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

Can you buy your groceries with your opinions on the peer-reviewed research?  How does that work when you go to check out?

Research-based Investing insights do not permit one to purchase groceries in the here and now. But they permit one to obtain more groceries over the course of an investing lifetime than one could hope to purchase going strictly by gut feel.

If you prefer to focus on the current moment over the long term, that’s your business. But lots of others have expressed an interest in doing well in the long term and those people have every right in the world to engage in the discussions that they want to engage in whether it makes you feel uncomfortable to hear people talking over what the research shows or not. It’s not your place to decide for them.

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 can spend it, it is real,

That says it all, Anonymous.

Irrational exuberance? What’s irrational exuberance?

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 millions of dollars and they are real. They are in my account and I can spend it at any time. Your dollars are not real. They are not in your account and only exist in your head. You won’t see one cent of your fantasy $500 million windfall. How do you know? Because you have nothing to spend.

These are important facts as it determines WHO has the problem. If I had a major issue come up (medical, repair to home, etc) I have the money to pay for it right now? Can you say the same? Of course not. You don’t have any money as you have admitted many times.

You’re saying that it is the numbers in an account that are the ultimate reality. I’m saying that the peer-reviewed research is a higher reality. The peer-reviewed research tells us whether we can trust the numbers in the account.

Shiller did something. I say that he showed us when we can trust the numbers in the account and when we cannot. You have never said what you believe Shiller showed that was so important that it merited a Nobel prize.

If it is so that we cannot trust the numbers in our account, that’s a big deal. I believe that it is so. So I believe that we need to come to terms with that. That’s why I advocate that we open every site on the internet to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. I don’t see this as being optional. I see it as being imperative. It’s not possible to have intelligent discussions about stock investing for so long as we don’t even know whether the amounts in our accounts are real or not.

We’ve got a tiger by the tale re this one!

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 millions of dollars and they are real. They are in my account and I can spend it at any time. Your dollars are not real. They are not in your account and only exist in your head. You won’t see one cent of your fantasy $500 million windfall. How do you know? Because you have nothing to spend.

These are important facts as it determines WHO has the problem. If I had a major issue come up (medical, repair to home, etc) I have the money to pay for it right now? Can you say the same? Of course not. You don’t have any money as you have admitted many times.

I agree that you can today spend the portion of your retirement account that is just irrational exuberance. I do not agree that that portion should be viewed as being the same as the portion that is not irrational exuberance.. The research shows that the irrational exuberance amounts will disappear in time and cannot be relied on.

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:

How hard is it to understand.  We have money.  You don’t.  That means we don’t have to do anything and you do.  Fix your own problems because we are not lifting a finger for you.

How much of the money you have is real and how much of it is pretend?

Do you even care to know?

That’s not my problem. That’s your problem. Fixing that problem would not be lifting a finger for me, it would be lifting a finger for you.

That’s what I believe, Anonymous. There are no two sides here. We are all on the same side.

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:

That market timing strategy of making you go broke is working out so great for you, Rob.  Way to go.  I guess I will have to just be miserable with having millions of dollars.

Today’s CAPE value signals an economic collapse that will cause an ocean of misery for millions of people. You certainly should be sad about that and about your role in making it a reality. And your millions won’t entirely protect you. When a nation of people suffers a Buy-and-Hold Crisis, no one is entirely spared.

I’d like to see us move beyond all that. I believe that we will get on a better path in days to come. We’ll see.

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:

Buy and Holders, by definition, continue to buy regardless of the daily swings of the stock market.  The failures you describe are clearly market timers.  These are the people that make emotional responses to the daily fluctuations and THEIR perception of the stock market valuation.  This is why the top 10% continue to consolidate ownership of stock.  You are a market timer, Rob.  You are broke.

Do Buy-and-Holders adjust their stock allocation in response to changes in valuations? That’s the question on the table, Anonymous. Do Buy-and-Holders Stay the Course in a meaningful way? Valuation-Informed Indexers do that. We engage in valuation-based market timing. That’s the only difference between Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing. VII is Buy-and-Hold updated to reflect the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.

It’s a big difference. As long as most investors are Staying the Course in a meaningful way, irrational exuberance, the cancer of the personal finance world, cannot get out of control. Stock prices are self-regulating so long as honest posting re the peer-reviewed research is permitted at every internet site. We all possess a sincere desire to invest effectively for the long run. But the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold impulse that resides within all of us, compromises our efforts. We need open discussion of the peer-reviewed research to strengthen our resolve.

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:

Yep. Market timers are selling there stock and just look at how everything has been consolidated at the top. Not surprising and it is not just stock. Take a look at real estate holdings and how that has changed over the years. You can decide if you want to follow those that have been successful or you can go with the 90% that struggle.

The people who you are calling “market timers” are just Buy-and-Holders who have lost confidence in their strategy. Buy-and-Hold is a confidence game. Excessive confidence causes prices to go to crazy high levels and excessive pessimism causes prices to go to crazy low levels.

The idea behind Valuation-Informed Indexing is to take the emotion out of the stock investing project. Those times of low prices are horror stories. We should all want to bring an end to them. To do that, we need to focus on what causes them. It’s high prices that cause the insane price drops. All that we need to do to stop the horrible losses is to stop the insane highs. That’s done with valuation-based market timing. Valuation-based market timing is the key to long-term investing success.

Irrational exuberance is a snare and a delusion, Anonymous. It is not real. It hurt us. We should all work together to to keep it from getting out of control. We should all work to keep the CAPE level at a reasonable levels.

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;

Just because you say something, it doesn’t make it true. Buy and hold has never failed and you cannot point to one single person with a buy and hold failure. To the opposite, you can’t point to even one single successful outcome with market timing. You are broke, Rob. You lost the game. You got everything wrong. Everyone abandoned you. You fail to acknowledge your long list of mistakes.

Buy-and-Hold fails every time there is a change in valuations and there is an investor who fails to change his stock allocation. I mean, come on.

Even the Buy-and-Holders say that investors should seek to “Stay the Course.” Well, an investor who stays at the same stock allocation when the CAPE value has changed is not exactly staying the course, is he?

The Buy-and-Holders got it right about staying the course and about following the peer-reviewed research. They got it wrong about there not being a need to practice valuation-based market timing. Price discipline is critical in all markets. We now have 44 years of peer-reviewed research showing that the stock market is not the sole exception to the common-sense rule.

Buy-and-Hold is a marketing gimmick. It’s what sells. Valuation-Informed Indexing (Buy-and-Hold updated to reflect what we’ve learned from the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research) is what works. I would permit honest posting re the peer-reviewed research at every site and see what happens.

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:

Buy and hold is based on research.  Market timing is all speculation as there has never been one successful outcome.  Why go on speculation when we all know what works and what has failed.

Buy-and-Hold is not based on research. Wade Pfau devoted 16 months of his life to the project of trying to find one iota of research showing that valuation-based market timing (price discipline!) is not always 100 percent required for every investor. He of course came up empty-handed. There of course is no such research. It is a logical impossibility that there could ever be any. It’s like looking for a perpetual motion machine.

Rob