A Rich Life

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

“The Prison Sentences Must Come First. We Have Seen That Jack Bogle Is Afraid to Post Honestly Because of His Fear of What You Goons Will Do to Him If He Dares to ‘Cross’ You.”

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

You could use this blog to explain your theories. You just use this blog to rant and rave about people who support “Buy and Hold”. It seems the one holding Valuation Informed Indexing down is YOU, Rob.

We disagree, Sensible.

I have zero problem with people who post in support of Buy-and-Hold in sincere ways. Pro-Buy-and-Hold posts are part of the process by which we all learn together. Those who believe in Buy-and-Hold have both a right and responsibility to say so in all their posts. People who put forward sincere posts in support of Buy-and-Hold are our friends.

People who engage in ABUSIVE posting are NOT our friends.

Those people INTIMIDATE those who have doubts about Buy-and-Hold from saying so.

Those people hurt us in very serious ways. Those people caused the economic crisis. Those people have for 11 years now covered up the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies. Those people are in the process of bringing on the Second Great Depression. Those people have been committing felonies for many years now and need to be put in prison. Animals belong in cages, no? There is a REASON why we made the sort of behavior these people engage in felonies under the laws of the United States.

Once prison sentences are announced for those who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney, our troubles are over, Sensible. We are the luckiest generation of investors who ever lived. The research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows us all how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. Once we get that study reported on at the front page of the New York Times, we will be on our way to the greatest period of economic growth in our history.

But, yes, the prison sentences must come first. We have seen that Jack Bogle is afraid to post honestly because of his fear of what you Goons will do to him if he dares to “cross” you. We have seen that Bill Bernstein is afraid to post honestly because of his fear of what you Goons will do to him if he dares to “cross” you. We have seen that Larry Swedroe is afraid to post honestly because of his fear of what you Goons will do to him if he dares to “cross” you.

We need these people, and thousands and thousands of others, posting honestly. We need to get accurate information out to millions of middle-class investors to have any hope of recovering from this economic crisis.

My best wishes to you and yours.

Rob

“If You Goons Want to Sign Off on a Deal in Which I Agree to Never Say Anything Negative About Buy-and-Hold and Only to Promote Valuation-Informed Indexing, I Will Sign in 10 Seconds. IF You Agree Not to Make Claims That Timing Doesn’t Work. It’s Because You Make Such False Claims That I Am Required to Point Out Their Falsity.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central site:

he’d spend about 80% of his waking hours wailing against Chocolate Cake, with a few mentions of the merits of cherry cake.  but mostly against Chocolate. 

I agree with you that this is a bad idea strategically, Dab.

I had a fellow come up to me at the Speed Networking Event at FinCon13 who said that he has checked out my blog on several occasions. He noted that he saw something about “a Buy-and-Hold Mafia” and presumed that he must have missed out on some background. I thought that was both very funny and very telling re my marketing difficulties. People lose confidence in anyone who talks about a Buy-and-Hold Mafia. I am not so dumb that I do not get that. I get that loud and clear.

The other side of the story is that The Buy-and-Hold Mafia is a reality and the tale must be told for that reality to come to an end.

I put up my famous post pointing out the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies on the morning of May 13, 2002. I didn’t know it at the time but discovered later that Bill Bernsteinzzz had published “The Four Pillars of Investing” on April 1, 2002, and wrote (in a confusing and hard-to-follow way) about the errors in the Old School studies in that book. So an argument can be made that I was not first, that Bill beat me by six weeks!

Now —

Say that there was no Buy-and-Hold Mafia.

The natural thing for Bill to do would have been to talk about the errors in the Old School studies in all his speeches and talks and thereby help make his book famous and sell millions of copies. If he had played it that way, nothing I starting saying on May 13, 2002, would have been considered even a little bit controversial. Things would have worked out better for me AND for Bill AND for Greaney AND for millions of middle-class investors. So why the heck didn’t Bill (who is obviously a very smart dude) not play it that way?

He didn’t play it that way because The Buy-and-Hold Mafia would have eaten him alive and he knows it. He wouldn’t have been able to post at the Bogleheads Forum any more. Bogle wouldn’t provide blurbs for his book jackets anymore. He wouldn’t be interviewed for articles in Smart Money anymore. His career would have come to an end. So he made a determination that it was better to write about the errors in a gobblygook manner that wouldn’t offend those still trying in the year 2013 to make a living pumping the Buy-and-Hold garbage. You Goons love Bill Bernsteinzz today. You hate Rob Bennett with a burning passion. The difference is that I stated things clearly and Bill used enough gobblygook to remain on your good side.

We need to change that. We cannot change it without having a national debate about the Buy-and-Hold Mafia and all the financial devastation it has brought to millions. If there were another way to do this, I would choose the other way. There is no other way. So, yes, I have elected to play it the way I play it, knowing that that means that I take a big marketing hit.

If you Goons want to sign off on a deal in which I agree to NEVER say anything negative about Buy-and-Hold and to ONLY promote Valuation-Informed Indexing, I will sign that piece of paper in 10 seconds. IF it contains a provision that you won’t come to my threads making all sorts of claims about how there are “studies” showing that timing doesn’t work and all your other garbage. It’s because you make such false claims that I am required to point out the falsity of such claims. Wade Pfau researched the question carefully. There has never been a single study showing that long-term timing doesn’t work. So the claim that timing doesn’t work is 100 percent deception without a tiny grain of truth to it. If no one makes the claim, I don’t need to mention that reality. If someone makes the false claim, I am left with no other ethical choice, marketing considerations be damned.

The background here is that the Buy-and-Holders achieved huge advances. And they personally practice what they preach. But had Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research in 1971 rather than in 1981, there would not be a single Buy-and-Holder today, every last one of us would be Valuation-Informed Indexers. That’s the entire problem. The Buy-and-Holders have their pride wrapped up in a strategy that has long been discredited by the academic research. So they engage in these insanely abusive tactics to keep the word from getting out.

I LIKE the Buy-and-Holders. I called myself a Buy-and-Holder until the evening of August 27, 2002, when Greaney threatened to kill my wife and children and 200 Buy-and-Holders endorsed the post. It was made clear to me on that day that the reasons why people follow Buy-and-Hold strategies TODAY are emotional and not intellectual, that Buy-and-Hold has become the OPPOSITE of what it was originally intended to be (a research-based approach). So I had to move on, give a name to the first true research-based approach and further develop that approach to the best of my abilities.

I am 100 percent happy to talk ONLY about Valuation-Informed Indexing and to never mention Buy-and-Hold again for the remaining days of my life.

But how the heck do we get from where we are today to that magical place without Jack Bogle getting up on a stage and saying the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” (or at the very bare minimum “I’m” and “Not” and “Sure”)?

I personally do not see any other way it can be done. Buy-and-Hold must be destroyed for Valuation-Informed Indexing to become the dominant model.

If someone has some bright ideas re another way it can be done, I am all ears.

My AIM is to advance Valuation-Informed Indexing, not to destroy Buy-and-Hold. But it’s pretty darn hard to achieve that aim when I have Buy-and-Hold Goons threatening to kill family members of any poster who puts up a post reporting honestly on what the peer-reviewed academic research of the past 32 years says about these matters.

So, yes, I get it that I hurt myself from a marketing perspective by calling out the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. And I will continue to do so. Because there is no other way to get us all from this awful place where we find ourselves today to the wonderful place that deep in out hearts we all want to reside tomorrow.

Tell me another way it can be done and I am your guy.

If there is no other way, then we continue on the path that ends with you Goons being put in prison cells for a long, long time following a price crash that in all likelihood puts the rest of us in the Second Great Depression.

We all want the same things. We have a legal system that permits us to achieve them together. And then we have you Goons and your terrorist tactics for keeping millions of people from learning about the errors in the Old School studies, why they were made, and what the correct SWR numbers are.

I am a Teddy Bear-type poster, as Petey Person once pointed out.

I put on my Frank Perdue act because I have been given no other options.

Do you and your Goon friends have some new options to suggest, Dab?

If you have something positive and constructive and life-affirming in mind, now would be a good time to work up the courage to spill it.

But then Goons never do that sort of thing, do they?

My best wishes

Rob

“J.D. Roth Was Offering Me a Compliment. He Didn’t Intend To. But I Heard a Compliment. I Want My Arguments to Be So Strong That They Are Perceived as Being ‘Overpowering.’ J.D. Is the Same When It Comes to Any Subject Other Than Stock Investing.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central site:

That’s the point, GW.

Being “overpowering” is a good thing, not a bad thing.

When you Goons say “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it,” you are telling me to be less “overpowering.”

I am not interested.

I play to win. I LIKE hitting home runs. I want Valuation-Informed Indexing to become the dominant model. I want to see Buy-and-Hold buried 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.

Do you see?

People who believe in Buy-and-Hold should be putting forward the best possible case they can. They should aim to be “overpowering.” If they are not doing that, they are letting the entire community down.

It works the same way with Valuation-Informed Indexers. We need to argue our case as forcefully as we possibly can. That’s how we help the community as a whole. The sharper we are in our arguments, the sharper the Buy-and-Holders need to be in response. The sharper everyone is, the better off we all are.

I offer zero apologies for being “overpowering.” J.D. was offering me a compliment. He didn’t intend to. But what I heard was a compliment.

And every time one of you Goons says “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it,” I hear a compliment. You are telling me that you can tolerate the people who question Buy-and-Hold in a soft way but that my stuff is just too darn “overpowering,” so “overpowering” that it wins converts.

Good.

I want to win converts.

I hope that I can learn more about all this stuff and thereby make my stuff that much MORE “overpowering.”

If I hit 60 home runs this year, I will aim for 70 next year.

I want my team (the Valuation-Informed Indexers) to win.

Period.

End of sentence.

End of paragraph.

End of chapter.

End of story.

I play to win, man.

That’s been so going back to even BEFORE May 13, 2002. I played to win when I was posting about saving strategies too.

That can never change.

One of the things I like about you Goons is that YOU play to win. You cheat. I don’t like that part. But at least you play to win. If all the wussies on my side played to win one-tenth as much as you Goons do, we wouldn’t be in an economic crisis today.

LOTS of people see that Buy-and-Hold is b.s. The trouble all along has been that most of them are wussies.

I have wussy tendencies in other areas of my life. I am a mild-mannered reporter by nature.

But when the bell rings and it is time to post about early retirement stuff, I go into a telephone booth and become Superman, the Overpowering One.

Or at least that’s what I aim for. At least that’s always the idea.

Trying to teach me to be less “overpowering” is like trying to teach a dog to meow or to teach a cat to bark.

It never, ever, ever, works.

It ain’t in me to give this stuff anything less than my absolute best.

And, truth be told, J.D. is just the same when it comes to any subject other than stock investing. He aims to be less than overpowering when he writes about investing because of the massive social pressure he sees applied for us all to enable the Buy-and-Holders and their Get RIch Quick fantasies.

Not this boy.

Find someone else.

I’d rather be banned at every site on the internet than know in my heart that I gave the job less than 100 percent.

Say it loud — I am overpowering and I am proud!

No apologies.

Rob

“I Had a Long Talk With My Buddy J.D. Roth. He Said That My Problem Is That My Arguments Are Too “Overpowering.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central board:

Rob, can you do me a favor and post a Youtube video of your Ignite presentation to the Financial Bloggers Conference (FinCon13)?
I believe that the talk will go up on YouTube. All of last year’s are there. I don’t have any knowledge of the process by which that is done or of the timing.I also don’t know if they post the slideshows on YouTube as well. I looked at the talks as preparation. I don’t recall if they had the slideshows as well or not.I am fine with sharing the slideshow. I don’t know what is involved in getting it posted here. If one of you Goons wants to explain that, I am willing to give it a shot. I am not sure that the slideshow will make much sense without the presentation to go with it. The slideshow is 20 slides. Each has a quote of something that was said during the 11 years of discussions and an image. Most of the images are intended to be funny. So, for example, I have one where one of you Goons says “Haven’t you noticed that NO ONE ever goes to your site?” and I have an image of a little boy holding a teddy bear for comfort. They are all that sort of thing.The talk was well-received. There were about 200 people there. I got a big laugh when the title of the presentation (“How to Become the Most Hated Blogger on the Internet”) went up. I got applause at the end, but that doesn’t mean much, everyone gets applause. I had three people come up to me as soon as the other talks were over and ask for more information. The four of us continued talking about investing and lots of other stuff until about midnight. I presume that other people had questions too. But people could see that I was involved in this group and so no one else actually came up.

I don’t believe that I have 200 converts. I think that what this did was put a thought in people’s heads that they will ponder in the back of their minds. That’s all you can do in five minutes. I say that that is the likely outcome because that is the outcome I saw with lots of people that I spoke to outside of the Ignite presentation. In each of the three years, I have seen an increased openness to the ideas. But rarely do I see people give 100 percent endorsements of the ideas. Usually, there is a tentative willingness to think them over and to hear more. It’s too big a change for people to go all the way as the result of a single exposure.

I did have two complete converts. One was a guy I had breakfast with. Another was a guy I met at a speed networking event. Those two offered John Walter Russell level support. I haven’t seen that before. So that obviously made me happy.

I ran into several people that I expect to work with a bit on different projects. Podcasting and that sort of thing. I have a few other things on my list before I turn to those projects. But it’s not too early to start making tentative plans for 2014.

I would say that in each of the three FinCons I have seen a bit more acceptance than in the one before. I had a long talk with my buddy J.D. Roth. He said that my problem is that my arguments are too “overpowering.” I noted that it is common for baseball teams that have a fellow who hits too many home-runs to let him go because it is not fair to the other teams for one team to always have the most  overpowering player. Then we shook hands and I went on my way.

I saw Mike Piper in the hallway and we exchanged cordial greetings and went on.

I talked with Todd Tresidder several times. One time I was explaining to someone else how there is a 65 percent crash coming and Todd said: “Now you know why Rob is so popular!”

I attended a Kareoke (I don’t know how to spell it but you know what I mean) event. I didn’t have the guts to get up and sing “You Are the SunShine of My Life” 100 percent off key. Perhaps if my wife had been there, I would have forced myself. I did that once on a trip we made to San Francisco. But no, on this particular occasion it was not in me to be the brave one.

I was nervous before doing the Ignite presentation. There was a lot of beer around and there was a temptation to use that to ease the nerves. I knew better because I have heard stories of one unfortunate fellow who went too far with that strategy last year. Once I was up front and saying words, the nervousness went away. I think the fear is that you won’t actually be able to talk when the time comes to do so. Once you see that your mouth works even when you are on a stage, the rest just follows.

Lots of financial bloggers have been hit hard by Google. That was the elephant in the living room. The number of attendees was way up (over 500 this year). I don’t see how that can continue if Google keeps hitting people. But I didn’t expect attendance to be up nearly as much as it was this year either. So there may be things going on that I do not fully understand.

Anyway, that’s the basic story. The conference was certainly worth the time and money I put into it. I will certainly do it again next year.

I hope that helps a bit.

Rob the Devil

Valuation-Informed Indexing #166 — Last Week’s Nobel Prize Award Is an Acknowledgement That We Do Not Today Know How Stock Investing Works

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I’ve posted Entry #166 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Last Week’s Nobel Prize Award Is an Acknowledgment That We Do Not Today Know How Stock Investing Works.

Juicy Excerpt: It was a diplomatic act to award the prize to both men. It was not a logically consistent act to do so. One of the two men is right about how stock investing works. One of the two men is wrong about how stock investing works.

By having the two men share the award, the committee is implicitly saying that they do not know how stock investing works; they are saying that this is today an open question.

That’s true. It IS an open question.

It is also an amazing and scary reality.

Valuation-Informed Indexing #164 — If Widely Held Views About Smoking Can Change, Widely Held Views About Investing Can Change Too

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I’ve posted Entry #164 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called If Widely Held Views About Smoking Can Change, Widely Held Views About Investing Can Change Too.

Juicy Excerpt: I don’t think anyone truly believed that smoking is good for your health. So, in a literal sense, no, no one believed the stupid advertisements.

But it is important to remember that it is not the purpose of an advertisement to persuade through logic. One of the characters on Mad Men did a good job of explaining the purpose of advertising when she said that the idea is to persuade people to do what they want rather than what is expected of them. Advertising attacks the Super-Ego with the aim of making the consumerist Id more powerful.

The advertisements promoting the health benefits were aimed at people who already smoked. Research showed that these people were starting to develop concerns that smoking could kill them. So they were thinking of quitting or cutting back. The aim of these advertisements was to offer reassurance to people who wanted to smoke that it would be okay to continue doing so. The aim was achieved by putting forward absurdly deceptive claims that possessed emotional resonance because they gave people a reason to do something they very much wanted to do but which was beginning to cause pangs of conscience.

It’s the same story with the absurdly deceptive claim of the Buy-and-Holders that there is no need for investors to lower their stock allocations when prices rise to insanely dangerous levels.

“Once We Get to the Other Side of the Big Black Mountain, the People Who Now Advocate Buy-and-Hold Are Going to Be the Most Vocal Proponents of Valuation-Informed Indexing. VII Is John Bogle’s Dream Come True!”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central board:

we all know how to live our lives. 

We are soul brothers re this one, Dab. Common sense TRUMPS academic research in my book.

Common sense tells us that price MUST matter. All that the academic research of the past 32 years does is CONFIRM what common sense reveals.

The reason why I focus so much on academic research is that it was a MISUNDERSTANDING of the academic research that got us on the unfortunate path we are on today.

It is the Buy-and-Holders who came up with the idea of basing one’s investment strategies in the academic research. I LOVE them for that. That gets us away from all the marketing-oriented garbage. People will tell you anything to make a sale. The Buy-and-Holders came up with the solution to that problem. Peer-reviewed academic research is INDEPENDENT. It is REAL. We all owe the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers a great debt for their focus on peer-reviewed academic research.

They made a mistake. There was research published that really does show that short-term timing doesn’t work and they jumped to a hasty conclusion that long-term timing is not required either. Big friggin’ deal! The mistake means nothing. ALL pioneers make mistakes. It’s because they take risks to help us that they make mistakes. I APPLAUD their mistake.

That said, we need to CORRECT the mistake. We need to move forward in our understanding of how stock investing works. We move forward by acknowledging the mistake and putting it behind us.

Once we move forward, we will all be on the same side again, Dab. People will be writing about our findings hundreds of years from now. They won’t be writing about these disputes. They will be writing about the end product, they will be writing about WHAT WORKS. The Buy-and-Holders will be getting credit for designing the framework. They earned that. I have obviously never said different. I WANT them getting credit for the important work they really did do.

It is the Buy-and-Holders who make the Buy-and-Holders look bad today, not me. I want them on my side. I wanted to call this “The New Buy-and-Hold” or “Buy-and-Hold 2.0.” Those ways of referring to it tell the story of how it all derives from the work of the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers. I only started calling it Valuation-Informed Indexing after a good number of Buy-and-Holders indicated that they wanted no part of it. That was their call, not mine.

Common sense is important and research is important. Each is a check on the other. If your research defies common sense, you need to check it carefully to make sure it really is on the mark. And if the research discredits what common sense tells you, you need to check for any holes in the common-sense message. What you want is to have common sense and research working together.

That’s what we have with Valuation-Informed Indexing. Common sense says price MUST matter. The last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research CONFIRMS that price always DOES matter. That makes it a lock.

All of the conflict that we have experienced is a result of the hard reality that we didn’t always know it all. There was a tine when good and smart people really did believe that long-term timing (taking price into consideration when buying stocks) was not required. Those people built careers around that idea. Now it hurts them to learn that they were wrong. I do NOT want to make them feel bad. But I know that they will end up feeling worse if they cause even more financial devastation. Deep in their hearts, the Buy-and-Holders want to do good work. We all need to work together to bring them to the place where that becomes possible for them once again.

Once we get to the other side of the Big Black Mountain, the people who now advocate Buy-and-Hold are going to be the most vocal proponents of Valuation-Informed Indexing. VII is John Bogle’s dream come true! This is what he was trying to achieve with his life when he was a young man. Now he has it and it is better than he ever dared to imagine it could be. We all just need to work together to get him to a place where he feels comfortable saying that out loud.

Common sense does NOT support the idea that price can be ignored when buying stocks, Dab. That idea caught on because of a mistaken understanding of what the peer-reviewed academic research in this field revealed (a mistaken understanding that dates to a time BEFORE Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research. It’s not timing that doesn’t work, it’s SHORT-TERM timing that doesn’t work. Long-Term Timing ALWAYS works. Long-term timing is always REQUIRED.

To fail to engage in long-term timing when buying stocks is like telling a user-car dealer to please just sell you a good car and that any price he chooses to attach to it will be 100 percent fine with you and so there is no need for you to ask any questions about that aspect of the purchase. Huh?

When a large number of the participants in a market come to believe that it is not necessary to ask about price, that market collapses.

And here we are.

Rob

“We Do Need Those Prison Sentences to be Announced. We Cannot Get Honest Words from Any of the Experts in This Field Until They Feel Safe About Posting Honest Words. The Death Threats Have to Stop. The Demands for Unjustified Board Bannings Have to Stop. The Tens of Thousands of Acts of Defamation Have to Stop. The Threats to Get Academic Researchers Fired from Their Jobs Have to Stop.”

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

This is the only blog I’ve ever seen that exists entirely in the past (perceived slights) and in a deranged imaginary future (prison terms, huge payday, blah blah) Never a word about the present. At this point anything would be welcome. Did you have breakfast this morning? Did you throw yourself a birthday party?

It is things that happened in the past that are destroying our future, X.

Do you think there is one person alive in the United States today who does not want to bring the economic crisis to an end?

There is not one.

Bogle wants that. Bernstein wants that. Shiller wants that. I want that. Linduaer wants that. Greaney wants that. You want that.

So why aren’t we working together to make good things happen?

Because the Buy-and-Holders feel bad about things that happened in the past.

I happened to be the person who discovered the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies. The first reaction of the Buy-and-Holders was to cover up the errors rather than to correct them. As time passed, it became increasingly difficult to do that. Eventually, they had to resort to felonies. Now they REALLY want to extend the cover-up. Now they are looking at prison terms. So things go down, down, down.

We need to deal with things that happened in the past so that we can all get back on track and make our future better.

Do you hear me taking any joy in these prison sentences?

I am the one fighting as hard as I can fight to get those prison sentences REDUCED.

The core reality here is that we are luckiest generation of stock investors who ever lived. We need to start taking advantage of the huge breakthroughs that we have achieved intellectually over the past 32 years. We need to start obtaining practical benefits from those breakthroughs. Which of course means that we need to SPREAD THE WORD re those breakthroughs.

I am hot and rarin’ to go re that positive, future-oriented stuff, X.

The thing that I have zero interest in is in adding hundreds of more layers of deception to the thousands of layers of deception that we have as a society already erected over this issue over the past 11 years.

We have a lot of exciting work ahead of us. All of that work must be rooted in HONESTY. That is the key to turning all the bad stuff into wonderful, constructive, positive, life-affirming stuff.

You want me to help spread the word re the investing realities that have been revealed through the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research? You got me.

You want me to post dishonestly re the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements? Please try to find someone else. Not this boy. I have other plans. No can do. I can’t go for that.

We are on the 99-yard line. Once prison terms are announced for those who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney, it gets better and better and better with every passing day.

But we do need those prison sentences to be announced. We cannot get honest words from any of the experts in this field until they feel safe posting honest words. The death threats have to stop. The demands for unjustified board bannings have to stop. The tens of thousands of acts of defamation have to stop. The threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs have to stop.

That stuff is inhuman. And it is humans who invest in stocks. We need to have discussions fit for humans if we are to make forward movement.

That is my sincere take re this important matter, in any event.

I wish you well, X.

Rob