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 is never your fault that you are broke and divorced.  It is somebody else:  the goons, the nation, the investment community, board owners, Wade Pfau, Robert Shiller (pulling his punches), Jack Bogle (the man you called a big con-man), etc.

And Rob Bennett. I was afraid to speak up for three years. We’re all born with that Get Rich Quick impulse that makes us want to believe that it’s all going to be different this time and Buy-and-Hold is actually going to work out okay for one or two long-term investors.

I didn’t create the humans the way they are. I observe it. I report on it. The peer-reviewed research reveals it. I just say that we should acknowledge it, at the bare minimum let people who acknowledge it talk about it so that they can protect themselves from irrational exuberance if they are inclined to do so.

If Buy-and-Hold was a real thing, hat wouldn’t upset you.

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:

So you are not broke. So you are not divorced? So all the experts are wrong and you are right, despite your lack of education?

I guess so as we see all these millions of people supporting you in the comments section on this board (which you control).

Great job, Rob!

We got it wrong as a nation of people in the days before Shiller’s research was available to us. Because there is so much riding on us getting it right, we have had a very hard time acknowledging the error. We are in the process of coming to terms with it.

The job of a journalist is to help us get to a better place.

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:

My money is a lot more real vs your money. I actually have it in my accounts. Your money is part of some fantasy that you are someday going to get a wild windfall.

No, Rob. We are not on your side. Fix your own problems.

My “fantasy” is that someday the same laws that apply in every field other than the investment advice field will apply in the investment advice field as well. I view that as an entirely realistic belief. I believe that the arc of history in the personal finance realm bends toward rationality.

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:

The sellers are market timers because they don’t have enough dry powder. Someone sitting there with only a few hundred thousands has no ability to hang on for the long term. They will always bail during any perceived time of risk.

I have already shared some of my details. You probably remember that my portfolio generates $300K plus a year in interest and dividends. I also have other sources of income. I don’t need to sell and I just keep doing just like the rest of the top 10% in that I keep accumulating assets.

It is fine if you don’t want to hold stock. People like me will continue to buy. Remember the old saying: “The are two types of people with McDonald’s. One type is the customer that buys the burgers. The other type is the guy that owns McDonald’s (stock). Pick which one you want to be.

Valuation-Informed Indexers don’t count phony gains as real. So they don’t perceive risk in the disappearance of the phony gains. They are looking at the realities and the realities of stock investing are very reassuring — gains of 6.5 percent real annually.

It is the roller coaster ride created by the Buy-and-Hold mindset (no price discipline when buying stocks now!) that causes all the crazy ups and downs. All of that is optional today and has been for 44 years now, All we need to do at this point is to get the word out.

Irrational exuberance is the cancer of the personal finance world. Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is the cure for cancer. We should permit people to partake in the cure.

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:

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, HAVE read your stories.  You have even bragged as such.  Despite all those prolific posts, no one sitting here offering you even one dime.  No one has for over 2 decades.

We need to change that, Anonymous. When people can earn as much promoting research-based strategies as they can promoting the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold stuff, the world will be a better place for all of us.

Where i’m coming from.

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:

I am a bit lost here.  Can someone tell me what the primary mission is of this website?

It’s to get every discussion board and blog on the internet opened to honest posting re the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research. Shiller published research in 1981 showing that valuations affect long-term returns. So investors who want to keep their risk profile constant over time (to Stay the Course in a meaningful way) are 100 percent required to practice valuation-based market timing.

Today’s CAPE value is 34. That’s scary. That’s slightly higher than the CAPE value that caused the Great Depression. We should all be working together to get that CAPE value down (of course, we never should have let it get that high in the first place. But the Buy-and-Holders get hostile when people point out the need for valuation-based market timing.

In the event that the stock market continues to perform in the future somewhat as it always has in the past, we will be seeing another Buy-and-Hold Crisis in the not-too-distant future. That will likely translate into millions of failed retirements, hundreds of thousands of business failures and millions of workers getting thrown out of their jobs. All of that awful stuff is optional today. If we permitted honest posting at every site, investors would know to lower their stock allocation at bit when prices got crazy high. The stock sales would pull prices back to reasonable levels. Stock prices are self-regulating when investors are aware of what the research shows.

But it doesn’t happen by magic. We all carry a Get Rich Quick urge within us. We all want bull markets to come consequence-free. We all want to believe in Buy-and-Hold. We all want to believe that our stock portfolio is really worth the number reported on our portfolio statement. If we were thinking clearly, we would adjust for the effect of irrational exuberance. At today’s CAPE, that would mean reducing the value of the portfolio by 50 percent.

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:

“trying to identify the best way to present things so that people will be persuaded.”

And how has that been working for you?

I persuaded people on the first day, Evidence. There were a number of posts thanking me for starting the most important discussion ever held in the history of the Motley Fool board.

Persuading people has never been a problem. The problem is the abusive posting and criminal behavior from the Buy-and-Hold side of the table. It’s only 10 percent of the population of investors that has been persuaded as of today. But, so long as the 90 percent either posts abusively or tolerates abusive posting, the 10 percent generally keeps quiet. Once we take action re the abusive posting, it’s all downhill sledding. But that’s the critical first step.

I still want to say things in the best way that I can. That’s the job.

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:

Before, you said it was advice.  Now you say you are expecting to be paid as a journalist.  What are you selling as a journalist?  A book?  A report?  You still won’t answer the question.

I’ll do the journalism work that needs to be done.

I pointed out an error in a retirement study on the morning of May 13, 2002, and that study has not been corrected to this day. I think it would be fair to say that there is a mountain of work that urgently needs to be done in this field. I’ll do what I can do.

I’m selling what journalists always sell — a better understanding of the world around us. Had we been discussing the how-to implications of Shiller’s amazing research at every site ever since the day it was published, not one person at the Motley Fool site would have placed any confidence in the Greaney retirement study. That’s the world that we should all want to live in, a world in which the ethical standards that apply in every field other than the investment advice field apply in the investment advice field as well.

I think that stock investing matter. It matters enough that we should all want to get it right. I felt like a creep during those three years when I was afraid to point out the error. Now I don’t feel like a creep. It’s clear from our discussions that a good number of the experts in this field who are afraid to speak out today feel like creeps as a result. I don’t want them to feel like creeps either. I want to see us all benefit from Shiller’s amazing research findings. If we are not going to permit the discussion of peer-reviewed research, why even have peer-reviewed journals?

The leverage here is completely off the charts.

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:

“I have put forward general time frames in which I said I believed the price crash would come. Those predictions did indeed fail. Those predictions were based on what has happened in the historical record. In recent history, prices have remained high longer than than they did at any earlier time in history. We are in uncharted waters. No one could have anticipated that.”

And did you learn anything from the failure of these predictions that weren’t really predictions?

I learned that we need to stress that the guessing game approach to market timing doesn’t work. I didn’t believe that it worked on the morning of May 13, 2002. I feel stronger re that point today.

We need to ask WHY short-term timing doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because stock investing is such an emotional endeavor. When prices are too high, they SHOULD be lower. But investors don’t care what they should be. Investors WANT prices ton be high. So they push them up even when there is no economic justification to do so.

Opening every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research will solve the problem. Investing will become a more rational endeavor. So prices will correct quickly. Investors will be encouraged to act in their self-interest. Prices will never again get so out of hand. So there will never again be such resistance to valuation-based market timing. All of these issues are connected.

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:

Many years ago, you were asked as to how you think things will all turn out. At that time you said the following:

1. There would be a huge crash
2. Congress would hold hearings on the crash
3. The New York Times would have front page articles on the danger of Buy and Hold.
4. The congressional hearings and New York Times articles would bring awareness to you and VII.
5. The financial community would make you the new leader of the community and you would be a highly sought after speaker and author.
5. Legal firms would line up to represent you in future settlement discussions with currently unnamed parties.
6. Minimum expectations on settlement payments would be $500 million.
Have I got l that right?

Is this the leading plan and is there a revised backup plan?

All of those things follow if it turns out that I have been right in what I have been saying for 23 years now — that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment.

There was a time when we didn’t know that valuation-based market timing was 100 percent required for every investor. Now we do. That’s been so for 44 years now. But we have not changed our investment advice to reflect the new research. Buy-and-Hold is still a thing. There are still people who say that the safe withdrawal rate is always the same number,

Getting the numbers right in retirement studies is a big deal.When we fail to emphasize the importance of valuation-based market timing, we all suffer in big ways. Just look at what happened in earlier Buy-and-Hold Crises if you want to get a sense of how bad it can be. We don’t need new research to get to a much better place. The research we need has been available to us for 44 years. The problem is that we have not yet given ourselves permission to discuss the new research on the internet. That’s what I have been proposing that we do for 23 years now.

I have made the comparison to finding the cure for cancer. Finding the cure for cancer would improve millions of lives in very big ways. What’s happened in the investment advice field is the equivalent of finding the cure for cancer and then having people who enjoy huge salaries giving chemo treatment engaging in abusive and criminal behavior to stop knowledge of the cure for cancer getting out.

Getting the word out about what works in stock investing (valuation-based market timing!) is a matter of huge importance for all of us. I think we are going to pull it off. I believe that, once we have all made it to the other side, there won’t be one person saying that they would like to go back to the Buy-and-Hold days, where we all had to suffer the consequences that arrive when the irrational exuberance came to an end. I think that we are all going to celebrate the huge advance we achieved on the day when we elected as a nation of people to open every internet site to honest posting re the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.

We’ll see, you know. I believe to this day that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment. The death threats haven’t persuaded me otherwise. The board bannings have not persuaded me otherwise. The acts of extortion have not persuaded me otherwise. All of the stuff we have seen supports Shiller’s findings. It has been insanely emotional stuff. Buy-and-Hold has made stock investors more emotional than they have ever been before and that aint’t good. I would permit discussion of the peer-reviewed research and let people come to see how dangerous it is to go with a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategy.”

I believe that we are close to achieving a huge positive breakthrough.

Rob