A Rich Life

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

“Wade Pfau Has a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton. Wade Spent Months Trying to Find a Study Showing That Long-Term Timing Is Not Required. He Never Found One. He Was Amazed. He Kept Thinking that He Had Done Something Wrong. But He Looked and He Looked and He Looked and He Never Found Such a Study.”

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

I am grateful to you for putting forward something that deals with substantive issues, Banned. We work out our differences by dealing with substantive issues.

There is a contradiction in the words used to introduce the table set forth at the link. First, it says: “By owning the entire market (all of the asset classes), susceptibility to changes in market variations is minimized.” Then it says: “Large variations over a short period of time, but tends to be stable when viewed over the long term.”

The first statement cannot possibly be true if the second statement is true (and the second statement IS true). These are not my words. These are the words of the Bogleheads, the primary advocates of Buy-and-Hold. And these words show why Buy-and-Hold can never work for even a single long-term investor.

The second statement is a wonderful summation of the 140 years of U.S. stock market history available to us. Year to year variations in returns are indeed INSANE. And long-term variations are indeed minimal. We are in complete agreement re this statement.

Where we differ is re its MEANING. You take this statement as signifying support for a Buy-and-Hold strategy. I take it as a warning NOT to follow a Buy-and-Hold strategy.

If returns are stable over the long term and if that stable return is a good one (it is), you want to be heavily invested in stocks as a rule. We agree re that point.

If returns are wildly variable in the short term, you want to be heavily invested in stocks during the short-term periods when returns are very, very good but you do NOT want to be heavily invested in stocks when returns are very, very bad. You want to avoid taking the huge hit that comes from being invested in stocks during price crashes. Avoiding crashes will increase your return DRAMATICALLY while also diminishing your risk DRAMATICALLY. The lifetime benefit is counter-intutively high. You would need to work the numbers to see how huge a difference this makes.

That’s Valuation-Informed Indexing, Banned. The only difference between Buy-and-Hold and VII is that with VII you lower your stock allocation at times of price crashes (those times when the short-term variation works against you) and increase it at times of huge price jumps (those times when the short-term variation works to your benefit). That’s the entire deal.

Now –

Buy-and-Holders would have to be insane not to want to take advantage of return predictability if it existed. They obviously do not believe that these times of short-term variability (in both directions) can be predicted. I obviously do. That’s the only issue in dispute.

This is where I say the Buy-and-Holders have never put forward a single sliver of evidence supporting their position. This was Wade Pfau’s most important finding. This is why Wade says that the research that he and I did together belongs in the Journal of Finance, the most important journal in the field.

Wade has a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton. He makes a living doing investment research. If there is anyone alive who is able to determine whether there is a study showing that long-term timing is not required, Wade is that person. Wade spent months trying to find such a study. He never found one. He was amazed. He kept thinking that he had done something wrong. He must have missed it! But he looked and he looked and he looked and he never found any such study.

He wanted to be sure. So he went to the Bogleheads Forum to see if anyone there knew of one. No one did. Not John Bogle. Not Bill Bernstein. Not Larry Swedrow. Not Rick Ferri. Not Taylor Larimore. None of these people have ever seen a single study supporting the core principle upon which the Buy-and-Hold strategy is built.

If these people never heard of a study, there is no study, Banned. There is zero reason for any rational person to believe that long-term timing (paying attention to price) is not absolutely required for anyone hoping to have a realistic chance of long-term investing success.

Now — to the first statement that appears before the presentation of the table!

The first statement says: “”By owning the entire market (all of the asset classes), susceptibility to changes in market variations is minimized.”

No! This is false!

The research that Wade and I did shows that the far bigger factor is the valuation level that applies when the asset is purchased. Just paying attention to valuations alone takes 70 percent of the risk out of stock investing. Owning a large number of asset classes does virtually nothing to minimize risk compared to the simple act of taking valuations into consideration when setting your stock allocation. Buy-and-Holders do not minimize risk by going with a pure Get Rich Quick approach. They MAXIMIZE it! Just as common sense tells us must be so!

There never can be any justification for failing to take price into account when buying something, Banned. It cannot be. It is a logical impossibility.

If you want to say that Buy-and-Holders sincerely believe that it is not necessary to take price into account, I can go along with that statement. But I cannot go along with a statement that there is research supporting such a statement. Wade checked this very, very, very carefully. There is no such research. There never will be any. The idea that it is not necessary to take price into account when buying stocks is dangerous and false and wrong and absurd.

Buy-and-Hold was a mistake.

It was a mistake made by good and smart people who were trying to help us. But it was a mistake all the same.

That mistake caused our economic crisis. That mistake needs to be fixed.

I wish you all good things.

Rob

“Jack Bogle Obviously Knows That It Was a Criminal Act of Financial Fraud for the Goons to Threaten to Get Wade Pfau Fired from His Job As His ‘Punishment’ for Publishing Honest Research. We Will Learn All the Details When Jack Is Called to Testify Before Congressional Hearings and in Civil & Criminal Trials.”

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

I doubt the man has even heard of Rob

My friend Jack obviously knows all about me.

He has told us that he visits the Bogleheads board on a weekly basis. He was there for the two years during which half of the threads put to the board concerned my investing ideas.

The Vanguard Diehards board was shut down and the community moved to the Bogleheads board so that the Goons could escape my posting re the peer-reviewed academic research of the past 32 years. There wouldn’t even BE a Bogleheads board if it were not for me. Bogle was there to see that take place.

I have sent Jack four e-mails letting him know about the Lindauer matter and asking for his help.

Rob Arnott is a personal friend of Jack’s. He copied several of his e-mails to me dealing with these issues to Jack. So Jack obviously knows.

Jack obviously knows that it was a criminal act of financial fraud for the Lindauerheads and Greaney Goons to threaten to get Wade Pfau fired from his job as his “punishment” for publishing honest research. The idea that Jack would have gotten himself involved in this criminal enterprise without thinking it through carefully is of course 100 percent absurd. We will learn all the details when Jack is called to testify before congressional hearings and in civil and criminal trials. But he obviously knows about my contributions and he is obviously aware that by failing to speak out about the Lindauer matter in the strongest possible terms he has encouraged the Goons to continue their criminal enterprise.

I have on numerous occasions encouraged Jack to have nothing whatsoever to do with the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney. There are hundreds of posts in the Post Archives to that effect.

I look forward to working with Jack to rebuild our broken economy after he gives his “I Was Wrong” speech, thereby opening the entire internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and hundreds of other critically important investment-related topics.

Rob

Valuation-Informed Indexing #148: Why It’s a (Not Entirely) Good Thing That Robert Shiller and Jeremy Siegel Are Personal Friends

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I’ve posted Entry #148 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Why It’s a (Not Entirely) Good Thing That Robert Shiller and Jeremy Siegel Are Personal Friends.

Juicy Excerpt: It’s wonderful that he is warm with Siegel and with lots of others in the field who hold very different viewpoints. But we need Shiller making the case for a new approach to stock investing as strongly as he can possibly make it. I have seem him on numerous occasions fail to do that. One doesn’t gain the sense listening to Shiller that Siegel’s investing advice is nearly as dangerous as one concludes it to be when one follows the logic chain set forth in Shiller’s book where it leads one.

“What You Are Seeing Here Is the Power of Compounding Returns Applied to Investing. When You Lose Money in a Crash, You Lose Not Only the Number of Dollars You Lose Directly in the Crash, You Also Lose DECADES of Compounding on Those Returns. The Losses Are So Large That the Human Mind Can Barely Process the Information.”

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

If you predict something twelve years too soon, have you really predicted anything?

Thank you for asking an intelligent and important question, Trevor. I believe that there are millions of middle-class people who experience precisely the doubt you are evidencing by asking this question.

The reality here is counter-intutive. It seems like the answer might be “no.” It seems like predicting something 12 years too soon is not doing something terribly useful. But what seems is not always what is. The answer to the question is “yes,” you are doing something amazing by being able to predict something 12 years in advance.”

The best way to see why this is such a big deal is to experience it for yourself. Please go to the Scenario Surfer:

http://www.passionsaving.com/portfolio-allocation.html

Run through some 30-year returns sequences. What you will find is that over and over and over again you will see yourself “predicting” a crash years before it comes. And, if you lower your stock allocation as you should, over and over and over again you will find yourself far, far ahead of the Buy-and-Hold portfolio in the long run. You will obtain FAR higher long-term returns while taking on DRAMATICALLY reduced risk. There will be some cases (not the norm) when your portfolio value at the end of 30 years will be more than DOUBLE the size of any of the three (20%, 50% and 80%) Buy-and-Hold portfolios.

What you are seeing here is the power of compounding returns applied to investing. When you lose money in a crash, you lose not only the numbers of dollars you lose directly in the crash. you also lose DECADES of compounding on those returns. The losses are so large that the human mind can barely process the information.

Valuation-Informed Indexers NEVER experience those losses. Not once in 140 years have they experienced those losses. But every Buy-and-Holder HAS experienced them. There has never been an investor who lived a normal lifetime of 80 years or so who did not experience at least one crash in his investing lifetime. So every Buy-and-Holder has been hit in a very hard way that not a single Valuation-Informed Indexer has ever been hit.

As a truly great and kind man was often known to say –

Have fun!

Rob

“Hearing Doubts Expressed Is Disconcerting. It Hurts, Especially If In Some Part of Their Minds They Entertain Similar Doubts. I Have Said Many Things That Have Caused Many Buy-and-Holders to Feel Pain.”

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

Say that the Phillies are playing the Yankees in the World Series and that it is the seventh game and that you do a statistical analysis showing that the pitcher they have slated to go is not up to the job. Say that you write this in a column with the aim of persuading the manager to use a different pitcher who according to your statistical analysis is more likely to win the game.

Is that “offensive”?

Many Phillies fans would find it so. They want to win the game. Hearing doubts expressed is disconcerting. It hurts, especially if in some part of their minds they entertain similar doubts.

But what you are saying is not “offensive” in an objective sense. If you claim to be a loyal Phillies fan and you have information that could help them win the World Series and you fail to reveal it because you are afraid that people will get mad at you if you do, you are a coward and not a true fan. You MUST share that information regardless of what it causes people to say about you.

I have said many things that have caused many Buy-and-Holders to feel pain. That’s an established fact.

I did it to help them achieve financial freedom many years sooner than would otherwise be possible. That’s the name of the game we are playing here. Someone who possesses information that would help his friends to achieve far higher returns at greatly reduced risk who fails to share has let down his friends in a serious way.

This I will not do. Not ever.

Sometimes learning experiences hurt. If you fall off a bike, it hurts. The answer is not to avoid learning how to ride a bike. The answer is to accept that sometimes learning experiences hurt but also to understand that they are worth undergoing because learning experiences ultimately bring us more joy than pain.

Every painful experience I have caused the Buy-and-Holders was part of a learning experience that they need to undergo to become the investors that deep in their hearts they all want to become.

I have been LOYAL to the Buy-and-Holders in a way that a lot of the “experts” that they slobber over have failed to be loyal to them.

I wish you all good things, Annie.

Rob

“I’ve Taken on the Buy-and-Hold Mafia, Sparky. I’ve Been Hearing Threats Every Day for 11 Years Running Now.”

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

Your comments about “the court of law” and the comment on ” civil and criminal law” could be considered defamatory and threatening. You should think before making accusations like that to anyone.

I’ve taken on The Buy-and-Hold Mafia, Sparky. I’ve been hearing threats every day for 11 years running now.

My good friend Jack Bogle has all the money and influence and power in the world, Sparky.

If he doesn’t like it that I call him and the other Buy-and-Holders out on their nonsense, he should sue me.

Maybe he’ll even win, you know?

I’m not going to post dishonestly on the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements. Not in 11 years. Not in 11 billion years.

That’s financial fraud. If I engage in financial fraud, I could be put in prison for good reason. At least if I go because my good friend Jack pulls some strings, I am being sent to prison without just cause.

I’m at risk either way. If I post honestly, the Buy-and-Hold Mafia feels that it needs to destroy me. If I post dishonestly, I have committed a real crime. Of the two options, I prefer posting honestly and taking my chances with Old Jack.

I love the guy. I rank him as the second most important investing analyst in history. I’ll sing his praises even if he sues me or gets me sent to jail. That’s because I like singing the guy’s praises when it is possible to do so honestly. So he can count on me for that.

When Jack posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer or John Greaney, he shames himself. I cannot support him when he goes down that dark road.

Are we clear where we stand?

If Old Jack does NOT sue me, I’ll be pointing people to this post and noting that he didn’t pull the trigger. That will encourage others to speak up. So having his Goons threaten to sue me and then not pulling the trigger is the worst of all worlds for him.

I wish you (and my good friend Jack!) all of the best things that this life has to offer in any event, Sparky.

Don’t let the bad guys get you down, man.

Rob

“I Had a Discussion About This With My Mother Shortly Before She Died. She Said That Maybe All That I Am Trying to Teach People Is Going To Become Widely Accepted After My Death. Oh, Great!….I Pray That I Have the Courage to Accept God’s Plan Here Without Too Much Whining.”

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

hopefully for your sake you have more of a plan than praying.

God helps those who help themselves, What. So I certainly need to work it myself in addition to saying my prayers.

But it is in God’s hands, not mine. If God doesn’t mean for this to happen, it’s not going to happen, no matter how hard I work it.

I had a discussion about this with my mother shortly before she died. She said that maybe all that I am trying to teach people is going to become widely accepted after my death. Oh, great! I hate that idea.

It was just like my mom to say that, though. My favorite trait of hers is that she was not one to sugarcoat. So I have to accept that she might be right.

Now –

Why would God do that to me? It sounds almost like a trick.

It could be that He wanted me to learn patience or compassion. There might be some lesson in all this that I am today oblivious to that I can only become aware of by experiencing whatever I will be experiencing as the days move on. Perhaps I really will be put to death, you know? Perhaps there is some lesson that I can only learn by being put to death and God knows that it is only re this issue that I could ever possess the courage needed for things to reach that point (the issue of standing by your friends on the internet really does touch me in a way that not too many other issues do).

If that’s God’s plan, that’s God’s plan. I don’t want it to be so, I don’t like the idea one little bit. But I pray that I have the courage to accept God’s plan here without too much whining.

I don’t control the world, What. I don’t pretend to. I am some guy who figured out how to get posts to appear on internet discussion boards, nothing more and nothing less. I don’t think that I even possess a master plan, in the way you suggest. The plan I follow is that I wake up each morning, turn on my computer, handle what is in front of me that day, turn off the computer and go to sleep. I try as hard as I can to understand the other fellow’s point of view and to be kind and polite when doing it. I also try to be firm about honesty on important matters, not to give in to pressures applied to me to get me to say things I don’t believe to be so. That’s the plan, in summary form.

Following that plan has taken me to some mighty strange places over the past 11 years. I’ve seen amazing things, both positive and negative. I’ve never been under the illusion that I controlled how things turn out. I control one tiny little piece of the world, the posts that show up under the name “Rob Bennett.” That’s all.

I do believe that God put me here to do this work. He doesn’t speak to me in a direct way. I hear him speaking to me in an indirect way and that’s the message I hear. But I’ve been wrong about that sort of thing before and it could be that it’s happening again. But I personally believe that God put me here to do this work all the same.

I don’t pray often. But I do on occasion pray for help and courage. I would phrase things the opposite of the way you did. I would say that I need to continue exerting my efforts but that I need to accept that those efforts will not be nearly enough, that I am not going to prevail here without God’s help. I would say that I would be foolish to think that my efforts alone are going to be sufficient.

Safe withdrawal rates matter, What. I believe that. But I also believe that in the grand scheme of things they may not matter all that much. It could be that in the grand scheme there are things going on here that matter more than the investing topics matter. Thinking along those lines gets a bit too cosmic for me, so I don’t spend much time doing it. But I think that’s a possibility. I certainly think it would be a terrible mistake for me to make safe withdrawal rates so important that I would be unkind to you or one of my other Goon friends. I don’t believe that I have ever been unkind to any of you and I certainly pray that I never cross that line.

Enough!

Take good care, my old friend.

Rob

Valuation-Informed Indexing #146 — Two-Thirds of Investment Advisors Don’t Believe That Valuations Need to Be Considered at All

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I’ve posted Entry #146 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Two-Thirds of Investment Advisors Don’t Believe That Valuations Need to Be Considered at All.

Juicy Excerpt: Are there people who believe that valuations don’t matter? I have not met anyone willing to take this position in a public debate of the question. But to read that two-thirds of financial planners believe that it is acceptable not to give valuations any consideration at all when putting together a retirement plan tells me that there certainly are people who for all practical purposes believe that valuations don’t matter. If they mattered, you would take them into consideration when putting together a retirement plan.

So we all say that we believe that valuations matter. But for a good number of us, such statements are polite reassurances that we understand the obvious realities. We don’t really believe that valuations matter. We pretend to believe it. When it comes to taking actions based on that belief, we take things the other way.

We are confused.

I don’t see how anyone can object to this conclusion.

“People Respect and Admire Jack Bogle. When He Sees a Mel Lindauer Behaving in the Manner in Which Mel Linduaer Behaves and Does Nothing About It, That Scares People.”

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

If you think that the Bogleheads Forum does not have great power to help or hurt people, we have a very, very different take re the matter.

When I was at Bogleheads, there were hundreds of very smart and good people who expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted. Mel Lindauer hated that idea. He was willing to destroy the board rather than permit honest posting there. But how did he pull that off? He’s one guy and there are hundreds on the other side. How did he do it?

He did it with Jack Bogle’s help.

Jack never personally advanced death threats. But he appeared in threads with Mel. He got Mel that column with Forbes. He showed up at events with Mel. I saw a photo once at the Goon Central board in which Jack and Mel are standing close enough together that you can see them both in the same photo!

People respect and admire Jack Bogle. When he sees a Mel Linduaer behaving in the manner in which Mel Lindauer behaves and does nothing about it, that scares people. Bogle has power in this world. And when he fails to speak up about a Mel Linduaer, he puts that power to a very great negative use.

The other side of the story is that that board has the power to bring the economic crisis to an end. That’s a big deal. There are many influential people who participate or lurk at Bogleheads. If we had been talking there about the true cause of the economic crisis going back to the first day, that front-page New York Times story on Buy-and-Hold that we all deep in our hearts long to see would have appeared a long, long time ago.

The internet discussion board is a powerful communications medium of the future, What. You couldn’t be more wrong than you are in the suggestion you make here.

The question is whether the power of that board community is going to be put to use serving good purposes or bad ones. I entertain both hopes and fears re that one. I know how much good that board can do and I hope to see the day it gets about the business of doing it. And I know how much harm that board is doing in its current incarnation and I fear for how those doing the harm are going to feel about themselves when they finally come to realize how many human lives have been destroyed.

There is a power that comes with being the biggest investing board on Planet Internet, What. And with power must come a sense of responsibility.

I am sure.

Rob

“People Won’t Tell You to Your Face That You Are an Ass. You Admit That You Have Been Doing This for 11 Years. Do You Notice That Your Message Is Not Going Anywhere? Wake Up, Rob!

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

Rob,

Even us unicorns know that people won’t tell you to your face that you are an ass. People, on the whole, will be polite in face to face discussions. There is no evidence of a vast conspiracy. You have been banned from so many sites because of your actions and demeanor. It is clear you are wrong and you made that more evident when you called Wade a liar. Additionally, my personal experience also shows you to lack credibility when you lied about me. There is clear evidence that you lie about others on here on a regular basis as we can look at their posts and watch you respond.

You admit that you have been doing this for 11 years. Do you notice that your message is not going anywhere, yet you have some delusion that it will go “viral”.

Wake up, Rob!

People who think you are an ass don’t say to you “your site is the best site I have seen in this area, I just love your investing ideas and have read every article you have written in an effort to learn more about them.” Give me a friggin’ break, Pink.

Now, the person that sent that message to me (I paraphrased but that was indeed the message) ALSO banned me from his site. So there are bits and pieces of what you say that are so. But the explanation of the EXCEEDINGLY strange situation is not that people think I am an ass. The explanation is that even the smartest people in this field are afraid today to go public with their doubts about Buy-and-Hold.

Whether there is a “conspiracy” or not depends on how you use the word. There are not people meeting in smoke-filled rooms plotting all this. But there are lots of people behaving in a similar manner when faced with similar sorts of circumstances. That’s been demonstrated THOUSANDS of times at this point.

You say I have been banned because of my “actions and demeanor.” Yes and no. It is an ACTION to report the safe withdrawal rate accurately. It is part of my DEMEANOR that I offer no apology for having done so when Buy-and-Holders react with anger. If that is what you mean by saying that my action and demeanor caused my bans, then sure, you are right.

How the heck do you think we are ever going to make the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing without someone advancing that sort of action and demeanor, Pink? We need to get from Point A to Point B. It doesn’t happen if I say “oh, here’s my personal withdrawal rate” and then leave the discussion. I need to say “calculations of the safe withdrawal rate that do not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the start-date of the retirement are in error.” It is that statement that the Buy-and-Holders consider an action and a demeanor that cannot be tolerated. I am trying to REPLACE Buy-and-Hold with Valuation-Informed Indexing. The Buy-and-Holders are trying to defend Buy-and-Hold. We are working at cross purposes.

I have every right in the world to tell millions of middle-class people what they need to know to lose confidence in Buy-and-Hold. The move from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance we have achieved as a people in the history of investing analysis. So please don’t suffer any illusions that I am going to back off that project. That is the project that I have been pursuing since the morning of May 13, 2002. With great pride. With great tenacity. With great diligence. With great hope. With great love.

I hope that part is crystal clear at this point. Please don’t ever suggest again that there might be some future date at which I would agree to say things in some gibberish way that would cause the Buy-and-Holders to let me post on the internet but that would not permit me to get the message out to millions of middle-class investors that the millions of middle-class investors very much need to hear. Those are my people, Pink. Those are my friends. I am going to get this message out to those people or I am going to die trying. There is zero chance of any deals being worked out re that point. Please give up that stupid, pointless dream!

Wade will be tried to a court of law. He will present his evidence and the state will present its evidence. That’s the way the system works. I will do everything in my power to spin things in Wade’s favor. I will not commit perjury. Fair enough?

I will handle things in precisely the same manner in your trial. Obviously the things I say will be different because the realities are different. But the spirit in which I will approach my obligation to testify will be the same in both cases. The rule I follow is to be as honest as it is possible to be without crossing an important line and becoming uncharitable while also being as charitable as it is possible to be without crossing another important line and becoming dishonest. That’s the story re that one.

Your take on the 11-year history couldn’t possibly be more different than my own, Pink. I have accomplished things over these 11 years that I never would have dared dream possible. I had a conversation just yesterday with a woman who is doing some technical work on my site. She marveled over the endorsements I have obtained. I was humbled. If you had told me back when I was a boy growing up in Northeast Philadelphia that scores of the biggest names in the personal finance field would be saying the sorts of things that scores of the biggest names in the personal finance field have said about Rob Bennett’s investing work over the past 11 years, I would have said that you were 100 percent loco nutso mixed-up crazytown. And yet here we are.

I am 100 percent convinced that the message will go viral, Pink. I have zero doubt.

I worry that it will take a Second Great Depression to make it happen. That prospect scares me to death. So I don’t mean to suggest that I am comfortable about where things stand today. I am not even a tiny bit comfortable. I am very concerned about where things stand today.

But I do not CONTROL that question. I have to accept that things are how things are. It is not my call. There are other people who have to get involved to make good things happen and, as of this morning, those other people have not elected to get involved. That’s the story there.

If Shiller is right (there is now a mountain of evidence that he is), the next price crash is going to put us in the Second Great Depression. That can be proven with numbers, Pink. If you don’t think that news that we are in Second Great Depression and that the Wall Street Con Men’s decisions to continue pumping out this Buy-and-Hold garbage for 32 years after the peer-reviewed academic research showed that there is precisely zero chance that it could ever work for a single long-term investor is going to go viral, then you are a dang fool. No personal offense intended. I know of no softer words to convey the essential point.

I’m awake, Pink. I was awake on the morning of May 13, 2002. Getting the numbers that people use to plan their retirements right matters. I am not guessing. I am SURE.

I naturally wish you all the best things that this life has to offer, my old friend.

Rob