Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent on December 10, 2018, to Summer Anne Burton, author of an article titled PETA Is Right and All of You Need to Stop Revving a Dead Porsche.

Summer:

My name is Rob Bennett. I read your article titled “PETA Is Right and All of You Need to Stop Revving a Dead Porsche.” I eat meat. I have occasionally given a tiny bit of thought to not doing that. But I have never engaged in much effort in that direction. I strongly share your belief that “what we do to animals to achieve cheap meat at massive scale is wrong.” But I just wish that different practices were followed by the corporate farms (I of course understand that that would cost me some money). You are probably on to something when you say that this ambivalence — which is probably experienced by a lot of people other than me — “is why it’s so appealing to draw attention to vagans and animal activists who seem kooky, annoying and tone deaf — it’s a way of changing the subject and of keeping away the creeping feeling that you just might be on the wrong side of history.”

Somehow those words made me want to share with you my pet (ha!) ethical cause — the need to tell people about the dangers of the Buy-and-Hold investing strategy. Buy-and-Hold has been discredited by 37 years of peer-reviewed research. Wall Street continues to push it because there’s money in it and because it appeals to our human weakness for Get Rich Quick schemes. In the event that Nobel-Prize-Winning Economist Robert Shiller is right about how stock investing really works, the continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold will probably cause another economic crisis, causing hundreds of thousands of businesses to fail and millions of people to be thrown out of work. It makes me sick that as a society we are permitting this to happen at a time when the knowledge needed to help so many people live better lives is so easily available to us. So I see at least a sliver of a parallel to the vegan issue (I admit that the issues do not seem at all similar on the surface).

Anyway I wanted to send you the attached article, which tells the story in some depth. If it pulls you in at all, please let me know and I will be thrilled to answer any questions that you might have. If it does not hold any interest, I of course understand (I have a hard enough time getting people who work in the field interested). Please know that I also sent the article to the “Tips” editors at Buzzfeed.

Please continue your good efforts re the vegan stuff. Perhaps someday you will wear me down. The odds are probably against you — but stranger things have happened in this mixed-up world.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent on December 10, 2018, to the editors at Buzzfeednews.com:

Buzzfeed Editors:

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My name is Rob Bennett. I have been working for a long time on a story that has huge public policy implications and that has been covered up (in some ways but not in other ways) for many years now. The question is whether the Buy-and-Hold Model for understanding how stock investing works is legitimate or not.

Buy-and-Hold is rooted in research that was published in the 1960s. That research was discredited by research published in 1981. The author of the more recent research, Robert Shiller, was awarded a Nobel prize for his work, so he is obviously a very serious person. But people who try to share their thoughts on the implications of Shiller’s research are intimidated into silence by advocates of the Buy-and-Hold Model. So most investors have no idea how dangerous the Buy-and-Hold strategy is.

I have attached an article telling the story in some detail. It is long. In this case I think the length is justified because it is only by reading multiple accounts of the same basic story that one can come to appreciate the amazing realities. Shiller’s model (I called it “Valuation-Informed Indexing”) is far superior to the Buy-and-Hold Model. It reduces risk dramatically while also increasing returns dramatically. And it greatly mitigates the boom/bust cycle in the general economy.

Everyone benefits if we make the move to the new model. But academic researchers are threatened with career destruction if they publish research making the case for the switch. Why? The benefits of the advance are so great that it makes the advocates of Buy-and-Hold look bad for people to learn what the new research shows. We can only escape the dangers of Buy-and-Hold by educating the public re what really works. But education efforts threaten the Buy-and-Holders, who possesses the power to block progress because today’s high stock prices make Buy-and-Hold temporarily look appealing.

Please let me know if you have any questions or require documentations of any aspect of this story. Thanks for the good work that you do.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent on December 10, 2018, to James Peltz, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times who wrote an article titled The Stock Market’s Severe Drop: Normal Pullback or an Ominous Sign?:

James:

My name is Rob Bennett. I read your article “The Stock Market’s Severe Drop: Normal Pullback or an Ominous Sign?” This is of course a question that many investors are pondering today. I ask that you consider — to what extent is our collective answer to that question determined by our core belief as to whether stock prices are determined by economic developments (as the Buy-and-Holders believe) or by investor emotion (as Nobel-prize-winning economist Robert Shiller argues in his book “Irrational Exuberance”)? 90 percent of today’s investors are Buy-and-Holders. So they tell themselves that we are working through a rational process. But, if Shiller is right, all of the arguments that we come up with for why what the market does makes sense are rationalizations. The one thing that matters is the extent of the emotional content present in stock prices because that tells us the extent to which we are kidding ourselves. Today’s P/E10 level tells us that the influence of investor emotion in stock prices is very high today indeed.

I explore this aspect of the question in a good bit of detail in the attached article. In the event that it pulls you in, I would love to hear any reactions.

I wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent on December 2, 2018, to Matt Yglesias, a senior correspondent at Vox.com:

Matt:

My name is Rob Bennett. I have attached an article titled “Buy-and-Hold Is Dangerous.” It explores an issue that I think is a big deal — the intimidation tactics that have been employed by advocates of the Buy-and-Hold investment strategy to keep people from learning about the implications of Nobel-prize-winning economist Robert Shiller’s research. If the pre-Shiller research on which Buy-and-Hold was built is right, the numbers on today’s portfolio statements are rooted in economic realities. If Shiller is right, 50 percent of today’s portfolio numbers are the product of irrational exuberance and will be going “Poof!!” in the next price crash. When millions of people suffer those sorts of losses, we will see a big economic contraction because trillions of dollars of spending power will be removed from the economy. I expect that we will even be seeing increased political unrest as middle-class people see a lifetime of saving effort wiped out.

My personal take is that this is the biggest public policy issue  before us today. I would love to hear your thoughts.

I wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent on November 29, 2018, to Will Davies, the author of an article titled “Why We Stopped Trusting Elites.”:

Will:

My name is Rob Bennett. I enjoyed your article “Why We Stopped Trusting Elites.” This is a terribly important issue re which I have greatly mixed feelings. I don’t think that our system of government (I live in the United States) can continue to succeed without a good bit of trust in elites remaining in place. But I certainly feel that there have been cases in which the elites have failed us and thus I cannot help but be somewhat sympathetic when people turn against them.

I have attached an article title “Buy-and-Hold Is Dangerous.” It reports on a project re which I have done a great deal of work and one that illustrates the problem with elites well. Robert Shiller is an elite. He is a professor at Yale and has been awarded a Nobel prize. I don’t see how you can get more establishment than that. But it is not possible to discuss the implications of his ideas on how stock investing works at any major web site today. I find this reality amazing.

The problem of course, is that there is another group of elites (those who developed and who promote the Buy-and-Hold Model) who oppose him. The elites who teach the dominant theory are not willing to give up any of the turf that they won in earlier days. This is a violation of the social contract by which elites gain the respect of the general public. Elites are supposed to possess at least a degree of interest in the general welfare. Otherwise, they should not be granted the respect that in the past has been bestowed on them.

I am grateful for the good work that you have done and continue to do.

Rob

Will sent a response e-mail later that day saying:

Thanks, Rob. Interesting issues to consider here.

Will

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent on November 27, 2018, to the editors of the Empty Wheel site:

Empty Wheel Editors:

My name is Rob Bennett. I was pulled to your site today by a link to the article “Mueller Just Guaranteed He Can Issue a Public Report.” A quick look indicated to me that you are doing important work — non-fluff journalism on subjects otherwise not widely covered. Thanks for that.

I am trying to get people interested in a story that I believe is of great consequence and that is not being covered hardly at all in a frank way. I have attached an article titled “Buy-and-Hold Is Dangerous.” It sounds to me that this might be of some interest to Ed Walker.

I understand that the article is too long for publication at your site. My intent is to present enough background to make the story fully understandable and thereby to get you interested in it. If there is interest in the story, I can of course write something that focuses on one or two angles or we can together come up with some other way to work together.

I wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.