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

I’m not worried about the quality of your contributions. Personal anecdotes are gold. People relate to personal anecdotes. This stuff doesn’t have to be complicated. The Wall Street Con Men try to make it sound complicated because that’s a good way to make a sale — intimidate people with big words and they feel that they need to listen to the “guru.” Yuck! People need to understand what they are doing to stick with a plan for the long term. We need simple, plain talk.

There’s no rule here that you need to understand or endorse Valuation-Informed Indexing. I love to hear from Buy-and-Holders so long as they adhere to basic rules of human civility. They keep me honest. And they teach me things that I otherwise might miss. Buy-and-Holders are very welcomed here. And of course followers of all other strategies are welcomed. And people who have no loyalties to any strategies and who just prefer to ask questions or to ponder possibilities are warmly welcomed. So that is not an issue either.

There are THOUSANDS of things we can talk about at the board.

You are correct in your suggestion that, once you describe the strategy, there is not much more to be said about what works from one way of looking at things. The strategy can be summed up in two words — Price Matters. That’s pretty much it. It’s common sense. All the peer-reviewed research shows that this is so. So what else is there to say beyond those two words?

Have you ever gone to Edmunds.com before buying a car? They provide information about the fair price of the car so that you can negotiate more effectively. I see this site as being the Edmunds.com of personal finance. In a perfect world, we could just tell people “Price Matters” and that would be the end of it. In the fallen world we live in, things tend to get a bit more complicated than that. The Buy-and-Holders have come up with THOUSANDS of tricks to take people’s eyes off the ball and to cause them to ignore the “Price Matters” injunction. We should be trying to describe the tricks for people so that they are not taken in by them. That’s a big job given how the Wall Street Con Men operate today!

Thanks for your post. We will see how things go. I much relate to the words you posted above re how this is not just about money. People spend much of their lives saving the money they need to finance a retirement and people in this field should show some respect for that reality. I hope that, as we explore things more deeply over time, we will come to think of each other as friends.

Please take good care until you have some time free to pay us another visit, Canuck.

Rob

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

You made an important point when you noted that you used to be a Buy-and-Holder, Canuck. That’s true of me as well. It was also true of John Walter Russell (John is the co-developer of four of the calculators at the site). It was also true of Wade Pfau (Wade is an academic researcher who has a Ph.D. in Economics who co-authored with me the peer-reviewed research that shows investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent [by abandoning Buy-and-Hold strategies]).

The same point is demonstrated again and again and again. There is nothing dumb about Buy-and-Hold. Millions of smart and good people believe in Buy-and-Hold. Buy-and-Hold was once a legitimate thing. There once really was research that seemed to support it. The vast majority of people who believe in Buy-and-Hold are NOT Goons.

Our nation’s problem is that the peer-reviewed research has shown for 33 years that there is zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor. Yet very few know this! Most people believe that Buy-and-Hold is a real thing to this day.

Our political system is set up to make this sort of national tragedy impossible. We have free speech. So people who see the holes in the Buy-and-Hold claims are free to tell people about them. The investing field is a money field. People could in ordinary circumstances make millions or even billions of dollars telling people about new strategies that reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. Why haven’t we seen many people make the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing?

There are three reasons.

One, there is a lot of money to be made with Buy-and-Hold. The secret to marketing is forming an emotional connection with your customer. Buy-and-Hold is pure emotion; it misleads people into believing that their phony and temporary bull-market gains are real and of course people love hearing that even though it destroys their hopes for a decent retirement in the end. The $12 trillion of phony gains created out of thin air during the bull market was essentially $12 trillion worth of marketing money used to promote this Get Rich Quick scheme. You can buy a lot of supporters with $12 trillion in marketing money.

Two, there are a lot of reputations that have been built through the promotion of Buy-and-Hold. The way you succeed in this field is by getting Big Shots to put in a good word for you. Most of the Big Shots are Big Shots because they backed Buy-and-Hold during the insane bull market and tricked (not intentionally — but still…) millions of investors into thinking that the gains being produced by the strategy they were following were real. These people are aware of Shiller’s research. But they have a huge personal stake in doing everything in their power to keep millions of middle-class investors from learning about its implications. Human nature being what it is, they keep it zipped. And they make it clear to others in the field that it would be in their best interests to keep it zipped as well. The sad reality is that most people in this field are out for themselves first, second, third and fourth and, if that means that their customers and their readers suffer failed retirements, that’s a price that just has to be paid as part of an arrangement that makes them multi-millionaires themselves.

Three, the Goons will stop at nothing to destroy the reputations and businesses of anyone who dares to “cross” them by telling people about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research really says.

Most people believe in Buy-and-Hold. But most people are open to hearing the other side of the story too. In fact, most people very, very much like the idea of being able to hear the other side of the story.

Here is a link to an article I wrote years ago pulling quotes from 101 comments from posters expressing a desire that honest posting be permitted:

http://www.passionsaving.com/investing-discussion-boards.html

THAT’S how most people feel about this stuff.

Most people believe in Buy-and-Hold because that’s all they have ever heard about. Most people are open to hearing about research-based strategies. But they are not going to buy into them in one day or two days or two months or perhaps even two years. Changing the strategy you use to achieve your retirement goals is a big deal. People want to be sure before they abandon Buy-and-Hold. They need to hear about the research-based stuff on a daily basis. They need to be able to ask questions. They need to be able to express concerns. They need to ponder things and come back and explore things from multiple angles. This process of exploration is not taking place and that’s why we are in such a terrible jam.

The reason why it is not taking place is not that people are dumb or not interested in learning. The reason it is not taking place is because not enough of those of us who understand that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage have the courage to stand up to the Goons and insist that they obey the laws that this nation has adopted to protect us from their ugly, abusive tactics.

Shiller doesn’t like to talk about that. He has faced a LOT of abuse because he has put forward the research that shows that Buy-and-Hold can never work. But he tries to limit the abuse by not speaking clearly and firmly and boldly about the insane abusiveness of the Buy-and-Hold Goons. And until Shiller and a good number of others start doing that, it is very hard for us to move forward. Lots of people have good insights. But they don’t get shared. If you are not going to share what you know, the society you live in doesn’t realize much in the way of benefits from what you know.

So that sort of thing has to stop.

The Get Rich Quickers have zero problem speaking up about what they believe and sticking up for each other. Those of us who believe in research-based strategies are exceedingly tentative in most of our claims and statements. We see academic researchers threatened and we hesitate to call it financial fraud. We see people refuse to correct errors in retirement studies for 12 years and we worry that it might be too “extreme” to note that they are going to end up in prison cells following the next price crash.

People see this. People see the cowardice (that’s what it is, isn’t it?) of the Valuation-Informed Indexers and they hold back from joining the cause or from expressing full support for it or whatever. I don’t play this game. I offer zero apologies for being the person to discover the errors in the Old School SWR studies. I offer zero apologies for being the co-author of peer-reviewed research that shows million of middle-class people how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 80 percent. I am proud of those contributions, which have served a huge positive purpose.

I hope to come up with plenty more breakthroughs of that nature. And I want to encourage lots of others to do so. I give the Goons the back of my hand. We adopted laws to protect ourselves from them because they are a destructive force. They have chosen to walk a path that leads to prison terms. I am happy to try to help them out. But I fail to see how it would be a life-affirming act for me to agree to commit felonies and end up in prison with them. My efforts are directed at getting their prison sentences reduced a bit, not at adding one for myself.

We need to see an attitude change. That’s the point here. We need to stop asking permission to post honestly and start demanding and insisting that our right to do so be respected — and no backtalk!

We need to change the incentives and disincentives that apply for those giving investing advice. Today there are huge rewards for those who push the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. We need to see that penalties apply for those putting their own interests above the interests of their clients and readers. And we need to see that huge positive incentives apply for those who call out the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads on their b.s. The more rewards people experience for posting honestly about investing issues, the more honest posting on investing issues we will see. We want to draw people of high integrity back to the investing advice field.

People have been telling me for 12 years that they want a place where they feel safe expressing their sincere thoughts. It amazes me that no such place exists on the internet today. We need to create such a place.

I am going to start a discussion board at this site when I have 10 people who have agreed to post at least once per day at that board. When newcomers to the site see that board and listen in to the discussions and see how wonderful and real and positive and life-affirming they are, they will join in and then spread the word to their friends and neighbors and co-workers. And the 10 posters will quickly become 100 and the 100 will become 1,000 and the 1,000 will become 10,000 and so on and so on. We have a winner here. We just need to make people feel safe for the flower to be able to bloom.

I’m am inviting you to become The Second Poster at that board, Canuck.

There are no hard feelings if you say no. I will 100 percent understand.

But if you say “yes,” that answer will make it that much easier for me to attract Poster #3. And a positive response from Poster #3 will make it that much easier to attract Poster #4.

That’s how it is done. Every great idea starts with one person and then grows and grows and grows and grows. The growth of this great idea has been hindered by the Goons. But the trick of all bullies is to make people feel intimidated and thereby to gain a power over people that they have not won through legitimate means. The Goons have been cutting off the heads of good people one by one for 10 years now. Once we have a board with 10 regular posters in place, that can never happen again. Then people who are attacked will have a place to turn to for protection.

Then the idea will grow and grow and grow and grow.

We are in the process of changing history in a very big and very positive way.

Rob

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

“When people work up the courage to call someone out on a discussion board, they will also work up the courage to file lawsuits and to demand criminal prosecutions. Why wouldn’t they?”

A snarky note on a message board requires no effort, no intelligence, no validity, and virtually no time. There are many orders of magnitude between that and a successful lawsuit or criminal prosecution. If you cannot understand that, then there really is no common point of reference to discuss anything with you.

There was nothing even a tiny bit snarky about the comments in which people called Taylor Larimore out on his dishonesty, Seriously. Most of the people who made those comments liked the guy and admired the guy. They had kept quiet about their doubts about lots of things he said for years. They were worried about what their fellow community members would think of them after they spoke their minds. It took a lot for them to work up the courage to do what they did. Their comments were rooted in love, not snarkiness.

I know how those people feel. It took me a lot of time to work up the courage and love to call John Greaney out on his b.s. And it took me a lot of time to work up the courage and love to call Mel Linduaer out on his b.s. And it took me a lot of time to work up the courage and love to call Jack Bogle out on his b.s.

If people can work up the courage and love need to take on Larimore and Lindauer and Greaney and Bogle on discussion boards, they can work up the courage and love needed to file lawsuits and to demand criminal proceedings. It certainly takes more work to bring a lawsuit. Obviously. But there are huge benefits to be had by bringing these lawsuits. We are talking about people who will have lost most of their life savings. Are you saying that no one will be able to work up the energy to file a lawsuit to obtain recovery of most of his life savings? Huh? That does’t make even a tiny bit of sense.

Bernie Madoff is in prison today. Someone must have worked up the energy to make that happen. The 13-year cover-up has destroyed the lives not of thousands but of MILLIONS. I have a funny feeling that there will be no shortage of people working up the energy to take action.

The hard thing is working up the courage to violate the Social Taboo. That’s been the story re these matters going back to the morning of May 13, 2002. Get Rich Quick investing strategies are cons. We LOVE them. Love them, love them, love them. It’s in our human nature to fall in love with Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick investing strategies. But it is also in our human nature to feel great shame when we fall for such garbage. So we HATE coming clean. We hate it, hate it, hate it.

The story of the past 13 years is that it is very, very, very hard for us to work up the courage to act. We don’t want to admit to ourselves that we have fallen for a Get Rich Quick scheme. And we don’t want to call out our friends and neighbors and co-workers for doing so. We don’t want people getting mad at us for calling them “fools,” which is what we are doing when we point out that someone has followed a Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick investing strategy. So there is a big wall to climb in getting these lawsuits filed.

But the hard part is not the filing of the papers. The hard part is working up the courage to say out loud the words “that is a big pile of smelly garbage.” Take a look at my work. I say those words freely and plainly and frequently today. But it wasn’t like that back in May 2002. I was tentative then. I was cautious. I felt uneasy going to the places to which I was going. That’s how the people who called out Taylor on his trickery felt. And they were the ones who had worked up the courage to go that far. That was a minority of the board population even in the days when the P/E10 level was 13. Most have never gone that far or anything close to it.

But the feeling spreads.

When one person works up the courage to violate the Social Taboo, it helps others form the courage needed.

The feeling of tentative courage spreads and spreads and spreads. Then it becomes less and less and less tentative. Then people actually become PROUD to be telling the truth and to be helping people rather than destroying their lives.

Filing a lawsuit is nothing to someone who has lost most of his life savings and who now sees that it is because he was tricked and who has thousands of friends encouraging him to do the right thing. It is hard to get from Point A to Point B. But the hard part is not the filing of the papers. The hard part is the part where the person comes clean WITH HIMSELF. Once we can be honest with ourselves about how we are not nearly as smart as we once pretended we were, all sorts of good things become possible.

Or so Rob Bennett believes, you know?

I believe all these things will happen. But I am not God. I can never be 100 percent sure. We are all just going to have to wait and see how things play out.

I know that I am happy to be on the side that I am on. That’s the one thing that I can say with 100 percent certainty. I love my country. I feel good in a very deep place to know that I am fighting to PROTECT her, not to destroy her.

I hope that all that makes at least a measure of sense to your Goon ears.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, my old friend.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a post that I recently put to the Quora site:

Is Andrews Smithers Right When He Says That U.S. Stocks Are 80 Percent Overvalued and That We Are in a Bubble Right Now?

Yes, he’s right.

I have studied this matter in great depth. I have spent the last 12 years of my life studying it. Smithers is a top-notch guy. He is NOT a doom-and-gloomer. He is a straight-shooter. He is kind and intelligent. His statements are rooted in a wealth of research.

What is hard for people to understand is how so many good and smart people could continue to tell us to buy stocks when the research shows that stocks are priced at such insanely dangerous levels. The only way to make sense of that is to understand the history of how our knowledge of how stock investing works has developed over time.

Prior to the 1960s, we were in the pre-historic days of our understanding. Stock investing was not the subject of systematic peer-reviewed research. People offered opinions as to how stock investing works. It was pretty much just guesswork in those days.

The first big breakthrough came in 1965, when University of Chicago Economics Professor Eugene Fama published research showing that short-term timing (changing your stock allocation because of a belief as to where prices are headed in the next year or so) does not work. This finding formed the foundation of the Buy-and-Hold concept. 90 percent of the advice you hear today about stock investing is rooted in Fama’s finding and its implications.

People were very excited about this finding and they thought that it was the endpoint of our journey. It turned out that they were wrong. Fama really just took us into the Dark Ages, a time when we knew a lot more than we knew in the Prehistoric Ages but not nearly as much as we would come to know in future days. It was Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller who supplied the final piece of the puzzle that we needed to finally make complete sense of stock investing.

Shiller did this in 1981. He showed that long-term timing (changing your stock allocation in response to big valuation shifts with the understanding that you may not see benefits for doing so for as long as 10 years) ALWAYS works and is always 100 percent REQUIRED for investors hoping to have any realistic hope of achieving long-term investing success.

Fama wasn’t entirely wrong. It really is so that short-term timing doesn’t work. Unfortunately, Fama stated his conclusions in a sloppy way. He didn’t say that “Short-term timing does’t work,” which is so. He said that “Timing does work,” which is not so. One form of timing (long-term timing) ALWAYS works and is always 100 percent REQUIRED. So Fama’s ideas took us to a very, very dangerous place.

Long-term timing is price discipline. Markets cannot function without price discipline. The thing that makes the car-selling market work is that buyers are always trying to get a good price and so sellers cannot overcharge and get away with it. So long as that dynamic remains in place, the car-selling market can assign prices to cars that are roughly right.

Investors who believe in Buy-and-Hold do not exercise price discipline. They do not spend less on stocks when prices reach insanely dangerous levels, levels at which the long-term return on stocks is less than the long-term return on far safer asset classes like Certificates of Deposit. They stick to the same stock allocation NO MATTER WHAT.

Price discipline is like the brake on a car. The stock market in a time when Buy-and-Hold strategies have become popular is like a car from which the brakes have been ripped out. It is a car headed for a crash.

There is now 33 years of peer-reviewed research, based on 140 years of stock-market history, showing this all to be true. So why doesn’t everyone know about it?

The experts in this field have painted themselves into a corner. They believed in Buy-and-Hold. They built their careers around promotion of it. Then research was published showing that it is not just a little bit off the mark but wildly off the mark. They experienced cognitive dissonance. They couldn’t bear to acknowledge publicly that they were wrong about something so basic. So they have been in cover-up mode for years now.

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

I see we’ve inflated up to five wins. Each new “win” strengthens your argument – is that how it works?

There are five real wins:

1) When I take over the Bogleheads Forum, all posters (both Valuation-Informed Indexers and Buy-and-Holders) will feel safe posting their honest views. That provides a great learning experience for every one of us;

2) Once we open up the internet to honest posting, we can bring the economic crisis to an end. A 65 percent price crash is going to hurt a lot. But that 65 percent crash is optional. It is crazy for investors to value stocks at one-half of their fair value. We should tell people the truth about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says. Then it would be impossible for the P/E10 level ever to drop much below 15. We would still suffer a price drop. But not anything near as devastating as what we will see if the Ban on Honest Posting remains in place;

3) The prison sentences for those who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney are obviously going to be shorter if they come clean prior to the crash. It is the extent of the anger felt by the millions of middle-class people who are seeing their financial futures destroyed that will determine the length of the prison sentences. People are obviously going to be a lot less angry if we avoid a big price crash;

4) The Wall Street Con Men make out a LOT better if we permit honest posting. They want to sell stocks. That’s how they make money. The last 33 years of peer-reviewed research is the biggest boon to those trying to sell stocks ever seen. We can now tell people how to reduce the risk of stock investing by nearly 70 percent. The biggest objection people have to buying stocks is the risk and we can pretty much eliminate it! That’s huge.

5) Bloggers benefit big time if we open the internet to honest posting. There are huge opportunities to write articles on the 33 years of research that we so far have not been permitted to discuss and to develop accurate calculators and on and on and on. We will be seeing many millionaires made because of these huge advances. That’s a good thing, no?

It’s a win/win/win/win/win.

If anything, I undersold it. If I spent some time on this, I am confident that I could ADD some wins to the count. Perhaps it is an 8-win thing or a 12-win thing. It’s a five-win thing at a minimum!

This is truly good stuff, truly exciting stuff.

That’s my sincere take, in any event.

Rob

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

There was a time when you took your “career” seriously, from the vanity book on down. You seem to have admitted defeat at this point.

I take the work I do very seriously and I have not admitted defeat, Anonymous.

I have come to realize that circumstances are not as I thought they were on the morning of May 13, 2002. That much would be fair to say.

I believe today that every person involved in this matter wants to come clean and move forward. Jack Bogle wants that. Wade Pfau wants that. Robert Shiller wants that. You know all the names. They all want that. You want that. Lindauer wants that. Greaney wants that.

There is no intellectual debate. There can be no debate when all the evidence is on one side and there is zero evidence on the other side.

What there is is a trap that we have as a society fallen into.

I believe that the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers had good intent. There are cynics who will say otherwise. I believe that the cynics are wrong. I believe that back in 1965 we didn’t know all there is to know about this subject and so some perfectly smart people made some perfectly understandable mistakes. In 1981 the research was published that identified the mistakes and that permitted us to move on to something far better.

The trouble is that during those 16 years lots of people built careers based on Buy-and-Hold and so they were not too excited about the idea of acknowledging that that had gotten some things terribly wrong and would need to admit their mistake before they would be able to begin offering sound investing advice. Their pride was hurt. They were ashamed. They felt that people would think they were stupid to have made such a mistake (any people who thought that would have been wrong but I believe that the Buy-and-Holders felt this way all the same). They elected to cover up the mistake rather than acknowledge it. That put us on a bad track.

At the time the mistake was discovered, valuations were at such low levels that it was possible for people to rationalize not admitting the mistake. The thought was that valuations would probably never again be at fair-value levels much less higher and thus this was not a big deal.

Years later, it had become a very big deal indeed. But by that time the lie at the root of the Buy-and-Hold concept had produced a huge bull market and telling millions of people that all that money was Pretend Money had become a very difficult thing to do. What had started as a soft cover-up became a hard cover-up. We entered a stage where careers were destroyed when honest people dared to tell the truth about these matters. That of course made the already hard cover-up an even harder cover-up. We cycled down, down, down.

I of course knew very little of this when I put forward my famous May 13, 2002, post. I knew that the story didn’t add up. I loved the Buy-and-Holders. I knew of no cover-ups. So I got myself involved in something ten thousand times bigger than anything I would have dared get involved in had I known all the realities. Twelve years later, here we are.

The corruption in the investing advice field is more extensive than any person who has not worked this matter for 12 years running can imagine. I learned how extensive the corruption is during these 12 years. That’s an important story and I need to report it to the millions of middle-class investors who need to know about it.

The upside potential is beyond description. Our system works. The idea that the Buy-and-Holders put forward of rooting one’s investing strategies in the peer-reviewed research has produced results beyond anything that they possibly could have anticipated. We possess today the ability to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. We are on the threshold of the greatest economic surge in our history. That’s very exciting stuff.

My job is to expose the corruption in such a way as to not undermine our hopes of enjoying the benefits of the huge economic surge.

It’s not an easy job, Anonymous.

There are many people who have committed acts of financial fraud and are looking at possible prison sentences. There are even more who are likely going to see lawsuits for the recovery of damages filed against them. There are millions who are going to be angry about the lies that have been told to them for so many years now when we experience the next price crash and they wake up to see that their retirement portfolios have been wiped out.

I love my country, Anonymous. I do not want to see it torn apart because of this. My concern that playing this the wrong way could cause my country to be torn apart informs every step I take. That’s been so going back to the morning of May 13, 2002. But as I have learned how deep the corruption goes, the concern has obviously grown greater and greater.

I of course want us all to realize the benefits of being the luckiest generation of investors ever to walk Planet Earth. I want the Valuation-Informed Indexers to enjoy those benefits. I want the Buy-and-Holders to enjoy those benefits. I want the Wall Street Con Men to enjoy those benefits. I want you Goons to enjoy those benefits. The positive side of this story is 50 times bigger than the negative, as big as the negative is. My job is to see that we all enjoy as much of the positive as possible while avoiding as much of the negative as possible.

It’s a big job for a fellow whose only expertise in the field of investing advice is that he figured out how to get his words to show up on internet posts. But someone has to take it on, you know? I think it would be fair to say that I have been elected by my fellow community members (including you Goons).

I haven’t given up, Anonymous. I have never given one second’s consideration to the idea of giving up. It’s the farthest thing from my mind. I think about how to take things in a positive direction from the time I wake up in the morning until the time I go to bed at night.

The tactics that I employ naturally change as I learn new realities.

There was a time when people were saying “Oh, you need peer-reviewed research showing that Valuation-Informed Indexing is always far superior to Buy-and-Hold, that would really make a difference!” I didn’t think that was so at the time people said it. We all obviously know that it is not so today. There was never any peer-reviewed research showing that Buy-and-Hold could work for even a single investor, so there was never any need to publish peer-reviewed research showing that it cannot work. It’s good that we have such research. The Bennett/Pfau research is of huge importance and is going to take us all to some amazing places in days to come. But the sticking point was always the embarrassment that the Buy-and-Holders feel about admitting their mistake and publishing research showing how costly the mistake has been was never going to mitigate that embarrassment. So publishing more research is not the answer.

Getting more supporters isn’t the answer. I already have hundreds. Again, it’s great to have that base covered. But getting hundreds more is not going to change things. We need the hundreds we already have to work up the courage to speak out, to expose the cover-up and the fraud and the corruption. If I were to get thousands more supporters in coming days, it wouldn’t make a difference for so long as they were all afraid to speak up about the corruption. And, if the supporters I have today felt safe in speaking up, they would be more than enough to get the job done. So getting more supporters is not the answer either.

What’s the answer?

We need as a society to care enough about moving forward that we are willing to take on the risks of standing up to you Goons. Once we reach that point, all the magic starts happening.

We are not there today. People see how wonderful it would be to be creating all the books and articles and calculators that millions need to become able to invest effectively. People love the idea of bringing the economic crisis to an end. People love progress. That’s what our country is all about. So that side of this thing is covered. Lots and lots and lots of people want to explore the positive side of this thing. That has been so since the morning of May 13, 2002, and is even more true today.

The only thing that stops us is the Goon factor. People don’t want to see their reputations destroyed. People don’t want to see the lives of their loved ones threatened. People can see how it would benefit us as a society to overcome you Goons. But people have their own lives and they do not want to sacrifice their lives to achieve this great advance in public policy. So for the time being we are stuck.

I believe that the next price crash is going to change things, Anonymous. I saw what the first one did. It opened doors that had long been closed. I would say that the door opened about 30 percent with that crash. Another push forward of 30 percent will create enough momentum for the thing to swing open all the way. I believe that that’s the answer.

I am not God. I could be wrong. Please feel free to believe what you want. But your question is about what I am doing today and what I am doing today is determined by what I believe will happen following the crash. So preparing to take things in a positive direction following the next crash is my focus today.

That means building a record. People need to know about the corruption. Obviously. All of the ugly stuff needs to be exposed. Because it is by exposing the ugly stuff that we bring it to an end and make it impossible for it ever to come back. So it is obviously part of my agenda to prepare for the exposure of all the ugly stuff.

But we certainly don’t want to break people’s sprits with the exposure of all this ugly stuff. We want to present the positive story that counters the ugly stuff too. We need to show people all the wonderful stuff that the Buy-and-Holders really did add to the mix. And we need to help people understand that the mistakes made by the Buy-and-Holders were perfectly understandable when considered in context and that even the corruption can be understood (I don’t say entirely excused, just understood) when considered in context. It’s just as important that the extenuating circumstances that apply here be revealed as it is that the corruption that has been holding us back for so long be exposed.

I tell those two parts of the story in every post I advance here, Anonymous. That’s the deal. That’ the job.

There are two ways we can go. We can elect to continue the cover-up following the next crash. In that event, we all go down together. The numbers show that. It makes me as sad as sad can be. But if that is the choice that we are going to make as a society, there is obviously not a thing that I can do about it. I don’t think that that is going to happen, so, no, I have not given up. But, if an angel came down from heaven and told me that that WAS what was going to happen, then I would indeed give up. I don’t see any way out for any of us if that happens.

If that does not happen, which is what I believe will be the case, we are going to need to find a way to tell this story in such a way that everything comes out and we achieve a cleansing effect but also in a way that does not tear us apart as a country.

You know what Lincoln had to do after the Civil War? That’s what we are looking at here. We are not going to go backwards. Lincoln didn’t reinstate slavery to make the South feel better about being in the Union. But he did reach out the hand of kindness and make efforts to achieve healing with people who had in earlier days been perceived as the enemy.

The Buy-and-Holders are our friends. They have achieved great things. They are part of our future even though the discredited Buy-and-Hold strategy is not. So we need to work very hard to make peace with them.

That’s my job. That’s what I think about every day. That’s what I prepare for with all the work that I produce here at the blog and elsewhere.

Does that help?

I haven’t given up. I haven’t even considered giving up. My energies are today pointed in a different direction. Because circumstances have changed. We don’t have to prove the Valuation-Informed Indexing case today. The case is as strong as any case could ever be. There’s nothing to do on that side of things. And we don’t need to show that it is only corruption keeping Buy-and-Hold alive today. There is now a mountain of evidence of the corruption. Anyone who is open to learning about the corruption is already 100 percent convinced. And anyone who is not open to being convinced obviously would not be convinced by more evidence.

The job today is to prepare for all that happens following the next price crash. The job today is to figure out how as a nation we achieve healing and move forward together.

My best wishes to you and yours.

Rob

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

You are the only known person to be implementing VII.

I don’t know where you got the idea that I am the only person implementing Valuation-Informed Indexing strategies. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Valuation-Informed Indexing is Research-Based Investing. The two terms are synonymous.

People have been following Research-Based Investing strategies since the first market was opened for business. And people have been following Get Rich Quick strategies (Buy-and-Hold) since the first market was opened for business. The history of investing analysis is the history of a battle between these two “ideas.” I put the word in quotes because Get Rich Quick is not really an idea, it is an emotional impulse. It might be more accurate to say that the history of investing analysis is the history of a battle between these two drivers of behavior, the one an idea and the other an emotional impulse.

Each “idea” becomes more or less popular at different moments in history. You can look at Shller’s site and track the popularity of the two ideas over the course of the past 140 years. Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick got very popular in the early 1900s. Then we saw an economic collapse. Then Valuation-Informed Indexing/Research-Based became popular for a time and our economy thrived. Then Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold became popular again in the late 1920s and we experienced the first Great Depression. Then Valuation-Informed Indexing/Research-Based became popular again and we recovered from the Depression. Then Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold became popular again and we experienced the stagflation of the 1970s. Then Valuation-Informed Indexing/Research-Based became popular again and we saw another economic boom. Then Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick became popular again and entered today’s economic crisis.

It’s a cycle, Anonymous. That’s not a coincidence. There is a reason why we always cycle back from Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing/Research-Based and from Research-Baed/Valuation-Informed Indexing to Get Rich Quick/ Buy-and-Hold.

We all possess a Get Rich Quick urge. So our natural state is to be drawn to Buy-and-Hold strategies. Investors have the power to set stock prices wherever they want them to be. We can vote ourselves raises. There is a voice within our heads that says: “Given that you have the power to vote yourself a raise, why not get together with your fellow investors and do it?” That voice is always present. It never goes away. Bull markets (the product of the Get Rich Quick urge) are a natural phenomenon.

If that were the end of the story, the markets couldn’t function. Our natural Get Rich Quick urge would destroy them every time we tried to build them. But we ALSO possess a Common Sense urge that COMPETES with the Get Rich Quick urge.

Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold ALWAYS destroys all of those who follow it and also always destroys the economy of a people who collectively are taken in by it. There has never been a time when Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick became popular and we did not see an economic collapse. There is no other way that an addiction to Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick can end. Those addicted eventually reach a point at which hearing what common sense says or what the historical data says (it is really just a common sense urge that causes us to turn to historical data to learn how stock investing works) becomes unbearably painful because reality “insults” the Get Rich Quick urge (reality is a troll!). So Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold ALWAYS creates the conditions that cause it to be discredited and that cause million of investors to swear off Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick. Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold cannot continue indefinitely, it is too destructive a force.

I believe that Valuation-Informed Indexing/Research-Based CAN continue indefinitely. I believe that, following the next crash, we are all going to turn to Valuation-Informed Indexing/Research-Based and never go back. There are many good and smart people who think I am wrong about this. There are many people who think that the humans can never overcome their natural inclination to destroy their lives with Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick.

I don’t think that’s right. I think over time we are advancing in our knowledge of how stock investing works. I view the introduction of Buy-and-Hold as it was promoted by people like my good friend Jack Bogle as a POSITIVE. Buy-and-Hold is dangerous. It is the ultimate expression of the Get Rich Quick urge. It has never worked for a single investor in the long term and it is a logical impossibility that it ever could. But the core idea is a very positive one.

The core idea of Buy-and-Hold is that investing strategies should be focused on the long-term and should be rooted in research. That is a wonderful advance. That is breakthrough stuff. It is because Buy-and-Hold is (or at least was meant to be) rooted in research that I became a Buy-and-Holder myself. It is because Buy-and-Hold is (or at least was meant to be) rooted in research that I always refer to you Goons as “friends.” I obviously do not endorse your death threats or your demands for unjustified board bannings or your tens of thousands of acts of defamation or your threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. What I love about you is that you believe in research-based strategies (so long as they do not interfere with your addiction to Buy-and-Hold!) In an ultimate sense, we are on the same side. In an ultimate sense, we walk the same path. In an ultimate sense, we are trying to do the same thing.

You are a Valuation-Informed Indexer, Anonymous!

You spit on the ground when you hear the words. That doesn’t matter. Actions speak louder than words. You have advocated what you call “Strategy C” in comments to this blog. Strategy C is a mix of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing/Research-Based. It is tilted in the direction of Buy-and-Hold. But it is not dogmatic Buy-and-Hold. When you advocate Strategy C, you are letting common sense and the results of the research done in this field to influence your thinking.

It would not be right to call you a pure Valuation-Informed Indexer. You certainly are not that. You HATE hearing what the research says. But you are not a pure Get Rich Quicker either. There is a part of you that sees some benefit in knowing what the research says. That is why discussion of what the research says hurts you so much. You very much want to follow Get Rich Quick and yet there is a part of you that sees through it and hearing what the research says reminds you of the benefit of paying attention to that voice of common sene.

The same thing is going on with Jack Bogle. He says that it is okay to change your stock allocation by 15 percentage points when prices reach insane levels. He pulled the 15 percent figure out of his backside. There is zero research pointing anywhere in that direction. But you can’t say that Bogle is a pure Buy-and-Holder. A pure Buy-and-Holder would say that you should not change your allocation at all — forget this 15 percent stuff. Bogle is a Valuation-Informed Indexer! He is more a Buy-and-Holder than a Valuation-Informed Indexer. But he allows the research to influence him a bit while still maintaing a greater belief in Get Rich Quick. He is a mix, like you.

Like just about everyone. I am a mix too, of course. You pointed out yesterday how in one of my columns I gave in to a temptation to make a short-term prediction and naturally got it wrong. That’s the Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick side of me coming out. Short-term predictions don’t work. All the research shows it. It is a core principle of Valuation-Informed Indexing. So why try? Because I am human. And because humans are drawn to Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold. Because I am a mess-up, just like all you Goons.

Many good and smart people think we are doomed to repeating this stupid cycle over and over and over again. I do not. The difference in this fourth cycle is that we now have 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing us what works. We never had that before. Common sense told us that price matters and of course the three earlier economic crises that were caused by a belief in Buy-and-Hold strategies taught us (for a time!) that the Pretend Gains that follow from adoption of Get Rich Quick strategies come at a price. But peer-reviewed research is different.

Research is objective. Research is numbers. I believe that the Buy-and-Holders were serious about using research to become better investors and I believe that research really makes a difference. Our MISUNDERSTANDING of what the research says has brought on what is likely to end up being known as the worst economic crisis in our history. But if the Buy-and-Holders are good people, as I believe they are, Jack Bogle’s heart is going to melt when we enter the Second Great Depression and he is ten going to work up the courage to walk to the front of a big room and say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” At that point, we are off to the races. Once Bogle flips, everyone is going to flip. I don’t see any reason why we would ever return to Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold again once every web site on the internet is telling the story of what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says.

Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold didn’t start with Jack Bogle and Valuation-Informed Indexing didn’t start with Robert Shiller. Both have been around since the first market opened for business. Because the human urge to get something for nothing has been around since the first market opened for business and the human desire to correct the excesses of Buy-and-Hold strategies with the common sense findings of the peer-reviewed research has ALSO been around since the first market opened for business.

And both the Get Rich Quick urge and the Common Sense urge reside within every human being. Bogle has a small desire to follow research-based strategies residing within him and Shiller has a small desire to follow Get Rich Quick strategies residing within him.

You are a Valuation-Informed Indexer, Anonymous.

Sorry.

Rob

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

Rob,

If you continue this pattern of hate and anger, you will spend your remaining years in misery. Instead, find something of real value to do with you life versus this fantasy you have with “goons”.

I obviously feel otherwise, Anonymous.

We are the luckiest generation of investors ever to walk Planet Earth. No earlier generation has had 33 years of peer-reviewed research available to them showing them how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent while also increasing their returns enough to permit them to retire five to ten years sooner. That’s exciting stuff.

You Goons are the only thing standing in our way.

Wade Pfau is not the only academic researcher who would like to be free to do honest work. There are THOUSANDS of academic researchers who would like to be spending their life energies helping us all out. That was their dream when they began their Ph.D. work. That was the driver behind their years of hard study. When ONE academic researcher is freed to do honest work, ALL academic researchers are freed to do honest work. I cannot wait to see what these guys and gals come up with!

It’s the same story with the Wall Street Con Men. They would LOVE to be doing real, honest, important work.

Why the heck do you think Jack Bogle included language in his book showing me that the numbers in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies are wildly off the mark?

Why the heck do you think Bill Bernstein devoted an entire chapter of his book to honest reporting on what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us while obviously being very, very aware of just how ruthlessly he would be attacked by his peers if he was perceived as having gone “too far” by including an entire chapter of honest reporting rather than just a few paragraphs here and there, as is the usual custom among the “experts” of today?

Why the heck do you think Larry Swedroe was honest enough in his postings at the Bogleheads Forum to bring on Mel Lindauer’s ire and get himself banned from the forum for a time?

Why the heck do you think that the Wall Street Journal took the risk of publishing an honest column pointing out that the Buy-and-Holders have been “telling only half the story” for all these years and telling sick and twisted Get Rich Quick lies about the other half?

We have learned something important during the Buy-and-Hold years, Anonymous. We have learned that millions of middle-class investors are VERY interested in knowing what the peer-reviewed research says. It’s the claim that the Buy-and-Holders make (falsely, but still…) that their strategy is rooted in peer-reviwed research that made it so popular in the first place. All that I am saying is that we now need to take it to the next step. I think it would be fair to say that lying about what the research says has not been working out so great in recent years. Why not take the idea of rooting one’s strategies in the peer-reviewed research to the next step? Why not permit HONEST AND ACCURATE reporting of what the research says? I think that would make a big difference. I think that would be a big positive.

We have seen that 80 percent of all of our communities like the idea of permitting honest posting. Why not give them what they want? It would not only help the millions of middle-class investors whose lives have been destroyed by the reckless and relentless and ruthless promotion of the Buy-and-Hold garbage. it would allow us to recover from this economic crisis and thereby put millions of middle-class people in a mood in which they might be willing to reduce the prison sentences assigned to you Goons a bit. Is that not so? Is that idea not more than a little bit appealing to you, Anonymous? Tell the truth.

We need to overcome you Goons.

There’s not getting around it.

We have the tools that we need available to us. Every site has rules prohibiting the tactics that you have employed to block millions of people from learning what the peer-reviewed research says. We have adopted laws making financial fraud a felony, which means prison time for those found guilty of it. Why not enforce those site rules and U.S. laws for the benefit of everyone involved? My feeble brain is not even able to imagine any downside. Has your far superior Goon brain ever been able to come up with anything?

I believe that it is all going to flip following the next crash, Anonymous. If you want to experience a taste of what that is going to mean for you Goons, I urge you to enter the word “Phillies” into a search engine and then what the fans say about the general manager of the club today compared to what they were saying a few years back. It’s a thin line between love and hate, my old friend. Pushing Get Rich Quick garbage makes you the toast of the town for so long as the Get Rich Quick garbage appears to be paying off. When the debt comes due, it’s a very, very, very different story.

We are as a nation of the verge of the biggest breakthrough in our understanding of how stock investing works ever attained in our history. I view that as a super cool reality. I am proud to be playing a big part in bringing it about.

I wish you all the best things that this life has to offer a person, my long-time abusive posting friend.

Rob

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

Your only regular interaction on this subject is with the “goons” and therefore a large percentage of your output is designed to provoke a reaction from the “goons”.

You’re wrong, Evidence.

The stuff I write today is written to show millions of middle-class people how their financial futures were destroyed. We need as a society to make peace with what has happened. That’s the first step. All the other stuff (the substantive stuff) follows easily once we come to terms with the massive act of financial fraud.

People don’t like to talk about the financial fraud. We all have participated in it in at least some small way (for example, I was afraid to post about the errors in Greaney’s study for the first three years in which I posted at Motley Fool). We are ashamed of ourselves and of our institutions. So we try to pretend that Shiller’s research was never published or doesn’t matter or doesn’t say what it says or doesn’t imply what it implies or whatever.

I don’t even put the primary blame on you Goons. I obviously don’t approve of your behavior. But Goon posters are a common reality on the internet. The usual way to deal with them is to ban them. Had Motley Fool banned Greaney when he made his first death threat, none of us would have travelled this dark road. Motley Fool screwed up. Big time. Motley Fool does not employ Goons. But Motley Fool voted for Get Rich Quick when they failed to ban the fellow putting forward the death threats and instead banned the fellow who discovered the errors in the Old School retirement studies. The site administrator at Motley Fool is more to blame for what has happened than any of you Goons, in my assessment.

I have had people say to me: “Rob, every thing that you say about investing makes perfect sense. But I just cannot follow your advice because my retirement is important to me and what you say is the opposite of what the experts in this field say.” That’s a pretty darn sensible statement, is it not?

The problem here is not that there is anything that I am saying that is wrong or that anything that I am saying is not supported by 33 years of peer-reviewed research or that anything that I am saying is not easy to understand. The problem is that every expert in the field is not saying what I am saying. Shiller published his research in 1981. He won a Noble prize for it. What the heck is going on?

The problem is that this stuff is TOO important for people to feel good about saying something unless they are absolutely sure. Shiller’s stuff was such a breakthrough that people were properly skeptical about it. They held back, waiting for more information.

Then they started to feel funny about reporting on it because there had been such a long delay in discussing all the amazing implications of what Shiller found. In 2002, it had been 21 years since the peer-reviewed research has shown that there was zero chance that a retirement study containing no adjustment for valuations could get the numbers even remotely right. What are you going to say at that point? “Oopsi! Sorry we destroyed your hopes for a decent retirement by giving you wildly wrong numbers all these years!”

Everyone in the field wants to see the Ban on Honest Posting lifted. Bogle wants that or he wouldn’t have included the language in his book showing that the Old School studies get the numbers wildly wrong. Bernstein wants that or he wouldn’t have included Chapter Two in his book; Chapter Two is the best short description of Valuation-Informed Indexing that has been published. Larry Swedroe wants that or he wouldn’t have put forward the honest posts that got him banned at the Bogleheads Forum until he promised Linduaer that he would go back to posting dishonestly. Wade Pfau wants that or he wouldn’t have put so much effort into the research he co-authored with me in the days before he learned that his career would be destroyed if he dared to “cross” the Buy-and-Holders by posting honestly. And on and on and on and on.

The trouble is that lots of Buy-and-Holders will be going to prison if the truth about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says gets out. And lots more will be getting sued by billions and billions and billions of dollars.

So the Buy-and-Holders stick together and respond in a ruthlessly abusive way when they find someone like me posting honestly about the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research.

If our economic system is going to survive, we are going to have to find some means of getting accurate and honest information about how stock investing works out to millions of middle-class people, Evidence. The posts that I put to this site are aimed at helping people come to terms with what we were up against all these years, with why it took so long to get these wonderful advances out to all the people who need to learn about them.

I am anti-Goon. Very, very, very much so.

But the deeper reality is that being anti-Goon shouldn’t cause me any problems. We ALL are anti-Goon. That’s why we have laws against financial fraud in the first place.

The question here is — Why as a society have we made an exception to our usual ant-Goon policies to permit the Buy-and-Holders to continue to shove their smelly Get Rich Quick garbage down our throats and cause us all even more economic ruin that we have already suffered?

When we answer that one, we are on our way to enjoying all the wonderful advances we have achieved in recent decades. The articles at this site aim to help us all come to understand the answer to that one.

Take care, man.

Rob

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

Rob, does anyone read this blog besides the goons who like to poke fun at you? I’ve never seen a comment by anyone else.

Comments by non-Goons are rare, Anonymous. There have been some here and there. But we often go a long time before seeing a fresh one.

That’s evidence of the core problem, no?

LOTS of people engage me in discussion when I post at a large board or blog. So many that you Goons complain that to let me post at a large board or blog is to create a “Rob Bennett Show.” When I posted at Bogleheads, my posts where the star attraction nearly every day for months on end. There were times when there were four or five separate ongoing threads relating to the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept.

You would think that some of the people who are so interested in the concept would follow me to my own site and ask their questions there, would you not? But they don’t. Huh? How come?

Humans are social creatures, Anonymous. That’s the thing that the Buy-and-Holders missed. It’s a very, very, very big deal. People do not like to engage in taboo conversations. Posting at a board owned by a fellow that has been banned from 15 different sites is engaging in taboo conversation. People don’t feel comfortable with it.

People’s minds tell them that there must be something wrong with the message of a fellow who has been banned at 15 different sites. Perhaps it is not clear what is wrong , perhaps people cannot put their finger on the problem. But there is something within them that tells them that they don’t want to be involved with the taboo. And being banned at 15 different boards is a signal of taboo behavior. Saying that the Old School SWR studies get the numbers wildly wrong is taboo. Saying that Buy-and-Hold caused the economic crisis is taboo. Saying that Jack Bogle is at risk of going to prison for financial fraud is taboo.

The fear of the taboo is the driver of all this. At the heart of our economic system is a belief that humans are rational actors. It’s not Jack Bogle who came up with that one. It’s freakin’ Adam Smith! That one has been around a long time. And that one is the one that was disproved by freakin’ Robert Shiller, Nobel Prize Winner.

Shiller changed everything. And it’s a very, very, very good thing that he did so. Our children and their children will live far richer lives than we lived because of the blessings that will be bestowed on us as a result of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings. It’s good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. It never ends (as least not as far as today’s eye can see). So lucky us!

But when we achieve that big an advance, there are a lot of people who get their feathers ruffled. All of the people who believed in Jack Bogle get their feathers ruffled. Heck, all the people who believed in Adam Smith get their feathers ruffled a bit! When you improve everything, you change everything. When you change everything, you ruffle a lot of feathers.

We have taboos against doing that sort of thing. Big Shots don’t like having their feathers ruffled. So they fight and they fight and they fight and they fight.

To no purpose. We HAVE to ruffle their feathers because our economy is bigger today than it was the last three times that Buy-and-Hold caused an economic crisis and so this economic crisis is likely going to be a lot worse than any of those before it is over unless we work up the courage to ruffle a few feathers. And one of those three put us in a Great Depression! So the cost of avoiding feather ruffling is getting pretty darn high.

Still, the humans are social creatures and the humans don’t like violating taboos and telling the truth about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works is the biggest taboo of all. So I am doomed, right?

I don’t think so, Anonymous.

I think we are as a society going to work up the courage to violate that taboo following the next price crash. Then I don’t just get average traffic here. I get off-the-wall insane traffic, traffic big enough to make me one of the richest men in the United States. Why? Because I have no competition! Everyone else is playing it the other way. Everyone else is saying “Why fight the taboo?” I violated the taboo 12 years ago and have been fighting it harder and harder every day since. On the day the taboo comes crashing down, I have a 12-year (or bigger) edge on everyone else.

I want the traffic. I want it bad. But I am not intimidated by anything you do to limit my traffic or to point out to me how small my traffic is. I am writing for the post-taboo days. They are not here yet, but they are getting close. I’d say that we are one price crash away. That’s the path I chose on the morning of May 13, 2002, and that’s the path I intend to stay on for at least another 12 billion years. Just so you know.

I get precious little non-Goon traffic here. I don’t dispute what you are saying.

I am going to continue posting honestly re SWRs and scores of other critically important investment-related topics all the same. I am never even going to flinch.

I think it’s the right thing to do. And I think it will make me very rich and very famous to take this path.

So the intimidation tactics don’t work on me. They hurt. I am not saying different re that. I am saying that they do not achieve their aim, getting me to stop violating the taboo. I think this taboo has caused huge human misery for millions of middle-class people and I want to see it torn down and I am proud of the efforts that I have put forward to tear it down and humbled that I was chosen by God or Evolution or the Fates or Whatever to be the one to bury it 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.

I intend to lead a Celebration of the Death of the Buy-and-Hold Taboo when this is over. I intend to do a jig and sing a song and laugh.

And it won’t be one of those empty, cynical laughs that you Goons are famous for either. It will be a laugh of joy. You Goons will be joining me in the laugh. My good friend Jack Bogle will be joining me in the laugh. We all will be laughing together.

Because there are no sides. We all want to know how to invest effectively. There is not one true exception, no matter how fearful many of us are re violating big taboos.

I hope that helps a bit, old friend.

Rob