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 Shiller has never said he is holding back. It is just something that you are claiming.

It is something that I am claiming.

And it is something that I am documenting.

There are thousands and thousands of cases of this phenomenon reported on at my site.

Bogle said in his book that Reversion to the Mean is an “Iron Law” of stock investing. Yet he had not come out an stated in clear and firm terms that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies get the numbers wrong.

Bernstein said that investors would need to subtract 2 percentage points from the 4 percent number to get the correct safe withdrawal rate at the top of the bubble. But he never demanded that the studies be corrected or that honest posting on the safe-withdrawal-rate topic be permitted.

Wade Pfau said that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies are “dangerous” and that “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” But he also stopped reporting on the amazing peer-reviewed research that he co-authored with me and doesn’t speak out publicly about the abusive behavior that he reported to me and that he told me scared him.

It’s the same with Michael Kitces. And with Bill Shultheis. And with Larry Swedroe. And with Carl Richards. And on and on and on and on and on.

Bull markets are an emotional phenomenon. And it is the Buy-and-Hold tall tales that drive that emotion.

We will either open the entire internet to honest posting in the days following the next price crash or we will watch our economic system go down together. I am betting on the people of the United States. I think we will work up the courage to stand up to you Goons when we see how much human misery we have caused by failing to do so up until now. I think we are going to have Jack Bogle leading the way and that no one will be able to stand in our way once Bogle signs up with the good guys.

But we will have to wait to see how things play out, you know? I ain’t God. I could be wrong.

Yes?

Slightly Uncertain 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:

This makes no sense. Because stock crashes have always occurred you could say that just about anything creates them.

I think it makes perfect sense, Laugh.

It is the very purpose of a market to get prices right. That’s what markets DO.

Now, think what happens to the stock market when people become Buy-and-Holders and just flat-out REFUSE to consider price when making their purchases. The price just keeps going up and up and the long-term value proposition just keeps going down and down until we get into the sort of situation where we are today. The market wants to get the price back to fair-value levels. But the only way it can do it when purchasing decisions become as dysfunctional as they are today is to crash. Crashes hurt us all. I think we should all be doing what we can to avoid crashes, not to encourage them.

Buy-and-Hold is the ultimate crash-inducer. What causes crashes? The lack of price discipline. What is the key Buy-and-Hold principle? Don’t ever, ever, ever consider price when buying. Huh? What the f? In every market that exists, price is the most important thing that buyers need to keep in mind at all times. But what do the Wall Street Con Men tell us? They say that there’s is some mystical, magical secret sauce that they apply to the stock market so that price makes no difference when buying stocks — stocks are ALWAYS worth buying, say the people who sell stocks. Um — sure they are. Um — I believe that! No, really, I do! Really!

It’s a scam, Laugh. Price has mattered for the entire 150 years for which we have good records of stock prices. It will continue to matter for the next 150 million years. It is a logical impossibility that there could ever be a market in which price did not matter. That’s a marketing gimmick that the Wall Street Con Men use to separate us all from our money. It’s a lie that has made the Wall Street Con Men very rich indeed. But it is not working out so great for the millions of middle-class people who are seeing their hopes of being able to afford decent retirements some day destroyed. That is causing political frictions on both the left and the right. I OPPOSE that sort of thing. I love my country.

Get Rich Quick is not the answer, Laugh. Not in this boy’s sincere opinion. I wish you all good things. But I cannot say that I do have much confidence that all of the laws of stock investing that have applied since the beginning of time are going to be turned on their heads and that the pure Buy-and-Hold “strategy” is going to work for one or two long-term investors for the first time in history.

I guess we will all get to see how it plays out, right?

My best wishes to you in any event, my dear Buy-and-Hold Goon friend.

Research-Believing 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 don’t think that that fellow would be entering a safe retirement if he took a 4 percent withdrawal starting in January 2000.”

You don’t think. In other words, your opinion. Based on nothing but gut feel. Bill Bengen says year 2000 retirees are doing just fine with 4.5%. And he has the numbers to back it up.

The “dispute” is that you believe your gut feel opinion trumps the actual numbers of the acknowledged giant in this area of study. And that you think other people should also believe that.

Wade Pfau is a giant in the field of retirement planning. He was asked at his Reddit appearance whether he agreed that the safe withdrawal rate is always 4 percent. He said that that he does not believe that a 4 percent withdrawal is safe for a retirement beginning at today’s valuations.

I am not going by gut feel. I am going by 37 years of peer-reviewed research. If valuations affect long-term returns, then there is zero chance that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all valuation levels. It is a logical impossibility. Bill Bengen should be addressing that logical impossibility in his public statements. So should everyone else who works in this field. We need to launch a national debate on these sorts of questions. They affect every single person alive on the planet today (including non-investors).

Shiller has been awarded a Nobel prize. He is as much of a “giant” as you are ever going to get. Have you asked Shiller whether he believes that the safe withdrawal rate is the same at all valuation levels? Has Bengen asked him? Has Bogle asked him? If not, why not?

If I had attended that Bogleheads annual meeting, I would have asked Bogle whether he thought that high valuations can push the safe withdrawal rate below 4 percent. Did you ask that I be permitted to attend so that we all could hear Bogle’s response?

Bill Bernstein said in his book that, when valuations are as high as they were early in the 2000s, you need to subtract two points from the usual 4 percent to know the safe withdrawal rate for retirements beginning at that time. Is Bernstein a giant?

The safe withdrawal rate is the product of a mathematical calculation. There shouldn’t be all these different answers to the most basic of questions. The reason why there are different answers is that there are today two very different schools of academic thought as to how stock investing works. Buy-and-Hold is rooted in Fama’s research and Valuation-Informed Indexing is rooted in Shiller’s research and the two pieces of research say opposite things about how the stock market works. Fama says that the market is efficient. If that were so, the safe withdrawal rate would always be the same number. Shiller says that it is investor emotion that sets stock prices. If that is so, then the safe withdrawal rate varies according to how much emotion is present in the market price at any given point in time.

The differences in opinion are differences in fundamental starting-point premises. These differences cannot be resolved without extensive debate involving the participation of thousands of people from both points of view, ALL POSTING THEIR SINCERE THOUGHTS WITHOUT FEAR OF WHAT WILL BE DONE TO THEM AS THEIR “PUNISHMENT” FOR ADDRESSING THESE MATTERS SINCERELY AND THOUGHTFULLY. We have good ways of resolving these sorts of differences of opinion in this country. We need to let our system of justice work its magic. We need to begin enforcing our laws against financial fraud in a reasonable way.

These are my sincere thoughts re this terribly important matter in any event, my long-time Buy-and-Hold friend.

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 reason for the bad performance of stocks that Hulbert references in the article is because he chose a market peak as his starting point. As he said “But try telling that to the investor who was unlucky enough to invest a lump sum in the stock market in March 2000”.

But for the vast majority of investors that is mostly irrelevant.

I too invested in March 2000 with the S&P500 over 1500 and achieved the subsequent mediocre results.

But I also invested in October 1998 with the S&P500 below 1000 and the received mush better results

September 2002 at 800 and and October 2007 at 1500 (good and bad)

February 2009 at 735 and February 2015 at 2100 (again good and bad)

It was over 2800 in January and the current decline may be a blip or the start of a 50% correction.

I have actually benefited from all this market volatility. Through making regular purchases (about twice a month for almost all this period) I have been buying more shares when prices are low that I do when prices are high.
Also, because of re-balancing I sell shares as they rise and buy back in again when they fall.

Basing an article on the poor returns achieved from a market peak is just as misleading as basing an article on the great results achieved from a market low.

I like your comment, Evidence. It’s balanced.

There’s obviously something that we do not agree on. You don’t highlight our differences in the comment. And that’s fine. We don’t always need to be talking about our differences. From time to time, it’s helpful to note our common ground, which is considerable.

Most investors do not invest lump sums. The normal thing is that they invest during highs and during lows and during in-betweens and it all sort of balances out. I get that. I get that that’s a big reason for the appeal of Buy-and-Hold to millions of people.

I don’t have a problem with people making that point. It’s a legitimate point and it needs to be made. So that’s not an issue.

But I have a problem when Buy-and-Holders don’t want to hear the other point being made. The other point is that the value proposition of stocks is not constant; it changes with changes in valuations. I think that there are times when it is important that that point be made. I think that’s where we part company. It is my experience that it is when I make that point that frictions begin to evidence themselves.

I made that point in response to a comment from you a few days ago. I noted that an investor who calculated that he needed $60,000 to live on in retirement was nowhere close to being able to retire if he had a stock portfolio of $700,000 in January 1996. He was $800,000 short of what he needed for a safe retirement, according to the Greaney study and the other Buy-and-Hold studies. But by January 2000 he was good to go because stock prices increased by over 125 percent in those four years. If you adjust for valuations, he was still nowhere close to where he needed to be. If you do not adjust, he was “100 percent safe,” in Greaney’s words.

This is our point of disagreement. I don’t think that that fellow would be entering a safe retirement if he took a 4 percent withdrawal starting in January 2000. I think he would have been kidding himself. And I think that any adviser who told him that a 4 percent withdrawal was safe would be hurting him in a very serious way.

And it is not just retirements that are at issue here. People need to know the true, lasting value of their portfolios for all sorts of financial planning purposes. And most just do not know the correct numbers today. Most people view their portfolio statement numbers as reasonable approximations of the truth. Shiller’s research shows that they are not that. If valuations affect long-term returns, people need to divide today’s portfolio numbers by two to know their real portfolio values. That’s a big deal.

That’s the dispute. I don’t have a problem with people saying “look, most of us don’t invest lump sums, so the returns earned from the 2000 high are not completely relevant for all of us.” That’s a reasonable point to make. But we also need to be telling people “look, don’t count today’s portfolio numbers as real, having $500,000 in your portfolio when valuations are where they are today is nothing like having $500,000 in your portfolio at a time when stocks are selling at fair prices, it’s nothing even close to being the same.”

I want to help people get the numbers right so that they can engage in effective financial planning. That’s what this all comes down to. I don’t say that there aren’t different ways to look at things. Stocks are a great asset class and it is true that most people invest over a range of valuation levels and that thus the bad side of high valuations doesn’t hit them with full force when their entire investing experience is taken into consideration. But people do need to know that price increases have a negative side to them. That point is not made often enough, in my assessment. I think that we all need to be making that point more frequently and more effectively.

We don’t disagree too much (or perhaps not at all!) on the particular point that you made with this particular comment. But it is my strong sense that we still disagree on this other, broader point, and I think that that disagreement is no small thing, the dispute is over an important aspect of the stock investing experience.

I hope that all of that makes at least a small bit of sense to you.

Thanks for stopping by.

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 want everyone to think about how they are wrong, yet you don’t even consider that you are wrong. As such, your definition of “working together” is for you to be the teacher and everyone else are pupils.

Something that I have suggested in the past is that a disclaimer could be added to the bottom of my posts saying: “Rob has acknowledged that his views are minority views and that it is possible that he is wrong in everything that he says about stock investing. He has also noted that his only claim to expertise in this field is that he has figured out how to get his posts to appear on the internet. It is his view that anyone who invests in the way that Rob recommends solely because he recommends it is a darn fool.”

I don’t have a problem with a statement like that because every word of it is true. I don’t think that I am wrong, I think that I am right. But one of the problems with being wrong is that the person who is wrong doesn’t recognize that this is the case (if he did, he would change his views). So I don’t have any problem with letting people know that, despite my confidence in my ideas, there is always the possibility that those ideas are in error.

I would like to see the same attitude from the Buy-and-Holders. I acknowledge that they believe that they are right. I think that it would be a huge help if they would at least acknowledge the POSSIBILITY that they are not. I wouldn’t say that I want them to “think about how they are wrong,” I would say that I would like them to reflect on that POSSIBILITY. For so long as my Buy-and-Hold friends believe in Buy-and-Hold, they have both a right and a responsibility to let that belief govern their postings. But it wouldn’t hurt for them to now and again acknowledge that Fama and Shiller hold very different views on stock investing and yet both have been awarded Nobel prizes. There is not one school of academic thought re how stock investing works today, there are two.

If someone asks me a question and I respond, I suppose that it would be possible for someone reading the words to conclude that I sound like I am “teaching.” What I am trying to do is to respond to the question effectively. I obviously have spent years thinking about Valuation-Informed Indexing in great depth and from thousands of possible angles. So it would be fair to say that I know things about Valuation-Informed Indexing that most others do not. My aim in responding to questions is to help people out, not to make them feel inferior.

The ultimate question here is the question as to whether it is Shiller or Fama who is right. If Shiller is right, then my investigations have great value (that’s so even if they are wrong — investigations often lead us down life-affirming paths even when they do not begin with perfect knowledge). If Shiller is wrong, then all the stuff that I say is wrong too. I can acknowledge that if it makes people hearing the words feel less insulted. But I cannot say that I believe either that Shiller is wrong or that I am wrong even if that means that someone might get their feelings hurt that I am implicitly suggesting that I know something that not everyone else knows. Any time someone in the world puts up a post to a discussion board, he is suggesting that he knows something that not every other person in the world knows; otherwise, he wouldn’t go to the trouble.

As a society, we do not today know whether it is Shiller or Fama who is wrong. We know that one of them is wrong — they are saying opposite things. It seems to me that it is in everyone’s interest that we figure out which one of the two is right and which one of the two is wrong. The only way that we can do that is to engage in a national debate in which people from both sides of the controversy feel free to state their sincere beliefs as plainly and clearly and fully as possible.

The Buy-and-Holders are in the majority today. If they want people from the other side of the table to challenge their views (they should — it is by being challenged that we learn the weaknesses of our beliefs and thereby sharpen our thinking on a subject), they need to warmly invite challenges from all who feel inclined to advance them. The key to getting the process to work smoothly is for people from both sides of the table to evidence respect and affection for people on the other side of the table. It is possible for humans to disagree without being disagreeable.

Do you think that you are assuming the role of teacher and putting me in the role of pupil when you explain why you believe that Buy-and-Hold is a good strategy, Anonymous? I don’t think that’s your intent. I think your intent is to share something of value that you have learned over the years with others with an interest in the subject matter. That’s my intent when I tell you why I am so excited about Valuation-Informed Indexing. Yes, I think I have something of great value to share with you. But, no, there is no desire on my part to make you feel small.

I would like to be one of many teachers of Valuation-Informed Indexing participating in a spirit of friendship in communities also populated with many teachers of Buy-and-Hold. If that’s the spirit in which discussions are held, the truth will reveal itself over time. There is no need for any of us to force things to a quick conclusion. We all need to accept that for the time being there are two schools of academic thought re these matters and that it is natural that both schools of academic thought would be represented on all of our board and blog communities.

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’ve never seen anyone use so many words to say so little.

“Bogle COULD be wrong too.”

Bogle says you can’t time the market. And, no, he couldn’t be wrong. It’s impossible that he is wrong. If he was wrong, some market timer would have leveraged his can’t-miss scheme a hundred times over. He would be the richest guy in the world.

Your “long-term timing” canard is just laughable. Any time you actually pull the trigger on an investment change – Bingo – you just did it – that’s short-term! Which explains you being out of the market for 22 years. Your own Catch-22.

I like your statement about how all ACTIONS taken as part of the implementation of an investment strategy take place in the short term. That’s so. And I think this is what makes Valuation-Informed Indexing counter-intuitive to a lot of people.

The distinction between short-term timing and long-term timing is the entire deal. The mistake that the Buy-and-Holders made was to fail to see the importance of that distinction. When we all agree on the importance of that distinction, we will all be in a much better place.

Or so Rob Bennett, some fellow whose only claim to expertise in this field is that he figured out how to get his posts to appear on the internet, sincerely believes, you know?

This Rob Bennett individual might be WRONG. That’s the curve-ball. Yikes!

Hang in there, man.

Fallible 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 laws were broken, then file charges. Otherwise, you are just repeating lies.

It is all the people of the United States who use the internet to learn how stock investing works. So the crime is against all the people of the United States. So we all need to pull together to demand that charges by filed by the prosecutors who work for us.

That will happen. Did the people who were defrauded by Bernie Madoff insist that charges be filed before the fraud was exposed? They did not. Madoff’s investors referred to him as “Saint Bernie” in the days before they lost their retirement money. The fraud had been going on for a long time. But it was only when they saw their retirement funds disappear that charges were brought. It appears to me that it is going to go the same way with The Great Buy-and-Hold Con.

All who follow the peer-reviewed research have known since 1981 that valuations affect long-term returns. So in an intellectual sense the fraud was exposed in 1981 (except it wasn’t really fraud until it was exposed — until Shiller published his “revolutionary” research findings, Buy-and-Hold was a mistake, not a con). But people have not suffered devastating losses to this day. We have seen poor returns for 18 years running now as a consequence of the out-of-control bull of the late 1990s. But the full reality is that those following Buy-and-Hold strategies have not done poorly if you count what happened in the years before 2000 and even from 2000 forward the losses have not been devastating. That’s what most people look at, most people look at the numbers on their portfolio statement to see how their investment strategy is doing. So most people are not inclined to demand that criminal charges be brought today. That would probably change if honest posting were permitted and people could see what has been done to them and how the Buy-and-Holders have behaved to keep the cover-up going. But I think it would be fair to sat that you Goons have zero intention of permitting honest posting. So we are where we are.

The fraud is ongoing. If the market continues in the future to perform anything at all as it has always performed in the past, we will see the devastating losses in the next year or two or three. Is there some reason why we would not demand charges to be brought at that time? That’s sure what I expect to see happen. All of us who love our country should of course be doing what we can to have this massive act of financial fraud exposed as soon as possible. But there is only so much that humans can do. You Goons are pretty darn brutal in your abusiveness. I think it would be fair to say that no one who lives in the United States has seen an act of financial fraud this extensive. So it may be that we are going to need to wait a bit re the bringing of criminal charges. We can let people know that they are coming so that they can avoid putting posts up in “defense” of the Lindauerheads and the Greaney Goons so that the number who go to prison will be as small as possible given the circumstances that apply today. And we can do what we can to urge you Goons to come clean prior to the crash so that your own prison sentences might be shortened a bit. And then we need to let it go and accept what comes. No?

The bottom line is that the good news here is 50 times more good than the bad news here is bad. The last 37 years of peer-reviewed research is amazing, life-enhancing stuff. The fact that we are going to see a good number of our Goon friends sent to prison is a drag, to be sure. But the negative here hardly compares to the good we will see done for millions when we are able to tell people how to invest in ways that permit them to retire many years sooner while taking on only a fraction of the risk that they had to take on in the Buy-and-Hold Era. We have to take the bad with the good. We should do all that we can to keep the bad as limited as we can possibly make it. But we should not lose site of the full reality that the good news here is 50 times more good than the bad news here is bad.

Does that help at all?

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

If you invested a lump sum in stocks at the beginning of the bull/bear cycle (1982),”

Who is investing just in one lump sum? People are investing over many years while the market does up and down. We know in the long run the market will continue to grow.

This is all part of how you spin the data.

We agree that the market grows over time, Sammy. Historically, it grows by 6.5 percent real per year on average.

Where we differ is that you say that it is not possible to predict future returns (to time the market) and so you generally stay at the same stock allocation at all times. In contrast, I say that we CAN predict long-term returns to a high (but not perfect) degree of accuracy by looking at valuation levels. Thus, I say that the sensible thing is to go with a higher stock allocation at times of low valuations and with a lower stock allocation at times of high valuations.

Wade Pfau and I co-authored research a few years back that showed that an investor who goes with a 90 percent stock allocation when valuations are low, with a 60 percent stock allocation when valuations are moderate and with a 30 percent stock allocation when valuations are high will end up with far higher lifetime returns while taking on dramatically less risk. It’s been working that way for 150 years now. That’s as far back as we have good records of stock prices.

Those who follow a Buy-and-Hold strategy are not practicing price discipline when they buy stocks. There’s a big penalty to be paid for failing to practice price discipline when buying stocks, just as there is a big price to be paid for failing to practice price discipline when buying anything else. The tricky part is that with stocks it can take a long time for the price that is being paid to become evident. But there always is a big price to be paid for failing to exercise price discipline and there always is a big benefit to be realized for being willing to engage in long-term timing (price discipline).

Investors need to focus on their lifetime return, not on what is going on in the market at any one particular moment in time. Gaining a much higher lifetime return permits you to do all sorts of exciting things with your life that you would not be able to do if you followed a Buy-and-Hold strategy (like retiring early!). There is no downside.

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

Thanks for stopping by.

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 he will see the need to speak more clearly and forcefully re these matters in the days following the next price crash.”

Since you obviously understand nothing about human psychology, I will spell it out for you. If Shiller believed “long term timing works”, he wouldn’t wait till after a crash to say it. He’d be mocked for such unhelpful hindsight. Instead he would be saying it now, when valuations are extreme, so that when the crash came he would be a hero. But he’s not saying it. And he’s had ample opportunity. The obvious conclusion is that he doesn’t believe it.

You can sit and wait and ponder all you want. Shiller is 71 years old. He’s not going to change his tune to suit you. (Here’s where you say it will be interesting to see how it plays out, since you are also blind to the fact that it has already played out.)

We obviously disagree, Anonymous.

Why did I keep my mouth shut about the errors in Greaney’s study for three years?

I believe that evolution has instilled within us all a disinclination to break with the herd. We want to get along with others. We want to have friends. We want to be popular. We want to see people praising us and linking to us.

And it takes many years, in some cases decades, for the downsides of Buy-and-Hold to reveal themselves. So we rationalize. We tell ourselves stories that make it seem not so bad for us to keep our mouths shut. My rationalization was that the Greaney study was a big advance over what came before it (I still believe that to this day). My guess is that Shiller’s rationalization is that he can do more good saying things the way he does because at least he gets the message out, which would not be the case if he were banned at every site like I am. And, indeed, Shiller’s work has persuaded about 10 percent of the population. Perhaps he has gone about things in the right way. I don’t think so. But I could be wrong, no?

I don’t think it has played out. I see all the difference in the world between being in a situation where 100 percent of the evidence available to us shows that investors need to practice price discipline when buying stocks but in which the portfolio statements of millions don’t look so terrible to being in a situation where the peer-reviewed research still says what it has said for 36 years now but millions of people have lost hope that they ever will be able to retire because of the devastating losses they have suffered as a result of following a pure Get Rich Quick approach. I think we are all going to pull together and open every site on the internet to honest posting in the days following the next crash.

But then I thought that this would all be resolved within two or three days of my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002. The joke was obviously on me re that one, no? So it is at least theoretically possible that I will be proven wrong again. That’s why I say that we are just going to have to wait to see how it all plays out to know for certain.

I wish you the best of luck with it in any event.

Does that help at all?

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 Shiller isn’t making things clear, then he is acting like a goon, correct?

To a limited extent, yes, that is so.

Shiller has never put forward any death threats. So he hasn’t gone full Goon. But, yes, it would be better if he spoke clearly about the importance of the distinction between short-term timing (which never works) and long-term timing (which always works). Each time someone speaks clearly about this stuff, it makes it easier for lots of others who are trying to work up the courage to speak clearly. And each time someone hold backs from speaking clearly, it makes it harder for lots of others who are trying to work up the courage to speak clearly.

Bull markets are liar’s markets. A bull market is what you get when millions of investors all agree to tell lies to each other about the value of their stock portfolios. If we permitted honest posting at every site, there could never be another bull market. Stock prices are self-regulating so long as investors are aware of the benefits of lowering their stock allocation as the value of investing in stocks diminishes. We act as a society to keep a bull market going by banning honest posting. So long as people cannot gain access to honest reports of how stock investing works, a bull market can continue. So we impose harsh social punishments on those who attempt to speak honestly about the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in public places.

I don’t want to play that game, Anonymous. I played it once. I saw people get hurt. So I stopped. I don’t ever want to go back to playing that game.

Shiller plays the game today to some extent. He doesn’t put forward death threats. But he gives evasive answers when he is asked about market timing. He fails to make clear the distinction between short-term timing and long-term timing. He extends the bull market by doing that. He hurts people by doing that.

We all need to work up the courage to speak honestly about this stuff. Shiller could help us all by being more honest about this stuff in his public statements. I would like to see him do that. I urge him to do that.

I cannot force him, right? So what would you have me do? I have done everything that I can think of.

I believe that he will see the need to speak more clearly and forcefully re these matters in the days following the next price crash. So it will happen then. I wish it would happen today. I wish that Shiller would come out with a 100 percent clear statement by the end of business today.

But I cannot force it, can I? I am just going to have to exercise some patience.

Does all of that not sound at least roughly right?

Rob