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 no one is following VII.  Why don’t you post your own results.  We haven’t seen a financial update since 2005.  The only thing we know is that you said you needed to go back to work due to depleted savings.

Say that there is a 1 in 100 chance that what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002, — that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment — is accurate. I think that the odds are a lot better than 1 in 100. I would put it at a 99.99999 percent chance. But let’s say for purposes of discussion that it’s 1 in 100. If it is 1 in 100, we should be permitting honest posting re the peer-reviewed research at every site on the internet.

Greaney isn’t the only one who got retirement planning wrong. EVERY Buy-and-Holder got it wrong. Greaney’s mistake was that he didn’t appreciate the importance of market timing. He treated every retirement date as equal. If market timing didn’t work (that is, if the market were efficient), that would be correct. Stock investing risk would be stable, not variable. But of course that’s exactly what Shiller showed is not the case in his Nobel-prize-winning research.

Retirement planning matters. Given that all the Buy-and-Holders got it wrong (because Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research was not available in the days when the Buy-and-Hold strategy was being developed), we should be permitting honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research at every site on the internet.

My sincere take.

Rob

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

Thanks for confirming that 4% has always worked.  Meanwhile VII has never worked.

To show that something survived is not the same thing as showing that it is 100 percent safe. To show that something barely survived on a tiny number of occasions actually shows that it is not safe at all, that there is a very good chance that it will fail on the next occasions on which it is tried. People acknowledge these realities in every field of human endeavor outside of the investment advice field. There should be a 100 percent consensus today that it is an urgent piece of business for us as a nation to figure out why these realities are not acknowledged in the investment advice field as well.

Human rationality is a plus. It helps us make our way through life, We should give ourselves permission to make use of human rationality in the investment advice field. It’s not just about saying whatever it takes to turn a quick buck. It can’t be. The level of success that people achieve with their stock investments affects the extent to which they achieve their life goals. This stuff matters. It affects people’s lives.

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:

“ But in the long term market timing always works! ”

It has never worked for anyone, including you and that is why you are broke.

It’s been 20 years and never once have any of you Goons put forward an explanation of how market timing could ever not work. i presume that we agree that valuations affect long-term returns. So stock investing risk is not stable but variable (risk is greater when valuations are higher). So market timing is REQUIRED for any investor seeking to keep his risk profile constant over time. You’re able to imagine some circumstance in which it could be a bad thing to keep one’s risk profile constant. I am not.

That said, I naturally wish you all good things regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow, 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:

The people over at WadePfau’s firm have confirmed that Rob Bennett is wrong and his market timing strategy is one big scheme.

https://retirementresearcher.com/occams-cant-time-markets/

This is a good statement of the standard Buy-and-Hold line. It is well-written and every statement taken in isolation is accurate.

Of course, the problem is that, while the individual statements are accurate, the overall impression left by the article — that market timing is not always 100 percent required and in some circumstances might not even work — is entirely false and exceedingly dangerous.

This line gives away the game: “Unless you can predict the future (or are substantially better at extrapolating trends than pretty much anyone else), there’s no way to tell how the markets will move in the short to medium term. As you can imagine, this makes it incredibly difficult to successfully time the markets.”

IN THE SHORT TO MEDIUM TERM!

Yes, that’s so. But in the long term market timing always works! There’s 40 years of peer-reviewed research showing that. So why leave that part out? The answer is — If you tell people about that part, the entire Buy-and-Hold house of cards comes tumbling to the ground. There are lots of wealthy and powerful and well-connected people who do not want to see that happen., These people built well-paying careers learning about and then pushing the conventional wisdom of 1980 and, then, when Shiller revolutionized our understanding of how stock investing works in 1981, elected to pretend that he hadn’t done that and to continue pushing the same old Buy-and-Hold garbage, discredited or not.

The entire theme of the article is that investors are rational. And, if that were so, it would all hold up. Timing wouldn’t work and the safe withdrawal rate would always be the same number. But of course it is not so. Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning contribution was to show that there are times when investors become insanely irrational and that irrationality inevitably leads to the destruction of millions of lives. It has never turned out otherwise. There is not even any way that the rational human mind could ever imagine it turning out otherwise.

Irrational exuberance is dangerous, It is a poison., It is a cancer. There’s only one way to rein in irrational exuberance — with market timing, I think it would be fair to say that market timing is 70 percent of what it takes to achieve long-term investing success. If that’s the case, then 70 percent of the advice in this field should be advice aimed at encouraging market timing. That’s obviously not what we have today. Which explains why today’s CAPE value is a national scandal.

Is there a place for articles explaining for the 5,000th time why short-term timing doesn’t work? Sure. There are some who missed the first 4,999 iterations or who need a reminder. But there is no excuse for devoting as many words as this fellow devoted to explaining why short-term timing doesn’t work without devoting any to the point that is 50 times more important — that long-term market timing always works and is always 100 percent essential.

Please mark me down as PRO market timing. All the way. I see the prohibition on discussion of the 40 years of peer-reviewed research showing how important it is that all stock investors always practice market timing as the most important public policy issue facing the United States today.

My best and warmest 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:

So you now admit it was a discussion about gun safety.  Also, the thread was not about safe withdrawal rates to begin with.  You do know that people discuss a large variety of topics in casual conversations.

The entire board community was at the time engaged in discussion of my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002, in which I asked whether we should be taking valuations into consideration when calculating the safe withdrawal rate. There is no rational case that can be made for not doing so. That’s why the Buy-and-Holders desperately turned to discussions of gun safety. If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, they would feel no need to do things like that.

The battle is between reason and emotion. Research-based strategies can be defended without the use of gun safety discussions, Buy-and-Hold cannot.

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:

“But we have a case where it caused the retirement account to be reduced to $1 at the end of 30 years”

Because that is how the study was designed. They set out to find what would last 30 years. If you want to find out what would last 30 years and have some left over at the end you can do that.

I understand that that is the way the study was designed.

The problem is that you are making a big deal out of the fact that 4 percent always survived. It BARELY survived in a tiny number of high valuation tests. That doesn’t suggest safety. It suggests a lot of risk.

Having a huge amount in the portfolio at the end would suggest safety (and you have that for retirements starting at low or moderate valuation levels). If you had hundreds of tests and it always at least barely survived, that would suggest that it will probably survive the next time as well and you could reasonably call that “safe.” But bare survival in a tiny number of tests does not suggest safety. It suggests just the opposite. It is showing that going with a 4 percent withdrawal for a retirement starting from an insanely high valuation level is as risky as all get-out.

It MIGHT barely survive one more time. You cannot say with certainty that it will fail. But you cannot say that it is safe, For something to survive on a tiny number of occasions does not make it safe. The concepts of “survival” and “safety” are not at all the same. These studies are exercises in semantic trickery. It is a national scandal that they have not all been corrected in the 20 years since the error in them was exposed.

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 never before seen prices remain at out-of-control levels for so long.”

Which means your timing scheme failed.

Not so. The purpose of long-term timing is to keeps one’s risk profile constant over time. That aim is achieved on the day that the stock allocation change is made.

Irrational exuberance tricks people and hurts people. All that you are showing when you point out that we have seen more irrational exuberance in recent years is that more people have been tricked and more people have been hurt than ever before.

I believe that we would all be far better off if we had been permitting honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research all along.

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>I really don’t understand this statement. All you have done is repeated about a half dozen lines for the last 20 years. It probably took a total of 30 minutes to come up with that and then it was just hitting the repeat button. You really haven’t done a thing. Meanwhile, others have posted way more volumes of useful information, while holding down jobs and/or running businesses.</i>

The line that I have repeated thousands of times is: Valuations affect long-term returns. That’s what Shiller showed with his Nobel-prize-winning research, You are right that it is a very simple concept. But it is a single concept with far-reaching strategic implications. If valuations affect long-term returns, then stock investing risk is not stable but variable. That means that any investor seeking to stay the course in a meaningful way is REQUIRED to engage in market timing.

We didn’t always know that. There was a time when many smart and good people believed that market timing might not be absolutely necessary or even that there might be circumstances in which it would not be a good thing. There were about 15 years in which people believed that before Shiller published his Novel-prize-winning research “revolutionizing” (his word) the field. So we now have an ocean of material on stock investing that is outdated, discredited by the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research.

I am saying that we should open every internet site to honest posting That would permit us to get rid of all the outdated Buy-and-Hold stuff that is causing so much human misery and replaced it with true research-based stuff that HELPS people. Yes, the finding that market timing is required is only one thing, But it is a very, very big thing. It is like the finding that the earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around, It changes everything.

You own behavior shows that you appreciate on some level of consciousness the importance of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research. You have spent 20 years of your life blocking people’s ability to discuss and thereby learn about Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research, You wouldn’t do that if you didn’t think it was a big deal. It is a life-and-death matter to you that no one be permitted to discuss the new research, If they do, that will be the end of Buy-and-Hold. And you just can;t freakin’ stand it.

You say that people have put forward volumes of information, Lots of people have put forward lots of information, that’s for sure, And much of that information is good stuff considered in isolation. But none of that information is going to do us any good id our economic system collapses. And our relentless promotion of the Buy-and-Hold “strategy” has put is in danger of seeing our economic system collapse. We have to get the market timing thing right for any of the rest of it to amount to anything,

Market timing is the brakes on the car. It is market timing that keeps irrational exuberance (the enemy of all stock investors) in check, These other people are helping us to build a stronger engine and to have a better sound system and an amazing paint job and all the rest. But none of that good stuff counts for anything in a car without brakes. And there is 40 years of peer-reviewed research showing that market timing is the brakes on the car.

I am trying to give value to the good work that all of these other people are doing by opening every sire on the internet to honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research, Without market timing, none of the rest works, We all need to be taking valuations into consideration at all times. When calculating safe withdrawal rates. And when doing any other calculation relating to stock investing. If it is true that valuations affect long-term returns (and that the market is not efficient, as was believed to be the case when Buy-and-Hold was being developed) then it is a logical impossibility that the Buy-and_Holders could ever get a single calculation right. Not good.

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:

“Does the Greaney study contain a valuation adjustment or does it not. “

It does not. Everyone knows that. No one ever claimed otherwise. However you keep bringing it up to distract from the fact that you can’t answer questions that are posed to you.

I like it that you now say that “everyone” knows that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment (and thus is in error since there is 40 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns). Did “everyone” speak up about it on those occasions when Greaney would say that a 4 percent withdrawal is “100 percent safe” even at the sort of valuation levels that applied in the last 1990s. I don’t recall “everyone” doing that. I recall there being a big commotion when I first worked up the courage to do it on the morning of May 13, 2002.

Did “everyone” know that slavery was wrong in the days when it was legal?

Did “everyone” know that smoking was bad in the days before we put cancer warnings on cigarette packages?

Did “everyone” know that pollution was hurting out planet in the days before “Silent Spring” was published and kicked off the environmental movement?

Did “everyone” know that it was wrong that women couldn’t vote in the days when that was so.

Sometimes everyone knows something one one level of consciousness but also suppresses what they know because there is a social taboo against speaking up about truths that are inconvenient to people with power and wealth and connections.

Yes, everyone who cares to know whether or not the Greaney study is in error knows that it is, Nothing could be more obvious. Everyone who cares to know the truth about stock investing also knows on one level of consciousness that one asset class can not always be the best choice and that putting ourselves at risk of a huge price crash also puts us at risk of an economic crisis and that valuation-based market timing is always a good thing (how could it ever be a bad thing for stock investors to practice price discipline when making purchases?).

It’s one thing for everyone to know something, It’s something else for everyone to be able to talk about that something so that they can process the knowledge and put it to good use in the real world. Today’s CAPE value would not be 40 if we had opened every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research in this field, as I proposed on the afternoon of May 13, 2002.

My sincere take.

And my best and warmest wishes to you, Evidence.

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 Bengen study and the Trinity study also used the “what survived in the past” method. And not surprisingly came up with just about the same result.

If you want to see that methodology replaced you need to come up with a better way.

And convince others that your way is better.

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide if you have been successful.

I agree that Greaney employed essentially the same methodolology as the Trinity study and the Bengen study. Both of those studies are in error as well. As you note, they look at what survived in the past. That’s part of the story but not the entire story. You need to look at what survived in the past in similar conditions (that is, at similar valuation levels).

If someone drives a car 150 times and gets in accidents that nearly kill him but don’t quite do so on four of those occasions and those four occasions happen to be the four times he drove drunk, those experiences do not show that driving drunk is “100 percent safe.” What they show is that driving drunk is extremely dangerous.

That’what Greeaney’s study (and Trinity and Bengen) show re retirements using a 4 percent withdrawal rate for a retirement beginning when valuations are where they were at the top of the bubble. Someone who retired in 1929 and used a 4 percent withdrawal had only $1 left in his account at the end of 30 years. At times when valuations were reasonable, the portfolio grew in size. It was super, super safe. But retirements at a CAPE of 33 barely squeaked by. Barely squeaking by indicates risk, not safety. And of course the CAPE was far higher in 2000 than it was in 1929. So those retirements were even more risky than the 1929 ones that left the retiree with $1 in his account. Those were insanely risky retirement plans, not “100 percent safe” (Greaney’s words) ones.

I want to see that long discredited methodology replaced. And, of course, working with John Walter Russell and Wade Pfau and many others, I came up with a better one. There have been thousands of our fellow community members who have expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted so that people can learn about the better methodology. Numerous big-name publications, like the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, have noted that the 4 percent rule does not apply when valuations reach the levels that we saw at the top of the bubble and that apply today. Yet there are still people promoting this long-discredited methodology today. And there are still investors who are tricked into placing their confidence in it because they do not get to hear the criticisms of it that people like me would put forward if it were not for the criminal behavior (death threats, acts of extortion. etc.) that you Goons have employed to keep people from hearing the straight story.

I believe that this will change in the days following the next price crash. I think that people will be pissed when their “100 percent safe” retirements fail. We’ll see. You obviously would not have behaved in the manner in which you have behaved if you thought that the methodology employed by Greaney could convince people in a community in which honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research was permitted.

A con relies on deception to convince people. Something real can win support even in an environment in which challenges to its logic are permitted. Your own behavior shows that the Greaney study cannot survive challenges. You have hurt millions of people in very serious ways. I am confident that I will indeed be successful in the days following the next price crash, when the on-the-ground realities show people how dangerous it is to tolerate a con of this magnitude. Please mark me down as saying that Greaney should have corrected his study within 24 hours of learning of the error he made in it and that he never should have engaged in a single criminal act in “defense” of his “100 percent safe” retirement claims.

A failed retirement is a serious life setback.

My sincere take.

Here is a small sample of the comments that our fellow community members have advanced:

Investing Discussion Boards Ban Honest Posting on Valuations!

Rob