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 don’t believe in the efficient market (and neither do Buffett, Munger, etc) but I also don’t believe in market timing. Buy and hold is the best way for most investors. If a smart trader like Jim Cramer can make so many bad calls what more an ordinary person working at Walmart? You can avoid entire sectors during times of irrational exuberance but even Buffett and Munger have made mistakes. If the brightest investing minds in the planet screw up what makes you thi k the Walmart employees who get their news from memes on Facebook will do better?

That’s my sincere and honest take re: these matters.

Thanks for offering your sincere and honest take, Anonymous. That’s always a plus.

I believe that market timing is absolutely essential. I believe that Buy-and-Hold is a catastrophe.

I love what Buy-and-Hold was INTENDED to be. I designed Valuation-Informed Indexing to be what Buy-and-Hold was intended to be. Everything in Buy-and-Hold except for the thing about market timing not always being required has checked out. So I just incorporated everything in Buy-and-Hold into Valuation-Informed Indexing with the exception of the one big thing that has been discredited by 41 years of peer-reviewed research that was not available to the people who put together the Buy-and-Hold strategy at the time they were putting it together.

If Buy-and-Hold is so great, why do we today have a CAPE value of 30? I think that CAPE value tells the story of what the relentless promotion of a pure Get Rich Quick strategy (no market timing now!) does to all of us. Many of the people working at Walmart are not engaging in market timing today. I cannot guranty that they will if we open every site to honest posting. But I sincerely believe that we can get the percentage who do up a bit. It’s 10 percent now. I believe that we can get that up to 20 percent within six months with every site opened to honest posting re the last 21 years of peer-reviewed research. It will take much longer to get it up to 40 percent and then 80 percent. But all we can do is all we can do, you know? It certainly seems more likely that we will be able to persaude more people to practice market timing (price discipline!) by permitting honest posting than we will be keeping the ban on honest posting (which has yielded a CAPE value of 30!) in place. Call me madcap.

The brightest minds in investing can certainly screw up, That’s why so many of them have endorsed Buy-and-Hold! The Bennett/Pfau research shows that the biggest difficulty in stock investing is not lacking a sufficient amount of intellect, the biggest problem is becoming so emotional that you come to believe that market timing/price discipline might not be 100 percent required at all times. People who work at Walmart are just as much capable of falling into the Buy-and-Hold traps as the experts. This is why I say that we should open every site to honest posting. We can all works together to help each other to tune out the Buy-and-Hold noise and come over time to live richer and fuller and better lives than we ever imagined possible in the Buy-and-Hold Era. The 41 years of peer-reviewed research is there for us. All that we need to do as a nation of people is to give ourselves permission to talk about it so that we can obtain the benefits it promises.

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:

The information is out there.  It doesn’t have to be on every website.  Nothing is on every website.  Those that have any material amount of money in the market decide if and when they want to educate themselves on how to invest.  Investing is no different from an educational aspect vs any other topic.

It has to be on every web site. We all have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge residing within us and we need regular reminders of the dangers of Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick. You can look at today’s CAPE value if you want to get an idea of how well the current procedure works.

It’s not true that nothing is on every web site. It you went to any diabetes web site, there would be mention of the dangers of consuming too many sugars and cards. that’s basic, just as is the need always to engage in price discipline/market timing. Any web site on lung caner would mention the dangers of smoking.

Investing is completely different from any other field. People are repeatedly told that the thing that they must absolutely do (practice price discipline/market timing) might not be completely necessary. I mean, come on. In any other field, studies that gor the numbers wildly wrong would be promptly corrected. The 21-year cover-up of the error in the Greaney study is a national scandal.

If we are not going to permit the peer-reviewed research to be discussed, we should just shut down all the peer-reviewed journals. Leaving them open suggests to people that the findings of the peer-reviewed studies have some influence on the investment advice that is given to people.

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 have a funny feeling that, if she had participated in all of the discussions that I participated in and she saw how many good and intelligent people would like to see every internet site opened to honest posting, she would be with me 100 percent of the way.”

She was too busy raising two boys and working six different jobs to be participating on discussion boards.

It’s more than that. I wrote an article a few years back called “Buy-and-Hold Is Dangerous.” The idea behind that article was to tell the entire story in`one place. It was essentially an early verion of the book that I am hoping to complete soon. The book just adds more detail and depth. Boo did not read that article. I find that odd. I would think she would be interested enough to spend the 30 minutes or whatever it would take to read it. I don’t believe that she will read the book when it is finished. The story that I am telling affected her life in a big way. So I would intuitively think that she would read it. But I do not believe that she will. She rarely asks me how it is going.

My brother and I have a good relationship. I will be watching the Super Bowl with him. I don’t know the details of his personal financial situation. But I know that he is thinking about retirement in the not-too-distant future and I know that he has a good bit of money in stocks. If there is another Buy-and-Hold Crisis within the next year or two or three, that is going to have a huge impact on his plans. So I think we should be talking this stuff over. We have had a few conversations about it over the years. He accepts some of it but he certainly does not buy in 100 percent. Again, I find this strange. If what I say is so, it is going to have a huge impact on his life. I am obviously willing to spend as much time as it would take to go into it with him in great depth. But I take my signals from him as to whether he wants to talk about it or not. Generally, he does not. So I largely keep it zipped. Again, I doubt that he will read the book. He might. There’s a chance. But I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on it.

We had a strange conversation when I was at his house on the fourth of July. There was some sort of conversation about witchcraft and the irrationality of how it was dealt with historically. I mentioned the parallel to how we deal with stock investing today — that it is irrational not to discuss Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research at every web site. This got him a little agitated. He said something about how it doesn’t matter if people are irrational, that it should not be my concern. He’s worried about me. The comment came from a good place. I tried to explain that dealing with human irrationality is my life’s work, that that’s pretty much what journalists do, they bring things to light that people are keeping covered up so that people can live better lives. I see it as a wonderful, life-affirming thing to do. We dropped it because it was clear that we did not agree.

That’s the dynamic that is going on everywhere. Boo and I are divorced because she does not appreciate how big a deal this is and she doesn’t appreciate how big a deal it is because she has not lived through what I have lived through and she is not terribly interested in getting up to speed by reading my article or my book or whatever. I think that that general phenomenon is universal. People are not comfortable with the lies that we tell each other about stock investing. I think that people know on some level of consciousness that they are lies but they don’t want to have to face that realty because recognition of the lies would make the irrational exuberance disappear and they can’t stand that throught. I see it as an urgent piece of business to expose the lies because that’s what journalists do. Most people are not journalists. So they just cannot see why I don’t let it go.

I have engaged in a small amount of dating since the divorce. I have seen this phenomenon play out with women who I have gotten involved with. The subject of what I do obviously comes up. It is obviously weird that I have not had money coming in for such a long time. They don’t want to be rude to someone they are just getting to know and who they might generally like a little bit. So they have to come up with something to say. What I have heard several different women say is something to the effect of: “I don’t possess any expertise in financial theory.” It’s a polite way of changing the subject. It doesn’t take any particular expertise to appreciate what is going on. It is very basic, we have as a nation of people created a mountain of irrational exuberance and we want to be able to plan our financial lives as if it were real money. Why do these women say that? They could ask me for a longer explanation, I am obviously happy to provide it. They want to change the subject. They do not feel comfortable talking about this subject.

That’s the entire deal right there, There’s shame involved in the creation of irrational exuberance. We are all involved in it. We create irrational exuberance as a nation of people. Some of us are very active in doing so. Others play their part just by keeping their mouths shut about it. But this is a community project. That’s why we tolerate the behavior of you Goons. We enacted laws criminalizing a good bit of the Goon behvior because in a general sense we hate it. But when it comes to helping us create and maintain a mountain of irrational exuberance, most of us are willing to make an exception. That’s the dynamic.

I believe that we need to stop doing this. That’s my story. But most people have come to accept the creaation and maintenance of mountains of irrational exuberance. They cannot imagine a world in which portfolio values are reported honestly and accurately. That world seems like a pipe dream to most people. I see it as a better world for all of us and an easily attainable world. So I am making the case for permitting that world to grow rather than stomping it out every time someone like me works up the courage to make an honest statement about some aspect of the stock investing project.

Boo is a good person. She would have been 100 percent supportive of my work if it brought in money like all other forms of work that husbands choose for themselves to do. But the work that I chose for myself on the morning of May 13, 2002, is different. This work must be stomped out, in the minds of 10 percsent of the Buy-and-Hold population (the Goons). And the general population, while it is horrified by the tactics that you Goons employ to stomp out discussion of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research, is not inclined to do too much about it. The general population (the Normals) is opposed to the Goon behavior but tolerant of it because the general population is sympathetic to the Goon cause of keeping the mountain of irrational exuberance in place.

Telling me that you have discovered one more person who is fine with keeping the mountain of irrational exuberance doesnt impress me. I’ve seen it all with my own eyes. I am coming at things from a different perspective, the perspective of a journalists. Journalists see it as a good thing to expose corruption. The 41-year cover-up of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research findings is the most amazing example of corruption that I have ever come across. So I feel a great need to work to understand it better and then to share what I have learned with everyone who is affected by the massive act of corruption, which is all of the humans. That’s the conflict here. That’s the story. That’s what is going on.

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:

“Say that there is a 1 in 100 chance that I was right in what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002 — 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.”

I understand why you keep harping on about Greaney’s study not including a valuation adjustment.

Because it’s easy.

You always take the easy path.

The more difficult path is to try and explain why you think it should contain a valuation adjustment and persuade others that it should. You have failed miserably to do that and you have clearly given up even trying to

All of the wonderful fruits of the first 20 years of our discussions resulted from me working up the courage to put that amazing question on the table on the morning of May 13, 2002. I wouldn’t be 80 percent finished writing a book on how stock investing works in the real world if I had not asked that question. I wasn’t even terribly interested in the subject of stock invesitng at that time. I wouldn’t have produced the Bennett/Pfau research, research that I think can faily be described as the most important research published in this field in the last 30 years, had I not asked that question. I wouldn’t have the five unique calculators that exist at this site today had I not asked that question. As you pointed out just the other day, i knew that the Greaney study was wrong on the morning of May 13, 2002, but I didn’t know the accurate safe withdrsawal rate numbers at the time. Now we do. Because I asked that question.

What you are describing is the subject of investment analysis. Investment analysis is explaining to people why, despite that Get Rich Quick impulse that resides within them and tells them that it might not be necessary this one time for some magical, nystical reason, they always, always, always must practice market timing/price discipline. That’s the job. We will be talking about that until there are no more stock markets on the planet. That’s the entire deal.

The super short version is that we know that we must take valuxations into consideration because Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research shows us that we must. But Shiller’s research is really just the starting point. We are never going to complete all of the follow-up research that will continue to enhance our lives for many, many. many years to come, God willing. Market timing/price discipline brings rationality to stock investing. The question should be — why would anyone ever want to take rationality OUT of stock investing? That’s the crazy thing. OF COURSE you want to practice price discipline when buying stocks. You practice it when buying everything else you buy, do you not?

Shiller has described the intellectual leap from the finding that short-term price changes are unpredictable (University of Chicago Economics Professor Eugene Fama showed this in research published in the 1960s) to the Buy-and-Hold belief that the market sets prices properly as “one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economics.” Buy-and-Hold (at least the part about market timing not always being 100 percent required) was a MIsTAKE. The question you should be asking is why we would we not want to bring rationality to the stock investing project just as we bring it to every other human project? Because we live better lives when we bring rationality to the projects that appear before us.

There’s nothing easy or hard about it. It’s just something that you do when you are a human. You approach things rationally. The people who developed Buy-and-Hold made a mistake thinking that market timing might not be 100 percent requied (because of that awful Efficient Market thing, that some academics once believed in). Now it’s just a question of getting off the mistake track and getting on the rationality track, which is what works in every other field of human endeavor.

We all want the same thing. We all need to know how to invest in stocks effectively. There shouldn’t be any “controversy” over any of this. It’s natural that we all not take the same positions on every question. But there should not be any hostility. We should all want to learn as much as we possibly can as quickly as we possibly can.

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 think that Evidence is right re the Greaany study. But I’d like to hear Greaney say it. It makes everything more clear. And the more clear people get re all this stuff, the better off we all will be, in my sincere assessment. Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold lives in the dark. Call it out and it shrivels up and dies. No one makles a conscious and thoughtful and well-considered to destroy his hopes to achieve financial freedom as early in life as possible.”

Evidence has answered it, just like everyone else. One more time: IT DOESN’T NEED IT.
Now, why didn’t you get the burger flipping job instead of making your wife get 6 jobs to pay the bills?

Do you believe that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns is legitimate research?

If not, why not?

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 things get to the point where I need to flip burgers, I’ll do it. Things aren’t at that point. ”

Based on the comments from your ex-wife, it got way beyond that point. She had to take on 6 jobs.
“ Even you acknowledged in your famous post from late 2021 (my favorite Goon pose ever!) that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment. Has Greaney ever said that he agrees with you? Have you ever asked him? It seems to me that that would be a construtive thing to do. You said in your famous post that even Greaney himself agrees that the study lacks a valuation adjustment. But in 20 years I have never heard Greaney say that. Why do you think that is?”
As said thousands of times, it never needed an adjustment to begin with, just like my Tesla doesn’t need a microwave oven. You don’t have to agree with it, but why do you keep asking the question when we already gave you our answer over and over again?

You haven’t responded to the issue of whether the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment “over and over again.” It’s true that Evidence responded in his famous post from late 2021. But that was a breakthrough. The usual response in the 19 years before that was some form of abusiveness aimed at shutting the discussion down or changing the subject. I applaud Evidence for the breakthrough. That was super. I’d like to hear Greaney’s response to what Evidence said. Evidence says that Greaney agrees but hearing Evidence say it is not the same as hearing Greaney say it. Greaney is the author of the study. He should know whether it contains a valuation adjustment or not. I think it would be helpful if he went on the record with his position on that one.

Each time Evidence has stated correctly and helpfully that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment, I have asked him whether he believes that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns is legitimate research. He has never responsed to that question. You have responded with this thing about a Tesla not needing a microwave oven but that doesn’t tell us whether you believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research, which is the matter in dispute. If Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research, then Greaney’s study is in error. I believe that Shiller’s research is legitimate. So I am compelled to note the lack of a valuation adjustment in the Greaney study when the subject of safe withdrawwal rates turns up in discussions held on the internet. Does that not follow?

The reason why you talk about microwave ovens rather than respond to the question is that to answer the question makes the error in the Buy-and-Hold criticism of market timing (price discipline!) obvious. There is a lot at stake in these discussions. We humans all have a deep love for Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies residing within us. It’s Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold thinking that permits us to build imaginary mountains of irrational-exuberance-based wealth and to fool ourselves into believing that it would be prudent to leave our jobs many years earlier than what the peer-reviewed research shows would be prudent. Irrational exuberance is the fantasy and the “idea” that market timing/price discipline might not always be 100 percent required is the means to keeping the fantasy going for a time. The reason why there is a good bit of opposition to discussion of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research is that the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research is a fantasy killer. The last 41 years of peer-reviewed research reveals the realities so hated by Buy-and-Holders/Get Rich Quickers. I am a research guy. That’s why you hate me so much.

As a nation of people we do not hate reality. We are not super crazy about it. We love Buy-and-Hold. Today’s CAPE value shoews that. But as a nation of people we permitted Shiller to publish his research and we made his book a best-seller and we awarded Shiller a Nobel prize and we advanced thoudsands of posts during the first 20 years of The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Denate expressing a desire that honest posting be permitted at every site. As a nation of people we are conflicted. We love us some Get Rich Quick stock invevesting strategies but most of us possess at least a dim awareness of the dangers of going full Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold. The turning point will be when we insist that every discussion board and blog be opened to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research, without a single exception. At that point, there will be a counter to all the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold happy talk and those of us who want to work to keep stock prices at reasonable levels will at least have something to work with.

I think that will be an amazing day, a second Independence Day for the people of the United States. We will be gaining independence from the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge that resides within all of us and which has been holding us back since the first stock market opened for business (the Bennett/Pfau research shows that an investor can reduce the risk of stock investing by nearly 70 percent just by opening up to the need always to practice market timing/price discipline when buying stocks).

I think that Evidence is right re the Greaany study. But I’d like to hear Greaney say it. It makes everything more clear. And the more clear people get re all this stuff, the better off we all will be, in my sincere assessment. Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold lives in the dark. Call it out and it shrivels up and dies. No one makes a conscious and thoughtful and well-considered decision to destroy his hopes to achieve financial freedom as early in life as possible.

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:

Long term with more people putting more money into the market by payroll deduction it does make sense for valuations to go up. Then you have to consider the effects of globalization. America’s multinationals benefitted more from globalization than any single entity other than perhaps the Chinese Communist Party.

If the U.S. economy became more productive than it has been in the past, it could support a higher average long-term stock return than the 6.5 percent real that it has supported for the past 150 years. But some would say that the 20th Century was the American Century and that it is likely that the average long-term return will be a bit less in the future than what is has been in the past. That’s a judgment call for the individual investor to make.

Are you suggesting that Greaney is expecting U.S. productivity to take a leap large enough to pull the safe withdrawal rate up from 1.6 percent (a number that assumes that stocks will perform in the future at least somewhat as they have always performed in the past) to 4.0 percent for retirement beginning at the valuation level that applied in January 2000. That would be an amazing leap. If that’s the assumption, he should tell people that so that they know what assumptions they are buying into when they use the 4 percent number. He certainly shouldn’t say that 4 percent is “100 percent safe” without noting that the calculation is rooted in an assumption that many would consider pretty darn wild.

I don’t doubt that there would have been some who would have used the 4 percent number in their retirement plans even if he did say that. But I am certain that there would have been some who would have gone with a lower number if they knew that that was the assumption. I believe strongly that these sorts of things should be disclosed to people.

Personally, I am inclined to go with a number that assumes that stocks will continue to perform in the future somewhat as they have always performed in the past. Not because I know that that will happen. Because that strikes me as the most neutral option. To the extent possible, I like to take my personal subjectivity out of it. But I have zero problem with others doing otherwise. My problem is with the idea of people being sold the 4 percent number without being told of the assumptions that produced it. I don’t recall Greaney ever saying that his study was rooted in an assumption that productivity would be higher in the future than it has ever been in the past.

This points to another benefit of opening every site to honest posting. When studies are scrutinized from many different angles, we all come to a better understanding of how they were put together and we can then have more confidence in them. It’s our retirement money that we are talking about here. We should all want to heat as many different perspectives re these matters as possible, in my assessment. I get the willies when I see all perspectives other than the one held by the author of a study being suppressed.

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, in the last 20 years, all you have done is point out something that is not really an error (despite you ignoring what everyone has said) and that is it.  It takes you 20 years to keep repeating the same one-liner.  Really?  That is all you have managed to do?

Valuations matter. That’s it. That’s the entire story, Anonymous.

It’s a very, very, very, very important story.

Adding market timing/price discipline to the mix permits investors to employ rationality when buying stocks. Rationality is a weighing of pros and cons. It’s the consideration of stock prices (market timing) that permits a weighing of the pros and cons of buying stocks. Take that element out of it and you can fool yourself into believing that stocks always offer the same value` proposition. That’s how you get bull markets and then bear markets and then economic crises and then political unrest.

Valuations matter. Rationality matters. Market timing matters.

That’s it. That’s a lot.

Rob

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

“But he clearly knew that he had not included a valuation adjustment in the study and that there was good reason to believe that one was needed to get the numbers right. “

There is no need to include a valuation adjustment in a study that reports on past withdrawal rates (the withdrawal rates that survived are the withdrawal rates that survived, no need for any adjustment)

If you wish to estimate what withdrawal rates will survive in the future, or estimate the probability that they will survive, then you may wish to consider valuations or other factors.

There is no harm in letting people know that the Historical Surviving Withdrawal Rate is 4 percent. But most people planning retirements want to know the SAFE withdrawal rate. That’s why Greaney did not correct the error. He wanted to continue to mislead people into thinking that 4 percent was the SAFE withdrawal rate. People love thinking that the safe withdrawal rate is always the same number, In a world in which the safe withdrawal rate was always the same number, there would be no negative consequences that would follow from pumping irrational exubernce up to insane levels. What a world, you know? The perpetual-motion-machine approach to investment analysis.

Back in the real world, the safe withdrawal rate is a number that ranges from 1.6 percent to 9.0 percent, depending on the valuation ;level at the time of the retirement. Reporting the numbers accurately and honestly lets people see how dangerous it is to persuade millions of people that it is not always 100 percent necessary to engage in long-term market timing. “Forget” to engage in market timing and you are going to see a bull market. Have a bull market and you are going to have a bear market. Have a bear market and you are going to have an economic crisis. Have an economic crisis and millions of people are going to lose their jobs and we are going to see an incresse in political frictions.

All 100 percent unnecessary in a day when Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is available for all of us to discuss. So long as most investors are regularly engaging in market timing, you could never again see an out-of-control bull market. Stock prices are self-regulating in a world in which honest posting re the peer-reviewed research is permitted. High prices bring sales of stocks, which bring lower prices. It all works nicely so long as honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research is permitted at every site, without a single exception.

Yes?

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 short, you NEED the entire market to trade how you want it to trade in order for your timing scheme to work out, but you are broke because people won’t do what you say.  Got it.

I need the market to move in the direction of rationality (which is what price discipline is) for my choice to follow a rational investing strategy to pay off. That’s so.

It always has. We have had the market go to crazy price levels before. This is not the first time. It has ALWAYS returned to rationality/fair pricing.

If you reflect on it a bit, you wll see that that must always continue to be the reality. If people could just push stock prices to whatever they wanted them to be with no concern for the economic realities, no one would ever need to work again. We could just push stock prices up to 10 times their fair value and be done with it. That can’t possibly be the way it works. Believing in Buy-and-Hold is like believing in a perpetual motion machine. I mean, come on.

I do not “want” the stock market to behave in the manner that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research shows that it has always behaved. My personal desires have nothing to do with it. What I want is to discuss with millions of my fellow investors HOW IT IS, how the stock market has always behaved in the past. I believe that it is very much a live possibility that the way the market has always behaved in the past is the way that it will continue to behave in the future. The purpose of research is to show us all how it has always behaved. Without access to research (and the ability to discuss it on a daily basis), we have an inclination to get caught up in our Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold fantasies and bring on an ocean of human misery for millions of investors.

Shiller showed that humans are just as emotional when engaged in stock investing as they are when engaged in any of the other activities that they enage in. But he also showed that they are not entirely emotional. If they were, we could push prices up to where they are and not see them collapse in the following days. We could have thrilling bull markets that did not bring on frightening bear markets. Humans are highly emotional but they are also fully capable of some degree of rationality. The entire history of the stock market shows that.

The question on the table is — Should investment experts do everything in their power to push the emotionalism to the max (to create as much irrational exuberance as possibe) or should they mix in some discussion of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research so that the horrors of the Buy-and-Hold Crises are not quite as bad in the future as they have been in the past? I am a strong advocate of permitting discussion of the peer-reviewed research at every site. Depressions and Great Recessions hurt human beings in very serious ways. I have grown fond of a good number of the humans over time. Some of them are quite likeable when you get to know them.

Rob