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 crash is here!

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/02/us-futures-move-lower-as-investors-worry-about-rising-yields.html

Call up The New York Times. Get that article on the front page. The checks should come rolling in and you will have your $500 million.

Do you think that the risk of seeing a price crash is greater when stocks are priced at two times fair value than they are when stocks are priced at fair value?

I do.

If that’s so, then there is a price attached to every price increase that takes place at a time when stocks are already overpriced. The price increase leads to a bigger number on the portfolio statement. But the increased risk diminishes the value proposition for stocks on a going-forward basis. The pros and cons of such price increases cancel each other out, meaning that price increases that take place at times of overvaluation are not real. They are pretend.

It makes a difference, If an aspiring early retiree ignored what the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about pretend price increases, he would use a 4 percent safe withdrawal rate to plan a retirement planned to begin on Jan. 1 2000. If he took the 36 years of peer-reviewed research into consideration, he would use a safe withdrawal rate of 1.6 percent for his planning. Getting the numbers right in retirement planning makes a difference.

The promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies always leads to stock crashes. There has never been one exception in the history of stock investing. Stock crashes hurt people in very serious ways. It’s not for me. I was a Buy-and-Holder in the days when I believed that claim that Buy-and-Hold is rooted in the peer-reviewed research. When I learned that that is not so, I moved on.

I don’t laugh about causing stock crashes. I see nothing funny about them. Your behavior tells the tale. Buy-and-Hold is rooted in investor emotion, not peer-reviewed research. It is investor emotion that has been making stocks a risky asset class since the first stock market opened for business. The job of an investment adviser is to help people rein in their emotions, not to encourage them to give their emotions free rein.

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:

“One, you don’t mention that the risk associated with owning stocks increases when valuations increase. ”

There is risk in anything you invest in. Look at the risk you took by avoiding stock. You took the biggest financial beating of anyone I know. That’s why we diversify and also rebalance. No one has a crystal ball. Perhaps you should follow what Shiller says instead of what you want him to say. Your misinterpretations have put you in the tough spot you find yourself in.

Do you think that the risk of investing in stocks is static or variable, Anonymous?

That’s the entire dispute.

If the market is efficient, stock investing risk is static and Buy-and-Hold is the ideal strategy.

If valuations affect long-term returns, stock investing risk is variable and any investor who refuses to adjust his stock allocation in response to big swings in stock prices is letting his risk profile go haywire as a consequence.

Do you think that you should be keeping your risk profile roughly stable over time or do you not? If you follow a Buy-and-Hold strategy, it’s not possible to keep it stable (presuming that the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research is legitimate research).

And, if risk is variable, it is certainly not possible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate accurately without taking into consideration the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.

We are not arguing over whether there is risk in anything you invest in or not. We are arguing over whether the risk associated with one particular asset class — stocks — is static or variable. There is 36 years of peer-reviewed research showing that it is variable. I believe that that research is legitimate. So I am not willing to pretend to believe that the risk associated with stock investing is static.

Does that help?

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:

It is a load of crap saying that Shiller is holding back. He has pointed out why you should not be using CAPE for marketing timing.

Secondly, it is crystal clear that people, such as yourself, that pulled out of stocks have missed out on the huge gains we have seen in the market. You keep telling us to wait for the crash and your predictions, including those that you made on this site have failed to materialize.

Shiller has never put forward a single word suggesting that investors should not be using CAPE to practice effective long-term timing. He has said that he does not believe that “timing” works. Most people think of “timing” as “short-term timing.” It’s true that short-term timing doesn’t work — there is over 50 years of peer-reviewed research showing that. But what about long-term timing?

If it is true that valuations affect long-term returns, as Shiller showed, then long-term timing MUST work. And, indeed, the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows that, for the entire history of the market, long-term timing always HAS worked. Why not encourage Shiller and lots of others to talk about LONG-TERM timing, the kind that works? Would it not benefit all of us to have a national debate on that question instead of on this silly one that was settled by the research over 50 years ago? It seems so to me.

Why do you use a phrase like “pulled out of stocks”? That sounds emotional to me. I didn’t “pull out” of stocks any more than I pulled out of a deal that was offered to me by a car dealer but that represented a poor choice for me given what my research into the market value of the car showed me. I elected to invest to advance my own self-interest. Other asset choices offered a stronger long-term value proposition than stocks because stocks were insanely overpriced. So I went with the better deal. Why does that bother you so much?

I didn’t “miss out” on any “huge gains.” Most of the gains that you are talking about were caused by overvaluation. There is now 36 years of peer-reviewed research showing that gains produced by overvaluation are temporary rather than lasting gains. I am investing for the long-term. So I am not concerned with “missing out” on temporary gains. The concept of “missing out” on temporary gains is an absurdity to a true long-term investor.

Most of my predictions have materialized. I said that TIPS were an amazing deal when they were offering a return of 4 percent real and indeed those TIPS have been beating stocks for 18 years now! At greatly reduced risk! If that’s failing on a prediction, I can only pray that I continue to fail more and more spectacularly on my predictions for many, many years to come. The annualized real return for stocks for the past 18 years has been 3.3 percent (that includes dividends). How many Buy-and-Holders predicted that?

The one prediction that I failed on is that I predicted that prices would return to fair-value (or lower) levels long ago. We have never seen prices remain this high (and dangerous!) for this long. It would have taken a crystal ball to have predicted that one given that we have never seen anything like it before.

I still believe that we will someday return to fair-value price levels. We always have before and I believe that we will this time too. I don’t even believe that the market will be able to continue to function indefinitely if we don’t eventually return to fair-value price levels. It is the purpose of the market to get the price right and I don’t see how the stock market can prove to be different than every other market that has ever existed in that regard (and it certainly never has been different for the 150 years of its existence for which we have good price records).

But we will have to watch things play out to find out for sure. Please mark me down as predicting once again that prices will probably fall to fair-value levels or lower within the next year or two or three while also noting that short-term price predictions have a very poor track record and that I don’t think that I am any better at making short-term price predictions than anyone else.

I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, my long-term Buy-and-Hold friend.

Rob the Poor Predictor

 

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

“scores of other critically important investment-related topics.”

And what would these “scores” of topics be?

This is an intelligent question.

It’s every single issue, Anonymous. The question of whether or not the market is efficient is fundamental. Everything else follows from that. If the market is efficient, then Buy-and-Hold is the ideal strategy, I certainly do not say different. But if valuations affect long-term returns, then it is emotion that drives stock price changes and Buy-and-Hold gets every single question it has ever addressed wrong. I don’t say intentionally. I believe that the Buy-and-Holders once sincerely believed that the market is efficient (and indeed I believe that millions sincerely believe this to this day). But if it is true that valuations affect long-term returns (I believe this strongly and there is 36 years of peer-reviewed research supporting me re this one), then there is zero chance that Buy-and-Hold could get even a single question right.

Everything that Buy-and-Hold says about risk management is wrong if it is true that valuations affect long-term returns. Everything that Buy-and-Hold says about retirement planning is wrong if it is true that valuations affect long-term returns. Everything that Buy-and-Hold says about asset allocation is wrong if it is true that valuations affect long-term returns.

If you get your starting premise wrong, you get everything wrong. I have often made the comparison to race relations. When people look at the fact that, in the 1950s, black people could not drink from the same water fountains as white people, they think it seems crazy. How could any person with a brain ever believe that that made sense? To understand what happened, you have to go back in history to when black people were slaves. They were not thought of as full humans. That’s how you come up with a rule that they cannot drink from the same water fountains as white people. Then you do away with the slavery thing, which is good. But if you don’t think through all the implications of the mistake that caused all the problems, you are still left with the crazy idea that blacks cannot drink out of the same water fountains as whites.

Fundamental mistakes have tremendous staying power because they don’t cause one thing to go wrong, they cause countless things to go wrong. And the more devastating a mistake is, the greater the reluctance is to admitting the mistake. In the investing case, we have thousands and thousands of wealthy and powerful people whose entire careers are rooted in the mistaken belief that the market is efficient. They do not want to admit their mistake. They do not, do not, do not. And they possess the power to destroy the career of anyone who dares to “cross” them by doing honest, research-based work in this field.

That’s why we are all living through an economic crisis today. Every single one of us is affected by the mistake. We all retire much later than we would if we had access to honest, research-based investing advice. And we all take on far more risk than we would need to take on if we all had access to honest research-based investing advice. But who is going to work up the courage to stand up to these Wall Street Con Men? They are powerful people. They don’t like to be crossed. They are used to getting their way. They have a lot of money at stake. They are worried that they will be going to prison for a long time if millions of middle-class investors learn how they have been lied to about what the peer-reviewed research in this field says. It’s a big mess, my friend.

This is why I say that we should all bend over backwards to show as much human charity as we can within the limits of the law to our Buy-and-Hold friends and to our Wall Street Con Men friends and to our Goon friends. They wouldn’t have gone down this road if they had known when they were starting out what we all learned when Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) 1981 research findings. Why not cut them all a generous piece of slack and thereby put our economic system and our political system on a much firmer footing? That benefits all of us, no? So I don’t see any downside.

But of course we do need to open every site on the internet to honest posting re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research. If we don’t do that, we see a Second Great Depression and there are no charitable words that are going to help our Wall Street Con Men friends at that point. The time for teaching millions of people what the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research says is now and, to do that in the age of the internet, we need to open every site on the internet to honest posting. I mean, come on.

The mistake that the Buy-and-Holders made affects every single question relating to investing. Buy-and-Hold is a numbers-based approach. The last 36 years of peer-reviewed research shows that the number that matters most (not by a little bit but by a very big bit) is the valuations number. Calculate numbers without taking into consideration the most important number of all (by a long shot) and all of your calculations are going to be in error. Huh? How does that help anybody?

The Buy-and-Holders should want to get the numbers right. That means that they should be in favor of opening every investing site on the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.

I hope that helps a small bit, my old 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:

Honest posting better come soon, before more retirements are ruined by this incredible bull market. Rob, what am I going to do with all this money?

You are being sarcastic, Anonymous. But I very much agree with the point that you are attributing to me. This is the difference between Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing, the difference between the peer-reviewed research that was available up to 1981 and the peer-reviewed research including that published from 1981 forward. The Buy-and-Holders believe that all gains are real, that all gains are caused by economic realities. The Valuation-Informed Indexers believe that gains that are caused by overvaluation are temporary in nature and disappear into nothingness in the long run. Since those gains are not real, you are better off not treating them as real. If you treat non-real gains as real, it becomes impossible for you to engage in effective financial planning.

The sarcastic tone reveals the lack of inner confidence that the gains are real. If you were 100 percent confident that the gains are real, nothing I said would worry you one iota and you would not even react to what I say. Buy you do react. You are troubled by the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research. Not enough to change your investing strategy. But enough to advance sarcastic comments on an internet blog. That’s not a good way to cope with your disquiet, in my assessment, Anonymous.

The better way is to discuss your uncertainty in a civil and reasoned way. That approach will eventually take you to one of two places. One is that you might end up no longer feeling the disquiet and having achieved a greater level of confidence in your strategy. Two is that you might give up your strategy. The venting of sarcasm doesn’t get you anywhere. It has kept you spinning in circles for 15 years now.

Anyway, I do indeed believe that more retirements are being ruined every day by this incredible bull market. It makes me sad. But I have done my bit and then some more on top of that and then some more on top of that. I will be back in teaching mode in the days following the next price crash, when being in teaching mode will again be producing good fruit. In the meantime, I will answer your questions if I think that I can put forward answers that will help you or someone else. And I will endeavor always to respond to you with a combination of complete honesty and complete love. And we will both just have to wait to see how that approach to things plays out in the long term.

My best and warmest wishes to you, in any event.

Bull-Market-Critic 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 are no two sides when it comes to learning how stock investing works in the real world.”

We already know how it works. It really is no mystery.

If you were confident in what you think you know, we never would have seen a death threat.

If we already knew everything that we will ever know about stock investing, we would not be handing out new Ph.D.’s every year. If we already knew everything that we will ever know about stock investing, there would be no journals publishing new peer-reviewed research. If we already knew everything that we will ever know about stock investing, investing discussion boards would not permit new posts — they would just advise any interested readers to read the posts put up until the day when every last thing about the subject became known.

You are kidding yourself. We don’t know it all today and we never will. Discussion boards are for learning. And, following the next price crash, we are going to unite as a nation and have you Goons sent to prison so that they can be used for that purpose once again.

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:

So, if a story comes out in The New York Times, giving Wade Pfau credit, but you get no recognition whatsoever and nothing ever happens to the goons, you would be okay with that.

I would be thrilled.

The only issue I have re you Goons is that I want the American people to overcome you. If there is a story in the New York Times giving Wade credit for Valuation-Informed Indexing, then there is a story in the New York Times on Valuation-Informed Indexing and we have overcome you. That’s victory for all of us.

If we all win, we all win. I’m one of us, you know? So, if we all win, I win. I can live with that.

The only way you Goons can win is if we all lose. Which would be unfortunate for you because, if we all lose, you lose.
‘
If our economic system collapses, we all lose. You Goons will probably be jumping up and down about that one because it will mean that I lose. Your hate blinds you to the fact that it means that you lose too.

We are all in this together, Anonymous. I can’t lose without you losing too. You can’t win without me winning too. There are no two sides when it comes to learning how stock investing works in the real world.

Fight harder, team-mate!

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 they have not emotionally taken in the knowledge that they possess so that they can make productive use of it. …The knowledge that they possess sits in their brains but they have not integrated it with their other thoughts”

And don’t you think it’s a wee bit presumptuous to claim you know the inner working of the minds of thousands of people you’ve never met, many of whom you agree are far more intelligent and experienced than you are?

I’m intelligent enough to see that there is no valuation adjustment in the retirement study posted at Greaney’s site, Anonymous. And I am intelligent enough to know that Shiller’s research showing that valuations affect long-term returns must be legitimate research or else he would mot have been awarded a Nobel prize for it.

I am intelligent enough to know that there is no place for death threats in discussions of stock investing. And that there is no place for demands for unjustified board bannings. And that there is no place for thousands of acts of defamation. And that there is no place for threats to get an academic researcher fired from his job.

If you have a better explanation for the events that we have seen transpire over the past 15 years, I would be happy to hear it. Neither you nor anyone else has even tried to put forward a better explanation. So, no, I don’t think it’s presumptuous at all. These events demand an explanation. And there is an explanation available in the psychological literature — cognitive dissonance. So that’s the one that I am going with until I hear something better.

You don’t have to accept my explanation if you don’t care to. You asked me a question and I gave you an honest response. My explanation is 100 percent sincere. I am as intelligent as I am, no more and no less. And that’s what I have come up with at this point in the proceedings. I look for new insights every day. So perhaps down the road a bit I will be able to add some detail to it.

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:

“Stocks are today priced at two times fair value.”

To be clear, this is a fact Wall Street is not aware of – otherwise they would immediately dump stocks. Is that fair to say?

You are making a great point here, Anonymous. If you would reflect on this point a bit, the entire matter would click for you.

Just about everybody on Wall Street is aware intellectually of what the P/E10 level is today. You see it mentioned all the time in articles. These people are obviously not dumb. So on an intellectual level, they know what they need to know.

But they have not emotionally taken in the knowledge that they possess so that they can make productive use of it. They rationalize away this knowledge that they possess. They tell themselves “oh, nobody knows when the crash is coming and I cannot afford to miss out on gains in the meantime” or whatever. The knowledge that they possess sits in their brains but they have not integrated it with their other thoughts on all of the various strategic questions and so it is as if the knowledge did not exist. It is passive knowledge. It is not being put to productive use.

It helps to remember what happened in the famous psychology experiment from the 1950s, the Asch experiment. People were put in a room and asked to identify which of two lines — a 12-inch line and an 18-inch line — were longer. Their brains possessed all the knowledge needed to supply the correct answer. It was obvious to them that the 18-inch line was longer. But the four people who were plants and who spoke before them all identified the 12-inch line as longer. This psychological reality neutralized the knowledge they possessed. Humans are social creatures. Evolution put something within us that tells us “don’t go against the tribe no matter what your brain tells you.” So they told the person conducting the experiment that they “thought” the 12-inch line was the longer one. Their emotions cancelled out the product of their mental processes.

All of these people on Wall Street “know” what it means to say that stocks are priced at two times fair value, Anonymous. But their emotions — their need not to defy the tribe — cancels out the effect of their mental processes. So they don’t give voice to what they “know.” They say: “timing doesn’t work” or repeat some other mind-numbing marketing slogan.

Prior to 1981, we were as a people largely ignorant of the effect of valuations on long-term returns. Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize because he published research in 1981 that in an intellectual sense dispelled that ignorance. Now we “know” how stock investing works. But it doesn’t do us any good to possess this “knowledge” if we cannot act on it. I am trying to take things to the next step, to win for us the ability to DISCUSS what we now know so that we can integrate it with our other thoughts on the subject of investing and thereby become able to make better strategic decisions.

That’s the story here. Do we begin to make collective use of the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field or do we elect to remain in effective ignorance and suffer the consequences of doing so? I of course say that we need to move forward, that all of our social norms favor open discussion of peer-reviewed research and that there is no way to hold back the tide of history re these matters indefinitely.

If we all talked openly about the overvaluation problem, the overvaluation problem would go away. Shiller SOLVED the one big problem of stock investing — the risk attached to it. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows that the risk that has always been associated with stock investing pretty much goes away once people are permitted to take the findings of the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research into consideration when making allocation decisions.

But people do need to be able to discuss these matters to be able to gain the power to overcome their unfortunate emotional inclination in favor of Get Rich Quick thinking. It is only by opening every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research that we can put those research findings to good use, that we can at last come to truly “know” what Shiller showed us 36 years ago. We need to enforce our laws against financial fraud. Those are good and necessary laws. They are a key part of the system that permits the American Experiment as a whole to work its magic.

Good question.

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:

It makes perfect sense. You despise Greaney. You just won’t say that, so you blindly attack his work.

Do you know how many Google hits there are out there for “rob bennett” “millions of busted retirements”? Lots. And the cause of all those busted retirements? The 4% rule. Now, magically, you have no problem with it. 4%, 4.5%, whatever, it’s all good, let’s just get along.

Today you say “Greaney has destroyed millions of middle-class lives with his insanely abusive behavior.” Which is absurd, but it clearly shows your problem with him is personal. Until someone says it’s personal. Then the problem is back to the 4% rule.

I don’t despise John as a person even a tiny bit. I had a lot of good times with the guy. I never would have had those times if he had not started that Retire Early board. When I was starting work on the book that became “Passion Saving,” I asked John to be my co-author. Why would I do that if I despised him? This claim makes no sense.

And it’s not right to say that I blindly attack his work. I reviewed his retirement study when he published it as a report at the Soapbox.com site. I gave it a five-star review. I felt a little funny about doing that because I knew at the time (but had not come out publicly and said so) that he got the numbers wrong in his study. I rationalized what I did on grounds that his study was a significant advance on the retirement literature that was in place before he came on the scene. I still believe that to be the case. Peter Lynch was the manager of the Magellan fund. He was a pretty big deal. Lynch said that the safe withdrawal rate was 7 percent. Greaney said it was 4 percent. Greaney was a lot closer to the mark than Lynch was. Not bad for a guy whose only qualifications to write about the subject were that he (like me) had figured out how to get his words posted to an internet site.

So I like the guy as a person and I admire his work.

But, yes, you are right that I believe that Greaney has caused millions of failed retirements. And that’s a big deal in a negative way jheust as the other stuff is a big deal in a positive way. What would you have me do, keep quiet about it? If Greaney were thinking clearly, he would want me to make that claim at every site on the internet. Once upon a time, he tried to help people achieve early retirements. If he knew that there was a study that was in the process of causing millions of failed retirements, he would want the flaws of that study exposed. The only reason why he doesn’t want that in this case is that the study in question has his name on it. That’s not a good reason.

We all make mistakes, Anonymous. I do. You do. Bogle does. Shiller does. Greaney does. Everybody does.

And we all live in communities. Different people have different sets of life experiences. And so they see things that we are not able to see ourselves. If they are our true friends, they help us to see our mistakes earlier than we would otherwise see them so that we can correct them sooner and cause less harm with them. That’s what I did with my friend John Greaney. I pointed out his mistake while also noting his good work, giving him an opportunity to correct the error before it caused him any significant embarrassment. And I did it in the most gracious way possible. I suggested that John and I work together developing what became The Retirement Risk Evaluator, the first safe-withdrawal-rate calculator that contains an adjustment for the valuations level that applied on the day the retirement began. John could have had his name on that calculator. His site could be the most popular and most important personal finance site on the internet today. He chose to get on this dark path that he is on today instead. I advised him against that choice. In the strongest language possible.

I like the guy. I appreciate his contributions. I 100 percent oppose the acts of self-destruction and the acts of destruction of millions of other middle-class people.

Do I have a problem with someone saying that the safe withdrawal rate is always 4 percent or always 4.5 percent or whatever? I have an INTELLECTUAL problem with it. I don’t believe it’s accurate. I believe that the 36 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns is legitimate research. So I believe that claims that the safe withdrawal rate is always the same number are false claims. False claims about a number that many, many people are using to plan their retirements do serious, serious damage in this world. I don’t like to see millions of people suffering failed retirements. So, yes, I make it my business to speak out about those false claims. I would like to see the entire world move on to Valuation-Informed Indexing, so that we would never again have to worry about people making those false claims or falling for those false claims and ruining their financial futures by doing so.

But none of that changes the reality that those false claims are being put forward by human beings and that human beings make mistakes from time to time and that the people making these false claims have also helped us all in very important ways and that they have earned our respect and affection by doing so. Am I a perfect being? I was a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. I now say that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage. I was either very, very wrong on the morning of May 13, 2002, or I am very, very wrong today. So I think it would be fair to say that it is a logical impossibility that I have gotten them all right. If I get some of them wrong, it might be a good practice for me to evidence a measure of charity toward the good and smart people whom I come to conclude are getting some of them wrong in this realm. You think?

I think Greaney is wrong. I think Bengen is wrong. I think that I have a responsibility to say so. Partly to myself. Partly to the millions of middle-class people who are in the process of seeing their lives destroyed. And partly to my friends Bill Bengen and John Greaney. So I say what I believe. And I offer precisely zero apologies for doing so. The one time during this saga where I did something wrong was in those three years from May 1999 through May 2002 when I did not possess the courage to speak out even though I suspected that the numbers in Greaney’s study were in error.

We all should be saying what we truly believe in the discussions that we hold on the internet about how stock investing works. That’s how we learn together. Learning together is a wonderful and amazing thing. It is the entire freakin’ purpose of our boards and blogs. If we truly have reached a point where our mistakes are so horrible to contemplate that we just cannot bear to permit honest discussions anymore, we should just shut down every investing discussion board and blog. Any discussion board or blog that does not permit honest posting is a corrupt enterprise. I want no part of such boards or blogs. Not this boy. I would be truly grateful if you could try to find somebody else.

The human race was not put on Planet Earth knowing everything there is to know about how stock investing works. We figured out some things over the years. By the time that 1981 came around, we knew a lot but we were missing one huge piece to the puzzle — it hadn’t yet clicked for us that valuations affect long-term returns. Now we know. We are all part of the lucky generation that happened to be walking the planet when the last big piece of the stock investing puzzle snapped into place. My job is to spread the word. Knowing for the first time how stock investing works in the real world helps every last human being on the planet. It is a win/win/win/win/win, with no possible downside. I am going to get the job done. I pledge you that much. As Elvis once put it, if you don’t believe I’m going , you can just count the days I’m gone.

My preference is to do this wonderful work in union with my many Buy-and-Hold friends, good and smart people for whom I feel much respect and affection and gratitude. But you know what? I don’t make decisions for my Buy-and-Hold friends. They have free will. They get to make their own decisions. I will accept with sadness the reality if they elect to follow a darker path. These sorts of things happen in this big old goofy world of ours from time to time, I have been told. I cannot force you to do anything that you do not care to do, Anonymous. I wish you well in all your travels, in any event.

Love is the answer. Re that one, I am 100 percent sure.

Take good care, man.

Rob