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 haven’t brought in an income for the last 25+ years just so that you can continue to repeat your Greaney line…….to which Evidence answered yet again last week.

He didn’t answer. Evidence has acknowledged that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment. That’s what I believe as well.

Our only difference is that I say that the study needs to be corrected and Evidence does not say that. I have asked him on numerous occasions whether he believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns is legitimate research. On one or two occasions he said: “Sure.” But he has not as of today advanced a statement saying that the study needs to be corrected.

I believe that there should not be one dissenting voice re that one. People use retirement studies to plan retirements. I have seen it happen. There were people at the Mptley Fool board using the Greaney study to plan their retirement on nearly a daily basis.This is serious stuff.

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 buy and hold crisis because the vast majority of people do not own any/enough stock to impact their net worth.  When stocks crash, it mainly impacts the top 10% and the drop does not alter their ability to still pay their bills.  The median household net worth in America is just under $200K.  Regardless of what percentage of that amount is in stock, the typical household has a savings issue and not an investment issue.  Americans, on average have a problem of not owning enough stock (and other assets) instead of owning too much stock.

When we experience a Great Recession or a Great Depression, it affects everyone, stock holders and non-stock holders alike. I mean, come on.

I’m in favor of people owning more stock. That’s why i believe that posting about Valuation-Informed Indexing should be permitted at every site, without a single exception. Valuation-Informed Indexers enjoy greater lifetime returns because they OWN MORE STOCK over the course of their investing lifetimes. When you stick with the same stock allocation when prices reach insanely dangerous levels, you lose more in the inevitable price crash. Those who follow research-based strategies have more money to invest in stocks when they are available at reasonable and super reasonable prices.

Buy-and-Hold is a marketing gimmick. People would be better off being satisfied with the 6.5 percent real return that is supported by the economic realities. Going full Get Rich Quick in one’s thinking about how the stock market works always subtracts and never adds. It puts a few extra dollars in the pockets of our Wall Street Con Man friends at the cost of destroying millions of hard-working people’s lives. No wonder the Buy-and-Holders feel a need to suppress discussion of the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research in this field!

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:

I could sell my house and move to the country my wife was born in and actually see a rise in my standard of living. I can live in a first world district that’s cleaner and “nicer” than the best cities here. I consider this the first major milestone of my Financial Independence journey. My goal is to stay as healthy as I can and retire young enough, with millions more than I actually need, so that I can live a Millionaire Next Door lifestyle here and an obscenely wealthy lifestyle when it’s winter here. Sometimes I might go on a cruise, other times I’ll be living in my wife’s original country. If my kids choose to become MDs I’ll buy them a decent condo there and pay tuition, to schools that produce so many of our doctors that their courses are designed to prepare students for western board exams. Our kids have the advantage of dual nationality.

What would be the better way to achieve my financial goals? Valuation Informed Indexing or Buy and Hold? The answer is obvious.

Valuation-Informed Indexing would be better. Practicing price discipline when buying something always adds, it can never subtract. Anyone Who tells you different is working a con. The odds are good that he is working a con on himself as well. So it’s a funny sort of con. But it’s a con all the same. Price discipline is always a plus. It’s impossible to imagine any exceptions to that rule.

You describe a pretty darn appealing future for yourself. What if the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis puts us in the Second Great Depression and the Second Great Depression leads to World War III and your kids are drafted and killed in that war? Will you still say that it was a good thing that as a nation of people we adopted a ban on honest posting re Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing us all for the first time how stock investing works in the real world. I obviously pray that that doesn’t happen. But it is not an entirely far-fetched scenario. The Buy-and-Hold Crisis of 1929 played a role in bringing on World War II and lots of scary and tragic things happened in that war. Causing a collapse of our economic system because you want to experience the thrill ride of bull markets followed by bear markets followed by economic crises Is not such a hot idea, in my assessment.

There’s a level of your own consciousness in which you don’t think it’s such a hot idea either. If you feel deep down that it was a hot idea, you would be happy to permit honest posting about the research and you would enjoy making the best case possible for your favored “strategy.” I put the word between quote marks because Get Rich Quick thinkng is not a strategy, it is an emotional impulse. The battle here is a battle between reason and emotion. You want the investment advice field to be dominated by emotion because you like the thrill ride that Buy-and-Hold makes possible. I don’t like the thrill ride because of the great harm it does to human beings. I think that a return of 6.5 percent real is <I>just fine,</I> you can keep all the irrational exuberance garbage so far as I’,m concerned.

Where I’m coming from.

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 I definitely believe in practicing price discipline when buying them, just as I believe in practicing price discipline when buying anything else.”

Other investors also practice price discipline when selling stocks.

They refuse to sell stocks to Rob Bennett at the knock down prices he wants to pay, whenever much higher prices are available on the free market.

As with most investing topics you are incapable of seeing both sides of an argument.

You don’t realize that just as you are unwilling to pay more than a certain price for stocks, other investors are unwilling to accept less than a certain price for stocks.

Those willing to pay the market price for stocks will continue to participate in capital markets.

Those who are unwilling to pay the market price will sit on the sidelines for about 30 years.

The fair-value price for stocks is not a “knock-down price.” Yes, I would like to pay the fair-value price for the stocks I buy. Why wouldn’t I?

We can never know the market price for stocks until we permit the market to function properly. The market obviously cannot function properly until we open every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. Investors need to be able to act in their self-interest for the market to function properly. Investors cannot act in their self-interest for so long as there is an internet-wide ban on honest posting re the 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 just checked Empower. My net worth hit another all time high. Having over a million dollars in cash + assets and a house that’s mostly paid off (no rush, though, with a 2.5% rate) at the age of 40 is “good stuff on top of good stuff”.

It’s nice that you’re happy with your circumstances, Sensible. But I don’t believe for two seconds that you are truly confident about your strategy (Buy-and-Hold). If you were, you wouldn’t behave the way you do. People who are confidence in their strategy are okay with knowing that other people follow other strategies.

And that lack of confidence will have an effect on our entire nation somewhere down the road. It is the lack of confidence that is typical of people following Buy-and-Hold strategies that causes bear markets. Falling prices brings on feelings of panic among people who are trying to persuade themselves that irrational exuberance gains represent something real.

I think we would all be better off permitting honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. Our economic system would be more stable and so would our political system.

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:

“Trying to guess when prices will shift is a fool’s errand.”

Some people have been waiting since the mid 90s for stocks to be cheap enough (in their opinion) to buy.

If I was a lawyer who had been hired to make the case for Buy-and-Hold, that’s the point that I would be focusing on. Prices have remained high for a very long time. That’s a reason for not being extreme in one’s approach. I recommend that people never go below 30 percent stocks. That way you always participate at least to a small extent in crazy bull markets.

The other side of the story is that, if we had been permitting honest posting re the peer-reviewed research all along, we never could see prices remain so high for so long. That would be a far-better works than the one we have been living in during the Buy-and-Hold Era. We wouldn’t have the crazy roller coaster ride of bull markets followed by bear markets. But we would see a steady return of 6.5 percent real. Reasonable people should be able to agree that that’s plenty good enough. There’s no need for the irrational exuberance garbage except for the greed-based desire to turn a few extra bucks while destroying millions of lives.

There’s no justification for not permitting honest posting re safe withdrawal rates. People who believe in the loony tunes Buy-and-Hold retirement studies and hand in their resignations based on what they come to believe is “100 percent safe” can’t go back in time and reverse those decisions. We all should be speaking up in opposition to those “studies.”

Where I’m coming from.

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:

You love taking things out of context. There are undervalued stocks available today. You can seek those out, or just buy the index. Timing the market is a fool’s errand.

Trying to guess when prices will shift is a fool’s errand. We agree re that one. But adjusting your stock allocation to maintain the proper risk profile that you determined was right for you has been working since 1870, which is as far back as we have good records of stock prices. That’s price discipline. Its impossible for the rational human mind to imagine any circumstance in which that would stop working.

I’m skeptical of the idea of picking undervalued stocks. i think it’s possible. But I think it’s harder to pull off that most people realize. I think it’s better for the typical investor to go with a broad index fund. If you do that, higher valuations translate into greater risk and you need to lower your stock allocation as prices risk to keep your risk profile constant over time. If there were any research suggesting that valuation-based market timing is not always 100 percent required, you Goons would have put it forward years ago. I mean, give me a freakin’ break. Buy-and-Hold is a marketing gimmick.

Rob

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

How do you adjust for the homelessness that Valuation-Informed Indexers have been known to suffer from?

That comment is pure emotion, Sensible.

Either irrational exuberance is a thing or it is not. If it is a thing, it’s something that we should be taking into consideration in every discussion about stock investing in which we participate.

There’s 43 years of peer-reviewed research showing that it is very much a thing.

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:

You haven’t helped any community members.  In fact, anyone that followed your advice would have been in much worse financial shape as your advice has greatly lagged the market for the past 25+ years.

You’re not adjusting for the effect of irrational exuberance. You have made that same mistake in every comment you have advanced during the first 22 years of the discussions. That’s the mistake that Greaney made in his retirement study.

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:

What is described by as success by the person you reference in this post is that he/she has millions in retirement accounts/savings that can be spent on retirement needs. What you call success is your opinion on what one guy said. He much can the person with millions spend on retirement needs versus what you can spend with what you have. I think most of us value the ability to have money in our retirement vs trying to determine if your opinion is to be considered. Outcomes matter.

Lifetime outcomes matter. Not moment-in-time outcomes. If you believed that Buy-and-Hold had even a one-in-time chance of prevailing in an environment in which honest posting re the peer-reviewed research was permitted, we never would have seen a single abusive post, much less any of the criminal stuff.

Ignoring 43 years of peer-reviewed research is an emotional choice.

My sincere take.

Rob