about. We are living through one side of the story today and we will be living through the other side in the days following the next price crash.In those days we will be living through the side of the story in which people like you are placed in prison cells for things they did when as a society we were living though the earlier side of the story.

Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, you know?

Hang in there, man. It gets better, prison cells or no prison cells. A lot better.

Rob

“”Irrational Exuberance Is Irrational, You Know? High Stock Prices Are Irrational. It Is True That Investors Like to Act in Their Self-Interest. So, If We Permitted Honest Posting, Could We Even Have These Crazy Prices? We Could not. Your Crimes Helped Keep Prices Up. That’s Why We Permitted Them. We Like High Prices and It Takes a Lot of Irrationality to Get Them and Your Criminal Stuff Has Kept the Research-Based Stuff From Shutting Down the Irrational Stuff.”

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

Show just one reference on your site in which someone made a death threat or threatened Wade’s job.

The only abusiveness I see is this person that calls people goons and tells them they are going to prison.

You’ve seen the Wade one 50 times, Anonymous. I love it. But even I am tired of looking at it.

You’re Goons. And you’re going to prison. People who threaten academic researchers are Goons and they go to prison.

The question is — Why haven’t you gone to prison YET? Why are we talking about it? If it had happened years ago, we wouldn’t be talking about it. Why hasn’t it happened?

People are complacent. Prices are at two times fair value and that’s what people care about. They care about the number on their portfolio statement.

Will they get upset when that number drops by 50 percent or more? If they get upset about that, then they’ll get upset about the criminal stuff. So you’ll go to prison THEN.

Is that crazy? It’s completely crazy. It would be better if we told people the truth about how stock investing works before they lost their money so that they could avoid having that happen to them. And it would be better if you weren’t going to prison. But whachagonnado?

You think you’re going to prison too or you wouldn’t be posting here. At the very least you’re worried about it. It’s not my fault. I asked Motley Fool to give Greaney the boot in June 2002. He wouldn’t be going to prison if they had done that. So what’s his beef with me? He has none.

We can’t have different laws apply for the investment advice field. I know we do for now. But that cannot be a permanent situation. It’s a mixed-up short-term thing.

Irrational exuberance is irrational, you know? High stock prices are irrational. It is true that investors like to act in their self-interest. So, if we permitted honest posting, if we sent you to prison as soon as you committed your crimes, could we even have these crazy prices? We could not. Your crimes helped keep prices up. That’s why we permitted them. We like high prices and it takes a lot of irrationality to get them and your criminal stuff has kept the research-based stuff from shutting down the irrational stuff.

Good for you, I guess.

Yowza!

Rob

“Throw Away Price Discipline and You Make a Market Dysfunctional. Throw Away Price Discipline and You Force a Market to Crash (the Core Purpose of a Market Is To Get Prices Right and, If You Throw Away Price Discipline, the Only Possible Way That the Market Can Achieve That Goal Is To Crash Prices).”

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

You can’t just make up accusations. You need proof and the only death threats that so have seen have come from you. I am always willing to speak out about someone making threats or being abusive, but you have never offered any direct proof. To the opposite, so have seen direct proof in which you misrepresented comments people have made, leading to false and slanderous statements.

Now if you want to show me or anyone actual comments backing up your claims, so will be first in line to condemn those comments. Lack of support then means we can only conclude you have been lying.

The ball is in your court.

The proof is in the comments, Anonymous. You look at a comment and you ask yourself “Is that the comment of a person who is trying to learn or is that the comment of a person who is trying to suppress learning?”

As a nation, we have been suppressing learning for 38 years now. If valuations affect long-term returns, as Shiller’s research shows, there is zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for even a single long-term investor. If valuations affect long-term returns, then an investor must adjust his stock allocation in response to big price swings to keep his risk profile roughly constant. If valuations affect long-term returns and short-term timing doesn’t work, then the only way that an investor can practice price discipline when buying stocks is to adjust his stock allocation in response to big price swings (that is, to practice long-term timing). Price discipline is what makes markets work. Throw away price discipline and you make a market dysfunctional. Throw away price discipline and you force a market to crash (the core purpose of a market is to get prices right and, if you throw away price discipline, the only possible way that the market can achieve that goal is to crash prices).

Any person who cares to can see thousands and thousands and thousands of comments at this site in which Buy-and-Holders reveal a desire to suppress learning rather than to learn. And that’s so at every other investing site as well to a lesser extent (it’s to a lesser extend because only a tiny number of the conversations are about Shiller’s research and so there is much less suppression in evidence — but the discussions that we all need to have are still not taking place). We need to have these discussions so that we can learn what the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research is trying to teach us and we are not having them. We are killing ourselves.

Now —

Will that change with a price crash of 50 percent or more?

I believe that it will change. But we are going to have to watch it play out to know for certain. If we were all thinking clearly, there never would have been any suppression of discussion of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research findings in the first place. As a society, we very, very, very, very much want Buy-and-Hold to remain the dominant model for understanding how stock investing works. If Buy-and-Hold fails, that means that we have been giving bad investment advice in thousands of books and podcasts and calculators for close to four decades now. We have caused very serious harm to millions of investors. We have caused hundreds of thousands of businesses to fail (trillions of dollars of spending power leave the economy when stock prices crash and that means that consumers must cut back on their purchases of goods and services). Millions of workers lose their jobs when hundreds of thousands of businesses go under. It’s always hard to work up the courage to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” In this case it is positively devastating.

But, if Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research, we don’t have any choice. We have put the matter off and put the matter off again and put the matter off again for 38 years now. But a 50 percent price crash that remains in place for a significant amount of time will do as much damage as the 2008 economic crisis or more. The damage that we will be bringing on ourselves will be too great for us to continue putting off the need to launch a national debate on Shiller’s amazing research findings. The price of continuing to suppress discussion will have grown too high.

Or so Rob Bennett believes in any event, you know?

My job is to make the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing as painless as possible. It cannot be 100 percent painless. Not after 38 years of suppression of discussion of these terribly important matters. But there are different paths available to us. We can elect to tear ourselves apart over the mistakes of the past. Or we can acknowledge our good fortune in now having 38 years of peer-reviewed research available to us that shows us for the first time in history how stock investing works in the real world and pull together and achieve great advances.

I favor the latter path. Which means that is is my job to do everything in my power to help people see the thousands of ways in which the Buy-and-Holders have helped us over the years while also insisting that we bring the suppression of honest posting to a full and complete stop. It is the suppression of honest posting that has been killing us for a long time now. We need to stop destroying ourselves. We need to appreciate our good fortune and bring this crazy abusive stuff to a full and complete stop.

The abusive stuff is not even a tiny bit hard to see. It is omni-present everywhere there are honest people who try to engage in discussions of the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s research finding that valuations affect long-term returns. The thing that has been lacking so far is an insistence on the part of all of us that our laws and our social norms saying that honest posting on the peer-reviewed research in this field be permitted everywhere be recognized. Will a larger number of us start insisting on that after we have experienced the pain that we will all feel when prices crash? I sure think so. I think that the pain that we will all experience will break us out of our complacency and we will all pull together to survive the economic crisis that we have brought on with our relentless promotion of the Buy-and-Hold concept.

I am optimistic. I believe that our future looks good. I believe that we are going to experience a mountain of pain. But I believe that there are six mountains of good stuff on the other side of that one mountain of pain. We just have to work up the fortitude to do what it takes to get us there. I am scared. I am not saying that I do not have concerns. But I remain optimistic re the long term. I have seen too many brave and intelligent and kind people try to help us out over these past 17 years not to be optimistic re what we will see after the next crash.

The efforts to suppress learning rather than to engage in it are there for the eyes of any open-minded investor to see in thousands and thousands of posts put to this site. Will more of us open our minds to the possibility that valuations really do affect long-term returns in the days following the next price crash? I think it is a lock. But I am one of those darn flawed humans. I never thought that it would take 17 years. I thought that it would take two or three days. So it is certainly at least theoretically possible that I am wrong. Time will tell the tale.

I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person. Flawed human or not, I know with 100 percent certainty that that one is so. Are you okay with showing a little patience waiting for the other one to play out? It is my sincere personal assessment that none of us has any other realistic choice.

My best wishes to you.

Rob

“Once the Ball Gets Rolling, We Will Build Up More and More Momentum. We All Want to Obtain Higher Returns at Less Risk. The Peer-Reviewed Research That I Co-Authored With Wade Pfau Shows Us How to Do That. We Will Be Talking About That Research at Every Internet Site. When People Get Excited About It, Other Researchers Are Going To Do More Exciting Research. We Will Look Back at How We Acted During These Past 17 Years and Wonder What We Were Thinking.”

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

You keep saying that we should all wait to see how things play out. Perhaps you could look into your crystal ball and tell us how you see this all playing out.

I believe that we will see a major price drop within the next year or two or three. That will cause a larger number of people to have doubts about the Buy-and-Hold Model for understanding how stock investing works. Today, 10 percent of the population believes that valuations are important. A major price drop may bring that number up to 20 percent. Once we get to 20 percent, the Buy-and-Holders will not be able to get away with abusive behavior that they employ today to suppress discussion of the far-reaching implications of the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. The national debate re Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research findings that should have been launched in 1981 will finally be launched.

Once the ball gets rolling, we will build up more and more momentum. We all want the same things, Anonymous. We all want to obtain higher returns at less risk. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows us how to do that. We will be talking about that research at every discussion board and blog on the internet. And, when people see that research and get excited about it, other researchers are going to jump in and do more exciting research. Things will just get better and better and better. We will look back at how we acted during these past 17 years and wonder what we were thinking.

I believe that, once we get to the other side, we will feel more respect for the Buy-and-Holders than we feel today. Because we will be so happy at what we have learned and, as we examine how we came to learn it, we will see that the Buy-and-Holders played a huge role in helping us get to where we needed to go. Learning experiences help everyone. Moving forward is a win/win/win/win/win. There is no possible downside.

I hope that helps at least a tiny bit.

Rob

“I Take All of the Stuff that Bogle Got Right and Incorporate it Into My Analysis. Then I Add the Stuff that Shiller Got Right So That the Stuff That Bogle Did Actually Helps People Instead of Destroying Their Lives. And Then I Add the Part that Shiller Failed to Put Into the Mix, the Exploration of the Far-Reaching How-To Implications of Shiller’s ‘Revolutionary’ (His Word) Research Findings. Without That Critical Part, the Entire Thing Just Does Not Work.”

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

You think way too much of yourself.

You’ve said that in a direct way hundreds of times, Anonymous. If we count indirect ways, you’ve said in thousands of times. So the thought behind the statement is obviously of great import to you.

I am extremely proud of the work that I have done over the past 17 years. If that’s what you are accusing me of, then you are right on. I think that Bogle is a giant. He built the foundation for the Valuation-Informed Indexing Model, which I see as the future of investment analysis. So I of course think very, very highly of Bogle. But I of course believe that he got the valuations question wrong. Which means that he got every calculation wrong. If valuations have to be considered in every calculation, every calculation that Bogle performed got the wrong answer because he never considered the effect of valuations.

Shiller is the one who corrected Bogle’s work by showing that valuations must be considered in every calculation. So I also think a great deal of Shiller. I also view Shiller as a giant. But Shiller’s work has not had nearly the influence that it should have had for the past 38 years because Shiller and all those who believe that his work is important have shied away from saying to the Buy-and-Holders: “hey, you got the numbers wrong.” So Shiller doesn’t tell the entire story right either.

I say those words. I take all of the stuff that Bogle got right and incorporate it into my analysis. Then I add the stuff that Shiller got right so that the stuff that Bogle did actually helps people instead of destroying their lives. And then I add the part that Shiller failed to put into the mix, the exploration of the far-reaching how-to implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research findings. Without that critical part, the entire thing just does not work. People who don’t know Bogle don’t know how stock investing works. And people who don’t know Shiller don’t know how stock investing works. And people who don’t know Bennett don’t know how stock investing works. The way it is.

You are right that I think very, very highly of the work that I have done. But when you say that I think “too much” of myself, there is a clear suggestion that my high appraisal of my work is not justified by the realities. My high appraisal of my work is 100 percent justified. If I had not been right in my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002, John Walter Russell would not have devoted eight years of his life to doing research on my ideas. If I had not been right in my famous post, Wade Pfau would not have devoted 16 months of his life to co-authoring research with me that shows beyond any doubt whatsoever that, in his words, “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” If I had not been right in my famous post, you Goons would not have put yourselves at risk of spending the remaining years of your lives in prison cells due to your desperate concern that, if the published rules of every internet site were followed, millions of investors would learn about the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept and buy into it.

You are the one who has an unjustifiably exalted view of yourself. Your view is that you can never admit even the possibility of once having made a mistake and that, if the laws of the United States don’t permit you to threaten academic researchers who show that you did indeed make a mistake, then those laws have to be ignored. You are the one on the wrong side of the law and that reality shows us that you are the one with the unjustifiably exalted view of himself.

I follow the law. I follow the peer-reviewed research. I follow the published rules of every site. I am the humble one here.

The work that I have done is of great value. I offer zero apologies for the work that I have done. But when I praise the work product, I am offering tribute to the country that put in place the laws that protect people like me from people like you. I am praising this country that I love as much as I am praising Rob Bennett the person. And I am praising Bogle when I praise my work because my work gives new life to Bogle’s work. And I am praising Shiller when I praise my work because my work gives new life to Shiller’s work.

Full truth be told, I am praising Greaney when I praise my work. Greaney’s intent when he posted his retirement study was to help people, not to destroy their lives. So, if Greaney had been thinking clearly, he would have thanked me for pointing out the error in his study and thereby permitting him to correct it before it caused him further embarrassment.

I have done amazing work. But I did not do it alone. I couldn’t have done it without the help of millions of people who formed the laws of this country and who built the Buy-and-Hold Model and who worked up the courage to stand up to you Goons when you threatened those of us trying to help out our fellow community members. It is the lawbreakers among us who suffer from an exalted view of themselves. I am just doing the job that we all sign up for when we sign up at a discussion board — using my intelligence and experience and love to help out my fellow community members.

I am playing it straight. You are playing it crooked. That’s a big distinction. It is because I am playing it straight that I have been able to achieve more and more great advances as the sand has continued to pass through the hourglass. I offered Greaney the opportunity to do the same. I asked him to work with John Walter Russell and me to develop the first valid safe-withdrawal-rate study. He took a pass. Greaney would be one of the ones today with all of the amazing accomplishments had he taken me up on that offer.

I think that what was going on there is that he just didn’t love himself enough to position himself to realize all those achievements. I like to think that I DO love myself enough to do good in the world. I am humble enough to respect the laws of the country in which I operate. That’s an appropriate and healthy humility. But I am proud enough to want to get the numbers right in retirement studies that I put before others for their consideration. That’s an appropriate and healthy pride.

Hating yourself is not the answer. Greaney hates himself. Not this boy, you know? I often point out that I can get things wrong, just as Greaney did. But I show deference to the law and I invite other community members to point out any mistakes that I have made so that I can fix them quickly. That’s a healthy humility that does not evidence itself in self-loathing. Greaney’s self-loathing helps no one, it brings us all down.

I love my work, I love my accomplishments. I hate your goonishness because it destroys you and millions of others. It is my view that the laws against financial fraud are good and necessary laws. I love it that my country protects me from people like you who engage in financial fraud. I wish that it protected me immediately. I wish that those laws were self-enforcing. I have learned through 17 hard years that this is not the way it works. But I still love it that I live in a country that has such laws and I retain confidence that those laws will be recognized in good and effective and life-affirming ways in days to come.

Proud (and Rightfully So!) Rob

“We Cannot Get Over the Ignorance Until We Acknowledge That We Humans Are Capable of Preferring Ignorance So Long As It Makes the Numbers on Our Portfolio Statements Bigger Than They Should Be and We Cannot Acknowledge That For So Long As We Remain in Ignorance. So We Are Trapped By a Catch-22. But a 50 Percent Price Crash Might Be Painful Enough to Shock Us Out of It and to Cause Us to Appreciate the Wonderful Gift That Shiller Bestowed on Us When He Published Research Showing Us How To Make Such Price Crashes a Thing of the Past.”

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

“It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, Anonymous.”

See above. It has all played out. Time for you to get that job. At your age and lack of recent experience, you can’t be that picky. Take what you can get. Let us know where you land and I will try to throw a few extra bucks in your tip jar.

The tip-jar thing is quintessential Goon stuff. It’s a celebration of the fact that you have been able to deny me an income for my fine work for 17 years with your ruthlessly, criminally abusive posting.

I see things from just the opposite perspective. I believe that someone who challenges your thinking on an important subject is doing you a favor. It’s possible that the person will convince you, in which case they have improved your life in a big way. And it is possible that the person will not convince you, in which case you are certainly not worse off and in reality are at least a bit better off because your conviction in your belief is strengthened by your having seen it survive the challenge. So all good stuff and no possible bad stuff.

You obviously don’t see it that way. Your reactions are DEFENSIVE. Defensiveness is not a rational response. Defensiveness is an emotional response. The insane amount of defensiveness that we have seen from Buy-and-Holders over the past 17 years tells me that Shiller is right. It’s very strong evidence. It is my view that people should be talking about that defensiveness on every investing site on the internet. We all need to know whether it is Shiller or Fama who is right and the defensiveness that we have seen makes a compelling case that it is Shiller. The frustrating paradox, of course, is that you almost have to believe that Shiller is right to even consider that sort of evidence. If you are a Buy-and-Holder you believe that investment decisions are 100 percent rational. So how could there be any defensiveness?

Each defensive post makes me more confident of my position and more confident in my belief that it will ultimately prevail. The stuff that persuades me a bit is when my Buy-and-Hold friends engage in rational and civil debate. That always at least impresses me and creates a desire within me to look at things anew and to do my best to give the Buy-and-Hold position as much credit as I possibly can. The abusive stuff is a huge turn off and assures me that it was a good thing that I finally worked up the courage (after three years of living in fear!) to advance that famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002.

The Ban on Honest Posting is consistent with the core principle of Buy-and-Hold. If investors are 100 percent rational, a Ban on Honest Posting is not even possible. So why worry that there is one in place? But the Ban on Honest Posting is not consistent with the laws of the United States. We protect people from fraud because we know that the humans have weaknesses that cause some of them to practice fraud and that cause others to fall for the fraudulent claims and that cause still many others to tolerate both the practicing of fraud and the falling for it without speaking out.

So the bottom line here is whether or not a 50 percent price crash will be a sufficient shock to prompt another 10 percent of the population to speak up about the ban which has been keeping us all in ignorance for so many years since Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research showing us how stock investing works in the real world. We cannot get over the ignorance until we acknowledge that we humans are capable of preferring ignorance so long as it makes the numbers on our portfolio statements bigger than they should be and we cannot acknowledge that for so long as we remain in ignorance. So we are trapped by a Catch-22. But a 50 percent price crash might be painful enough to shock us out of it and cause us to appreciate the wonderful gift that Shiller bestowed on us when he published research showing us how to make such price crashes a thing of the past.

It all comes down to whether I believer that this is a good country or not. I believe that this is a good country, I believe that we are a good people. Not a perfect people, obviously. But a good people. If we were not a good people, Shiller’s book would never have found a publisher and would not have become a best-seller. If we were not a good people, Shiller would not have been awarded a Nobel prize. If we were not a good people, Wade Pfau would not have devoted 16 months of his life to preparing research with me showing that Valuation-Informed Indexing has been far superior to Buy-and-Hold for the entire time-period for which we have good records of stock prices. We are a good people who have been held back for 17 years (or for 38 years, if you count back to 1981) by a Catch 22 that has made fools (and, in the case of you Goons, criminals) of us.

I believe in us! I believe in research! I believe in the published rules of all the sites! I believe in learning! I believe that investors are humans and that humans possess emotions!

But we’ll see, you know? I certainly never thought that it would take 17 years for us to make our way to the other side of The Big Black Mountain. I thought that it would take perhaps 17 hours. So I have something less than a perfect track record when it comes to this stuff. Reader be warned!

My best and warmest wishes to you, Anonymous.

Life-Affirming Rob (All You Need Is Love, Man)