A Rich Life

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

“Every Abusive Post by a Buy-and-Holder Argues in Favor of Shiller’s Core Finding That Stock Investing Is at Times a Highly Emotional Endeavor. That’s a Lot of Arguments in Favor of His Nobel-Prize-Winning Research! “

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

No one is buying what you are selling.  What friends are you talking about.  You don’t have any friends posting here.  Instead, you give us a link to old comments that are often taken out of context. There is not a single person alive today that will say they agree with you.

If we opened every site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research, in time there wouldn’t be one person alive who would disagree that market timing/price discipline is always required.

If you hadn’t seen with your own eyes how many investors are interested in learning from the peer-reviewed research, you would never have advanced a single abusive post. If you thought that Buy-and-Hold might prevail in civil and reasoned discussions, you would welcome them.

Every abusive post by a Buy-and-Holder argues in favor of Shiller’s core finding that stock investing is at times a highly emotional endeavor. That’s a lot of arguments in favor of his Nobel-prize-winning research!

Rob

Buy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: “I Have Never Seen One Buy-and-Holder Go Broke”

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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:

What pain?  Going broke?  I have never seen even one buy and holder go broke.  I have never seen any successful outcome with VII.  The only cover up going in is taking place at this website.

Have you ever watched the movie “Grapes of Wrath”? It stars Henry Fonda.

Rob

Buy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: “So Only Rob Bennett Thinks Clearly and the Rest of Us Are Delusional Idiots.”

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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:

“If we were all thinking clearly, there would not be one person in the United States disagreeing with any of this.”

So only Rob Bennett thinks clearly and the rest of us are delusional idiots. Got it.

Today’s CAPE value is 31, Anonymous. What does that say about our ability to think clearly?

We’re trying to do better. Shiller’s book was a best-seller. He was awarded a Nobel prize for his amazing research. Thousands of our fellow community members have expressed a desire to see honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research permitted at every site.

But we have obvuously not yet brought it all the way back home. A nation of people that is thinking clearly does not permit the CAPE value to reach 31. We should all be working together every day to bring that CAPE value down to a more reasonable level. It takes market timing/price discipline, you know?

My sincere take.

Rob

“Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick Is a Serious Addiction, Have You Ever Heard of Someone Quitting Smoking or Escaping Alcoholism Because They Heard One Time How Smoking or Drinking to Excess Are Negative Behaviors? To Get Over an Addiction That Strong, You Need to Hear the Message Repeated Daily and You Need to Hear It From Many Different Places.”

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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:

Now read the whole thread again. You don’t have a step 2. People have heard your message and they don’t agree. Removing the bans doesn’t change a thing.
As to the bans, you mention a key point in that you state the following: “ I was banned at lots of places”. Combine that with the fact that no one will talk to you outside of these places and your wife, now ex-wife, also decided to part ways with you. Any reasonable and rational person would finally come to the conclusion that they are the problem and not everyone else.

It’s not everyone else. Thousands of people have expressed a desire that honest posting re the peer-reviewed research be permittet at every site. A good number of the biggest names in the field have said that they believe that my stuff checks out. Several have even worked with me. Wade Pfau devoted 16 months of his life to research showing that “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” His emails showed that those were the happiest 16 nonths of his life. He had hopes in those days of being awarded a Nobel prize for the research that we co-authored.

It’s only a small number of insanely dogmatic Buy-and-Holders (the Goons) who have held us all back. And they had to engage in criminal behavior to do it! It’s true that the 90 percent of Normals did not do enough to rein in your Goons. That is of course a highly unfortunate reality. But that 90 percent would be perfected happy to see honest posting re the peer-reviewed research permitted at every site.

And those people have NOT heard the message. They heard a small part of it on a small number of occasions. But the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is too big a change for it to be achieved with a few mentions of what the research says. Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is a seriois addiction, Have you ever heard of someone quitting smoking or escaping alsoholism because they heard one time how smoking or drinking to excess are negative behaviors? To get over an addiction that strong, you need to hear the message repeated daily and you need to hear it from many different places. I have seen people converted from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. I am a convery myself. It is something that happens gradually over a period of time, not in a flash in response to one mention of what the research says.

If we want people to avoid the dangers of Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick, we need to be telling them every day and at every site what the research says. The message just won’t stick otherwise. We need to be singing the praises of market timing and we need to be singing those praises in a highly spirited way. That’s Step Two. That’s what changes everything.

As a nation of people, we believe that discussion of the peer-reviewed research should be permitted. We have a funny way of showing that belief. If we didn’t have a funny way of showing it, we wouldn’t have the black cloud of a CAPE value of 31 hanging over us today. But that is our core belief. If it were not, we would have shut down all the peer-reviewed journals. We wouldn’t have to worry about millions of people learning about the dangers of going pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold is we shut down all the peer-reviewed journals. But we haven’t done that. You Goons would support it. But 90 percent of the population of investors thinks we should permit discussion of what the peer-reviewed research is trying to teach us.

The next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will show us all once again how dangerous it is to pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold. I believe that some of the people in that 90 pervcent will work up the courage to stand up to you Goons at that time. I believe that we are today on the threshold of the biggest surge of economic growth in U.S. history. Getting the word out to millions of people re how stock investing works in the real world is no small thing. I am horrified by the thought of what we will be put through n the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. But I think it would be fair to say that the good news re this matter is 20 times more good than the bad news re this matter is bad.

We’ll see. Wish us all luck!

Rob

“I Was Not Banned At Just One or Two Places. I Was Banned At Lots of Places.”

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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:

All the people that are on the sites that you are banned on have all seen your opinions on Greaney.  If you regain access and post the same things they have already seen, they won’t change their mind.  I think you know this as well and that is why you gave up posting anywhere else on the internet, such as Reddit.

That’s not too far off the mark.

I was not banned at just one or two places. I was banned at lots of places. There were a few places where I backed off when it became clear that I was going to be banned if I continued posting about what the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investint works in the real world. If I continued pushing at those places, I would have been banned at those places as well.

I once was telling my doctor about my sad story and she said “this is not your time.” I half agree and I half do not. I agree with the thought that I cannot achieve success in the current environment. When the CAPE value is 31, the market for research-based investment advive is obviously very, very small. That makes me sad. But I think it would be fair to conclude after 21 years of this, that that is the current-day reality. Like it or not, I need to accept it.

The part that I don’t agree with is the suggestion that it would be okay for me to retreat until conditions for forward progress inprove, There are things that I can do today to sharpen the case that I will be able to proceed successfully with in the days following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, when the CAPE level will be a lot less than 31. One, I can finish writing my book. Two, I can respond to comments from you Goons when there is something in a particular comment that suggests that there is a greater-than-zero chance that someone will someday be able to learn something from the interchange. So I do those two things.

I think it would be fair to say that the most important public policy before the United States today is the question of how much longer it will take us as a nation of people to open every internet site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research in the investment advice field. If I were king of the world, we would have opened every site to honest posting on the afternoon of May 13, 2002, I proposed that at the time. I am obvuously not the king of the world. I don’t have to like that reality. I need to accept it as a reality whether I like it or not.

And I need to make the best of the situation. So that’s what I am to do. Does that not make perfect sense?

Rob

“While the Intellectual Support for Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick Is Precisely Zero, the Institutional Support for It Is Huge. For the Buy-and-Holders to Come Clean, They Not Only Have to Acknowledge Their Initial Mistake, Which Is No Big Deal, but Also the 42-Year Cover-Up of the Mistake, Which Makes Them Look Really, Really, Really Bad.”

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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:

<i>A smart guy once said:

“ Rob, suppose the stock market does drop 65% as you are expecting. It might happen, who knows.
Step 1: Stock Market Drops 65%
Step 2: ??
Step 3: Rob wins $500 million settlement from the Goons, the Goons are sent to prison, the investing public learns about and adopts VII.
What is Step 2? There isn’t one. You will still be in the same position as you’ve been in for the last 10 years. Why didn’t something happen for you after the 2008 financial crisis? You are like the guy who keeps predicting new ends for the world as each previous prediction date passes by.
That is why I’m telling you, from one human being to another, that it is time to move on.”</i>

Step Two is the owner of one large site opening his site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research. It will take guts. You Goons will go after that guy like mad. But a lot of the people who work in this field possess a long-supressed desire to do honest work, to actually help people rather than to destory their lives. My sense from my years of interacting with lots of experts is that just about everyone in this field feels this way. Bogle did. Bernstein does. Kitces does. Tressider does. Shultheis does. Burns does. And on and on and on and on and on.

The leverage here is off the charts. Once a site becomes known as a place where people who post honestly are safe, experts will flock to it. And, the more people there are posting honestly, the more safe it is for new people to join them. The power of you Goons comes from one thing — your ability to isolate those who post honestly, to employ intimidation tactics to stop others from posting in support of the guy or gal who risks career destruction by talking about what the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world.

Support for Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is a mile wide and an inch deep. If Shiller had published his Nobel-prize-winning research in 1961 instead of 1981, there never would have been a Buy-and-Hold strategy, no one would have ever cooked up this loony-tunes idea that the stock market is the only market that has ever existed in which price discipline is not 100 percent required for every market participant. People want to use their life energies to do good work. That’s the way it is in every field other than investment analysis and that’s the way it is in the investment analysis field as well. The problem in this field is that, while the intellectual support for Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is precisely zero, the institutional support for it is huge. For the Buy-and-Holders to come clean, they not only have to acknowledge their initial mistake, which is no big deal, but also the 42-year cover-up of the mistake, which makes them look really, really, really bad.

People don’t want to see their careers destroyed. They want to post honestly but they do not want to see their careers destroyed. The abusive stuff is so off the charts that people decide to let someone else be a hero. But will they be able to continue doing that after the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, when they see millions of lives destroyed. I believe that there will come a time when someone will just not be able to bear it any longer and he will just go ahead and open his site to honest posting. As more people join him, there will be a greater number posting honestly and eventually the isolation stuff will just not have much of an effect anymore. It will become the thing to do to post honestly and the New York Times will publush a series of articles about the long cover-up on its front page and that will be that. We will all be working together to learn how stock investing works in the real world, as we would have been all along if only we had been thinking clearly.

What’s the alternative, Anonymous. The Buy-and-Hold Crisis of 1929 almost caused the entire thing to go under. Are we going to continue risking that? I think that’s too big a risk. I believe that some brave soul will work up the courage to open his site to honest posting after he sees the ocean of human misery that we will see in the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis (I am presuming that stocks will continue to perform in the future somewhat as they have always performed in the past).

P.S. I am confident that Wade will flip back when he sees that it is safe to do so The things he told me in the many emails that we exchanged made clear that those days in which he was posting honestly were the happiest days of his life. Everyone who works in this field will get to experience those feelings in coming days. And everyone who lives in the United States will reap the benefits of learning about the first true research-based strategy.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob

Valuation-Informed Indexing #663: At What Point Does a Mistake Become a Scam?

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I’ve posted Entry #663 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called At What Point Does a Mistake Become a Scam?

Juicy Excerpt: But I don’t believe that the error was deliberate. The people who developed the Buy-and-Hold concept would have had to have been monsters to make a conscious choice to cause so much human misery and my impression of just about all of the Buy-and-Holders who I have gotten to know a little bit well is that they are all smart and good people. I think it was a mistake.

Valuation-Informed Indexing #662: The Fact That People Still Push the Long-Discredited 4 Percent Rule Shows the Irrationality of Buy-and-Hold

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I’ve posted Entry #662 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called The Fact That People Still Push the Long-Discredited 4 Percent Rule Shows the Irrationality of Buy-and-Hold.

Juicy Excerpt: The safe withdrawal rate is not always the same number. The 4 percent rule makes no sense. Those of us who follow the peer-reviewed research have known this for 42 years. Once Shiller published his research showing that valuations affect long-term returns, it was clear to everyone that the safe withdrawal rate is a number that changes with changes in valuations.

It’s clear enough. But it’s also controversial. It’s clear in the way that it’s clear that smoking causes cancer and that driving drunk is dangerous and that one should pay attention to red flags before getting romantically involved with the wrong person. We humans know that some things are bad for us but we elect to do them anyway because there’s something about the way that they make us feel that we like.

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Valuation-Informed Indexing #661: Most People Don’t Appreciate How Important Market Timing Is Until They Think About It a Bit

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I’ve posted Entry #661 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Most People Don’t Appreciate How Important Market Timing Is Until They Think About It a Bit.

Juicy Excerpt: I love market timing. I believe that it always works. I believe that it should be heavily promoted. But I acknowledge that it is more than a little nuts that it works. It shouldn’t work. The market should be efficient, just like the Buy-and-Holders say. I believe that the Buy-and-Holders are wrong about an important element of the stock investing puzzle. But I acknowledge that what they say is logical (the problem is that investors are not logical but at times highly emotional).

“If You Look at Statements by Buy-and-Holders, You Will See That They Often Recommend Taking the Peer-Reviewed Research Into Consideration. It Was Their Focus on the Peer-Reviewed Research That Drew Me to the Buy-and-Hold Strategy in the Days When I Was a Buy-and-Holder. If Only the Buy-and-Holders Had Listened to Themselves!”

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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:

So you think drug addicts and alcoholics are rational people, but those of us that don’t want to go broke like you are irrational.  Got it.

Yes, people who suffer from addictions do not behave in a rational manner. They behave in a self-destructive manner. But it is not that they lack the capacity for reason. Addicts often evidence rationality in many other areas of life. The problem is that the addiction cancels out rationality in the area where the addiction takes hold.

If Buy-and-Holders were capable of thinking clearly, they would be happy to see discussions of what the peer-reviewed research says. If you look at statements by Buy-and-Holders, you will see that they often recommend taking the peer-reviewed research into consideration. It was their focus on the peer-reviewed research that drew me to the Buy-and-Hold strategy in the days when I was a Buy-and-Holder. If only the Buy-and-Holders had listened to themselves!

Rob