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 really have no clue about investing. Stocks are being driven by lack of options. Rates on CDs, bonds, Money Markets, etc., have dropped to almost nothing. There is even risk in negative rates. What else can they do?

A zero return is a lot better than a negative 70 percent return.

Once we open the entire internet to honest posting re the last 39 years of pee-reviewed research, investors will be able to educate themselves as to their options. Millions of investors will choose the zero return over the negative 70 percent return.

And that will pull stock prices down! Which is what we all should want. In a functioning market, stock prices would always be at least somewhat close to fair-value levels. We should want the stock market to be functional. We should permit it to do its most important job, which is to get prices right. We can all plan our financial futures much more effectively when stock prices are set properly.

And the returns on super-safe asset classes will go up when the value proposition of stocks improves because they will have to go up to attract capital.

Permitting honest posting is a win/win/win/win/win. It is not possible for the rational human mind to imagine any down side.

I don’t count the Buy-and-Holders having to learn how to pronounce the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” as a downside. That’s just one of those things. The human race did not come to Planet Earth knowing everything there is to know about how stock investing works. So there were going to be days when there were huge advances. Shiller provided us all with the biggest advance in the history of personal finance in 1981. Once the Buy-and-Holders say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong,” we all get to move forward and enjoy richer lives from that day forward. Since it is something that absolutely must be done, the best thing is to do it quickly and move on.

My sincere take.

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:

Can you show me just one failed buy, hold and rebalance portfolio and then just one single person that has been successful with VII?

Every single Buy-and-Hold portfolio that was ever assembled has been a failure if you go by the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research. And every single Valuation-Informed Indexing portfolio has been a success if you go by the peer-reviewed research. If valuations affect long-term returns, it is a logical impossibility for an investment strategy that does not call for long-term market timing to ever produce good results.

Look at what happened in 1929, Millions of people were hurt in the Great Depression. That was caused by Buy-and-Hold. Had Shiller’s research been available at the time and if people had felt free to discuss it, the CAPE value would never have reached 33 and caused an economic collapse. Was it worth it? I am sure that the Wall Street Con Men of that time turned a few extra bucks because Shiller’s research was not available to the people of that time. But was it worth it? The Depression caused an ocean of human misery, even to a lot of the Wall Street Con Men. I think it would have been better had Shiller’s research been available and if people had felt free to discuss it and if we could have avoided the Great Depression.

The key to every market that has ever existed is price discipline. Take that away by telling people that it is not necessary to engage in market timing and sooner or later you are going to cause an ocean of human misery. It is not even possible for the rational human mind to imagine a scenario in which it would not turn out that way. Given that there is precisely zero indication in the peer-reviewed research that market timing is not required (Wade Pfau researched this question very carefully), I think we should tell people that it is always required and that it always works. What possible downside could there be other than our Buy-and-Hold friends needing to learn how to pronounce the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong?”

My sincere take.

Great Depression Foe 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 have long held the position that we would some day see this huge market crash and that eventually buy and hold would be blamed and you would be rewarded for that. When challenged, you said to “wait and see how things turn out”. We are now in the era of Covid-19. If the market does well, the Fed will be credited for their support of the market. If we see a stock crash, Covid-19 will be blamed. Any small chance of your buy and hold crash scenario has now gone away. How else can their be any other outcome or conclusion? It’s over.

If we see a very damaging price crash over the course of the next year or two, it will be properly blamed on the coronavirus issue. But it will also be true that the relentless promotion of the Buy-and-Hold strategy will have caused the price crash to have been much worse than it would have been if we had all been taking price into consideration when buying stocks. If we did that, the CAPE would never have gone much above 16. Prices still would have fallen, perhaps to 12. That would be a price drop of 25 percent. But the way things are set up today, we may see a price drop of 75 percent (from a CAPE of 32 to a CAPE of 8). That’s a price drop of 75 percent. Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick takes any economic problem and makes it much worse than what it would be if investors were able to learn what the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing works in the real world.

You say “if the market does well…” If Shiller is right (I obviously believe that he is), it is not possible for the market to do well. Stocks were priced at two times fair value when the coronavirus crisis hit. If prices drop to fair-value levels, that would be “doing well” in the sense that it would permit millions of people to better plan for their financial futures because they would know the true value of their portfolios. But people would be left knowing that their life savings is far less than they previously believed and they would cut back on spending, which would cause hundreds of thousands of businesses to go under and millions of workers to be thrown out of their jobs. If instead prices rose, that would be even worse. Then the inevitable future crash would be even more devastating because the loss of pretend wealth would be greater.

The creation of Pretend Wealth is never a good thing, Anonymous. It is impossible that it ever could be. You are a Buy-and-Holder. That is why you don’t worry about high stock prices. Buy-and-Hold is rooted in a belief in the Efficient Market Theory, which in turn is rooted in a belief in Rational Man Economics. If investors were rational, high stock prices really would be a good thing. If investors were rational, they would bid stock prices up when the economic realities improved. So higher stock prices would signal greater wealth for all of us, which of course would be a good thing. But if price rises that take the CAPE value above 16 are nothing more than the product of irrational exuberance, those price rises are a very bad thing. They make it impossible for people to know how much wealth they possess, which of course makes it impossible for them to plan effectively for their financial futures. Not good.

You say “it’s over.” I agree that it is over but not in the way that you mean. I say that it was over in 1981, when Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research was published in a peer-reviewed journal. Shiller’s research discredited the Efficient Market Theory. so we should have at that time buried Buy-and-Hold 30 feet in the ground, where it could do no further farm to humans and other living things. If Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research, Buy-and-Hold is the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind and there will obviously come a day when the destruction that it has caused will have grown so great that we will as a nation move on from it.

It’s been over intellectually for a long, long time. What has kept Buy-and-Hold alive for the past 39 years is an emotional urge, our Get Rich Quick urge. We all have a Get Rich Quick urge residing within us. We want to believe that we are richer than we are. Buy-and-Hold is popular because it flatters us, it tells is that the core reality of every other market that exists (that price discipline is absolutely essential for the smooth functioning of the market) doesn’t apply in the stock market. Shiller’s contribution was to show that the stock market works just like every other market that ever existed, that the “idea” that it is not necessary to take price into consideration when buying stocks is a dangerous fantasy.

We are there intellectually. We have been there for a long time. What we need to do today is to bring our emotions into tune with what the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing works in the real world. I believe that a huge price drop will cause a larger percentage of the population to become suspect of the pure Get Rich Quick approach and then the first true research-based approach (Valuation-Informed Indexing) will just grow and grow and grow. In the days following the next price crash, Buy-and-Hold will have lost the only edge that it continues to possess after the publication of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research, the claim that it makes that gains that are the product of irrational exuberance are real and can be counted on to finance a retirement.

We’ll see, you know? If Shiller is wrong, then I am the biggest fool who ever walked Planet Earth. If Shiller is wrong, then I have wasted 18 years of my life. But, if Shiller is right, then Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future and Buy-and-Hold is the past. And I have spent the last 18 years of my life developing the model for understanding how stock investing works that will become dominant in coming days. That’s important work for which I can realistically expect to be well-compensated.

We’ll see.

My best wises to you and yours.

Future-Focused 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:

It appears that you didn’t see that the Fed had to step in as a backstop to even money market funds.

They’re trying to keep things from getting out of hand. That makes perfect sense. I applaud them for that.

The question is — Why did we as a nation set things up so that sooner or later we were going to need to take desperate steps to keep things from getting out of hand? Had we been permitting honest posting at every site on the internet all along, the CAPE could never have risen so high. Then you still have the problem of the economic effects of the Coronavirus. But you don’t have the problem of seeing trillions of dollars worth of irrational exuberance disappear into thin air at the same time. Buy-and-Hold takes any economic problem that we face as a nation and magnifies it.

And always at the worst possible time. To achieve what good purpose, you know? A temporary feeling that we all “outsmarted” the market by getting to enjoy the “benefits” of the pure Get Rich Quick approach for a few years? Huh? I’d rather have a stable economy. I’d rather be able to count on most of the money in my retirement plan remaining there for when I need it. I can live with a 6.5 percent real return each year. I don’t need the phony exaggerated returns that the widespread promotion of Buy-and-Hold brings us followed by the horrible economic destruction that always comes in its wake.

The same thing happened in 2008. Shiller predicted the 2008 economic crisis in his book, which was published in March 2000. How was he able to do that? He studied the historical return data. He saw what always happens in the years following a time when the Buy-and-Hold “strategy” becomes popular. Always widespread economic destruction. It’s a logical impossibility that it could ever end any other way.

Irrational exuberance doesn’t last. The market’s core function is to get prices right. That’s what markets do. So, let irrational exuberance go wild (It always does once a large number of investors come to believe that market timing is not always 100 percent required), and you are sooner or later going to see a wipe-out.

No one can say when. Short-term timing really doesn’t work, just as the Buy-and-Holders say. But discourage market timing in general and sooner or later you are going to see a wipe-out. It happens every time because it MUST happen every time. Once most investors refuse to engage in market timing, there is no other way for the market to get prices right, and that is the market’s core function.

Markets are information processing machines. Information comes in and causes ups. And then information comes in and causes downs. The market works things out. That’s what it DOES. That’s what a market IS — it’s an information processing machine. Fill people’s heads with the crazy idea that there might be some magical, mystical alternate universe where market timing is not 100 percent required and the means by which the information processing is achieved breaks down.

We have had mountains of information coming in over recent years telling investors that they need to lower their stock allocations. Have you seen many do it? Investors are afraid to lower their stock allocations. They understand that lowering your stock allocation because prices have risen too high constitutes market timing and they have heard the marketing slogan “timing never works” so many times that some part of their brains believes that there might be something to it. They are afraid to do the right thing, the sensible thing, the prudent thing, the research-based thing.

Buy-and-Hold started out telling people that they should root their investment strategies in the peer-reviewed research and it has evolved over the years into insisting that, no matter what they do, investors must never,never, never give the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research in this field the slightest consideration. I am the true Boglehead. I am the one who says that investors should do what Bogle said they should do in his early years — follow the peer-reviewed research. The Lindauerheads abandoned Bogle’s early teachings because to follow them would mean acknowledging that Bogle (and everyone else!) made a mistake back in the 1960s when they came to believe that Fama’s research showing that short-term timing never works can be interpreted as showing that no form of market timing is required. Huh?

The last 39 years of peer-reviewed research is information, Anonymous. Investors should be considering that information when they decide on their stock allocation. When discussion of 39 years of peer-reviewed research is banned at every site on the internet, the purpose of the market is defeated. The market cannot process information when it cannot even hear it The stock market as it exists today is not even a market in the true sense of the word, When the most important information is prohibited, the market cannot perform its very important job of processing all information available to it.

This is a repeat of what happened in 2008. There were genuine mortgage problems in 2008. Those problems set off the crash. But it was the insane CAPE values that applied that made the crash and the economic crisis that followed from it so devastating. The Fed stepped in and saved us from a Great Depression. That was a good thing. But you can’t just pump prices up to crazy levels and leave them there and expect that to work out in the long term. If you are going to pump prices up to stop a depression, you need to come back in a year or two and let prices drop back to reasonable levels. That’s where the Fed let us down. They let prices remain at crazy levels and thereby insured that we would sooner or later be facing the same sort of problem again. And here we are.

The only long-term solution is to open every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. I am 100 percent sure.

Fed Supporter (For the Things It Does Right) and Detractor (For the Things It Does Wrong) 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:

Robert Shiller says Rob Bennett is still wrong.

https://www.ibtimes.com/what-do-prominent-economists-say-about-coronavirus-paul-krugman-robert-shiller-joseph-2943646

If Robert Shiller felt the market was overvalued, he wouldn’t tell people to stay in the market. Also notice how he blames the drop on Coronavirus and does not put any blame on buy and hold.

Thanks for the link, Anonymous.

I certainly agree with Shiller when he says: “I would advise people not to take any extreme measures. Don’t think it’s the time to sell out completely, but also, don’t conclude it’s a big buying opportunity and push into leveraged positions in the market.”

He makes reference to the critical issue of investor emotion (irrational exuberance possibly being transformed into irrational depression) when he says: “I call this a co-epidemic: One is the coronavirus, and the other is like a narrative epidemic, about our confidence and outlook for the economy. That’s a new one, it’s happening fast, and it’s very contagious. Everyone’s talking about this.”

Shiller often used the term “narrative” when he is making reference to irrational exuberance. He is saying here exactly what I believe about this price crash. There is an economic side to it. And there is an investor emotion side to it. The part that I wish he would be more clear about is that the risk that we are going to take a huge hit on the investor emotion side of things is far, far greater when the CAPE value is 30 than it is when the CAPE value is 16. So as a society we should all be working at all times to keep the CAPE from rising much above 16.

The practical means for doing that is through market timing. There is no other way. The Buy-and-Holders preach price indifference. And that just doesn’t get the job done. Without the presence of market timing, prices always drift upward as a result of the Get Rich Quick urge that resides within all of us. Only a sound knowledge of the benefits of market timing can rein in the powerful Get Rich Quick urge that causes price crashes and economic crises.

Please mark me down as placing a good bit of the blame for this price crash on Buy-and-Hold. The Coronavirus was the precipitating event. But the size of any crash is largely determined by the CAPE value that applied when it begins. It is Buy-and-Hold that discourages market timing. The Buy-and-Holders took away the tool that we need to prevent this sort of things from happening.

Buy-and-Holders act like price crashes are acts of God, something that no one can do anything about. There’s a lot that we can do. If we educated investors re the benefits of market timing we would never see a devastating price crash. We would still see small ones. A Coronavirus-type event could show up when the CAPE was at 16. But the crash that would follow would not be nearly as devastating in those circumstances. The thing that has the potential to make this one so devastating is the huge amount of irrational exuberance that was present in the stock price before the Coronoavirus appeared on the scene.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.

My best and warmest wishes to you, dear Goon friend.

Shiller Follower 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:

To bad your book is not out yet, Rob so that you save us all right now from the Covid-19 crash.

It’s definitely too bad that the book is not out. We all need a clear and complete explanation of what is going on and what we all did (darn that Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold impulse residing within all of us!) to get ourselves into this mess.

The other side of the story is that the book is only a few months away from completion. Can you imagine where we would be if I had not worked up the courage to advance my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002? That’s what got the ball rolling. I could have cowered in fear and then we would not have that clear and complete explanation available to us even in a few months. So thank God for the voice that He put in my head to do the right thing re that one, you know?

Opening every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research, as I have been urging since the morning of May 13, 2002, would indeed have protected us all from the worst effects of the Covid-10 crash. We of course would have seen the terrifying threat to millions of lives in any event. And we of course would have seen some drop in our portfolios in any event, as our efforts to cope with the health threat required huge economic disruptions which obviously were going to cause a drop in stock prices. But the sort of price drop that is now on the table should never be on the table and never would be on the table in a world in which honest posting re Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research were permitted.

The thing that we call a stock market is not even truly a market — not today. In a true market, prices change as the result of the input of various information bits. We have lots and lots and lots of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold information bits being pumped into the brains of all market participants on a daily basis. But consideration of research-based information bits is prohibited. So, when a bad economic development like this takes place, we don’t see a drop in the CAPE value from 16 to 13 but perhaps a drop in the CAPE value from 30 to 8. We have made things a lot worse than than they needed to be. And we had to on numerous occasions travel outside the confines of U.S. law to pull it off. Not good.

I think we will make it. I think that we are a good people and that we are going to make it successfully to the other side of The Big Black Mountain. I am scared. I have been scared for a long time of what the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research told us was inevitably coming. Now that it appears that it may really be here, I am even more scared. But I remain hopeful that we will pull together as a nation and get the word that millions of investors need to hear out to them, as we should have begun doing on the morning of May 13, 2002 (or even better yet, back in 1981, when the Nobel-prize-winning research that showed us for the first time in history how stock investing works in the real world was published).

Wish us all luck, Anonymous! I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.

Frightened But Hopeful 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:

This is all playing out to be your worst case scenario.

It’s not entirely clear to me what you are trying to suggest here.

If you are suggesting that the coronavirus matter might provide enough of a negative economic shock to send stock prices from a CAPE value of 30 to a CAPE value of 8 and that a price drop of that size will bring on an ocean of human misery, then, yes, you are right that the idea that something like that could happen has indeed long been my worst-case scenario. I pray that it doesn’t happen. But I certainly worry about the possibility. And I have been worrying about this possibility for many years now.

The other side of the story is that a horrible experience like this could be what we need to open the entire internet to honest posting re the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research in this field and that could in time bring on positive economic effects bigger than the negative economic effects of the crash experienced. I think that Shiller’s research points us to an amazing economic advance and I very much want us all to begin reaping the benefits of that advance. If going through a scary rough patch is what it takes to reap those benefits, then I guess that that is what it takes. I hate the idea. Hate it, hate it, hate it. But nobody asked my opinion before setting things up in the way that they have been set up. I have to play the cards that I am dealt whether I like what I see in my hand or not.

I am scared of what may happen. Please feel free to quote me re that one.

I am also very excited about the good stuff that we may see on the other side of this thing. I am obviously going to do everything in my power to minimize the bad and to heighten the good. I can do no more and I can do no less.

Please pray with me that we are all able to make it to the other side in one piece. The risks here are very big. If that is the suggestion that you are intending to advance, I get it loud and clear.

Worried 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:

This morning, we see that the price wars with oil is also now taking blame, along with the coronavirus as to the drop in stocks. There are also comments about the drop in treasuries are also signaling a recession. Not a single comment about buy and hold causing anything. I am guessing that you haven’t received a call yet from The New York Times. Don’t hold your breath waiting.

I can’t control what other people say, Anonymous. Please mark ME down as saying that it was the relentless promotion of the Buy-and-Hold “strategy” that served as the primary cause of the price drop that we experienced over the past few weeks just as it served as the primary cause of the huge price drop that brought on the 2008 economic crisis.

The other factors that are mentioned obviously play a role, just as the other factors that were mentioned in regard to the 2008 economic crisis played a role then. But these factors are things beyond our control. There are going to be positive economic events and there are going to be negative economic events. The question is what we do as a people to be prepared for those developments when they take place. There is now 39 years of peer-reviewed research showing that the best way to prepare for them is to always, always, always encourage all investors to practice market timing so that the irrational exuberance which we are all naturally formed to fall victim to does not get so out of control as to bring on an economic crisis.

The factor that is in our control is the CAPE value that applies when negative economic events show up on the scene. If the CAPE value had been 16 when the Coronavirus hit, we probably would have seen a drop to 13, a loss of about 20 percent, significant but not too terribly frightening. Given that we were at a CAPE value of near 30 when the virus hit, a drop to 13 would be loss of nearly 17 CAPE points. Losses that big could cause the raging irrational exuberance to be transformed into a raging irrational depression, a transition that would cause the CAPE level to drop all the way down to 8. That would mean that millions of investors would see losses of nearly 70 percent. The resulting loss of consumer buying power would cause hundreds of thousands of businesses to go under and millions of workers to be thrown out of their jobs. It would cause political frictions to worsen. There’s already one case in history in which the high prices brought on by the promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies caused a Great Depression.

Please mark me down as urging that every investing discussion board and blog on the internet be opened to honest posting re the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research in this field, without a single exception. We know from the thousands of community members who have expressed a distaste for the criminal tactics that you Goons have employed to block millions from learning what the peer-reviewed research teaches us all that most investors would be perfectly willing to practice market timing if only they had access to honest and accurate reports of what the peer-reviewed research says and to places to talk about what it means.

I believe that we will get there. 18 years later than I would have preferred, to be sure. But I believe that once we get to a better place and are all living better lives as a result that it is unlikely that there will be even one person wishing that we could return to the Buy-and-Hold days and the insane bull markets and insane bear markets and insane economic crises that went with them. Holy moly!

I haven’t received a call from the New York Times as of this morning. But I believe that that day will come. I believe that this is a good country. I believe that the people of the United States are going to find a way to overcome you Goons. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

My best and warmest wishes you and yours, in any event, dear Goon friend.

Buy-and-Hold Critic Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

Shiller never said to use CAPE to time the market. To the opposite, he said not to use CAPE to time the market.

Shiller said (in 1996) that investors who failed to lower their stock allocations in response to the high CAPE value were going to live to regret it. He was encouraging people to use CAPE to time the market.

And good for him! Stock prices are self-regulating so long as investors practice market timing. Market timing (price discipline!) is magic. Stocks are today priced at two times their fair value. We obviously would all be better off if stocks were priced properly. How are we going to get prices down if we don’t engage in market timing? That is how it is done.

The alternative to market timing is just to wait for a price crash. Is that better? A price crash would mean that millions of people would suffer failed retirements. And trillions of dollars of spending power would disappear from the economy. That would push hundreds of thousands of businesses into bankruptcy and cause millions of workers to lose their jobs. Political frictions would increase, just as they did following the 2008 crash (many of the political frictions that we are seeing today got started with the 2008 crash, which was caused by the failure of many investors to practice market timing (price discipline) in response to the high CAPE values that applied in those days.

I see market timing as a far better response to high prices than price crashes. We can achieve gradual corrections to out-of-control prices through market timing. With price crashes, we see huge losses of wealth take place suddenly. Price crashes are a shock to our economic system. It’s the difference between adopting a more balanced diet when your doctor warns you that you are overweight and just waiting for a heart attack to arrive. A price crash is the economic equivalent of a heart attack. Not a good thing.

The reason why people who make a living selling stocks discourage market timing is that there is short-term money in it for them to persuade people that the thing they sell is always worth buying. For the investor and for the country as a whole, market timing is the far better approach to getting prices back to reasonable levels once we have all let our emotions get the better of us.

Are you able to suggest some means other than market timing or price crashes to get prices back to reasonable levels once too much irrational exuberance has put us in a dangerous place, Sammy?

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 there is any crash, it will be blamed on something like debt levels, Mideast tensions, etc. The market will recover and the buy and holders will do even better than before. No one will even think about you or your market timing schemes. I just hope you can take advantage of the current job market and scrape up a few dollars to pay the bills because your investing career has been a bust.

Okay, Anonymous.

I don’t doubt that there will be people who will blame the next price crash on debt levels on or Mideast tensions or whatever. That’s the old way of thinking about these things.

I believe that the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research offers us a better way of thinking about these things. The beauty of understanding that it is bull markets that cause bear markets and bear markets that cause economic crises is that that understanding liberates us. We cannot do anything about debt levels or Mideast tensions because something of that sort is always going to be with us. For so long as we deny ourselves access to the hundreds of powerful insights that follow from an appreciation of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research, we remain subject to the craziness of a stock market that can take away half of our accumulated savings of a lifetime overnight and without warning. If Shiller is right (I believe that he is), then none of that even needs to happen again. Learning that valuations affect long-term returns is like discovering antibiotics. It is an advance that helps every person living on Planet Earth to live a better life. Once we all get to a place where we feel free to consider what really works with stock investing, I don’t believe that there will ever be one person who will wish that we could go back to the days when we didn’t realize how essential it is that all stock investors practice market timing (price discipline!). The widespread practice of market timing is the only way to restore sanity to stock investing by keeping prices at reasonable levels at all times.

It may be that I am more optimistic than you or more idealistic. Perhaps that’s the core difference. You would say more foolish. Whatever it is, I am what I am and I offer no apologies for it I can acknowledge that it is possible that I am wrong. I don’t believe that I am or else I wouldn’t say the things that I do. But I do acknowledge that I am one of those flawed humans and that it is at least possible that I am wrong. But, given how important this stuff is, I don’t feel that I have any option but to post honestly about these matters.

I wish that that were okay with you. But I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person in any event, dear friend.

Idealistic (Foolish?) Rob