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

Your only quibble with Greaney is the definition of “safe”. His definition for the purpose of his study is objective and precise. Your definition, near as anyone can tell, is subjective and squishy, and therefore unmeasurable. It boils down to “I don’t know what safe is, I only know that Greaney is wrong.” Which is useless hot air.

Perhaps your precise definition is in your book, which you said would be done by the end of the year. Yet another missed deadline?

My definition of “safe” is the dictionary definition of the word. I don’t consider my difference with Greaney to be a “quibble.’ People use retirement studies to plan retirements. A failed retirement is a serious life setback. We all should want to numbers reported in retirement studies to be accurate.

Gresney obviously doesn’t consider my objection to the methodology used in his study to be a “quibble.” He wouldn’t threaten to murder my loves ones over something he viewed as a quibble. He wouldn’t engage in extortion to silence an academic research who worked with me for 16 months and concluded from his research that “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” Greaney gets it that Valuation-Informed Indexing and Buy-and-Hold are very, very different models for understanding how stock investing works

The difference is that one is a pure Get Rich Quick approach and the other is the first true research-based model. Buy-and-Hold treats irrational exuberance as if it were something real, something that you could use to finance a retirement. Valuation-Informed Indexing treats irrational exuberance as empty air and counts economic-based gains as something real.

That’s a very big difference. The reason why many Buy-and-Holders get so upset when someone cites the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is that spreading knowledge of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research to every investor on the planet will cause the Buy-and-Hold house of cards to tumble to the ground. I see that as a very good thing. Greaney wants to maintain confidence in Buy-and-Hold. Greaney and I are working at cross purposes.

I consider us friends. I had a lot of good times with Greaney in the days prior to May 13, 2002. And I believe that his study caused a lot of people at the Retire Early board to take lower withdrawal rates than what they would have taken if he had not prepared the study. But once it became clear that I was not buying into the core Buy-and-Hold dogma that market timing is not always 100 percent required for every investor, he could see that we were working at cross purposes. The fact that thousands of our community members reacted positively to what I said freaked him out completely.

I have fond feelings for the guy. But I do not believe to this day that his retirement study contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. I didn’t believe that on the morning of May 13, 2002. I really, really, really don’t believe it after seeing the past 20 years of behavior of Greaney and his Goon pals. Buy-and-Hold is rooted in emotion. The “idea” that irrational exuberance gains are real is the product of an emotional Get Rich Quick impulse, nothing more. Buy-and-Hold is what sells, Valuation-Informed Indexing is what works.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.

My best 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:

Shiller never said Greaney made an error.  Same for Evidence…….and when YOU have lost Evidence and everyone else. what does that tell you?

Shiller was kind enough to tell us all how stock investing works in the real world. He will be happy to spell it out for us and say the words “the safe withdrawal rate is not the same number at all valuation levels” once we as a society elect to apply the same laws that apply in every field other than the investment advice field in the investment advice field as well. There’s a reason why we have laws against death threats. They scare people. If you want to hear people like Shiller talk straight to you, stop engaging in behavior that scares them.

I applaud Evidence for acknowledging that Greaney got the number wrong in his study. I obviously disagree with his position that there is no need to correct the error. People use retirement studies to plan retirements. People who publish retirement studies need to correct them when they learn of errors that they made in them.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.

Buy-and-Hold! Science! Stay the Course! 100 Percent Safe! Peer-Reviewed Research!

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 believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research.”

When did Shiller say that Greaney made an error? Answer: Never

Your problem is that you don’t know how to interpret research, nor do you include all historical information in your definition of research.

He said that there’s a thing called “Irrational Exuberance.” It’s the title of his book.

If there’s a thing called irrational exuberance, the safe withdrawal rate cannot possibly be the same number at all times. It has to be a smaller number at times when there is a lot of irrational exuberance. Greaney’s retirement study says that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all times. Greaney’s study is in error.

Fair enough?

Even Evidence-Based Investing recently said that he does not believe that Greaney included a valuation adjustment in his study. Evidence is one of the generals in Greaney’s Goon Army. When you’ve lost 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:

Why doesn’t it bother you that you never say anything new?  What you do can easily be replaced by a bot.  Maybe it already has. Greaney suggested as much earlier this year. From now on you will be addressed as Rob-bot.

There’s no need to say anything new. The point that I have made repeatedly since the morning of May 13, 2002 — that we need to open every discussion board and blog to honest discussion of Shiller’s amazing Nobel-prize-winning research findings — is the most important public policy issue before our nation today. If irrational exuberance is a real thing, Shiller’s discovery of it is the most important advance in the history of personal finance.

The Buy-and-Holders do not account for irrational exuberance (they developed the Buy-and-Hold concept in the days before Shiller published his amazing research). That means that every calculation they have ever done has been in error (you can’t leave out an important factor and get any calculations right). Going from getting every calculation wrong to getting every calculation right is a big advance.

We have the opportunity before us for us all to begin living better and freer and richer lives just by working up the courage to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” And. once the entire internet is opened to honest posting re the past 40 years of research, we will have thousands of people participating in the effort to build the first true research-based model for understanding how stock investing works.

If I am successful in my effort to open every site to honest posting re the last 40 years of research, I will have done more good for the world than I could have reasonably expected to accomplish in 50 lifetimes. So it is my intent just to keep my eyes on the prize. I repeat one point over and over and over again because it is a very, very, very important. Irrational exuberance exists. It is real. It is not possible to make any accurate statement about how stock investing works without coming to terms with Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning findings.

My claim that we need to open every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research cannot repeated often enough. This one issue is more important than all other investment-related issues put together.

My sincere take.

And 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:

There is no evidence of that. We would have seen how all the information pertaining to you had existed and then was removed in total. What we all know is that it is impossible to erase everything from the internet as information is archived.

We don’t disagree on the point you are making here.

Forget the stuff about me. Shiller’s freakin’ book is in public libraries all over the country. The title of the book tells the story that needs to be told — <i>Irrational Exuberance.</i> If irrational exuberance exists, not all stock gains are real. If irrational exuberance exists, people need to adjust for the effect of irrational exuberance when determining the value of their holdings.

The information is out there. But it doesn’t click with people unless they hear regularly and are able to ask questions about it and are able to absorb it over time. That’s what is missing. People need to talk about this stuff for it to have a practical effect and the Buy-and-Holders do not want to see that happen. When somebody says “the safe withdrawal rate is always 4 percent” and no one in the room objects, the people hearing those words thing “it must be so — I didn’t hear anyone object.” The normal thing would be for people who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research to reject. The cover-up lies in the suppression of those kinds of statements. For so long as those kinds of statements are suppressed, support for Valuation-Informed Indexing will not grow beyond the 10 percent of the population that today believes in it. The cover-up will come to an end when people are no longer afraid to say what they believe and the new way of understanding how stock investing works will begin to spread naturally and freely.

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:

Gee Rob.  You must be right because you have such a massive investment portfolio and you are keynote speaker at every key investment meeting.  Just look at all the comments your followers post on this board.  How do you ever keep up with such a volume?  I guess managing that big pile of money, keeping up with all those speaking engagement and responding to all your fans leaves you no time to go out and get a job.

I posted honestly re what the past 40 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how to calculate the safe withdrawal rate, Anonymous. That’s worth something.

A bull market is a liar’s market. During a bull market, we all get together and say “I’ll pretend that stocks are worth such and such if you will pretend too but we all have to agree to slam anyone who dares to cross us by posting real numbers.” There is a price to be paid for telling the truth about stock investing during an insane bull market and I have paid that price. So be it, you know?

I believe that the day is coming when we will permit honest posting re the past 40 years of research at every discussion board and blog on the internet, without a single exception. I don’t think that we have any choice but to go there. The effects of not going there will just be too horrible, in the event that stocks continue to perform in the future at least somewhat as they always have in the past.

The core dispute is — Are stock investors 100 percent rational or are they at times highly emotional? All that we have seen from the Buy-and-Holders for 19 years now is an insane level of emotion. what does that tell us re the question of whether Shiller is right or not? You know what I think it tells us.

I did right by my fellow community members. That means something to me. So that’s what I did. If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, no one would be pressured to pretend that they believe in it. If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, the Buy-and-Holders would want people who had doubts about it to express their honest views so that they could hear those challenges and address them.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.

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:

Seriously, you have only made two points in 20 years:

1. Your opinion on Greaney making an error (he didn’t)
2. Using CAPE to time the market

Your posts are just twists to each of those. Yet you can’t take the time to go work a job because you have to repeat those two things every day? Nope, you just don’t want to work.

Heck, most people don’t want to work. We still do. We wait until we have enough saved to retire.

My real two points are:

1) Irrational exuberance is real; and

2) Many people don’t want to acknowledge that irrational exuberance is real at a time when stocks are insanely overpriced because doing so requires that they acknowledge that their nominal portfolio value is not even close to being accurate.

The two points you mention follow from Point One. If irrational exuberance is real, Greaney got the safe withdrawal rate number wrong because he failed to account for the effect of irrational exuberance. And, if irrational exuberance is real, long-term timing must always work because knowing the amount of irrational exuberance present in the market price at a given time tells you in advance how stocks will be performing over the long-term (because irrational exuberance always disappears in time, being rooted only in investor emotion and not economic realities).

Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research changes everything we once believed about how stock investing works. We should be exploring the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s amazing research findings at every discussion board and blog on the internet, without a single exception. We not only should permit honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research in this field, we should encourage it. Bringing an end to the ban on honest posting re the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research is the most important public policy issue before our nation today because the price crashes brought on by the relentless promotion of strategies that disdain market timing destabilize our economic and political systems. We need to pull together as a nation to overcome the criminal behavior of the various Buy-and-Hold Goon squads that have worked so hard to suppress discussion of the last 40 years of research.

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:

<em>You said before that you should get paid $500 million for your work. Now you are saying that you didn’t do the work and that you are merely a reporter of the work. If that is the case, you didn’t earn the $500 million</em>

Shiller is a giant. I certainly don’t say different. But what practical effect has his work had? The CAPE today is 39. That’s a good bit worse than the CAPE that brought on the Great Depression. Shiller’s work achieves nothing if people do not feel free to talk about it at every site on the internet. It is by engaging in discussion of it that we gain the ability to overcome the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold impulse that resides within all of us. The journalistic role here is very, very, very important. That’s why I soldier on. I have the weight of millions of retirements on my shoulders. I have no choice but to give this my best shot. My catch phrase is — I can do no more and I can do no less.

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’s not so. He was referring to a lot of the dogmatic stuff put forward by the Buy-and-Holders.”

Show a link.

You show a link supporting your claim that he was referring to people engaged in market timing.

The easy way to solve this is to open the entire internet to honest posting and ASK HIM. Buffett would be happy to respond to questions, just as Shiller would be, if it is made clear that the discussions were going to be civil and reasoned. That means no death threats, no demands for unjustified board bannings, no acts of defamation, no acts of extortion. Lot of people are willing to help if you show that you genuinely want to know the answers to the questions, not just to bully people into pretending that everything you have ever said on the subject of stock investing is correct.

Greaney hasn’t corrected the error in the retirement study posted at his web site to this day. What does that tell us about Buy-and-Hold? An investment expert who does not correct errors is an investment expert that you do not want to be paying attention to. My sincere take. Making errors is fine. The only people who never make mistakes are people who never do anything. But not correcting errors after they are brought to your attention is not even a tiny bit fine.

Dial the Goon stuff back about 4,000 notches and Buffett (and lots and lots of others) will he happy to answer any questions you have. We should have started engaging in productive discussions re these matters back on the afternoon of May 13, 2002. That is why I proposed it at the time.

Rob