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

“ That part is hard to write. It involves being somewhat critical of my readers. Generally not a great promotional strategy.”

Because only Rob Bennett is right. Only Rob Bennett is honest. Only Rob Bennett is normal.

Sorry, Rob, but the results say just the opposite.

It’s not only Rob Bennett. Thousands of our fellow community members expressed a desire that honest posting re the peer-reviewed research be permitted. Shiller’s book was a best-seller. The 16 months in which Wade was doing honest research were the happiest days of his life.

It’s never been a majority, that’s for sure. But it’s not reasonable to think that new research would have majority support starting from the day it is published. People have to hear about it and then get to ask questions about it and then over time to be persuaded by it. That’s the part of the process that’s been missing for 22 years now.

I predict that, once we get every site opened to honest posting re the research, we will go from 10 percent Valuation-Informed Indexers to 20 percent Valuation-Informed Indexers in six months.

Rob

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

Nothing has worked out like you said it would for the last 25 years.  You are 65 years old and broke.  You are saying you don’t have any doubts yet?

I have tiny doubts because prices have remained high for so long. Prices have remained high longer than at any prior time in U.S. history. That shakes my confidence a little.

The other side of the story is that the Buy-and-Holders evidence almost no confidence whatsoever. You Goons evidence bravado, That’s not the same thing, Say that you possessed a deep belief in Buy-and-Hold. Then you would be fine in hearing people who believe that Shiller’s research is legitimate have their say. You would present your side from time to time and many people would agree with you while some would not. So what, you know?

That would be normal. That’s not even a tiny bit what we see. What we have been seeing for 22 years running is that Goon portion of the Buy-and-Hold community goes completely nutso is anyone suggests that Shiller might have a point. The defensiveness is off the charts. That’s not the majority of Buy-and-Holders., It’s about 10 percent. But the others tolerate the strange behavior. They might speak up against it once or twice. Then they fade into the background. They go along to get along.

That tells me that Shiller is very much onto something,. Buy-and-Hold is rooted in the Efficient Market Theory, the idea that investors act in their self-interest, that they are rational. Shiller is saying “no, at times investors are not rational at all, at times they are highly emotional.” If that’s so, we need to be studying the ways in which investors become emotional and what to do to help them hold into their rationality. The Bennett/Pfau research indicates that investor emotionalism is 70 percent of the stock investing story, that overcoming one’s inclination to emotionalism is the most important thing that one needs to do to achieve long-term investing success. That learning to practice price discipline can permit one to retire five years sooner while taking on far less risk. That’s no small thing, That’s investor heaven.

I wasn’t sure on the morning of May 13, 2002, I was reasonably confident that Greaney got the number wrong but I wanted to hear what other people had to say because I was not 100 percent sure. I couldn’t identify any flaws in what I was saying. But it seemed too incredible to be true. So I wasn’t entirely sure, It made me happy when Wade Pfau described himself as experiencing the same sort of feelings. He was so excited about our research that he said he couldn’t sleep at night. But he was asking himself: “Did I miss something?” Because it all seems so impossible. Most of the Buy-and-Holders are very smart people. So it’s hard to imagine that you would be right and they wouod be wrong about so important a matter.

In some ways, I am much more confident today than I was on the morning of May 13, 2002. So many pieces of the intellectual puzzle have snapped into place during the first 22 years. But we haven;t had a price collapse. We had that one short-lived one in late 2008. But that didn’t last long enough to break the bull psychology. Buy-and-Hold is just as popular today as it was in 2002. Witness today’s CAPE value. So I wouldn’t say that I am entirely free of doubt.But i just have no explanation for the Goon behavior outside of Shiller’s contention that investors are capable of high levels of emotion. So in an overall sense I remain confident.

The most important thing to me is that we explore these questions. If Shiller is wrong,let’s find that out. Let’s talk about it and identify where he is wrong and where he is right. It is only Buy-and-Holders (and really only a small percentage of the Buy-and-Hold population) that wants to suppress discussion of the peer-reviewed research. That speaks volumes to me. I cannot imagine ever overlooking that one, It’s just not the way that humans behave when they believe in what they are saying.

I am 100 percent confident in saying that we need to open every site to honest posting re the research. I am highly confidence but not 100 percent confident re my belief that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research.

My best wishes, etc.

Rob

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

“Yes, I would like to pay the fair-value price for the stocks I buy. Why wouldn’t I?”

The problem is that your idea of fair market is lower than other peoples, therefore they won’t sell to you.

You seem to think that fair value is a single number, whereas in reality investors can have different ideas of what is fair value for them.

We can add fair-value to the long list of investing topics that you don’t understand.

I believe that my idea of fair-value stock prices would be very much in line with that of most other investors if all investors had access to discussion boards and blogs that permitted honest posting re the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.

There’s only one way to find out.

Rob

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

The people who used Greaney’s study to plan their retirement would have done well. Those who followed your advice would have done poorly. There will be no court cases. Bogleheads has a right to ban you and you don’t even need to violate any rules. There’s no “compelling public interest” in a mid-tier discussion forum. Heck, YouTube (the #1 site which you, of course, refuse to use) could ban you for being a Phillies fan or even for your VII theories and there’d be nothing you could do about it. I thought you went to law school?

I went to law school and i don’t agree with what you’re saying, Sensible. I absolutely believe that there’s a compelling public interest in whether or not millions of middle-class investors have some means to gain access to honest and accurate and research-based reports on what the peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world.

It’s the most important public policy issue of our day. On pure substance terms, there are more important matters: the polarization of political views; the war in Ukraine; climate change; the unrest in the Middle East. But all of those are highly complicated matters. In this case, the solution is easy-peasy. If Shiller only published his Nobel-prize-winning research today, there would not be one dissenting voice questioning the need for it to be discussed at every discussion board and blog, without a single exception. The only thing holding us back is the 43-year cover-up. That makes the Buy-and-Holders look really, really, really bad. But it’s not as if it will look better for the Buy-and-Holders when it’s a 44-year cover-up.

I think that we all need to act together to get every site opened to honest posting re the research. Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers should be united re the process question and they would be if it were not for you Goons. The same laws that apply in every field of human endeavor outside of the investing advice field need to be made applicable in the investing advice field as well. It”s silly that I should even feel a need to say that. It’s not all just about turning a quick buck any way you can.

My best wishes to you.

Rob

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

Companies issue quarterly and annual reports, and they are audited. Falsifying the information on these reports leads to prison sentences. See Ken Lay. What SPECIFIC remedies do you suggest?

I believe that we need to open every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting ee the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. All laws that apply in every field other than the investment advice field should apply in the investment advice field as well. So no death threats, no extortion to stop researchers from publishing honest research, no defamation to suppress discussions of the research, etc.

That would do it. We have seen strong interest among experts in the field to report on what the recent research says and strong interest among ordinary investors to learn as much as they can about the subject. Everyone is not going to switch to Valuation-Informed Indexing immediately. It wouldn’t be realistic to expect such a thing. But I am highly confident that we could get the percentage of Valuation-Informed Indexers up from 10 percent to 20 percent in six months if honest posting were permitted. And it would grow from there.

Doing something about the intimidation tactics would take the fraud element out of it. That’s the big thing. There are still smokers today even though it has been years since researchers were afraid to let people know about the research showing that smoking causes cancer. But the number of smokers has been reduced significantly. And those who smoke at least know what they are getting into. That’s how it should be with Buy-and-Hold. People should be able to learn how dangerous and be able to make up their own minds after hearing both sides of the story.

I would recommend down the line that mutual fund companies provide both the official numbers for stock portfolio value and the number after it has been adjusted for the effect of irrational exuberance. I would encourage all investors to work together to pull the CAPE value down once it rises significantly above fair-value levels. And of course I believe that all retirement studies not including valuation adjustments should contain language explaining why many people believe that such adjustments are needed to get the numbers right. If people elect to ignore such warnings, so be it. But all should be properly informed of what the research shows.

It’s too important a matter to just let the industry turn a quick buck exploiting people’s weakness for Get Rich Quick approaches. In the long run, there would be more money for everyone as a result of us having a more stable stable economic and political system.

Rob

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

It is possible that there were a few at Motley Fool who used his study as one of many pieces of information when planning a retirement.

However it is likely that many more people used the Trinity or Bengen studies as they are much better known.

You talk about the Greaney study a lot, you have made no meaningful attempt to engage the authors of the Trinity and Bengen studies.

I agree with you that many more used the Trinity and Bengen studies.I would of course like to see those studies corrected as well. It would have been easy to get those studies corrected once we had gotten the Greaney study corrected. We would just go as a group to the various boards and tell the story and we would have lots of good people helping out. I cannot imagine such efforts not being successful.

It’s not like I work up one morning and said to myself: “I know what should do with my life, I should become the retirement study corrector!” I posted at the Motley Fool board for three years before I pointed out the error in the Greaney study. I was friends with Greaney at that time (I still consider him a friend but the feeling is obviously not mutual) and with a number of the regular participants at that board. We discussed the Greaney study there on a daily basis (I rarely did, I limited myself to posting on saving strategies).

Greaney became abusive when stock prices dropped a bit and was in the process of causing our best posters to leave the board. I felt that the only thing that I could do to save the board was to point out the error in the study. My thought was that that might cause him to be a bit less arrogance in his dealings with others. I also thought that we would all learn a lot about safe withdrawal rates. I had always felt like a bit of a creep for not having the courage to point out the error, which I had known about from the first day I posted there.

When I saw the reaction to my post, I realized that I had a tiger by the tale. This isn’t just a story about safe withdrawal rates. It’s about the entire Buy-and-Hold Model. Getting the Greaney study corrected would be a huge step forward toward getting the entire Buy-and-Hold Model corrected. Greaney didn’t make the error because he is dumb. He just followed the model. I don’t think that the people who followed the model were dumb either. They didn’t have Shiller’s research available to them when they were developing the model. They took a shot in the dark on the issue of valuation-based market timing and they made a mistake.

So what, right? It happens. The trouble is the cover-up of 43 years. Because there are lots of powerful and wealthy and well-connected people who will “look bad” when the cover-up is revealed, there’s a lot of pressure to continue the cover-up. But that of course makes things worsr, not better. I naturally would like to take things to a place where we can all begin making things better and better and better.

Rob

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

Who is the expert that agrees with you?

My impression is that just about everybody in the field agrees. Not entirely. But you wouldn’t expect that. The Rob Bennett who existed on May 13, 2002, wouldn’t agree with the Rob Bennett who exists today. I have learned a lot by asking questions and exploring this stuff and talking it over with interested parties for 22 years. So I don’t say that everyone agrees 100 percent. But just about everyone agrees that Shiller’s research taught us all something important and that honest posting re Shiller’s research should be permitted at every site.

Bill Bernstein obviously agrees on the basic question. He said that the safe withdrawal rate in January 2000 was 2 percent, not 4 percent. That’s what I say. John Bogle largely agreed. He put up that post at the Bogleheads forum saying that he could see how valuation-based market timing could work in some circumstances. That was not a full-throated endorsement. But it was a far cry from the Goon position. I think it would be fair to say that Bogle was hoping that he could get a productive discussion started by making that admission (which was a change from things he had said at earlier times). And of course there are lots and lots of others.

People don’t want to be threatened. If you want people to say clearly that they agree, you are going to need to rein in the abusive stuff. People just won’t speak clearly as long as they are subjected to the kind of abuse that you Goons dish out for doing so. But my sense is that just about everyone in the field agrees on the basics, they are just afraid to say it. I am not able to recall even a single time where anyone (this includes you Goons) made a case that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is in error. That’s a remarkable reality. The fact that that has never once happened in 22 years should tell us all something.

My best wishes.

Rob

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

From today’s New York Times

“This reminds Professor Shiller of the rallies of the 1920s and the dot-com boom, which both ended badly. When prices get too far ahead of earnings, there will eventually be a reckoning — and, he says, there’s a good chance that U.S. stock market returns will be lower over the next decade than the last one.”

Doesn’t look like there is any ban on discussing Professor Shiller’s ideas.

There’s certainly a ban. I pointed out the error in the Greaney retirement study (it lacks a valuation adjustment) on the morning of May , 13, 2002. It has not been corrected to this day. Please explain.

It’s not a TOTAL ban. That much is so. If it was a total ban. Shiller wouldn’t have gotten his research published in a peer-reviewed journal and his book wouldn’t have been a best-sellter and he wouldn’t have been awarded a Nobel prize. If it had been a total ban, we wouldn’t have seen thousands of our fellow community members put up posts expressing a desire that honest posting be permitted and I wouldn’t have a research work with me for 16 months to develop research showing that my ideas check out and all that sort of thing.

I am not able to think of another case where things are sufficiently open that we have a mountain of evidence that an existing model is false while not permitting the new model to be openly discussed and thereby developed to the point that it can effectively replace the now-discredited model. That is exceedingly strange stuff. But that’s where we stand in the investing advice field. There has never been an iota of evidence that valuation-based market timing might not work or might not be required. But woe to the individual who dares to say that openly on any discussion board or blog on the internet. Holy moly!

I said it. I love what the Buy-and-Holders were trying to do. That’s why I was a Buy-and-Holder myself for a time. And I view the mistake they made as trivial in the grand scheme of things. They didn’t have Shiller’s research available to them. So they took a wild shot in the dark and made a mistake. So what. you know? The only people who never make mistakes are people who never try to accomplish anything of consequence. So the mistake was nothing.

But the 43-year cover-up of the mistake has hurt millions of people in very serious way. The cover-up is responsible for today’s loony-tune CAPE value. The cover-up was responsible for the Great Recession of 2008. The cover-up has made effective financial planning impossible for 43 years now. Not good. Our discussions show that 10 percent of the population of stock investors believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research. If we all had been speaking up in clear and firm terms for 43 years now, we could as a nation of people have buried the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it could no longer hurt humans and other living things, a long, long time ago.

I have a funny feeling that continuing to keep it zipped, as I did from May 1999 through May 2002, is not going to get the job done. That’s why I play it the way that I do. I show respect and love for my Buy-and-Hold friends and for all of the great contributions that they really did make. But I am pretty darn insistent in saying that I sincerely believe that the Greaney retirement study (and ALL Buy-and-Hold retirement studies) lacks a valuation adjustment. Call me madcap, you know?

My best wishes,.

Rob

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

If my Tesla had a microwave oven, we would see the greatest economic boom in history.

It’s your opinion that valuation-based market timing is not required. It’s my opinion that it is.

If there were no abusive posting, both opinions would be represented in every discussion held on the internet. Your opinion is held by ten times the number of people who hold my opinion. So there would be more people giving voice to your opinion, in the short term. I believe that, so long as my opinion was represented in every discussion, over time we would see more people coming around to support my opinion. There’s only one way to find out for sure.

It is not your place to “win” the debate by imposing a ban on honest posting. You agreed to follow the published rules of the various sites and you should honor that promise. Each community member should be able to hear both opinions and to make up his or her mind as to how to invest his or her retirement money.

That’s where I’m coming from re this one, in any event.

I sincere believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment.

Rob

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

In your mind, all of you opinions are honest and everyone else’s opinions are abusive.

That’s not so. The vast majority of Buy-and-Holders (possibly every last one of them) believe that Buy-and-Hold is best. And it is only about 10 percent of the population of Buy-and-Holders who engage in abusive or criminal behavior. The problem is that the 90 percent of Buy-and-Holders who are non-abusive (the Normals) are afraid of you Goons. They might speak up in opposition to the abusive and criminal behavior of you Goons one or two times. But, when that is not enough to make it stop, they retreat into silence.

Which means that the discussions that we all need to have to spread knowledge of what the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world never take place. And we all miss out on the amazing benefits that should follow from knowing the realities for the first time in history. I want to write about those realities. I want to help people to live better and fuller and freer and richer lives. And the published rules of all the sites as well as the laws of the United States permit that.

Rob