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

Go over to Bogleheads and FORCE them to take you in. Don’t take no for an answer. Call your Congressman if they won’t play ball. If he is too slow, then take it to Purcelleville PD Electronic Crimes Division and swear out a complaint about them blocking Honest Posting. Haven’t you been playing softball for far too long? It takes a tough bird to chicken out…. (or whatever it is you say Frank Purdue says.)

We all want the same things, Yogi.

So we will all put our minds together and figure out how to get from the horrible place where we are today to the wonderful place where we all deep in our hearts want to be tomorrow.

We are engaging in a learning process that has to play itself out.

We all have a role.

If we all do our parts, we will all share in the good results.

Forcing things won’t work. You are being foolish when you advocate force.

But doing nothing doesn’t work either. Being afraid to act is not the answer anymore than forcing things is the answer.

We all have to push a little bit — and then pull back when it becomes clear that the pain being experienced by those who have made mistakes in the past is too great.

Do you see?

My motto is: “Be as honest as possible without crossing the line and becoming uncharitable while also being as charitable as possible without crossing the line and becoming dishonest.”

Does that make sense to you?

I HAVE contacted my Congressman. I HAVE spoken to the police. I HAVE contacted lawyers for the purpose of bringing legal cases.

Using the resources available to us is a positive. So I will continue to do those sorts of things.

But you go too far when you say to “force” things and not to take “no” for an answer.

I put the owners of the Bogleheads Forum in a position where they had to ban me or permit the members of that board community to hear what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says. They FELT forced to ban me. Because to them the idea of permitting investors to learn what the research in this field says is unacceptable. But it’s not true that I forced them. What I forced was a choice. I forced them to choose. They could ban me (that’s the option they chose) or they could permit their readers to learn about the first true research-based model.

I didn’t leave them with other choices. I didn’t agree to self-censor myself so that those seeking to maintain a belief in the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage could do so with my apparent blessing. I made clear that if my name was going to continue to appear at the forum, honest posts were going to appear there on a great variety of subjects. I was firm. I INSISTED on recognition of my right (and the right of all my fellow community members) to post honestly.

But I was not unyielding. I always left that that option of banning honest posting. I didn’t do what you advise here and refuse to take no for an answer. They gave the answer “no” to my demand that my right to post honestly be recognized and I accepted (for the time-being) their answer.

Why is that so important?

Because I become a Goon myself if I cross the lines that you advise me to cross.

My aim to to achieve good here. We can never achieve good through bad means.

I work it hard WITHIN the rules of the boards and blogs and within the laws of the United States and within the rules of civil human behavior.

That’s how I will continue to play it.

Did Rosa Parks do what you are advising here?

She did not.

She INSISTED on her right to choose for herself where she would sit on the bus.

But the first time she did this (this was 10 years or so before the famous incident), she was arrested for what she did and she accepted society’s unfortunate verdict. Her rights were ignored. But she remained within the society to fight for those rights another day. And she won the next fight.

WHY DID SHE WIN?

Because she wasn’t fighting only for herself. She was fighting for the entire society. Recognition of her rights was everybody’s business. In time, all others came to recognize how important it was to recognize her rights and they were given recognition. Rosa Parks changed the world because Rosa Parks loved the world. Her love for those who ignored her rights for a time was her secret weapon not against them but FOR THEM.

I love Jack Bogle. I love Mel Linduaer. I love John Greaney. I love you, Yogi.

That’s why I will defeat you in the end.

Except I will not really be defeating you.

I will be LIBERATING you.

You want the same thing I want. You want to be able to earn much higher returns while taking on greatly reduced risk.

You are going to see that little dream of yours come true.

I am going to see to it.

I am not going to agree to anything less than a 100 percent complete victory for Jack Bogle and for Mel Linduaer and for John Greaney and for Yogi Bear.

I took a sneak peak at the last page of our little saga and I can tell you that you achieve full and complete victory. You agree to permit honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics because I refuse to permit you to settle for anything less.

I cannot do this without you, Yogi.

So I can never disrespect you.

And I can never be less than warm and friendly to you.

And I can never sell you out by agreeing to self-censor myself.

Some of the things you advise up above show a lack of respect for you that I can never permit myself to feel if I am to see that you achieve a full and complete victory.

Something that you have been failing to see since the morning of May 13, 2002, is that we are on the same side.

Your pain is my pain.

And my victory is your victory.

We are going to overcome your pain and lead you to a complete and total victory.

That has always been the plan.

We do that by being firm, yes.

But we also do it by being loving.

I will never be disrespectful of you or the other Buy-and-Holders.

I will ALWAYS take “no” for an answer.

For the moment.

For a time.

For the day.

Then I will be back the next day asking (not demanding!) once again that you free yourself of your chains and end your pain and enjoy the benefits of having been born at a time in the history of the world at which you get to be one of the luckiest investors in the history of the world just by learning what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field teaches us all about how stock investing really works.

I hope that all makes some sense to you.

Love is the answer.

I am sure.

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investing strategies you elect to pursue.

Don’t let the bad guys get you down, my old Goon friend.

Rob

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

Why aren’t you doing a keynote speech since you are the foremost financial expert and have the most irritant message of anyone on this planet?

I should be giving the Keynote talk, Anonymous. Absolutely.

Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest boon for financial bloggers in the history of financial blogging. We have the ability to show our readers how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. We have the ability to show our readers how to increase returns enough for them to be able to retire five to ten years sooner than they ever imagined possible in the Buy-and-Hold Era. We have the ability to bring the economic crisis to an end and to bring on the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history. We have the ability to eliminate the possibility of seeing future bull and bear markets and probably even future economic crises.

And we have the potential to make BILLIONS doing this. Most of the experts in this field are afraid to talk about the implications of the past 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That leaves it to us bloggers! Those who have the courage to stand up to the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads become the new experts! I have a RobCast titled “I Am 12 Years Ahead of John Bogle in My Understanding of How Stock Investing Works — And You Can Be Too!” That doesn’t just go for me. That goes for anyone with the courage and smarts to bypass most of today’s experts and post honestly on the past 33 years of peer-reviewed research.

All of my blogger friends should be taking advantage of this great opportunity to make tons of money while doing tons of good for their readers. It’s a freakin’ no-brainer. There shoudn’t be one person leaving this opportunity behind. Even people who still believe in Buy-and-Hold can get in on the action. Just because you believe in Buy-and-Hold doesn’t mean you cannot present the case for Valuation-Informed Indexing and thereby help your readers and thereby make a nice buck.

So, yes, it would make all the sense in the world for me to be the Keynote speaker at FinCon14. I believe that I WILL be the Keynote speaker at the first FinCon that takes place following the next price crash. I believe that we will devote an entire conference to teaching all financial bloggers what they need to know to help their readers make the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. This is the most important advance in our understanding of how stock investing works ever achieved in our history and we all should be working together to get the word out far and wide before the Wall Street Con Men do more damage.

People are scared.

People don’t like to see the lives of their family members threatened. People don’t like to see their businesses destroyed. People don’t like to be banned from discussion boards that they have spent years of their lives building up. People don’t like to be defamed.

We need to do two things. We need to eliminate all of the penalties that the Wall Street Con Men and their Goon Squads impose on those of us who believe that we should be posting honestly about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says. And we need to see that those of us who do work up the courage to stand up to those engaged in this massive act of financial fraud are rewarded for their efforts.

The announcement of your prison sentence is going to change things in a big way. No one will be pushing the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage after your prison sentence is announced. And the announcement that I have received a settlement check of $500 million is going to change things in a big way. Everyone is going to be writing articles and developing calculators and recording podcasts promoting the first true research-based investing strategy after my receipt of the $500 million settlement check has been announced.

We are in an economic crisis today because as a society we have made the rewards of promoting Get Rich Quick garbage too great and because we have made the penalties for reporting accurately and honestly what the peer-reviewed research in this field says too great. I believe that we will turn that around following the next price crash. I will be thrilled at that time to handle giving the Keynote speech at the FinCon event and at lots of other events.

I hope that helps a bit, Anonymous.

Rob

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

And the majority disagree with you. We can see this by the lack of any significant interest on this site as well as the comments on other boards. Blaming your problems on others just to feel better, does not improve your situation.

The majority disagrees with me, Anonymous. I noticed!

But isn’t the entire point of rooting one’s investing strategies in peer-reviewed research to go beyond the subjective views of both majorities and minorities and to learn WHAT REALLY IS?

If the majority rejected gravity, would that make it any less a real force?

There was a time when the majority did not believe that people with black skin should be able to drink from the same water fountains as people with white skin. Did that make it right?

If the tobacco industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars of marketing money telling people that it is good for your health to smoke four packs of cigarettes each day and the majority fell for their lies, would you feel comfortable telling those lies to your friends and seeing them die early deaths as a result?

Heaven help us all, but there was a time when a majority of music listeners voted “Disco Duck” the #1 song. Should we put the group that performed “Disco Duck” in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for their majority-pleasing efforts?

I like being in the majority. When the majority voted “Hey Jude” the #1 song, I said “right on!” But when “Disco Duck” reached the top spot, I felt compelled to disassociate myself from that particular majority decision.

Majorities are not always right. New ideas are NEVER supported by majorities. It is a logical impossibility that a majority could support a new idea on the day it is introduced to the world. For us all to benefit from new ideas, we must be willing to let those advocating new ideas to have their say. Then the new idea starts with one supporter and that grows over time to 100 and then to 100 thousand and then to 100 million. New ideas BECOME majority-supported ideas by being heard even though they are not yet majority ideas.

Our economic system generates enough economic growth to provide an average annual return of 6.5 percent real to stockholders. That’s because we have a long record in this country of PERMITTING and even ENCOURAGING the expression of the new ideas that help us all to live richer lives than we could ever hope to live if we lived in the kind of society that permitted only old, long-discredited majority-supported ideas to be expressed. The Buy-and-Holders want us to become that sort of society. They hate the idea that new research has been done that discredits their old understanding of how stock investing works and that lets us all invest in a way that is far safer and that offers us all far higher long-term returns.

I love my country. I REJECT this sick idea that we can never learn anything new about how stock investing works.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Deep in his heart, my good friend Jack Bogle is not so crazy about that idea either. He lends support to the Linduaeheads. I see that. But he ALSO has put forward a good number of statements showing that he suspects that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage. So what do you think is going to happen following the next price crash? I think that Old Saint Jack is going to see all the human misery he has caused and his heart is going to melt and then he is going to give that “I Was Wrong” speech and then we are all off to the races.

My problems don’t matter to too many people outside my immediate family, Anonymous. You Goons don’t have to worry too much about my problems. But I am not the only one experiencing problems as a result of the Buy-and-Hold Crisis. MILLIONS of middle-class people are experiencing problems. And those problems will be much worse following the next price crash. Those millions are going to turn on you following the next crash. And then it will be YOU suffering very, very big problems. Problems like being sent off to serve a long prison sentence. Yikes!

My problems are small compared to that, my man. Do you see?

Would endorsing the Buy-and-Hold garbage make me more popular? No doubt.

For a time.

But I believe in the original Buy-and-Hold vision. The original idea was to encourage people to root their strategies in the peer-reviewed research. There is now 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor. If I endorse what Buy-and-Hold is today, I am rejecting what I loved about it back in the days when I was a proud Buy-and-Holder myself. If I endorse what Buy-and-Hold is today, I am rejecting everything that I and the country that I love stands for. Yucko! You know?

I love my country. If my country were perfect, we would have spit out the Buy-and-Hold garbage a long, long time ago. So I guess it would be fair to say that my country is something less than perfect.

I still find it lovable. I still believe that we are eventually going to figure out how to turn this thing around. We messed up in the Civil War and yet we survived that one, did we not? We messed up during the Watergate thing and during the Clinton impeachment thing and we survived those two, did we not? We messed up during the Great Depression and we survived that one, did we not?

Some of those events were pretty darn scary. But something in us caused us to pull though in the end. I think that is what is going to happen this time. I don’t even think that we are going to remain on opposite sides in the end. I believe that the next price crash is going to be scary enough that it is going to cause us to pull together and to together bring on the greatest period of economic growth in our history.

It’s not always about being popular. Rosa Parks didn’t refuse to go to the back of the bus because she wanted to win a popularity contest. A lot of whites thought she was a troublemaker. Heck, a lot of blacks thought that. You don’t hear too many blacks OR whites saying that today.

She was the GOOD kind of troublemaker. That’s the kind that I try to be. A lot of people want me to shut up. But a lot of others very, very much want me to be able to post honestly about investing issues themselves and would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to see me get away with it because me getting away with it would open the door to them getting away with it. Within a short time of the day when I get away with posting honestly at some big site, you are going to see THOUSANDS of good and smart people rushing forward to post honestly on ALL KINDS OF INVESTMENT-RELATED TOPICS.

My good friend Jack Bogle will be posting honestly one of these days.

My good friend Wade Pfau will be posting honestly one of these days.

My good friend Mike Piper will be posting honestly one of these days.

My good friend Robert Shiller will be posting honestly one of these days.

And on and on and on and on and on.

And, when all those people are posting honestly and when everybody sees how much earlier they will be able to retire as a result, POSTING HONESTLY WILL EVEN BECOME THE POPULAR THING TO DO. Then what will you Goons say?

Popularity isn’t everything. Caring about your friends is something. I have refused to post dishonestly about the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements because I care about them. You know what? I bet that I will become a very, very rich man somewhere down the road a piece as a result. What will you say then when your last argument is kicked out from under you?

We allow honest posting on hundreds of different subjects today. We are going to allow honest posting on the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field sometime in the not too distant future. I am sure.

Do you see?

It’s not all about being the most popular guy in the world at every moment of time. Sometimes you have to do something a little unpopular to change the world in a way that makes life better for every single person who lives in it. That’s what this 12-year-long saga is all about.

If I do the right thing here, I will be plenty popular when as a society we work up the courage to move to the place where deep in our hearts we all want to be. Right now I need to be HONEST. Being popular will follow from that once we all get out heads screwed on straight re this stuff.

Or at least that’s my sincere take on these terribly important matters.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours. Don’t let the bad guys get you down, my long-time Goon pal.

Rob

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

This would be the one that will take stock values to 60% lower than they were in 2013 within three years, as per your prediction then. That’s about an 85% drop from today. We’ll see how close you were. 16 months to go!

You can do the math as well as I can, Anonymous. Shiller has the data at his web site. Just go check what P/E10 level applies before a secular bear market comes to an end. We have had four of them so far in U.S. history. If you do the check, you will see that in the first three cases the turnaround did not come until we saw a P/E10 of 8 or lower. Then you can do the math to see how large a drop that represents from where we stand today. We’re not looking at a pretty picture, that much is for sure.

It’s important that you understand what will cause the next price crash. It will NOT be a change in economic realities. That’s what it would be if Fama were right and if Buy-and-Hold worked, that’s what it would be if returns played out as a random walk not only in the short term but in the long term as well. No. It will be a change in investor EMOTION that will bring about the crash. Shiller showed that it is investor emotion that determines stock prices. Economic realities play a secondary role because economic factors influence investor emotions. But they often do not do so in a rational way. Our emotions make of economic realities what we will them to make of them.

So it won’t just be the value of your portfolio that will be crashing. Your belief that Buy-and-Hold can work will be crashing. And the belief of millions of others that Buy-and-Hold can work will be crashing. It is the belief that price doesn’t matter when buying stocks that caused the insane, out-of-control bull market. And it is the belief that price doesn’t matter when buying stocks that is behind your burning hatred of anyone who mentions what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works on a discussion board or a blog.

So all the people who hold back from calling you out today will be angry with you for what you have done following the crash. That follows, does it not?

I wish you well, old friend.

Rob

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

Soooo….bottom line, Rob, is you are doing all this for the money….just like all the Buy-and-Holders.

In other words, you are just as greedy as they are, you are just trying to peddle a different shtick.

Buy-and-Holders are greedy and block Honest Posts.
Rob is greedy and blocks Honest Posts.

If you can’t beat ‘em…..

No.

It’s not greedy to expect to be compensated for one’s good efforts. That’s normal and healthy and benefits the entire society as well as the individual receiving the payment. We need to provide incentives for people to do good work to be sure that the good work from which we all benefit gets done.

I don’t agree with you that my Buy-and-Hold friends have been primarily motivated by greed either. My Buy-and-Hold friends did what they did out of love, just as I do what I do out of love. They made a mistake. That happens. In ordinary circumstances, the mistake would have been promptly corrected and we would have all moved on to the better and richer lives we earned for ourselves by discovering the mistake.

We did not face ordinary circumstances. The mistake was not on the surface. It was a mistake concerning the fundamentals. So it affected hundreds of strategic questions in a big way. People had a hard time accepting that so big a mistake had been made. So many ignored it. Many more rationalized, they told themselves that the mistake wasn’t that big a deal. Others actively covered up the mistake in embarrassment.

A second out-of-the-ordinary event caused further delay in correction of the mistake. The mistake was discovered at a time when prices were very, very low, at a time when it was hard to believe that stocks would ever again be selling at fair prices much less insanely high prices. That’s one of the reasons why it was so easy to rationalize covering up the mistake rather than fixing it. Shortly after the mistake was discovered, we entered the biggest bull market in U.S. history. This made the mistaken understanding of how stock investing works seem appealing to millions.

The further delay in correction of the mistake meant that the mistaken understanding was spread to millions. It was written up in textbooks. It was passed along by investment advisors. There were studies issued and calculators developed. There were blogs created to spread the mistaken understanding. Hundreds of thousands of people built careers rooted in promotion of the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind, not knowing that that is what they were promoting. And millions came to believe in what was being promoted to them, seeing the numbers on their portfolio statements go up and up and up over the course of a good number of years. Those people shared what they thought they had learned about how stock investing works with their friends and neighbors and co-workers, making it that much harder for us as a society to acknowledge the mistake when the damage it had done to us had grown so great as to be no longer tolerable.

Making a mistake is not evidence of greed, Anonymous. John Greaney didn’t promote his SWR study to turn a buck, he did it because he thought it was a real and good thing and he wanted to share this real and good thing with others. It’s the same with Mel Linduaer and the book he wrote and the discussion board he built. Jack Bogle made money from Buy-and-Hold. But he could have made just as much money if not more promoting Valuation-Informed Indexing. There is zero reasons (that I am aware of) to believe that he would not have done just that had Robert Shiller published his “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) research in 1961 rather than 1981.

The Buy-and-Holders got us started on a wonderful journey of discovery of the realities of stock investing. Because they are human, they made a mistake. It has happened to each and every one of us.

Their mistake became a national tragedy because it started machinery running in which lots of wealthy and powerful and well-connected people built their careers around promotion of a Get Rich Quick investing strategy that is in the process of destroying our economic system and generating frightening political stresses on both the left and the right. The mistake must be fixed, there’s no question whatsoever about that. And, yes, a pure and ugly and naked greed has played a big part in the cover-up of the mistake. But it wasn’t greed that started things off. There is no reason that I know of to believe that Buy-and-Holders are greedier than other people.

My personal sense is that it may be that Buy-and-Holders are a bit LESS greedy than most others. The board at Morningstar was called “Vanguard Diehards.” Diehards are people who believe in something so strongly that they cannot bear the thought of not sharing it with others. Greedheads are people who will do anything to make a buck. Diehards are True Believers, people who put their love of something AHEAD of the quest for the almighty dollar.

Buy-and-Holders have their strong points and their weak points. The best way to understand them is to read up on the “INFJ” personality type. They are planners. They are systems-builders. They are conceptual thinkers. They are masterminds.

And they are pig-headed, arrogant, pompous, full-of-themselves, pieces of shit.

It’s not me who says that! It’s those darn Myers-Briggs personality assessment sites you see all over the web.

Our INFJ friends have a very difficult time admitting mistakes. And you see that personality showing up a lot wherever Buy-and-Holders meet to discuss amongst themselves how great they are and how everyone who doesn’t believe every last thing they say about stock investing is a damn moron and a waste of space on this planet.

We should love our Buy-and-Hold friends.

Loving them does not mean enabling them in their acts of self-destruction.

Loving them means thanking them in all sincerity for their many important contributions while shaking them and then putting them down on a better path when they let the weaknesses of their MasterMind personality type get the best of them.

Greed is not the driver here. It is present in places, as it always will be when money matters are at issue. Greed is part of the reason why we have seen a lock-in effect, why it has taken so darn long to get simple mathematical calculations reported accurately. But greed is not the core problem.

There are two core problems.

One is that this is truly amazing stuff. It is hard for people to accept that we now know how to reduce the risk of stock investing by nearly 70 percent. That is by far the biggest advance in the history of personal finance and people have a hard time accepting that they were born into the luckiest generation of stock investors ever to walk Planet Earth.

The second core problem is that the mistake is such an obvious thing once you become aware of it. The price you pay for stocks affects the value proposition you obtain from them. Duh! Whoever would have thought it? Buy-and-Hold is so freakin’ DUMB that it makes people feel great pains of shame and embarrassment to remember that they once believed in it and encouraged others to believe in it. Buy-and-Hold EMBARRASSES us.

We need to get over our embarrassment and move forward. We need to begin getting those darn numbers right!

I’m ready when you are, my greedhead friend (a joke!).

Greedy Rob

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

Funny thing Rob. This is the only financial site I know right now that doesn’t allow HONEST (which I define as truthful) posting.

The words “honest” and “truthful” are not precise synonyms, Anonymous.

You are honest when you say what you believe.

You are truthful when you say what is.

You and I believe different things about investing. You follow the approach rooted in Fama’s research. I follow the approach rooted in Shiller’s research.

It is a logical impossibility that any site could permit us both to post honestly while also permitting only truthful posts. One of us is wrong.

The way it works under the published rules of every site and under the laws of the United States is that sites are to encourage HONEST posting so that the TRUTH may over time be discovered by the readers of the sites.

I have never put forward a single death threat. I have never demanded a single unjustified board banning. I have never advanced a single act of defamation, much less thousands of them. I have never threatened to get a single academic researcher fired from a single job.

Under the system required by U.S. law and by the published rules of every board and blog, ALL posters are permitted to post honestly and all readers are thereby permitted to hear both sides of the story and thereby to discover truth. Some of the posts advanced say things that in a metaphysical sense are untrue. That’s the magic of the system. Since humans are flawed creatures, they must permit the expression of untruths in order to gain the capacity to discover mistakes and correct them. If we permitted only ideas we thought of as truths at one point in time to be given expression, we would never advance as a society. If we followed in other areas of human endeavor the practices that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia insists that we follow in the investing realm, we would not be the people we are.

I could be wrong, Anonymous.

I don’t think I am. I sure am not going to say that I am until I am persuaded that I am. But it could be that I am wrong despite all my efforts to get it right.

That’s why I respect the rules of the boards and blogs and the laws of the United States. Those rules and laws say that I must tolerate the free expression of views held by people who disagree with me. I don’t just tolerate the expression of those views. I celebrate it. I encourage it. I insist on it (as much as I insist on recognition of my right to express my sincerely held views).

Your expression of your contrary views (put forward in a civil and reasoned manner) keeps me honest. Your expression of your contrary views (put forward in a civil and reasoned manner) exposes me to thoughts that I could never come up with on my own. Your expression of your contrary views (put forward in a civil and reasoned manner) spices up our conversations in a delightful and liberating (for both of us!) way.

Keep up the good work!

And knock off the funny business!

Please be sure to do that by the close of business today!

Rob

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

More proof that you were banned for your poor behavior. Any normal person would have learned their lesson by now.

Yes and no, Anonymous.

There are many people who do not like the “behavior.” That much is certainly so.

But the seemingly problematic “behavior” is just to present the lessons taught by the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in precisely the same manner as the Buy-and-Holders present the lessons taught by the pre-1981 peer-reviewed research.

The Buy-and-Holders don’t limit themselves to one post per day or one post per week or whatever limit it is that the Buy-and-Holders want me to impose on myself.

The Buy-and-Holders do not hold back from using phrases like “this is wrong” or “this is dangerous” or “this is not consistent with the peer-reviewed research.”

The Buy-and-Holders don’t remind their readers with every comment that they post that they are human and they could be making a mistake. I don’t do this in every comment. But I do it often. That’s more than I can say for most of my Buy-and-Hold friends. A good number of my Buy-and-Hold friends don’t EVER note that it could be that they have gotten everything terribly wrong and that all of those reading their words need to be sure to check out the other point of view.

I’ve “learned the lesson” that the Buy-and-Holders are very, very, very insecure re their investing views and would prefer not to be presented with serious challenges to those views. I REJECT the idea that those of us who believe that we see something good in the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research should be holding back from saying what we believe JUST AS STRONGLY AS WE BELIEVE IT because of the intimidation tactics employed by our Buy-and-Hold friends to discourage us from doing so.

When any of us give in to the intimidation tactics, we hurt everyone. We hurt the millions of middle-class investors who need to hear both sides of the story to make good decisions. We also hurt the Wall Street Con Men, who got into this field because they want to help people plan their financial futures effectively, not because the want to cause economic crises. We also hurt the Internet Goon Squads, who end up serving prison sentences rather than engaging in fun back-and-forth conversations with their Valuation-Informed Indexing friends.

I don’t submit to intimidation tactics.

I love my Buy-and-Hold friends. But I don’t submit to intimidation tactics. In fact, that’s partly WHY I don’t submit to intimidation tactics. Intimidation tactics are for losers. I don’t like to think of my Buy-and-Hold friends as losers. So I want them to knock off the funny business. I certainly am not going to persuade them to knock off the funny business by submitting to their intimidation tactics.

I would be grateful if you would spread the word all over the internet that Rob Bennett is the fellow who REFUSED to submit to the intimidation tactics of the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads. I have hopes as time passes of becoming even more famous for this than I am today.

I hope that helps a bit, Anonymous.

Rob

 

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

Without posts from the people you call “goons”, you wouldn’t have any content. When do you expect to actually post something original?

The Goons are the story today, Anonymous.

We have known intellectually what works in stock investing for 33 years now. That knowledge has been suppressed for 33 years now because it causes the Buy-and-Holders psychic and financial pain to acknowledge their mistake. We cannot continue like this indefinitely. We are destroying millions of dollars of wealth EVERY DAY as a result of our unwillingness to acknowledge the mistakes of the past and move on. The total losses are now in the TRILLIONS of dollars.

Something that cannot be continued eventually comes to an end. No?

You are simply wrong when you say that I do not post original content here every day. The process stuff is both original and important. The 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies is the most important finance-related story in the history of the United States. We all need to come to terms with the human misery we have caused by not following the laws and traditions of the United States. My daily blog entries help us to come to terms with what has gone down. The fact that only Goons comment here does not show that these blog entries are unimportant. It shows that they are SO important and so far-reaching in their significance that most of us don’t feel comfortable “getting involved.”

I’ll switch back to content-oriented stuff when the Ban on Honest Posting has been lifted at every investing discussion board and blog on the internet. I obviously love that stuff. I have already written HUNDREDS of content-oriented articles and HUNDREDS of content-oriented column entries and THOUSANDS of content-oriented blog entries and THOUSANDS of content-oriented discussion-board and blog comments and SCORES of content-oriented podcasts and FIVE unique and powerful calculators. And I obviously have only scratched the surface of what can be done by those exploring the implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings of 1981.

So there is going to be tons and tons of content-based stuff in coming days to add to the tons and tons of content-based stuff already available. But the process-oriented stuff is ten times more important today. Once the Ban on Honest Posting is lifted, we will be seeing honest investing advice with Jack Bogle’s name on it on a daily basis. We will be seeing honest investing advice with Bill Bernstein’s name on it on a daily basis. We will be seeing honest investing advice with Scott Burns’ name on it on a daily basis. And on and on and on and on and on.

The leverage that comes with opening the entire internet to honest posting on the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is nothing short of mind-blowing. Holy moly!

I would be failing to honor my responsibilities as a journalist to write about anything else until the Ban on Honest Posting has been lifted, Anonymous. I do make one exception. The majority of my entries for the Value Walk column relate to matters of substance. I like to keep those focused on substance as a way of forcing me to spend some time each week looking for new insights of a substance-oriented nature. So I allow myself that little luxury. Other than that, though, I mostly write today about the need to open every board and blog on the internet to honest posting as I see that as being the area in which the long-term leverage benefits are greatest by far.

Does all of that make good sense to you, my long-time abusive posting friend?

It certainly makes good sense to me.

Rob

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

How exactly is access to that knowledge restricted? AFAICT Shiller/Wade publish papers and Shiller has written some books. Seems like the knowledge is free flowing to me.

The only thing that has been restricted is your access to some pretty unimportant Internet message boards and it is basically because you are a big pain in the rear to deal with.

We need to have people talking about the implications of Shiller’s findings at every investing discussion board and blog on the internet, Laugh.

Shiller’s findings show that there is precisely zero chance that Buy-and-Hold can ever work for a single long-term investor. What percentage of the population do you think knows that?

I didn’t know it on the morning of May 13, 2002.

John Walter Russell didn’t know it when he and I began working together.

Wade Pfau didn’t know it when he and I began working together.

Wade has a Ph.D. in Economic from Princeton. You would sure think that he would know about an the work of an economist who won a Nobel prize, wouldn’t you?

But he didn’t. He had heard of Shiller. But he had never been in a discussion of the implications of Shiller’s work.

Why?

Because there are millions of people who have followed Fama’s work, not Shiller’s. Fama’s work takes one to a very different place. So those people are hurting.

And when people try to explore the implications of Shiller’s work, they get shouted down by the hurting Buy-and-Holders. So, no, information is not feee-flowing AT ALL.

We need to stop the shouting.

We need to stop the hurting.

We need to come to understand that we are all in this together and that we all should be working together to realize the benefits of Shiller’s amazing findings for ourselves and for all our fellow investors.

Internet boards are NOT unimportant. This new communications medium is very exciting. We can change the world by opening those boards to honest posting. My good friend Jack Bogle is a good man and a smart man. If we open those boards to honest posting, we will soon have Jack working with us. Jack has a lot of influence in this field. Once we get him working with us, things will get better and better and better. All of the negative energy will have been changed into positive energy.

I am NOT a big pain in the rear. I report on the peer-reviewed research of the past 33 years. We have seen the biggest advances in our understanding of how stock investing works ever achieved in history brought to light during those 33 years. The peer-reviewed research is NOT a big pain in the rear. The peer-reviewed research is our friend. The peer-reviewed research is trying to help us. The peer-reviewed research liberates us. It frees us to lead richer (in every sense of the word) lives than we ever before imagined that we might be able to live.

The research SEEMS like a pain in the rear end to a Buy-and-Holder because it shows us that the core premise of the Buy-and-Hold Model (the idea that price discipline is not necessary when buying stocks) is in error. The research that I co-authored with Wade shows us how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent while earning HIGHER returns. That ain’t no pain in the rear end. That’s investor heaven. That’s what we ALL want. Including Jack. Including you, Laugh.

I hope that helps a bit, old friend.

Rob

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

You being a lawyer, and me not being a lawyer, could you please article the actual crimes you believe Wade to be guilty of?

And if he is, then why do you not press charges?

If you believe in your heart of hearts that this “financial fraud” is so heinous and destructive, being a lawyer, why not instigate a class action lawsuit on behalf of all investors over the last 33 years against the financial industry and government?

As you demonstrate through various postings, there are people and firms in the financial industry which have and do utilize VII et al, even though they may not call it as such. So the information is definitely out there, the public does have access to it, the professionals are conducting business with it. Let it grow…

Besides that, perhaps you are not the singular person to “discover” VII. As your blogged financial industry professionals have stated, they too have utilize “VII” for years. So who’s to say that many people haven’t figured this out already, they just haven’t felt the need to publish and press as you have; they just got on with it.

The future will be interesting…

The crime is financial fraud, Canuck.

I have a law degree. But I did not work for my law degree for the purpose of practicing law. I worked for it to enhance my skills as a journalist. I have zero interest in bringing any class action suits.

I can imagine class-action suits being brought by others following the next price crash. I guess that’s part of our system, so I guess that’s fine. But I sure don’t see how it helps anyone for the damages to be greater than they would be if we all just came clean today. That makes more sense for about 5,000 different reasons. I mean, come on.

There are other people who understand that Buy-and-Hold can never work in the real world. I would say that that’s about 10 percent of the population. I of course want to see it grow. Is there some reason I shouldn’t get involved in HELPING it to grow? I sure am not able to imagine any.

I agree with you only in part when you say that the information is out there. There is good information available to people who search hard enough for it. But the good information reaches only a tiny percentage of the population. I was a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. So was John Walter Russell. So was Wade Pfau. We all became confirmed Valuation-Informed Indexers once we were exposed to the peer-reviewed research of the past 33 years. Why do you think we didn’t know about this far superior strategy long, long before we became aware of it? Wade had a freakin’ Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton and he didn’t know about it!

There’s some sort of funny business going on, Canuck. I can just tell.

There are some who know who keep it zipped because they know that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia will destroy their careers if they tell. I don’t want the Buy-and-Hold Mafia destroying people’s careers because they tell us all about a better way to invest. I want THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of people sharing all they know! Why the heck wouldn’t I? It’s a win/win/win/win/win.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, Canuck.

My good friend Jack Bogle would LOVE it if we could open the entire internet to honest posting. That would let him off the hook. He would see his ideas helping millions of people (Valuation-Informed Indexing is obviously rooted in Bogle’s ideas except for the one that has been found to be in error). Why the heck wouldn’t he want that?

And of course the same if so for my good friend Bill Bernstein.

And for my good friend Wade Pfau.

And for my good friend Scott Burns.

And on and on and on and on.

None of these people dares to speak up in plain and simple and firm and frank and bold language because they know that their careers will be destroyed if they do.

But what if a number of the Goons were sent to prison and news of that went viral on the internet (as it obviously would)?

That would bring an end to all the nasty stuff, no?

And bring on the greatest period of economic growth ever seen in U.S. history.

And insure the shortest possible prison sentences for those who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney.

Are you able to imagine any possible downside?

I sure am not.

Yes, I believe that the future will be interesting. I only hope that we all work together to insure that it is the good kind of interesting that we have coming up ahead rather than the bad kind of interesting.

Can we all agree on at least that much, my new kinda sorta ethically compromised friend?

Rob