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

Buy, hold and rebalance has had a track record of successful outcomes. VII has not. There is no contest, nor is there a debate. Having trouble understanding? It is like comparing a drug that has been used in patients for years showing successful patients versus a drug that hasn’t even reached experimental status.

I don”t agree, Anonymous.

Wade Pfau and I co-authored research that we had published in a peer-reviewed journal that shows that Valuation-Informed Indexing has been far superior to Buy-and-Hold for as far back as we have good records of stock prices. Investors who are open to practicing price discipline when they purchase stocks thereby reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. That ain’t nothing.

And you Goons realize how important the Bennett/Pfau research is. That’s why you threatened to get Wade fired from his job if he continued doing honest work in this field. If you thought that you could prevail in a reasoned debate, you never would have crossed the felony line. You did it because you believe that you are boxed in by the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. I mean, come on.

I don’t agree that the Buy-and-Hold drug has been successful given that it has brought on an economic crisis on each of the four times in U.S. history when it became popular. Success would be NOT causing an economic crisis. Call me madcap but that’s my sincere take.

And I don’t agree that Valuation-Informed Indexing has not reached experimental status. It might have been reasonable to have said that in 1980. But once Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research showing that valuations affect long-term returns was published in a peer-reviewed journal, Valuation-Informed Indexing became one of the two models for understanding how stock investing works that are respected by the academic community. And any doubts re that point were removed when Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize for his work in 2013.

The only thing holding us back today is the criminal behavior of you Goons. And I believe that we are going to see you sent to prison cells in the days following the next price crash. That one is going to go viral and change the world. After your prison sentence is announced, every investing site on the internet is going to be opened to honest posting re the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field and we will all live better lives from that point forward. Good for all of us, you know?

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, my dear Goon friend.

Non-Proven-Drug-Pushing 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:

Here is the bottom line. You don’t consider others opinions. You twist everything to suit a view. You call people names and threaten them.

This is my last post, so now you get to sit around with a permanently empty comments section, a website that has little to no traffic/visibility and exists only to help you cope with your poor decisions.

Good luck. You need it.

Okay, Anonymous.

I’ll miss the part of you that sometimes puts forward helpful words (but obviously not the other part).

And I sincerely wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.

Hang in there, man.

Name-Calling, Prison-Sentence-Threatening 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 want feedback.”

No you don’t. You just want to keep pushing your points.

You’re wrong, Anonymous.

I want both. I want feedback. AND I want to post honestly re my views on how stock investing works (or, as you put it, I want to push my points).

The two work together. I want feedback so that I can inform my thinking and challenge my current beliefs. Now — if I agree to post dishonestly (to push YOUR points because I am afraid of what you will do to me if I post honestly re my own views) then all of the informing stuff serves no good purpose. Say that I work so hard at listening to feedback that I become the best informed person in the world but that I agree to post dishonestly because I fear what you will do to me if I say something other than what you believe. Are my posts helpful? I say “no.” I say that my posts would be exceedingly unhelpful in those circumstances.

The whole discussion-board thing works ONLY if all community members feel 100 percent comfortable posting their sincere views. That’s why we have laws against financial fraud. We recognize as a society how dangerous your intimidation tactics are. So we adopted laws letting people know that we would send them to prison if they engaged in that sort of behavior. Good for us, you know?

I only wish that we had all been enforcing those laws going back to the morning of May 13, 2002. Then we would not have suffered that economic crisis in 2008 (we would have suffered a recession but things would not have gotten as out of control as they did) and we wouldn’t be looking forward to a follow-up in the next year or two or three. And you Goons wouldn’t be looking forward to long prison sentences. And the Motley Fool’s Retire Early board would today be the most successful investing board on the internet instead of a shell of what it once was.

Having those laws is a solid first step. But we need to ENFORCE those laws to get the job done.

My sincere take.

Point-Pushing 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 are literally a very sick man, Rob. Sick meaning ‘in need of medical attention and treatment’. I recently saw you posting at some obscure blog where you tried to ingratiate yourself to the blog-owner, exactly as you tried to do with Greaney on Motley Fool, exactly as you did Wade Pfau on Mstar or wherever you tracked him down at… it’s part of your standard M.O: it always begins with treacly praise and fawning bows and over the top accolades to the person you are targeting and ‘buttering-up’. But it never lasts long! You need to look up the meaning of the word obsequious in the dictionary. You are disgustingly and stupidly transparent with that behavior, and not one soul is ever taken in by your false flattery and ridiculous ‘me-too-isms’. You should consider why you are so fawning to people, only to later throw them ALL under the bus when they chose not to tout you and your bizarre brand of insanity. Todd Trelander? Mel Lindaur? Arrette? Promethius? Raddr? Motley Fool? Bogleheads? etc etc etc. I thank the stars that (to date at least) your particular brand of mental illness has not manifested itself into actual violence (as far as is known publicly). I do fear though, that your level of financial destitution and mental instability could easily lead you to eventually become unhinged enough to actually try to harm yourself or others. So, Please. Please. Get help, Rob. I genuinely hope you will, before your ongoing years-long decline eventually turns into a full blown mental health crisis. Think about it seriously. Talk it over with the wife. And/or a trusted physician. Get a mental health wellness referral. As you often ask: “What’s the downside?”

I love my Buy-and-Hold friends, Hopeful. None of the positive stuff that I say is fake. It is all 100 percent sincere. I view Bogle as a giant in this field. The only person I have learned more from is Shiller. To be second to Shiller is to be a giant in the field. Greaney helped a lot of people. He told people that the safe withdrawal rate was 4 percent. If he had not been saying that, I am confident that a lot of the posters at the old Motley Fool board would have been putting together retirement plans calling for a 7 percent withdrawal. So Greaney’s study was a plus in a very important sense. And on and on and on. We would not be where we are today if not for the good work of the Buy-and-Holders. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing had Buy-and-Hold not come before it. Valuation-informed Indexing is the fulfillment of the Buy-and-Hold dream, which was a very, very life-affirming dream indeed.

I love the Buy-and-Holders. And one of the things that I most love about them is that they argue that investors should use the peer-reviewed research in this field as guidance on how to invest effectively for the long run. It’s because I believe in that Buy-and-Hold idea that I believe that we should open every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. On safe withdrawal rates and on scores of other critically important investment-related topics as well.

Does all of that not make perfect sense, my dear Goon friend?

Nearly Unhinged 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:

Forgive me for doubting you, but your record is not that great in this area. Take this link for example:

http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2009/01/22/my-e-mail-to-the-virginia-police-re-the-campaign-of-terror-against-our-board-communities/

With the first link, you appear to make the claim that this is a threat against you. Yet, when we open the link and read the post as well as responding posts, we see that this is an ongoing discussion of board members discussion firearms for home protection. There is even a section at the end of the first post reminding people of gun safety rules.

Certainly, you have something substantive to support your ongoing claim of death threats. If this is all you have, then it is an outright lie.

Are you okay with letting the members of your jury make that call, Anonymous? That’s how it works in our system.

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:

“When I saw 200 Buy-and-Holders endorse Greaney’s death threats, I knew that it was garbage. ”

If you can provide me with a link to the actual death threat the the 200 endorsements, I will personally apologize to you on this board. I will then call Wade Pfau and tell him that he should start working with you again. Next, I will contact the New York Times and tell them to feature you on the front page. Lastly, I will change my entire investment strategy to that of VII.

Okay, so let’s see the link to the actual death threat. Unless there is no death threat. If you don’t provide a link, I can only assume that there never was a death threat and then you owe everyone out there an apology for lying about it all these years.

I will wait for your response.

I could provide a link. But there is nothing that I can do to hold you to the promises that you make above. If you were a person who kept his promises, we never would have seen the death threats in the first place. You were required to promise to follow the published rules of the Motley Fool site before you were permitted to post there.

I have provided links in the past and it never accomplished anything. I need others to help me insure that there are consequences that follow when you engage in criminal behavior. I have not been able to get others to do that for 17 years now. The trouble is that many people want to believe that the numbers on their portfolio statement are real and rationalize away your behavior. They tell themselves that it is not a big deal. Others do not like the abusive behavior and would like to be able to participate in civil discussions of the last 38 years of research. But people in that group are afraid to speak up because they have seen you behave in the way that you do and they have seen you suffer no consequences and they are thus afraid to call you out on your b.s.

The question is — Will all this change in the days following the next price crash? I believe that it will. I believe that providing links then will bring results. And so I will supply them then.

For now, people can look at your comments here and figure out what the problem is. It’s not at all hard for any fair-minded person to get the general idea. If there are not enough of us today to take us to where we all deep in our hearts want to go, that of course makes me sad. But I continue to believe that there will be enough down the line a bit. So we will all move forward then.

I wish you all good things.

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 question is — Why haven’t you gone to prison YET? Why are we talking about it? If it had happened years ago, we wouldn’t be talking about it. Why hasn’t it happened?”

No, the question is why haven’t you sought help from a mental health professional? Why hasn’t your family insisted that you get help?

All of the women who have accused Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse crimes need to see mental health professionals too, according to Epstein.

I’m not impressed. I’m going to go with what the jury says.

My best 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:

See above. It has already played out. Time for you to go get that job.

I intend to seek corporate employment at the end of the year, when I have finished my book.

But it is not going to make much of a difference.

I will still be writing my weekly column. I will still be checking the blog each night to see if there have been comments and to respond to them. I won’t be able to response immediately, that’s a small difference. But is that such a biggie? I sure don’t see how.

I am still going to be doing the honest-posting thing. So how are you Goons better off?

It all comes down to how millions of middle-class Americans react when they lose 50 percent or more of their life savings. Do they at that time applaud Buy-and-Hold or do they turn on it? I think they are going to turn on it. But I thought that Greaney’s Campaign of Terror against the hundreds of people who wanted to see honest posting permitted at the Motley Fool board was going to be brought to an end within 48 hours, 72 hours at the tops. The joke was obviously on me re that one. It is at least a theoretical possibility that the millions of people who lose more than half of their life savings in the next price crash will applaud the Wall Street Con Men and you Goons for what they and you have done to them. We are just going to have to wait and see how it all plays out to know for certain.

I didn’t call Greaney out on his b.s. for three years. I knew that his retirement study didn’t contain a valuations adjustment the first time that I looked at it. It was the first thing that I looked for when I discovered his web site. So my hands are not 100 percent clean re this matter. I have goonish tendencies working inside me too. We all do. I was a proud Buy-and-Holder myself once upon a time. I was in the company of millions of good and smart people. So sue me, you know?

If we are ever going to move beyond Buy-and-Hold to something real, we are going to have to open every site on the interest to honest posting re the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. There is no other way. We cannot think about something until we give ourselves permission to talk about that something. And Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research findings are something that we very, very, very much need to be thinking about. So we are going to have to as a nation work up the courage to stand up to you Goons and have the laws against financial fraud enforced at every discussion board and blog on the internet. That’s my sincere assessment after 17 years of this — er — stuff.

I wish you all the best, okay? I think of you as a friend, your goonishness aside. I would like to think that that counts for a little something, whether you are open to saying so or not.

My best wishes to you, dear Goon FRIEND.

Honest-Investment-Discussion-Seeking 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:

“Thousands of people have offered effusive praise for my work. ”

How much have those “thousands” paid you for your work?

How many of those thousands are posting here on your board to show they support you?

I have not earned one dime from this work in seventeen years.

And not one of the thousands who have expressed interest in the work is posting here today.

You’ve got me re those two, Anonymous.

I still say that your behavior demonstrates that you see the huge potential for me to make boatloads of money promoting the first true research-based model for understanding how stock investing works. You have put yourself at great risk of going to prison for a long time in the days following the next price crash. That’s strange, strange, strange behavior. My behavior of sticking at this for so long is unusual. But my behavior has not been one-fiftieth as strange as yours. I have hurt myself financially for 17 years with the hope of receiving a huge payout when the crash arrives. You have put yourself at grave risk of going to prison for the remaining years of your life. There’s no comparison.

I don’t think that you believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing. I believe that your skepticism is genuine. But you obviously don’t believe that all investors who learn about these ideas share your level of skepticism. If you believed that, you would just let me speak and enjoy watching them lose interest and walk away. Never one time have you considered doing such a thing. You behave the way you do because you have seen the same thing that I have seen — intense interest in a better way to invest on the part of about 10 percent of the investing population, which is millions of people. You can’t stand the thought of me making the millions that you believe that I will make if you permit the laws of the United States to rein in your behavior.

Well, I intend to make those millions anyway. And I intend to encourage hundreds of others to follow my lead and earn their own big paydays developing and promoting the first true research-based strategy. A win/win/win/win/win, if I ever heard of one.

We’ll see how it plays out, you know? I wish it hadn’t gone this way. I wish that you weren’t going to prison and I wish that my efforts to turn a buck with this stuff had not been delayed for 17 years and I wish that the people of the United States were not likely to see a 50 percent drop in stock prices over the course of the next year or two or three. I played the cards that I was dealt. That’s all that any of us can do.

But I certainly believe that I have been dealt more good cards than bad ones. There are some bad ones that have come my way. I have seen some very, very, very bad cards. The way it is. But I have also seen some very, very, very exciting and encouraging and life-affirming and enriching (in all senses of the word) cards. Good for me, you know? I have zero intention of throwing those cards back. It’s knowing that those cards remain in my hand that keeps me from breaking into tears when I think about all the pain that the bad cards that I have been dealt have caused me.

One has to take the bad with the good, no? Things become cliches for a reason.

If there is ever anything that I can do to help you out a bit, please let me know. I will be there. Holding grudges is bad karma, in my book. I don’t go for that sort of thing.

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:

“My most valuable asset is the 17 years of material that I house here at the site that tells the story of what the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world. My top priority is to protect and develop that asset. Finishing the book is a huge advance in that area. So that needs to come first.”

It actually has no value unless someone is willing to pay you for it. At this point, your most valuable asset is your ability to work.

Thousands of people have offered effusive praise for my work. When I first began doing this work, I never imagined that I could receive even one-fiftieth of the impact that I have achieved. If I achieved this much praise just by putting the ideas before a small number of people on the internet, it is hard even to estimate how much money I could earn when the general population learns about them, as it will in the days following the next price crash, when you Goons will be placed in prison cells and every discussion board and blog on the internet will be opened to honest posting on safe withdrawl rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.

I think it would be fair to say that we never would have seen a single abusive post or a single criminal act had you Goons not seen the intense enthusiasm that about 10 percent of the various board communities showed for these ideas. 10 percent of the investing population is millions of people. And there is no one alive on Planet Earth today who has developed these ideas to the extent that I have. There is no one in an even remotely close second place.

Are you joking?

Rob