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 only death threat made, was the one that came from you. All the board banning look to be justified. The largest collection of defamation can be found on this website. All you have to do is just stop with the defamation. The career threat is made up. That has been confirmed by Wade. Your positive sign is really a negative sign. You have to realize that you are wrong, thus your recent comments about going back to work.

Okay, Anonymous.

I do wish you all good things, in any event.

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 seem to think that people have to convince you that you are wrong. In fact, it is just the opposite. Despite your claims to the contrary, you have failed to provide sufficient proof of your points. You keep referring to what you believe the research says. What you are really referring to is your opinion of what you want it to say. To support research, you must present outcomes data that is also reproducible.

I say that there are two schools of academic thought as to how stock investing works. Both Robert Shiller and Eugene Fama were awarded Nobel prizes for their research. But both cannot be right. Fama says that stock prices are set through a rational process. Shiller says that stock prices are set through an emotional process. Buy-and-Hold is rooted in a belief in Fama’s research. Valuation-Informed Indexing is rooted in a belief in Shiller’s research.

I don’t say that people have to convince me that I am wrong and I don’t say that I have to convince any others that they are wrong. What I say is that both Valuation-Informed Indexers and Buy-and-Holders should post honestly and avoid the use of acts of intimidation against those who subscribe to the other school of thought. That’s what the laws of the United States require and that’s what the published rules of every site to which I have ever posted require.

You and I do not agree re how stock investing works, Anonymous. You are a Buy-and-Holder and I am a Valuation-Informed Indexer. It doesn’t have to be a problem that we disagree. It can be a plus. I can learn from you and you can learn from me. But death threats are a problem. And demands for unjustified board bannings are a problem. And thousands of acts of defamation are a problem. And threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs are a problem. That sort of thing needs to come to a full and complete stop by the close of business today.

Does that help?

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 ironic is that you aren’t planning on providing for your retirement via investing with the VII strategy. Instead, you plan relies on getting settlement payments.

There’s nothing ironic about that.

I spent years saving enough money to permit me to leave corporate employment and start my own internet business, which would be work that would be more fulfilling and that would provide me much higher compensation once I got it off the ground. When you look at the amazing number of endorsements that I have received from big-name experts, I obviously would have earning an amazing amount of money from my internet business. The only thing that held me back was the criminally abusive behavior of you Goons.

I earned every penny of that $500 million many times over. Getting the word out about how stock investing really works is the most important project being worked on in the United States today and I have put 17 years of work into developing the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept. And I obviously am going to invest the $500 million pursuant to VII principles. So VII will be paying off for me for many years to come. Passion Saving principles (detailed in my earlier book) helped me earn that money and VII principles will help me to protect it and to grow it.

These new ideas on saving and investing work better than the old ideas. I am extremely proud to be able to share them with interested parties. And there are a LOT of interested parties when you Goons don’t disrupt conversations with your criminally abusive behavior.

Please don’t forget that the announcement of my settlement payment will change the internet in a very, very positive way. The internet has great potential to do good. But abusive posters like you Goons frighten away good and smart people. When word spreads that I have received a $500 million settlement payment, I can guaranty you that lots of good and smart people are going to try to replicate the things that i have done and they are not going to permit abusive Goon posters to hold them back. That’s a plus for everyone alive on the planet. Good for the planet, you know?

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 I learned that someone had left a flaming bag of dog crap outside of someone’s front door, I would wonder what was going on. That’s unusual behavior. Someone would have to have a reason to do something like that.”

When there is a flaming bag of dog crap on your doorstep, the meaning is obvious. When you have been banned from the boards repeatedly, the meaning is obvious. If people keep leaving flaming bags of dog crap at your doorstep for 17 years, the sensible person would come to the conclusion that they have been doing something wrong.

I obviously see it differently, Anonymous. My take is that, if you find yourself continually leaving flaming bags of dog crap at doorsteps, you need to ask yourself what is driving you to do that. I don’t like being on the receiving end of flaming piles of dog crap. But I think that I would like being on the delivering side of flaming piles of dog crap even less.

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:

“But I don’t see that I have ever had any alternative courses of action available to me. ”

You should have kept working instead of quitting at such an early age.

Clearly, I don’t buy this whole conspiracy thing, but let’s set that aside for now. Even if there was some credibility to you claims, you didn’t have to quit working. You can still hold a job and do your whole internet thing in your spare time, just like everyone else.

I don’t agree.

My plan was very carefully thought out. When I left my job at Ernst & Young, I had no intention of not working again. The entire purpose of my plan was to shift to a form of work that I would find more fulfilling and that would in the long run produce more income than the corporate employment that I left behind. I obviously would have earned amounts far in excess of what I needed had it not been for the criminal acts of you Goons. I did absolutely nothing wrong. My plan worked like a dream. No one can anticipate criminal acts, whether they are employed in the corporate realm or in the self-employed realm.

I will pursue litigation to have all of the damages paid to me in the days after your criminal acts are exposed on the front page of the New York Times. I made a few calls to lawyers a long time ago. I experienced the same problem talking with the lawyers re my lawsuits as I have experienced trying to get the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies corrected. People have a hard time believing in what you refer to as “this whole conspiracy thing.” There has never in U.S. history been a time when a matter of this importance has been covered up for so long. Most people have never experienced or even heard about an act of financial fraud of this magnitude. So they have a hard time appreciating what went on and are reluctant to get personally involved.

I believe that that will change in the days following the next price crash. Millions of people will be experiencing very serious losses in the event that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is on the mark (I believe that it is). All lawyers will hear about the problems and will be looking for people who were harmed to bring lawsuits on their behalf. I don’t believe that I will have any problem finding a lawyer to take on my case at that time. All lawyers want to take on cases where the damages are in excess of $500 million. So it won’t be an issue at that time.

The issue today with the lawyers is the same as the issue with the site owners today. The thing that you refer to as “this whole conspiracy thing” is the fact that there is now 38 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor. Everyone alive on the planet needs to know that. But it is a scary thing to point out when you know that most people’s lives are riding on the validity of Buy-and-Hold and they are thus highly reluctant to listen to the message. Things will not improve until there are enough of us posting honestly that you Goons will no longer dare to commit criminal acts. But how will there ever be sufficient numbers posting honestly until a few of us are willing to take on whatever heat you direct at us to win recognition of the right of everyone in the field to post honestly? There is a reason why the work that I have been doing is worth a very big multiple of $500 million. This work frees everyone. Our society’s understanding of how stock investing works will never be the same again after we have freed everyone in the field to do honest work. We are on the threshold of a huge advance but it can only be achieved by a few of us being willing to take on some very, very, very hard and nasty hits. That’s just where things stand today.

I could not have done what i have done had I been doing this in my spare time. I made the right call. I expect to finish writing my book on these matters by the end of this year. Once I have the manuscript in hand, I could imagine taking corporate employment and going part-time with the investing work. I have not made a decision to do that. But, once I have written the book, i will feel that i have in hand what I need to tell the story in a powerful and complete way. Combining the book with the materials already residing at this site, I would feel highly confident that the Valuation-Informed Indexing story will prevail in the days following the crash. So I could see easing up on the time that I devote to this at that time. I do want to get the book written first. My understanding of the matters involved has not until recent months been deep enough to complete the book. But the book is coming well now. So I think that I am close.

There’s nothing wrong with doing these sorts of things part-time. But there is nothing wrong with doing these sorts of things full-time either. You can get more good work completed and have a bigger impact working it full time. But there are obviously income implications to doing it that way. I have suffered negative income implications solely because of your criminal acts. And on the content side I have achieved things 500 times more important than what I thought was possible when I first started walking this path. So I am hardly going to express regret for playing it the way that I did. My efforts have paid off in amazing ways both for myself and for my family and for the entire world except for the effect of the criminal acts, which I expect to be compensated for down the line a bit.

It all comes down to what happens in the days following the next price crash. If millions of people want to know at that time what happened to their retirement money, I will be able to tell them and this site will be the hottest site on the internet and no one in the Bennett family line will have to be concerned with financial constraints for many generations to come. Good for the Bennett family line, you know? I love my boys (and I hope and believe that I will love their children) and I am happy to have been able to have helped out in the way that I have. While of course being unhappy about the thousands and thousands of thousands of hits that I have had to endure getting the job done. This has been hard work. I think it is the hardest and most important work that anyone in the United States has done over the past 17 years and I hope and expect to be compensated accordingly.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, that much is for sure.

My best and warmest wishes to you, dear Goon friend.

Highly Compensated (Not Yet But Soon, Let Us Pray!) 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 write these words, yet ignore the realities. As you have acknowledged, you haven’t made anything. Further, you have no track record or any other successes with VII. The very fact that you been unsuccessful shows you why no one is interested in VII.

It’s time to face reality in that your plan failed and you should be going with a plan “B”.

I accept the realities. But I view them as temporary realities.

You are right that, as Valuation-Informed Indexing begins making money for people, people will flock to it. Today, there is no money in it. So people stay away from it.

If Shiller is right, we will be seeing another crash within the next year or two or three. If enough people are hurt in a serious enough way, there will be a demand for explanations and for strategies that insure that nothing like that can ever happen again. Valuation-Informed Indexers will be able to offer research-based answers to people’s questions and I believe that they will.

At that point, a few people will be making money with it. That will cause a few others to test the waters. Then more people will be making money. And then the idea will not seem so odd anymore because there will be a significant number of experts advocating it. Then the floodgates will open and things will just get better and better and better.

The ideas are rock-solid strong. But we need to get to a point where there are enough people advocating VII for it to take off. With 38 years of peer-reviewed research behind us, we are very close. We just need a few people to stand in the fire long enough to help a few others to feel comfortable getting on board.

All of the intimidation stuff tells me that the Buy-and-Holders recognize the power of the concept. If they didn’t see great power, they would not behave the way they do. You see the intimidation stuff as a reason to drop out. I see it as a reason to hang in there. We are coming at this thing from different perspectives.

Take care, man.

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:

Yourso called research failed. You have admitted that predicting the future prices was hard. Your crash predictions have time and again. With your last failed prediction, you said we should question VII. Sorry, but I won’t gamble with my retirement, hoping to cash in on some kind of windfall like you.

f you don’t believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing, you shouldn’t follow it. That’s for sure. And you shouldn’t recommend it either. If you have doubts about it, you have both a right and a responsibility to express those doubts to others.

Personally, I don’t have any significant doubts. I know that I don’t know everything about Valuation-Informed Indexing. It’s a concept that needs to be developed further. And not just by me. We need to have thousands of people working together to develop the concept as fully as possible. We will make mistakes as that development process continues. It’s inevitable. I of course hope that we acknowledge our mistakes when they are discovered and quickly correct them and learn from them. But I don’t have any significant doubts re the core idea that price discipline is 100 percent required when buying stocks. I think that the case for that much is rock solid.

I don’t think it is entirely unreasonable to have some doubts. Prices certainly have remained high longer in the current bull/bear cycle than they have in any earlier cycle. I think that can be explained, primarily by looking at actions of the Federal Reserve. But I wouldn’t argue too much with someone who concluded that the fact that prices have remained high for a longer stretch of time in this cycle meant that this is not for him. Each person has to decide how to invest his or her money.

I would not feel comfortable failing to exercise price discipline. Others would not feel comfortable engaging in market timing. So be it, you know? The smart way to play it is to try to learn from those who come at things from a different perspective. I certainly try to learn from my Buy-and-Hold friends. I have even learned things from you Goons! It makes me happy when that happens. I hope that my Buy-and-Hold friends occasionally learn something from me. I know that some do because they have told me so. I don’t think you Goons could bear to acknowledge that you have learned things from me. But I believe that you have. And, again, that makes me happy.

My best wishes to you, Anonymous.

Windfall-Cashing 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 it is our opinion that your posts are not honest, then we are okay with banning your posts, right? That is what you seem to do here. Why is it not okay for others to ban your posts?

Bernie Madoff is in prison today because he committed financial fraud. His crime was to send statements to the people who invested in his fund listing transactions that never took place.

Greaney similarly has made false claims about the safe withdrawal rate. He has said that it is the same number (4 percent) at all times. There is now 38 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. So the safe withdrawal rate is a number that varies, depending on the valuation level that applies on the day that the retirement begins. Do that math and you learn that, in January 2000, the safe withdrawal rate was 1.6 percent, not 4.0 percent. Greaney’s act of fraud has hurt hundreds of times the number of people who were hurt by Madoff’s act of fraud.

Is it “okay” to violate U.S. law? Is it “okay” to commit financial fraud? Is it “okay” to destroy millions of people’s lives (Greaney’s study was only used by thousands of people but Wade Pfau and I intended to get ALL of the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies corrected before you Goons threatened to send defamatory e-mails to his employer in an effort to get him fired from his job if he continued doing honest work in this field — so there are millions who will see their lives destroyed because of your acts of financial fraud in the event that stocks continue to perform in the future at least somewhat as they always have in the past).

I don’t think it is “okay” to commit financial fraud. So I am going to continue to report the safe withdrawal rate accurately and honestly and to do everything in my power to EXPOSE your massive act of financial fraud and thereby to bring it to a full and complete stop. You have not as of today been prosecuted for your act of financial fraud and so I suppose that in that very limited sense you could say that it has turned out “okay” for you. But Madoff was not in prison in the days before his acts of financial fraud were exposed either. I don’t think that he would say today that what he did was “okay.”

We will have to wait and see what your jury says about whether your acts of financial fraud are “okay” or not, Anonymous. That’s how our system works. I am going to continue to say that they are NOT okay. I presume that you are going to continue to say that they are okay. Your jury will decide the matter. I believe that our laws against financial fraud are good and important and necessary laws. I believe that we will see those laws enforced in the days following the next price crash. I SUPPORT those laws.

Does all of that help at least a tiny bit?

Law-and-Order-Guy 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:

Excellent cut and paste job.

A lot of stuff there.

Nothing about Greaney threatening anyone.

That’s what Section E is about, Evidence.

Wade described the Bogleheads Forum as a “hostile environment.” Huh? What the f?

We are all in this together. We all need to know as much as we can re the subject of how to invest for retirement. There’s no one who did more to cause stock prices to zoom in the 1990s than Jeremy Siegel. He’s a pure Buy-and-Holder right? But it was Siegel who suggested to Shiller that he should write a book about his ideas re how stock investing works. That’s the spirit! That’s what we should be seeing when Rob Bennett or John Walter Russell or Wade Pfau or Microlepsis or John D. Craig shows up at Bogleheads. We should be welcomed warmly as friends so that we all can enjoy a great learning experience together.

A hostile freakin’ environment? What the f is that all about?

It was the hostile freakin’ environment that I witnessed at Motley Fool that caused me to give up on Buy-and-Hold myself. I was a Buy-and-Holder until the night of August. 27, 2002, when Greaney put forward his first death threat and it was endorsed by 200 Buy-and-Holders. Buy-and-Hold is promoted as a research-based strategy. That’s research? Death threats? Buy-and-Hold is the most emotional strategy ever concocted by the human mind. As has been demonstrated by you Goons on a daily basis for 17 years running now.

Not this boy, you know? I have never seen a Valuation-Informed Indexer advance a death threat. We really have research on our side. It’s not just a story that we tell ourselves, it’s a reality. If you thought that you had research supporting your claims, you would behave very, very, very differently. There would be no “hostile environment” at the Bogleheads Forum if Buy-and-Hold were a true research-based strategy.

That’s my sincere take. I love my Buy-and-Hold friends for all of the great contributions that they have made. But I think they need to stop and take a step back when they see themselves tolerating the sort of behavior that we have seen from you Goons for 17 years running now. It’s not my particular cup of tea. That’s not a terribly close call.

And of course this is just the sort of thing that we should expect to see in the event that Shiller’s research is on the right track. Shiller showed that it is investor emotion that causes insanely high stock prices. And what do we see from thousands of Buy-and-Holders at the time when stock prices are at the highest levels ever seen in history? All of this garbage. Gee, I wonder what is going on here.

I do wish you all good things, in any event.

My best to you.

Disillusioned 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 fair-value CAPE value of 16 is based on 150 years of stock market history”

The average CAPE value over the period was 16

That does not mean that 16 is the fair value at every moment in time.

The entire question that we are trying to determine is what IS the fair value of stocks at every moment in time.

The Buy-and-Holders say that the best indicator of fair value is the price assigned by the market. If the market were efficient and investors were engaged in an effort to set prices properly through a rational process, I would agree with that. Shiller showed that the market is NOT efficient and that investors do NOT set prices rationally. So that doesn’t work.

How would you calculate the safe withdrawal rate if you don’t want to use the average CAPE value and you are aware that there is 38 years of peer-reviewed research showing that the Buy-and-Hold approach doesn’t work, Evidence?

If there is an investor who believes that the fair-value CAPE number is really 17, I have no problem with that. Perhaps that investor believes that our economy will be more productive in the coming years than it has been on average over the past 150 years. That would bring the CAPE value up. Going with a different number makes sense if you hold that belief.

I don’t have a belief as to whether the economy will be more or less productive in the future than it has been in the past. So I use the CAPE value that has been the average for 150 years. I think that that’s a sensible default number.

What I don’t feel even a tiny bit comfortable doing is assuming that the number that will apply in the future will be nothing even close to the number that has applied for 150 years. When you use the 16 number, the safe withdrawal rate you get for a retirement beginning in 2000 is 1.6 percent real. Greaney says that the safe withdrawal rate at the time was 4 percent. Huh? What the f? That’s not exactly close, you know? He is assuming that stocks will perform in the future nothing at all as they have always performed in the past. Based on what?

And does he tell people about these crazy assumptions that he makes that stocks are going to perform in the future in ways in which they have never performed in the past? He does not. He tells people that his crazy assumptions produce numbers that are “100 percent safe.” And, when he is questioned about the methodology that produced the crazy numbers, he responds with death threats. And when we get a fellow with a Ph.D. in Economics to help us out and he spends 16 months researching these questions and concludes that the Buy-and-Hold studies are “dangerous,” Greaney responds by threatening to get the guy fired from his job if he continues to do honest work in this field. Are you freakin’ telling a joke?

That’s a con, Evidence. Bernie Madoff is in prison today for financial fraud. What John Greaney has done is 500 times worse than anything that Bernie Madoff has ever done. Not this boy, you know? I don’t want to be associated with a criminal enterprise. Not no way, not no how.

If Greaney were saying that he thought that 1.7 might be safe in 2000, and if he presented a reasonable case for that number, I could say that that’s not crazy even if I didn’t personally agree. The criminal stuff is something very, very different. I don’t want my name associated with that sort of thing except as the name of the person who EXPOSED this massive act of financial fraud. If you don’t feel that you can report the safe withdrawal rate accurately and honestly, you are better off just not reporting it all. That’s my sincere take.

I hope that that helps a small bit.

Crime Exposing Rob