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

To believe your point, we would have to assume that each and every person has suspended such thought and consideration on your particular issue as part of a coordinated mass conspiracy that was pre-determined and carried on for longer than a decade, risking every shred of credibility as well as potential significant impact on their ability to continue their careers and earning capability.

It’s a fact that the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies have not been corrected for over 11 years, Questions. The discredited findings of those studies were reflected in thousands of articles in personal finance magazines and web sites and so on. Millions of retirements are likely to fail as a result of the errors that were made in those studies and as a result of the 11-year cover-up of those errors.

You are saying that the only way that such a thing could happen is through what you refer to as a “coordinated mass conspiracy.” You’re wrong.

If humans were 100 percent rational creatures, you would be right. But they are not.

Black people could not drink our of water fountains reserved for whites in the pre-Civil-Rights South. Was that the result of a “coordinated mass conspiracy”?

It was the result of a social policy that was reflected in state laws.

There were LOTS of people in the South who had problems with those laws and with that social policy. Most of those people were afraid to speak out. So they rationalized. They told themselves “this is just the way it is, you can’t fight City Hall, this can never change and so it is not worth fighting it, this is not my battle.”

That’s what the MANY people who see problems with Buy-and-Hold tell themselves. They say: “It’s not my fight.” And, once they come to rely on that rationalization, they come to prefer NOT adding to their understanding of the issues. They don’t want to feel bad about themselves. So they intentionally keep themselves in the dark re the most important topics relating to stock investing.

The people you refer to ARE risking their careers, you have that one right. But the part you are leaving out is that they see a more immediate threat to their careers if they give voice to their honest beliefs. Wade Pfau LOVED learning the realities of stock investing. He was like a kid on Christmas morning, jumping up and down with each new discovery. When he did his honest research, he knew that he was doing the thing he had been in training his entire life to do. But when he learned that people like Jack Bogle and Bill Bernstein and Larry Swedroe and Scott Burns would not say a word to help him while his career was destroyed, he flipped. He has financial responsibility for two small children. He told himself that it was more important that he provide for those two small children than that he be a hero by publishing the honest research that would bring the economic crisis to an end.

Wade was not the first person who was intimidated out of doing honest research in this field. Rob Arnott asked at a conference how many of the researchers believed in the Efficient Market Theory. Only a tiny number of hands went up. Then he asked how many of the researchers would be basing the research they would be doing when they got back to the office on a belief in the Efficient Market Theory. Nearly every hand in the room shot up. No academic researcher wants his peers to think that he believes that Buy-and-Hold can work. He would be thought a fool if anyone came to think that he truly believed that. But no academic researcher dares to do honest research so long as the Buy-and-Hold Mafia makes clear that it will destroy the career of any researcher who does honest work. They all need to make a living and they all know that doing honest research is not permitted today. It’s a CLM, a Career Limiting Move.

That needs to change, Questions.

We need Jack Bogle to stand up on a stage and say words that make clear to everyone working in this field that the Buy-and-Hold Era has come to an end and that there will be no more punishments for those who tell the truth about what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research says about how stock investing works in the real world. When people hear a figure as widely known as Jack say that in clear language, they will feel safe again to say what they honestly believe. From that day forward, each day will look brighter than the one that came before it, the opposite of what we have been experiencing in the early years of this economic crisis.

Rob

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

We can see the same people you refer to have given thoughtful consideration to almost every other financial topic discussed. It is the intelligence and experience that compels them to challenge assumptions and give opinions based on all the data available.

I certainly agree with all of these words, Questions.

The only way to even agree with your assertion is to see a prior pattern for each and every one of these people to neglect available data and to form opinions that are contrary to the facts. We have no evidence of this case.

I don’t agree with these words.

You are saying that we can never conclude that someone has made a mistake in one area unless he has a long history of making a mistake in every area he takes up. No.

The Buy-and-Holders are plenty smart. And they are hard working and good people.But they made a mistake. Now they need to fix it.

The problem is that the mistake has been so costly that it has caused the Buy-and-Holders to feel great shame. So they have become defensive.

We need to help them get over their defensiveness. We don’t do this by covering up the mistake. That makes things worse. We need to put the Buy-and-Holders on the hot seat, we need to INSIST that they give direct answers to direct questions. We need to DEMAND that the entire internet be opened to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics. We need to point out to all our friends and neighbors and co-workers and fellow community members that the Buy-and-Holders have been engaging in death threats and board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs as part of their effort to keep the 11-year cover-up going. Those participating in the cover-up have committed multiple felonies and will be going to prison following the next price crash. We should want those prison sentences to be as short as possible. That means doing all we can to bring the cover-up to a close by the close of business today.

Make sense?

Rob the Sensible

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

There’s an important follow-up point to be made here, Evidence.

We all need to work together to insure that those who have the guts to post honestly on what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research tells us about how stock investing works are rewarded handsomely for their efforts.

People respond to incentives. We are all drawn to Get RIch Quick strategies. So Buy-and-Hold has always been an easy sell. People have gotten rich pumping Buy-and-Hold strategies for many years now. That’s why we are all today living through an economic crisis.

This nonsense must stop.

In other fields, people are rewarded when they do good work and punished when they do poor work. We don’t give baseball players big raises when they win strikeout records. We reward them for hitting home-runs and punish them for striking out. Nor do we reward doctors for killing their patients. We reward them for curing their patients and we punish them for killing their patients.

So it must be in the investing advice field.

Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage. It was been tried four times. It has brought on collective losses so massive as to bring on an economic crisis each and every time. We must make it the social custom not to honor those who promote the absurd and self-serving idea that price doesn’t matter when buying stocks but to ridicule and shame them. Anyone saying that he believes that a Buy-and-Hold strategy can work for even a single long-term investor either has not bothered to learn about the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research in this field or is very slow on the uptake or is just flat-out dishonest. If we tolerate this behavior, we will see more of it. We must as a society make clear that such incompetence (or worse) will not be tolerated.

And we must reward those who work up the courage to call out the Buy-and-Holders on their incompetence and on their dishonesty.

I’m first.

I am the person who discovered the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies. It is our discovery of those errors that led to all of the other amazing insights that we have developed over the past 11 years, including the absolutely incredible finding in the Bennett/Pfau research paper showing millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. And I am the person who for 11 years now has led the effort to get every board and blog on the internet opened to honest posting on SCORES of critically important investment-related topics.

So I need to demand the rewards that are due to me and to do all that I can to make everyone else who works in this field or who has aspirations to work in this field aware that these are the sorts of rewards that go to those who have the courage to take on the big bad Wall Street Con Men and their Goon Squad pals and insist that honest investment advice be provided to the millions of middle-class people very much in need of it.

But this cannot stop me with.

There are thousands and thousands of people who have become millionaires pushing the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. We need to make sure that thousands and thousands become millionaires promoting the first true research-based strategy.

That’s how we change the world, my old friend.

Dark times are needed every now and again. It is the change achieved in dark times that lead to the bright times that follow.

We need to flip it. The Buy-and-Holders have taught us the marketing power of the claim that an investing strategy is rooted in the peer-reviewed academic research. Now we need to show that that power can be put to positive purposes by permitting HONEST AND ACCURATE reports of what the peer-reviewed academic research actually says.

We’re on the 99-yard line, my abusive-posting friend. I look forward to hearing the announcement of your prison term (I hope for a relatively short rather than a relatively long amount of time!) and to all the other signs that we have turned the corner on this economic crisis and will be spending our remaining days reaping all the benefits of being born the luckiest generation of investors ever to walk Planet Earth.

Hang in there, my good friend.

Rob the Visionary

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

Did you sleep through the 53% crash that hit bottom in 2009? Where were the buy-and-hold lawsuits? Why isn’t John Bogle in prison? And most importantly, where is your multi-million dollar judgement?

These are intelligent questions.

We are halfway through a PROCESS.

At the high, we were at a P/E10 of 44. At the low, we are always at a P/E10 of 8. We are now in the low 20s. That’s a big change from 44. But it is another big change going to 8. We are halfway through the process.

No one got sued in the 2008 drop. That’s so. But we saw VERY BIG CHANGES with that drop. The level of emotionalism in the market diminished dramatically. I was effectively banned at just about every personal finance blog prior to 2008. Since that drop, I have had Guest Blog Entries posted at scores of places that wouldn’t give me the time of day pre-2008. We have already seen huge changes.

We have not yet seen the amount of change needed to get people sent to prison. That much is so. But why would you think that is not going to happen following the drop to 8?

Please consider what a drop to 8 means. It means that EVERYONE sells. You can’t get to 8 without massive, insane selling. When the P/E10 is 8, stocks are selling at half of their real value. Please consider what that signifies. We all want to be able to retire. To have a P/E10 of 8 means that we are deliberately setting the price of our portfolios at HALF of their true value. Why would anyone do that?

The answer is — There is no rational answer to that question. No one would choose to do such an insane thing. It will happen because, following the next crash, investors will no longer be sane. They will be mad. They will be furious. They will be out for blood.

That’s why there will be lawsuits. That’s why there will be congressional hearings. That’s why there will be prison sentences.

I am not advocating these things. I am saying that these things will evidence themselves. Angry people act in angry ways.

The question we all should be asking ourselves is — How do we stop people from getting so angry?

The answer to that one is — We tell them the truth!

And there is not one of us, including the great (no sarcasm intended) Jack Bogle who possesses all truth within him. To tell the truth, we must permit honest posting by EVERYONE, Valuation-Informed Indexers and Buy-and-Holders alike.

That’s why our system is set up the way it is. That’s why every board and blog on the internet has published rules prohibiting the tactics that have been employed by the Lindaurheads and the Greaney Goons. We don’t want people to get so carried away with their personal beliefs that they end up committing acts that down the road get them thrown in prison.

You Goons have committed the felonies. So I cannot say it is wrong for you to be imprisoned. But I WILL say that you are not the only ones who did wrong things. Every site owner who failed to ban you when you committed felonies did wrong as well. You Goons deserved better. You Goons deserved journalists and site owners and investing experts and policymakers who would call you out on your garbage. You didn’t get that. For that, we all should be ashamed.

We didn’t see prison sentences following the last crash. But we did see a lot of political turmoil. And we did see a lot of opening of minds to the idea that Buy-and-Hold is garbage. And we HAVE seen congressional hearings at the end of other secular bear markets (We didn’t see prison sentences but we did not have 32 years of peer-reviewed research showing that Buy-and-Hold can never work for even a single long-term investor at the end of earlier secular bear markets — that’s a big change from a legal standpoint).

We are working our way through a process. It is to every single citizen’s benefit that we limit the prison sentences of our Buy-and-Hold friends to the extent possible. We do that by opening every board and blog to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics. We are the luckiest generation of investors that ever lived. We are the first generation that has access to peer-reviewed academic research showing us how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. It is by telling people how to do that that we appease their anger. Appeasing the anger of the millions of middle-class people whose lives have been destroyed through the reckless and relentless and ruthless promotion of Buy-and-Hold investing strategies should be job #1 of every person who cares about the future of our economic and political system.

My warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob, the Fellow Who Knows That He Is Part of the Luckiest Generation of Investors Who Ever Walked Planet Earth

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

The first comment you list under “People are talking” is “Your ideas are sound.” from Rob Arnott.

Here is more of that quote. “Your ideas are sound. Your stridency is unhelpful to your cause.”

As always you are incapable of accepting any advice or criticism.

I certainly accept that he said it, Evidence.

I’ll go a step farther. LOTS of good and smart people have said similar things. Rob Arnott is in very good company re that comment.

Here is a mind-bender for you: Is it possible that Rob Arnott is right that my ideas on investing are sound and wrong that my “stridency” is unhelpful to my cause? That’s what I very strongly believe to be the case.

If I am right in my ideas about stock investing, it is the relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies that served as the primary cause of the economic crisis. Jack Bogle is a hero of mine. I have a funny feeling that he did not dedicate his life to helping millions of middle-class people to invest effectively because he wanted to bring on the Second Great Depression and wipe out their retirement savings.

“Strident” means “harsh.” I describe a harsh reality. So there is indeed a sense in which my words could properly be described as “strident.” But the real problem here is not the words describing the harsh reality, it is the harsh reality itself. That is what must change.

When the reality of the 11-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School retirement studies changes, I will be leading the chorus of praise for those who brought about the change. There will be nothing whatsoever “strident” in the words I direct to my Buy-and-Hold friends on that day.

The Buy-and-Holders made a mistake. That’s the core reality here. If you care deeply about the Buy-and-Hold project, as I do, you very, very, very much want to see that mistake CORRECTED. If the mistake is not corrected, the entire project goes down in flames. Every breakthrough insight brought to us by the Buy-and-Holders counts for zero if the U.S. economy is crippled by the failure of the Buy-and-Hold pioneers to acknowledge their mistake in time to save us from the next price crash and all the political turmoil that will follow from it.

You have a lifetime friend who is turning the key in a car after getting stone cold drunk at a party at your house and you grab the key from him and tell him in no uncertain language that he will be sleeping it off in your guestroom tonight. Is that strident? Your drunk friend probably hears it that way. In his state of mind, he thinks he can make the drive home just fine. You are sober. You know better. You have a vision of him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life that renders you incapable of letting him decide what is in his best interest. This is a time when he is in need of a friend badly and you call yourself his friend. So you do what must be done regardless of what names he calls you in response. He’ll see his way to thanking you in the morning.

Did I do a good thing or a bad thing when I put forward my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002, reporting on the errors in the Old School SWR studies, Evidence? Greaney was pushing that study on a daily basis at the Motley Fool board. Thousands of my friends used that studies to plan their retirements. Those people will in days to come be suffering one of the worst life setbacks imaginable. All of that could have been avoided had Greaney said “Thank you!” to the person who tried to save him further embarrassment by letting him know of where he had made a MISTAKE. Who is Greaney’s true friend here, you or me?

I am John Greaney’s true friend.

I am Jack Bogle’s true friend.

I am Rob Arnott’s true friend.

I am Evidence’s true friend.

Your hate cannot cancel out my love. That can never, ever, ever happen. If it does, we all go down together. And that is not an acceptable result. I will not permit it.

The studies will be corrected. We will bring the economic crisis to an end. We will bring on the greatest period of economic growth in our history. The study that Wade Pfau and I co-authored will be written up on the front page of the New York Times. We will rebuild all of the boards and blogs that have been destroyed or compromised.

That’s how the story ends, Evidence. Deep in your heart, you know that this is the ONLY way it can end. Please act accordingly from this point forward.

Death threats are strident. Board bannings are strident. Tens of thousands of acts of defamation are strident. Threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs are strident.

Posts pointing out the errors in a retirement study put forward with the aim of saving millions of middle-class lives from ruin? Not so much.

It is the behavior of the Buy-and-Holders — including the KIng of Buy-and-Hold himself, John C. Bogle — that has made my loving and good and constructive and positive and life-affirming act of revealing the errors in those studies and indeed in the Buy-and-Hold Model itself APPEAR for a time to be strident in the eyes of many good and smart people like Rob Arnott.

When we rebuild our economy, Rob will be putting forward a different take. He and millions of others will be saying at that time that they regret not having been sufficiently “strident” themselves to bring this 11-year Campaign of Terror to a full and immediate stop before permitting it to put our economy in the Second Great Depression.

I speak strongly. I speak clearly. I speak firmly.

No argument whatsoever.

I speak out of love for the Buy-and-Hold Project, which once upon a time was a PRO-research project. I don’t apologize for the depth of my love for that project for two seconds.

You want to have someone diss the accomplishments of Jack Bogle and the thousands of other Buy-and-Hold pioneers? Look elsewhere, my long-time abusive posting friend.

Not this boy.

No can do.

I can’t go for that.

It’s not my particular cup of tea.

Please try to find someone else.

My best and warmest wishes to you.

Rob the Strident (Without Apologies!) One

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

I heard the goons have built up a strong hold on social media sites like reddit. Have you checked them out yet?

I had a thread once on Reddit. My recollection is that someone saw one of my “Beyond Buy-and-Hold” columns and posted it there. It was a good discussion, there were posts on both sides of the issue and there were comments that didn’t take sides, that just asked questions.

Being on Reddit every day would be a huge plus. If Valuation-Informed Indexing became popular on Reddit, the ideas would spread to other sites. Eventually, that would create pressure for the investing sites to discuss research-based strategies as well. So your idea is certainly a good one.

There are two problems.

One, the Buy-and-Hold Goons obviously are aware that word will spread if they let Valuation-Informed Indexing become popular on a large social media site. Before that happens, they will come in and disrupt the threads. We have seen this happen at scores of sites that are not primarily investing sites.

Two, once the disruptors come in, the people who are being persuaded at the social media sites will need to decide who to believe. Their presumption is that those who are expert in the field of investing are the people who know the most about investing. They are properly going to wonder — If there is really 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing that Valuation-Informed Indexing is superior to Buy-and-Hold, why isn’t Valuation-Informed Indexing being actively promoted at every investing site?

What do we tell them? That the Buy-and-Holders are so worried about the prison sentences that are going to follow as a result of their 11-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies that they have vowed to destroy the career of any academic researcher who posts honestly on any question relating to stock investing? That puts us right back where we were before we took our cause to Reddit, does it not?

The economic crisis affects everyone living in the United States today, Goon. That obviously includes people posting on Reddit. So, yes, it makes all the sense in the world for us to spread these ideas on Reddit. But it also includes people posting on the Bogleheads Forum and the Early Retirement Forum and Motley Fool and Index Universe and every other investing site. We need to be posting daily on the dangers of Buy-and-Hold at BOTH sorts of sites.

And of course those trying to “defend” Buy-and-Hold in the Year 2013 (32 years after the peer-reviewed academic research in this field showed that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work out well for a single long-term investor) know that there is a danger in permitting honest posting re the academic research at ANY sort of site and respond appropriately when they learn that people are having honest discussions re the massive financial losses they have caused millions of us.

We need honest posting on the last 32 years of academic research at non-investing sites. We also need honest posting on the last 32 years of academic research at non-investing sites. The key to opening the entire internet up to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important topics is announcing prison sentences for those who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney. When people see that there are personal consequences that follow from committing acts of financial fraud, they will stop doing it. That is why we adopted the laws against financial fraud in the first place. We need to start enforcing those laws in a reasonable manner if we all want to see the Buy-and-Hold Crisis brought to an end.

My best wishes to you, Goon.

Rob the Goon Destroyer

Set forth below is the text of a post that I recently put to the Goon Central board:

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

How do you expect to have a community board in which people have a DISCUSSION when you end up posting 99% if the content. That is not a discussion. It is a lecture.

This is why I say that we need to open up every board and blog on the internet to honest posting on SWRs and MANY OTHER critically important investment-related topics.

Today there are huge rewards handed out to those who help the Wall Street Con Men push their smelly Get Rich Quick garbage.

And the thousands of community members who have expressed a desire to participate in honest discussions have been denied that basic right.

We need to hold those who participate in abusive acts in “defense” of Buy-and-Hold accountable for their behavior. We need to hold them both civilly and criminally liable.

And we need to say “thank you!” to those who work up the courage to post honesty about the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research.

People respond to incentives.

The fewer incentives we offer to those who push smelly Get Rich Quick garbage, the less we will see of it.

The greater the benefits we offer to those who post honestly about research-based strategies, the more we will see of the good stuff.

There will come a time when I won’t have to deliver any more lectures because you will be hearing about Valuation-Informed Indexing on every television program and in every investing magazine and on every investing web site.

We have to start somewhere, Pink.

We start with permitting one poster to post honestly re one topic.

Then it grows. And grows some more. And grows some more.

One day, you wake up and the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage is buried 30 feet in the ground.

What do you think would happen today if someone with black skin was told that he or she had to go to the back of the bus?

That’s what will happen a few years from now to someone who threatens to kill another poster’s wife and children because that person reported the safe withdrawal rate accurately and honestly.

Get Rich Quick is on the way out. Research-based investing strategies are the future.

I am sure.

Rob the Lecturer

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

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