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

A wise man once said” You go about it in a manner that is catastrophically unproductive by adding missionary zeal that inflates your importance and demeans others. The whole idea that there is a new school of Safe Withdrawal Rates reeks of personal aggrandizement.”

To bad you ignored him.

I think that there is a new school of safe withdrawal rate analysis. I believe that, if valuations affect long-term returns (as Shiller showed is the case with his Nobel-prize-winning research), then there is precisely zero chance that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all valuation levels. It is a number that CHANGES with changes in valuation levels. That’s something new that we learned by doing the research.

Of course we need to as a nation of people give ourselves permission to discuss the amazing how-to implications of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. The research doesn’t by its mere existence make us all better investors. We need to talk these things over amongst ourselves to enjoy the learning experience that to our good fortune is now available to us.

I ignored Scott Burns because I think he was wrong re that one. I believe that all of us who care about the future of our country should be doing everything in our power to get every discussion board and blog on the internet opened to honest posting re the past 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That would be a catastrophically productive thing to pull off, in my assessment.

My best 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:

We have discussed the made up death threats story and your error on Greaney’s work.  Why keep repeating it.

The thing that we should be talking about is the amazing how-to implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research findings. We should be talking about that on every internet site every day.

The intimidtion stuff comes up because the reality is that we are NOT talking about the how-to implications of Shiller’s research at every site. I noted that Greaney’s retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment and the Buy-and-Holders freaked out. Lots of people wanted to talk about the point that I had raised. We had hundreds of people saying: “Thanks, Rob, you have started the most important discussion in the history of the board!”. But some of the more dogmatic Buy-and-Holders were not so thrilled. They saw that, if as a community we acknowledged that the Greaney study was in error, the entire Buy-and-Hold house of cards would come tumbling to the ground. So they advanced all sorts of intimidation stuff to suppress this very important discussion.

What we have had for 20 years is not the Great Debate proper. What we have has is a Debate About Having a Debate. I believe that in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, we will develop the courage as a nation of people to move on to the debate proper. From that point forward, we will all live better lives in scores of different ways.

Does the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins or does it not? I believe that it does not. That is my sincere take re this terribkly important matter.

My best and warmest wishes to you, Anonymous.

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 you think your book will save the world, why are you wasting your time posting on the internet?

I always want to remain open to hearing thoughts coming from people on the other side of the table, Anonymous. I of course get it that you Goons have zero good intent. That became evident on the afternoon of May 13, 2002. But I absolutely believe that you yourselves follow Buy-and-Hold strategies. There’s a mountain of evidence supporting that conclusion. And I have never seen any evidence of a lack of intelligence on the Buy-and-Hold side. So we have smart people following a strategy that has been discredited by 41 years of peer-reviewed research. Huh? What the f?

It is my job to figure out that puzzle. Listening only to people who agree with me is not going to get me there. I wish that you Goons would be more honest and balanced in your comments. That would be a huge help. But I do not think it would be smart for me to refuse to interact with you at all. I call you out on the b.s. abusive stuff. I do that all the time. But I also listen closely for the grains of genuine insight mixed in to your comments from time to time. I feel that it’s worth wading through all the muck to get to those little nuggets of gold if capturing those nuggets of gold enhances my understanding of this unfortunate moment in U.S. history in some way.

I believe that my book will play a role in taking us all to a much, much better understanding of how stock investing works than we have ever possessed up until this time, that’s so. But the publication of the book is not going to do that by itself. For us as a nation to achieve that advance, we are going to have to give ourselves permisson to TALK about the book and of couese about the peer-reviewed research findings at the core of it. As a nation we are going to have to overcome the social taboo against acknowledging the importance of market timing (price discipline!) that has been holding us all back for 41 years now.

You Goons are the primary advocates of suppression of discussion of what the peer-reviewed research teaches us all. So I think it makes sense to listen to what you have to say when you are able to present it in a way that is not 100 percent abusive intimidation garbage. There are times when you are not able to quite meet that standard. But there are also times when you do.

I hope that helps at least a tiny bit.

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:

You are not really serious about writing a book.  If you were, you would have completed it a long time ago.

I’m serious.

It’s a very, very, very hard book to write. It’s not an intellectually difficult project. It’s difficult from an emotional standpoint. In the event that irrational exuberance is a real thing, the stock market is today overpriced by many trillions of dollars. Nearly half of the value of the stock market is imaginary. As the imaginary value disappears into the mist (it always does), we will be seeing millions of failed retirements, hundreds of thousands of business failues (because people can no longer afford to purchase the same amount of products and services) and millions of people losing their jobs (because of the business failures).

Each and every one of us will know on some level of consciousness that we contribited to the ocean of human misery that inevitably follows from a time-period when the Buy-and-Hold “strategy” becomes popular. So most of us very, very, very much do not want anyone talking about the realities of stock investing at even single internet site. Write a book that does a good job describing the realities and you are going to have a lot of your fellow humans more than a little upset with you.

If we are all going to further develop our understanding of this important subject, someone is going to have to write that book. As more people come to understand the realities, it will become easier and easier to make the case for research-based strategies. And we will all live better lives as a result. But it’s not an easy thing to do. It goes against the grain of human nature to do something that is going to piss off so many people.

That’s why we have not seen a book exploring the how-to implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research during the first 41 years followeing the publication of it. Even Shiller himself has elected to not talk about the all-important how-to implications.

I don’t want to see more human misery. So I am forcing myself to getting it all down on paper. I am not quite done. But I am grtting close. I am serious about this project and I will compete the book. Unless I get hit by a truck sometime within the next few months.

Please don’t tell Mel Limdauer or John Greaney. I don’t want to put any funny ideas into their heads.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, Anonymous.

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 you were right, you would be rich by now, while the rest of us would be broke. It never played out like you said it would.  You have admitted as such.

Things did not play out as I thought they would. This has been the worst bull market in U.S. history. Who could have possibly anticipated such a thing?

If we don’t open the entire internet to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research, we are just going to have to live through another bull market in days to come. Does that sound even a tiny bit appealing to you?

I think that I will become rich from this work in days to come. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is (by far) the greatest advance in the history of personal finance. That’s why it has been hard to pull off. Changes like that do not happen overnight.

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:

“ Following research-based strategies is a win/win/win/win.”

You haven’t had a win yet. Does that mean your strategy isn’t really research based?

It means that as a society we have not yet reached the point where we are able to be kind enough to ourselves to rein in our Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge. It’s my job to gather any material and insights that I can that will help to push us over the line in the days following the next price crash. That’s why I believe that I will receive a settlement payment of $500 million. Permitting honest postibng benefits everyone on the planet. And we are very close today. We need one person to stand up to you Goons and to continue posting honestly re the peer-reviewed research no matter what. I was elected. So I continue to do what I can do.

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:

You can work on a book and work a job.  There are plenty of hours in a day.  Millions of people work on more than one thing.  There is nothing special in your case.

There is something special. Say that stocks continue to perform in the future at least somewhat as they have always performed in the past. That means that we will be going to a CAPE of 8. From a CAPE of 30. That’s a loss of something in the neighborhood of 70 percent. Not for one person. For millions and millions of people. All at the same time. Collective losses that big will cause a severe economic contraction (because people will react to the huge losses by cutting back on spending). So we will see hundreds of thousands of businesses go under and millions of people thrown out of work. We will see political frictions dramatically exacerbated. Especially when people find out that all of this was 100 percent avoidable, that peer-reviewed research was published 41 years ago pointing us all to a better way but that they have never seen it discussed because these Buy-and-Hold goon squads will not permit it.

Would you say that people should contiue sitting at their desks and doing their ordinary jobs when there is a bomb threat in the building? I say “no,” they should take quick action. They should make the removal of the bomb threatening everyone’s life a top priority. Our economic system is at risk. Even our political system is at risk. Our way of life cannot continue unless we find some way to make people aware of what Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world. Opening the entire internet to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research is not just a nice idea. It is an absolute imperative. We need to achieve this goal by the afternoon of May 13, 2002, if not a good bit sooner. We are already far, far behind schedule.

Have you considerd what it would mean for all of us and our futures if it turns out that I was right in what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002 — that Greaney’s retirement study really does lack a valuation adjustment, just like I (and, in recent days, Evidence as well) said? Yikes! Holy moly! Yowsa! The proper thing to do when one learns that one got an important number wrong in a retirement study is to correct that darn study!

Do you see?

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:

“ And, yes, everyone agrees that a person needs to earn an income. I of course agree with that as well. But I am aware of the unusual circumstances that apply here.”

No there is nothing special. You can still waste your time doing whatever you want, yet there is still plenty of time to work a job as well. Funny how you won’t admit that.

This is the most important public policy issue in the United States today. Everyone who works in this field should make it their top priority until every site on the internet had been opened to honest postingt re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. It shouldn’t take 20 years to get an error corrected in a study that people use to plan their retirements. It shouldn’t take more thsn 20 hours.

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 watched moneyball.  There was no middle school kid trying to teach the pros.

That’s not how the pros saw it. The scouts portrayed in that movie were every bit as upset about the idea of people learning about what the science showed as our Wall Street Con Men friends. It’s a story as old as humankind itself. Everyone loves to enjoy the benefits of progress. But no one wants to be the one to tell the ones who made it rich pushing the old idea that a new and much better idea has come along. What we are living through today is the stuff that we need to work through so that we can all begin living better lives in days to come.

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:

We know what Bogle thought.  You do as well. We remember you calling Bogle a Con-man.  We remember you wanting to attend a Bogleheads meeting so that you could troll him.  You have no credentials.  You lack any formal education in the field.  You have a failed retirement.  It’s like some kid in middle school who thinks he should be able to teach the New York Yankees how to play baseball.

You need to watch MoneyBall.

Things change. People learn new things. Those who have the most invested in the old understanding are the least open to the new understanding.

Rob