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

We have discussed the made up death threats story and your error on Greaney’s work.  Why keep repeating it.

The thing that we should be talking about is the amazing how-to implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research findings. We should be talking about that on every internet site every day.

The intimidtion stuff comes up because the reality is that we are NOT talking about the how-to implications of Shiller’s research at every site. I noted that Greaney’s retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment and the Buy-and-Holders freaked out. Lots of people wanted to talk about the point that I had raised. We had hundreds of people saying: “Thanks, Rob, you have started the most important discussion in the history of the board!”. But some of the more dogmatic Buy-and-Holders were not so thrilled. They saw that, if as a community we acknowledged that the Greaney study was in error, the entire Buy-and-Hold house of cards would come tumbling to the ground. So they advanced all sorts of intimidation stuff to suppress this very important discussion.

What we have had for 20 years is not the Great Debate proper. What we have has is a Debate About Having a Debate. I believe that in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, we will develop the courage as a nation of people to move on to the debate proper. From that point forward, we will all live better lives in scores of different ways.

Does the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins or does it not? I believe that it does not. That is my sincere take re this terribkly important matter.

My best and warmest wishes to you, Anonymous.

Rob

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 you think your book will save the world, why are you wasting your time posting on the internet?

I always want to remain open to hearing thoughts coming from people on the other side of the table, Anonymous. I of course get it that you Goons have zero good intent. That became evident on the afternoon of May 13, 2002. But I absolutely believe that you yourselves follow Buy-and-Hold strategies. There’s a mountain of evidence supporting that conclusion. And I have never seen any evidence of a lack of intelligence on the Buy-and-Hold side. So we have smart people following a strategy that has been discredited by 41 years of peer-reviewed research. Huh? What the f?

It is my job to figure out that puzzle. Listening only to people who agree with me is not going to get me there. I wish that you Goons would be more honest and balanced in your comments. That would be a huge help. But I do not think it would be smart for me to refuse to interact with you at all. I call you out on the b.s. abusive stuff. I do that all the time. But I also listen closely for the grains of genuine insight mixed in to your comments from time to time. I feel that it’s worth wading through all the muck to get to those little nuggets of gold if capturing those nuggets of gold enhances my understanding of this unfortunate moment in U.S. history in some way.

I believe that my book will play a role in taking us all to a much, much better understanding of how stock investing works than we have ever possessed up until this time, that’s so. But the publication of the book is not going to do that by itself. For us as a nation to achieve that advance, we are going to have to give ourselves permisson to TALK about the book and of couese about the peer-reviewed research findings at the core of it. As a nation we are going to have to overcome the social taboo against acknowledging the importance of market timing (price discipline!) that has been holding us all back for 41 years now.

You Goons are the primary advocates of suppression of discussion of what the peer-reviewed research teaches us all. So I think it makes sense to listen to what you have to say when you are able to present it in a way that is not 100 percent abusive intimidation garbage. There are times when you are not able to quite meet that standard. But there are also times when you do.

I hope that helps at least a tiny bit.

Rob

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

You are not really serious about writing a book.  If you were, you would have completed it a long time ago.

I’m serious.

It’s a very, very, very hard book to write. It’s not an intellectually difficult project. It’s difficult from an emotional standpoint. In the event that irrational exuberance is a real thing, the stock market is today overpriced by many trillions of dollars. Nearly half of the value of the stock market is imaginary. As the imaginary value disappears into the mist (it always does), we will be seeing millions of failed retirements, hundreds of thousands of business failues (because people can no longer afford to purchase the same amount of products and services) and millions of people losing their jobs (because of the business failures).

Each and every one of us will know on some level of consciousness that we contribited to the ocean of human misery that inevitably follows from a time-period when the Buy-and-Hold “strategy” becomes popular. So most of us very, very, very much do not want anyone talking about the realities of stock investing at even single internet site. Write a book that does a good job describing the realities and you are going to have a lot of your fellow humans more than a little upset with you.

If we are all going to further develop our understanding of this important subject, someone is going to have to write that book. As more people come to understand the realities, it will become easier and easier to make the case for research-based strategies. And we will all live better lives as a result. But it’s not an easy thing to do. It goes against the grain of human nature to do something that is going to piss off so many people.

That’s why we have not seen a book exploring the how-to implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research during the first 41 years followeing the publication of it. Even Shiller himself has elected to not talk about the all-important how-to implications.

I don’t want to see more human misery. So I am forcing myself to getting it all down on paper. I am not quite done. But I am grtting close. I am serious about this project and I will compete the book. Unless I get hit by a truck sometime within the next few months.

Please don’t tell Mel Limdauer or John Greaney. I don’t want to put any funny ideas into their heads.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, Anonymous.

Rob