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

You currently have a presence on two large platforms: Twitter and YouTube. Even with that exposure, you have not gotten any traction. You have made thousands of posts on the major investment boards as well and you have no traction there either. Thousands upon thousands (probably in the millions) have seen your posts, yet you have no traction. You don’t even have one supported on this website, which you control.

How do you think you will see anything different be delivering you same exact message to the same people on the same boards (including those that have banned you)?

Thousands, yes, but I seriously don’t think it’s been millions.

How does any new idea become known and over time come to dominate the world? It always starts with one person, the person who had the idea. He tells a second person. The two of them then tell two others. And then it’s 40. And then 400. And then 4 million. Like that. It’s the only way it has ever been done. Because it is the only way that it ever could be done.

Shiller had the idea, not me. In 1981. It’s been 42 years now, The new idea (that market timing is always 100 percent required) is so important and valuable an idea that it should have taken over the world by now. It has not. But the fact that we have seen thousands of people express a desire that honest posting re the peer-reviewed research be permitted shows that 10 percent of the population believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate. How do we get it to 20 percent and then 40 percent and then 80 percent? We open every site to honest posting re the research. That changes everything.

Valuation-Informed Indexing will not become domninant on the day we open every site to honest posting. Most people are still going to be Buy-and-Holders. But if discussion of a new and better approach is permitted, over time more and more people will be exposed to that better way. And over time, gradually and slowly but also surely, more and more people will become Valuation-Informed Indexers. That’s the way it always happens. That’s the only way it ever could happen.

It doesn’t mean much that 90 percent of investors are Buy-and-Holders today. Most have never heard about Valuation-Informed Indexing, So they don’t know any better. Or, if they heard about it, they did not have a chance to ask questions about it and to explore it in depth. People aren’t going to make a change in something as important as how they invest their retirement money without first asking lots of questions and seeing what sorts of answers come back. There are not going to be instant coversions. But there will indeed be conversions. Over time. If honest posting re the research is permitted.

It’s essential that we go that way because that is the only way that as a nation of people we can ever advance in our understanding of how stock investing works. We all benefit from that. So this is something that we should all want. There is no downside. So we should all be working together re this one. We should all be friends.

My sincere take.

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:

Only Rob Bennett (the broke guy) knows how investing really works.  Not Shiller, Not Pfau, not Bernstein, not Bogle, not Buffett, etc.

Everyone knows on some level of consciousness, Anonynous. You know. If you didn;t know in your heart that the safe withdrawal rate cannot possibly be the same number at all valuation levels, you wouldn’t work so hard to keep the ban on honest posting re Shiller’s research in place.

You know but you don’t want to know. Having to hear about what the research says is upsetting because what Shiller showed makes so much sense. All that he showed is that we need to buy stocks in the same way we buy everything else, by taking price into conideration at all times.

That’s it. I say that we must consider price, you don’t want to. Because taking price into consideration would mean that your portfolio is only worth about half of what you have been led to believe it is worth and very, very much want to believe it is worth.

Shiller wouldn’t have been awarded a Nobel prize if there weren’t a lot of people who suspect that he is onto something very important. I wouldn’t have have had thousands of my fellow community members praise my stuff to the skies if there weren’t great demand for hearing about the last 42 years of research. You wouldn’t fight so hard if you hadn’t seen how much interest there is in knowing the realities.

No one is dumb. That’s not the issue. We are moving from the dark ages of investing analysis to a much better place and there are some outlier personalities (You!) who can’t stand accepting that there was a time when they didn’t know it all. I think that we all will make the journey that we need to make in the days following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.

We all want the same thing. We are all in this together. We all are smart and good people. The stuff that we have seen during the first 21 years is 20 times more good than it is bad. I think that I know a thing or two about stock investing at this point. If I didn’t know a thing or two, I wouldn’t presume to write a book about the subject. But I didn’t learn those things by sitting in a room thinking great thoughts. I learned what I know by listening to lots of others, including the people you mentioned. If I am the only one who knows anything, how is it that I learned so much from those people?

Heaven help us all but I have even learned some things from you Goons. Scary, I know. But I believe that that’s the full reality here.

That’s my sincere take, in any event.

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:

There is a 100% chance it did not need an adjustment as it is a retrospective study.

Market timing has never had a successful outcome. You are the promoter of VII, yet you are broke. Why would anyone want to pay you even one dime? You call being broke a “good plan”?

It is a retrospective study that ignores the factor that in the past has always been the most important factor in determinging safety — the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.

I call telling the truth about stock investing a very, very good plan. The fact that it is so hard to gain access to research-based reports on how stock investing works in the Buy-and-Hold Era makes reports that are research-based all the more valuable. The more resistance I see to discussion of the past 42 years of peer-reviewed research, the more confidence I have that there’s value in exploring those 42 years of peer-reviewed research in great depth.

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

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:

Remember when Wade said this: “ What is Step 2? There isn’t one. You will still be in the same position as you’ve been in for the last 10 years.”

He was wrong. You are not in the same position as 10 years ago. You are in a much worse position. Your savings are now depleted, your wife divorced you and you lost your house. It is often said that drug addicts and alcoholics finally seek help when they hit rock bottom. You have hit rock bottom, yet your are so far gone that you can’t even deal with the reality of the situation. You have experienced a major failure and your future is bleak, unless there is some kind of miracle.

Woe is me, Anonymous.

The miracle is the learning process that is taking place in the background as we speak. It’s been going on for 42 years now. No, it has not yet come to full fruition. I obviously wish that it had. But for every negative thing that you can point to in “defense” of the suppression of discussion of the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research, I can point to 20 positive things that show why it is so important that we keep in mind why we permit honest posting re the research in every other field.

We are not a bad people. We just are not. We are not a perfect people. But we are a fundamentally good people. So we all need to count our blessings (while not losing sight of the weaknesses that have been brought to our attention and that need to be addressed) and soldier on to the best of our ability. That’s where I am coming from re this thing in any event.

Step Two is opening every site on the internet to honest posting re the past 42 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. We are close. I believe that it will happens in the days (it may take years of days, of course) following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. Given that today’s CAPE value is 31, there is good reason to believe that we are close. We are obviously not living in the promised land today. But we are close. So I solder on. I hope that that works for you.

Saying that there is no Step Two is an expression of cynicism. If it really were so that there is no possibility that we could ever again as a nation of people advance in our understanding of how stock investing works, we should just shut down all the peer-reviewed journals. We haven’t done that. Why? Because we believe in some level of consciousness that further learning experiences are possible, that that excitement that Wade felt when he declared that “Yes, Virginia, Valuation Informed Indexing works!” is real and important. I want millions of people to be able to experience that flood of good feeling that I saw Wade experience when we were working on our research together.

I believe that Wade will flip back in the days following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis and that we will have more fun times together. If I were king of the world, he never would have felt even a tiny flicker of concern that anything bad would happen to him if he did honest research in this field. We need more people doing honest research, not fewer. The last thing we need is more people seeking to avoid having your abusiveness directed at us by doing what it takes to appease you Goons. So I make an effort not to go there.

I believe in being polite. So I do that. But I continue to say that I believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. When everyone who works in this field feels 100 percent comfortable saying that at every site on the internet, we all will be in a far better place than we are in today. Getting safe withdrawal rates right matters. The people who use retirement studies for help in planning their retirements matter.

That’s where I am coming from re this one, in any event. My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

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:

People are happy to talk about research.  They are not happy when people keep repeating the same lies over and over again and refuse to listen to what others have to say.

There are two schools of academic thought re how stock investing works. Anonymous. It is a logical impossibility that both are correct because they are rooted in opposite premises. As a nation of people, we need to figure out which one is right. The only way we can do that is to talk it through, showing respect and friendship to those on “the other side.”

My sincere take.

Rob

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

So your plan on making money is to be selling people on the concept of your investment scheme versus making money utilizing the investment scheme.  Got it.

There is a sarcstic tone evident in your comment, which is unfortunate. But the statement is essentially correct. I follow Valuation-Informed Indexing principles (which are the same as Buy-and-Hold principles, with the sole exception that market timing/price discipline is encouraged rather than discouraged) when investing. That means that I will earn higher lifetime returns while taking on less risk. Following VII priciples will generally add hundreds of thousands of dollars to one’s portfolio over the course of a lifetime. So it is no small thing. But it’s not something that is going to make someone millions overnight. It’s not intended to be that.

I believe that the journalism work will bring in hundreds of millions overnight. That’s because the 42-year cover-up has been so brutal. We have thousands of good and intelligent and hard-working people who long to do honest work in this field and who will be freed to do so once one large site opens itself to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research and promises to protect those who do honest work from the sorts of individuals who have posted in “defense” of Lindauer and Greaney. The leverage here is completely off the charts. And of course there are financial rewards that go to the person who led us from the Buy-and-Hold Era to the Valuation-Informed Indexing Era. It’s work that helps people that generate value and it would be hard to imagine anything that would produce more value than my idea of opening every internet site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research, without a single exeption.

Hang in there, old friend.

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:

Now read the whole thread again. You don’t have a step 2. People have heard your message and they don’t agree. Removing the bans doesn’t change a thing.
As to the bans, you mention a key point in that you state the following: “ I was banned at lots of places”. Combine that with the fact that no one will talk to you outside of these places and your wife, now ex-wife, also decided to part ways with you. Any reasonable and rational person would finally come to the conclusion that they are the problem and not everyone else.

It’s not everyone else. Thousands of people have expressed a desire that honest posting re the peer-reviewed research be permittet at every site. A good number of the biggest names in the field have said that they believe that my stuff checks out. Several have even worked with me. Wade Pfau devoted 16 months of his life to research showing that “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” His emails showed that those were the happiest 16 nonths of his life. He had hopes in those days of being awarded a Nobel prize for the research that we co-authored.

It’s only a small number of insanely dogmatic Buy-and-Holders (the Goons) who have held us all back. And they had to engage in criminal behavior to do it! It’s true that the 90 percent of Normals did not do enough to rein in your Goons. That is of course a highly unfortunate reality. But that 90 percent would be perfected happy to see honest posting re the peer-reviewed research permitted at every site.

And those people have NOT heard the message. They heard a small part of it on a small number of occasions. But the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is too big a change for it to be achieved with a few mentions of what the research says. Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is a seriois addiction, Have you ever heard of someone quitting smoking or escaping alsoholism because they heard one time how smoking or drinking to excess are negative behaviors? To get over an addiction that strong, you need to hear the message repeated daily and you need to hear it from many different places. I have seen people converted from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. I am a convery myself. It is something that happens gradually over a period of time, not in a flash in response to one mention of what the research says.

If we want people to avoid the dangers of Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick, we need to be telling them every day and at every site what the research says. The message just won’t stick otherwise. We need to be singing the praises of market timing and we need to be singing those praises in a highly spirited way. That’s Step Two. That’s what changes everything.

As a nation of people, we believe that discussion of the peer-reviewed research should be permitted. We have a funny way of showing that belief. If we didn’t have a funny way of showing it, we wouldn’t have the black cloud of a CAPE value of 31 hanging over us today. But that is our core belief. If it were not, we would have shut down all the peer-reviewed journals. We wouldn’t have to worry about millions of people learning about the dangers of going pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold is we shut down all the peer-reviewed journals. But we haven’t done that. You Goons would support it. But 90 percent of the population of investors thinks we should permit discussion of what the peer-reviewed research is trying to teach us.

The next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will show us all once again how dangerous it is to pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold. I believe that some of the people in that 90 pervcent will work up the courage to stand up to you Goons at that time. I believe that we are today on the threshold of the biggest surge of economic growth in U.S. history. Getting the word out to millions of people re how stock investing works in the real world is no small thing. I am horrified by the thought of what we will be put through n the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. But I think it would be fair to say that the good news re this matter is 20 times more good than the bad news re this matter is bad.

We’ll see. Wish us all luck!

Rob

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

I guess you figured we all needed to keep it zipped and just let Hocomania run wild, right?

That makes sense, Hocus…………….not

I don’t think you can have a society in which research is published in peer-reviewed journals and cannot be discussed by the investors affected by it.

It’s an inherently unstable situation.

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 information that is missing is the pain that millions of people will experience during the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.”

If it hasn’t happened, then it can’t be missing. Further, you have already made this claim on many websites for over 20 years, so you can’t even claim it is missing.

What you are really saying is that no one believes you.

The majority certainly doesn’t agree with me. If the majority agreed with me, we wouldn’t all be looking at a CAPE value of 29 today.

How do you think that is ever going to change? It’s not going to change by all of us who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research keeping it zipped to appease you Goons.

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:

When did William Bernstein tell you to quit your job and pull your money out of the stock market?  Why are you broke if you know how the market works?

Bernstein reported the safe withdrawal rate accurately in his book. He should have repeated what he said in his book when the question came up on the Bogleheads Forum. That way, we could have gotten the Greaney study corrected many years ago. Once that study was corrected, we could have moved on to all the other Buy-and-Hold retirement studies that got the numbers wrong because they failed to account for irrational exuberance. Then we could have moved on to asset allocation questions and risk management questions. We could have replaced Buy-and-Hold with Valuation-Informed Indexing. We wouldn’t have a CAPE value of 29 today, we wouldn’t be priced for another Buy-and-Hold Crisis within the next year or two or three and we would all be living better and fuller and richer lives today than we ever imagined possible during the Buy-and-Hold years.

That’s how it works in every field of human endeavor other than the investment advice field. Humankind didn’t come to Planet Earth with knowledge of everything that any of us will ever need to know. So the people who developed Buy-and-Hold made a mistake (Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research was not available at the time). If we were all thinking clearly, we would all have wanted that mistake to be corrected as quickly as humanly possible. What possible benefit is there to having retirement studies that get the numbers wildly wrong? That’s nuts. I mean, come on.

The problem today is that it doesn’t just make the Buy-and-Holders feel bad for people to learn about their original mistake, it makes them feel really, really, really bad for people to learn about the 42-year cover-up. In another year, it will be a 43-year cover-up. Then a 44-year cover-up. It can never get better. It can only get worse. I believe that the error should have been corrected as soon as it was discovered (in 1981). Given that 42 years have already passed, it should be corrected by the close of business today. Continuing the cover-up hurts each and every one of us and helps absolutely no one.

Bernstein did a wonderful thing by reporting the safe withdrawal rate accurately in his hook. But that obviiously wasn’t enough to get the job done. It was his fear of what you Goons would do to him if he did honest work in this field that caused him to keep it zipped when the discussions turned up at the Bogleheads Forum. We all need to pull together and support each other when you Goons attack us and then the problem is solved. Then Bernstein would feel better and I would feel better and Wade Pfau would feel better and Larry Swedroe would feel better and Bill Shultheis would feel better and on and on and on. It’s a win/win/win/win/win.

If we are not going to permit people to discuss the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research, we should shut down all of the peer-reviewed journals. Those journals still exist. That signals to me that as a nation of people we still care what the peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing works, no matter how afraid we are of what you Goons will do to us if we post honestly. I think that the current state of play is an unstable situation. We can’t have peer-reviewed journals and not permit people to discuss what we learn from reading what is published in them. I believe that we may all come to the realization that we need to open every site to honest posting in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I sure hope that that happens. We’ll see, you know?

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob