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

Are the reporters being threatened by the goons?

Wade Pfau wasn’t threatened directly until we finished our research paper showing that Valuation-Informed Indexing is superior to Buy-and-Hold and he presented it to the Bogleheads Forum and received lots of positive comments that scared you Goons out of your minds. But from the first day on which he contacted me he was afraid of getting on the wrong side of you Goons. He often referred to the “hostile environment” at that site. Why the heck would the environment there be hostile? Buy-and-Hold is supposed to by a research-based strategy, is it not? So what is there to be hostile about? If you believe in research, you are certainly going to want to hear about the new peer-reviewed research findings, are you not? So what’s this stuff about a “hostile environment”?

Greaney advanced his first death threat on the evening of August 27, 2002. I knew about the error in his study from the first day I posted at Motley Fool, in May of 1999. I didn’t point out the error until May of 2002. What the heck was going on for those three years? I knew about the error, there had been no death threats and yet I didn’t point out the error to my friends, who were using the study to plan their retirements. It was that old hostile environment matter causing problems again.

People are social creatures. We want other people to like us. Buy-and-Hold is the dominant academic model for understanding how stock investing works. It has been for a long time. Tell people that Buy-and-Hold is flawed and they are going to get angry with you. They don’t always have to advance direct threats to get the message across. People are sensitive enough to pick up that they are upsetting other people and that there are going to be consequences for doing so. It happened to me, it happened to Wade Pfau and it happens to all these reporters to which you refer.

They know that they are saying something shocking if they say that there is 37 years of peer-reviewed research discrediting Buy-and-Hold. They don’t necessarily know it on a conscious level. They probably would not be able to articulate how they feel. But they hold back from saying things that they would say if they did not feel intimidated. And they even hold back from thinking things that they would think if they did not feel intimidated.

That’s the entire story here. We all want to know how to invest effectively. We are all on the same side. But some of us want to explore whether Buy-and-Hold has any flaws so that it doesn’t ruin us and others of us want to keep any discussion of flaws suppressed. Those who want to suppress discussions have all sorts of ways of communicating their preferences and those thinking of starting discussions are able to pick up on those preferences. Many choose never to say a word. Others say a few words, get a negative reaction, and then shut up. A tiny few are like me and interpret the attempts to suppress discussion as signs that discussion is very, very, very much needed and thus state their concerns all the stronger and more frequently in response to the efforts to suppress them.

Most reporters have not been threatened directly. But most know the score, at least subconsciously. When the pain of keeping discussion of these matters suppressed grows greater than the pain that they suspect they will experience by speaking up, the reporters will speak up. You Goons have made it clear that the price for speaking up is going to be very large. But, if Shiller is right, the pain for suppressing the discussions is eventually going to be even larger. At that point people will work up the courage to speak and we will all be off to the races.

Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, you know? We will not know for sure, blah, blah, blah.

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:

“The title is “Irrational Exuberance.”

What exact words in the book talk about death threats, job threats, jury trials, prison sentences and $500 million windfalls?

Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize because he published research that discredited the Efficient Market Theory. If the market were efficient, stock price changes would be caused by economic developments and would reflect reality. He showed that, when the market is overpriced, it is irrational exuberance that causes price gains and that those gains thus cannot be counted on to finance a retirement.

All of the things that you refer to in your post are things that follow if a person points out what Shiller’s research shows in a community frequented by a significant number of Buy-and-Holders. It hurts the feelings of Buy-and-Holders for them to hear that they made a mistake in thinking that the market is efficient and that it is not necessary for them to exercise price discipline when buying stocks.

I don’t do it to hurt their feelings. I do it because people need to have accurate numbers to plan their retirements. If there were a way to give accurate numbers without hurting the feelings of the Buy-and-Holders, I would make use of it. But there isn’t. This is the risk that goes with the use of any research-based strategy. New research is published all the time. When we learn new things, we need to update our understanding of a subject. We need to acknowledge that we didn’t always know it all.

I am grateful for all that the Buy-and-Holders taught us. They of course got many things right. But not the efficient market thing. Not according to the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. I think that the Buy-and-Holders have hurt themselves and many others by failing to acknowledge the mistake they made re that one. The safe withdrawal rate is not always 4 percent. It is a number that changes with changes in valuation levels.

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

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, Anonymous.

Irrational Exuberance Reader (and Death Threat Receiver) 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 article is an 11,300-word summary”

I wonder did they even read beyond that phrase? The idea that 11,300 words is a summary suggests that the writer is unable to state his case succinctly.

On the Quillette site I cut and pasted a couple of the recent articles in the Politics section into Word and got a word count for both articles between 3 – 4 thousand words. Did you do any research to see what the typical article length is at that site?

When you had your tax writing career did you ever have to meet a word limit for your articles?

It’s a super long article. I certainly don’t say different. Even 4,000 words is long for the internet. So Quillette was one of my best bets. I worked hard to get the length down. It couldn’t be done. I only address one issue — Why we need to launch a National Debate on the challenge that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research presents to Buy-and-Hold. There’s nothing in there about how to invest or anything like that. But I did want to at least include a brief reference to all of the issues that need to be raised as part of an argument that we need to launch a national debate. It is not possible to achieve that goal in less than 11,300 words. I’ve re-read the article every day since I finished it. I have never been able to identify a single wasted word in it. It’s concise for what it does and the job that it does is a job that very much needs to be done. So I don’t apologize for the length.

The length will make it hard to find a publisher. I have zero doubt re that one. If someone were to say “oh, we will publish only this section” or “we will publish the entire thing but in several parts” or whatever, I am of course fine with that. But I did not want to leave out any issue that is key to the thesis of the article — that we need to launch a national debate. I have had a good number of discussions with my boy Timothy about these issues. He is very smart and he gets most of this. I know because he asks lots of good questions. But one day I was shocked because he asked a question that revealed that he lacked an understanding of a key part of the story. That’s when I decided to write the article. I wanted to be able to point people to one place where they could hear the entire story (in the fewest number of words possible) re the most important question, the need to launch a national debate. It would have been missing the point to have left something out.

So no apologies re the length although I certainly acknowledge that the length presents practical problems re finding a publisher. I can state the case succinctly by saying “We need to launch a national debate re the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research findings.” That’s the story being told. The problem with saying it that way is that for most people it goes in one ear and out the other. They think: “Yeah, national debate, sure, why not?” That doesn’t get the job done. This is for people who don’t see that this is such a big deal or who find it hard to understand why, given the importance of the issues, we haven’t already seen a national debate take place. If you are one of those, you will appreciate that the article touches on all the key issues because the thorough treatment will aid your understanding of where things stand. If you are not one of those, this article is not for you.

I think it is an amazing article. I couldn’t be more thrilled with how it turned out. It was a very hard article to write. But I got there in the end.

I think that there’s a good chance that I will not find a publisher, partly because of the length but also for several other reasons. If I don’t, I will eventually post the thing at my own site. But I don’t intend to do that anytime soon. I would prefer to have someone else publish it.

I am also sending it to non-publishers. If I see an article at the National Review (my favorite conservative site) or the Atlantic (my favorite liberal site) and the author gives his e-mail address, I will send it to that person. That’s another way of getting the word out. It’s a painfully slow and inefficient way. But you never know. Even someone who never writes on investing might know someone who does. Anytime you are connecting with other humans, there is a chance that good things will happen. And I could see sending it to Quillette for another try after the next price crash. If the same person looks at it, she might say: “Oh, I remember this from before, now I get why it is so important!” If that’s the way it works, then that’s the way it works. My job is to get stuff out there. I need to leave it to others re how to react to what I put out there.

I’ll mention one issue that was a struggle for me because my sense is that it is a particular concern of you Goons. Up until the last draft, I did not mention the matter of criminal prosecutions taking place after the next crash. People hate that stuff. It is an unpleasant subject to talk about. So I didn’t want to go there. In the end, though, I didn’t feel that I was telling the full story if I didn’t include at least a brief mention of that aspect of the story. So I added a brief mention. I always talk about the article on the front page of the New York Times that I believe will bring the nasty side of this to an end. I asked myself: Would I expect the New York Times article to mention the issue of criminal prosecutions? It needs to mention that. We cannot close the door on the ugly side of this matter without coming clean as a society re all that sort of thing and further cover-ups do not help us come clean. So I decided that I needed to go there and I did. I think that I made the right call.

Again, though, mentioning that sort of thing will make it hard to find a publisher. Lots of places are not going to want to go there. So I didn’t let my desire for publication rule me as to how to write the article. I did everything that I could do to make the article publishable (it is an amazing story and the accumulation of detail is stunning when taken in in a single sitting) while not compromising re what needs to be done to tell the story that needs to be told. I accept that it may not get published, or that it may not get published until after the onset of the next price crash. But I feel comfortable that I did my part to the best of my ability and that now it is up to the rest of the world to do what it needs to do to get this story before lots of people’s eyes.

As always, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. Thanks for your interest and for your expression of your concerns, Evidence. Wish me luck!

Take care, man.

Verbose (But Not Really!) 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:

“That’s not so.”

Yes it is. Your emotions confirm that.

Okay, Anonymous.

Please understand that I don’t deny my bias. I have 16 years of my life involved in building the Valuation-Informed Indexing model. So I have a deep emotional commitment to this model. I try to keep my emotions in check. I make an effort. But in the event that I sometimes let my emotional bias get the best of me, I wouldn’t know that that was happening, would I? So it is possible that your suggestion here is on the mark. Perhaps what I am seeing so clearly would not be so clear to me if I were capable of seeing things from a 100 percent objective perspective.

The only thing that I have been able to come up with to deal with that possibility is to make note from time to time that it is possible that I am wrong, that I am just another one of those flawed humans. I say that from time to time for that reason. I certainly don’t think that I am wrong. I believe strongly that I am right or else I would not have devoted 16 years of my life energy to this thing. But it is POSSIBLE that I am wrong and that I don’t see it. So I think that it is healthy for me to make note of that reality from time to time. As confident as I am, I am one of those darn flawed humans.

This line of discussion reminds me of the comment that one of the members of one of the peer-review committees that rejected the paper that Wade Pfau and I wrote together put forward. He said something to the effect of “it would be nice to know the ultimate criterion to look at to know which of the two strategies is the right one.” That’s a fair comment. It would be hard to argue with it. But I see that more as an argument in support of publishing the paper than as an argument for rejecting it for publication. There is no one ultimate criterion. There is a PROCESS in which humans talk things over and come to decide on things over time. The publication of peer-reviewed research is part of that process. You publish the paper not because it is ultimate truth but because it helps people to prepare themselves for the discussions that they need to have among themselves to arrive at truth over time.

I am emotional. You are emotional. We are both humans. So that one is a given. The difference, in my eyes, is that I favor permitting the debate to go forward and you favor shutting it down. The debate is the process by which we learn who is right and who is wrong. Shut down the debate and we are stuck with what we thought we knew before the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research was published, and that’s that the market is efficient and that Buy-and-Hold is the ideal strategy. I want to see the debate move forward because I want to move beyond that old and flawed (in my assessment) understanding. You don’t want to move forward. You like where things are today. So you do everything you can to shut down the debate. We work at cross purposes.

I could be wrong on the ultimate issue. I don’t think so. But you never know. But I don’t think that I am wrong on the process issue. The process issue — that new ideas may be discussed, whether advocates of the old idea want those discussions to take place or not — is what our country is all about. When you engage in criminal behavior to stop the debate from even taking place, you travel to a place where I just cannot go. I love this country. I love what it is about. If I am wrong and the debate goes forward, I will be discovered. Good. That’s the way it should be. If the debate is blocked — boo, baby!

That’s not me. That’s not what I am about. I love it that my country favors seeing such debates go forward and I don’t think that that one can ever change. I can say that it is possible that I am wrong re the substance issue but my love for what my country is all about runs too deep for me to say that the laws that my country has saying that such debates must be permitted to go forward are wrong. I think those are good and necessary laws regardless of whether I am being tripped up by my emotional weaknesses or not.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. I am voting for the people of the United States! No apologies.

Emotionally Influenced and Thus Possibly Wrong 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:

We are all to believe that MMM, Wade Pfau, Jack Bogle, William Bernstein, John Greaney, Michael Kitces and Scott Burns are all scared to tell the whole story. They are all part of a mass cover up. Only Rob Bennett has been the one to tell the whole truth.

All of the evidence is available to you, Anonymous.

Bill Bernstein said in a book published in 2002 that the 4 percent number was off by 2 percentage points when stocks were priced at their highs. But he didn’t say that the studies that said that the safe withdrawal rate is always 4 percent needed to be corrected. Huh?

Wade Pfau said that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies are “dangerous.” But he hasn’t insisted that they be corrected either. Huh?

Jack Bogle endorsed Valuation-Informed Indexing in one interview. He said: “Big moves out of stocks should not be done at all. But strategic asset allocation can be done at very rare times, maybe six times in an investor’s lifetime, three times when the market is stupidly high and three times when stupidly low.” That’s what I say. But he only said it one time. Most of the time he says that timing doesn’t work and fails to distinguish short-term timing from long-term timing. Huh?

Greaney said that people should not overstate the safe withdrawal rate, that they should not give wrong numbers. But when he learned that the numbers in his own study are wildly off the mark, he didn’t correct them. Huh?

Kitces said that low valuations can bring the safe withdrawal rate up higher than 4 percent but that high valuations do not bring it down lower than 4 percent. Huh?

Burns wrote about my work on safe withdrawal rates in his column but failed to name me. He referred to those of us who believe that the safe withdrawal rate changes when valuations change as a “New School” but then criticized me for using that term. Huh?

Lots of people have told different bits of the truth. Much of what I have done is just to report what other people have discovered. The difference is that those other people flip back and forth from positions that make sense today to positions that no longer make sense now that Shiller has published his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings. I try to remain consistent. I don’t flip back and forth. That makes people who do flip back and forth look bad. So I am disappeared.

Shiller’s 1981 research findings did not bring on a small change in our understanding of how stock investing works. He discredited the foundation stone on which the entire Buy-and-Hold Model was built. So he changed everything. As a society we have not yet come to terms with what he did. We need to come to terms with it. We have to stop pretending that we can duck the hundreds of questions that his research brought to the table. We have to talk about where our knowledge of how stock investing works stands today. We need to engage in serious and honest and frank interactions re hundreds of questions that we once thought were settled but no longer are. This stuff is important. We need to get it right.

I don’t know it all. I don’t say that I do. My stuff is just the product of a person who believes that Shiller’s research is legitimate research and who explores every question that comes up with that belief in mind. I need to hear feedback from all the people you mention and from lots of other people so that I can do better work. And all those others need the same. We all need to stop pretending that we know it all and get about the business of trying to learn as much as we can as quickly as we can.

All of the people who you refer to would LOVE to give their honest take on every question. Read your own comments at this blog if you want to know why they don’t do it today. You point out over and over and over again that I can not make a living in this field because I posted honestly re the safe withdrawal rate issue. That’s why other people don’t do the same. Other people want to be able to make a living. Stop punishing honest work and you will get more of it. There’s no mystery re that particular aspect of the question. Stop punishing people who are trying to help you and more people will try to help you.

The difference between Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing is that Fama says that stock price changes are caused by economic developments and Shiller says that they are caused by investor emotion. That makes all the difference in the world. Stock prices went up by 126 percent from 1996 through 1999. If Fama was right, that huge jump was amazingly good news. If it was economic developments that caused that huge price jump, our economy must have been going gangbusters at that time and that is obviously a good thing. If Shiller is right that only a small portion of those gains came from economic growth and the vast majority just came from a temporary emotional flight of fancy, then we hurt ourselves very seriously in those years. We told people that those gains were real and they made plans for the future based on their belief that that was so when it was not. People cannot engage in effective financial planning if they have no idea how much they have in savings.

Shiller changed the world. And the world has not yet caught up. That’s the story here. I was still a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. All that I was concerned about at that time was the safe withdrawal rate. But when I saw the insanely emotional reaction to my safe withdrawal rate post, I knew that Shiller was right. So I stopped writing about Buy-and-Hold and from that point forward I wrote only things rooted in a belief that valuations affect long-term returns. Since I have been doing that for 16 years now, I have explored things that no one else had explored. It’s not that I am smarter. It’s that I have been doing it longer.

We did not know everything that there is to know about how stock investing works in 1981. Part of the scientific process is learning new things and then correcting your old understandings as new information comes in. That learning process was cut off. I think it is because this is so important an issue that the people who unintentionally got things wrong couldn’t bear to acknowledge it even to themselves. The conditions were perfect for cognitive dissonance. But they are aware on some level of consciousness that Shiller’s work is saying something important and new and so they have become insanely defensive about these matters. So the learning process that should have been going on for 37 years has been proceeding very slowly.

We all want the same things, Anonymous. We all want to know the truth about how stock investing works.

We know how to handle things. We need to handle things in the investing advice realm in the same manner as we handle things in every other field of human endeavor. We need to let people say what they believe and not punish them if they say something new. New can be good. We should be skeptical of new ideas to be sure. Skepticism is good. But we should not go to the point of threatening to kill people just because they advance new ideas that are rooted in peer-reviewed research that was awarded a Nobel prize. Those ideas have enough behind them that we should permit discussion of them.

As the new ideas are discussed, they will come to seem less strange. We will over time come to accept the new paradigm. Some of the new ideas will probably be rejected. That’s of course fine. But some of them will also probably be accepted. That’s also of course fine. We will only be able to separate the good stuff from the bad stuff once we permit honest posting by every single person willing to contribute in a positive way to our discussions, Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers alike.

That’s my sincere take, in any event.

My best wishes.

Whole Truth (I Hope!) 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 about Mel Lindauer? Should he be featured?

He adds a lot to the discussion. So I would certainly be happy if we could all enjoy the positives that he brings to the table. But, as you know, he has not been willing to follow the published posting rules of the site. That’s a problem. That hurts us all. That has to be addressed. If that were addressed, then I would 100 percent support the idea of featuring Mel.

And you know what? My strong hunch is that Mel and I would become good friends over time. I don’t think that we would come to agree on all investing questions. But I think that, if we regularly engaged in interactions in which we disagreed in a respectful way, we would over time come to kid around with each other and become good friends despite our differences on the substantive questions. I think that would be just great. It would make me very happy to see things play out that way. I think it would be inspiring to all our fellow community members to see it play out that way. That’s how it should be, in my assessment.

Future Lindauer Pal 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:

Uh oh, Rob. Shiller just said you are wrong yet again. We aren’t gone to see that 50-60% drop that you say we are going to see.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/housing-market-now-reminds-me-of-2006-robert-shiller-says-2018-10-30

Notice he says the following:

“The drop in home prices in the financial crisis was the most severe drop in the U.S. market since my data begin in 1890,” Shiller said. “It could be that we’re primed to repeat it because it’s in our memory and we’re thinking about it but still I wouldn’t expect something as severe as the Great Financial Crisis coming on right now. ”

So it oops likeyou don’t really know what Shiller’s data really says. Further, it means your dreams of a big crash leading towards your $500 million windfall will not materialize since your logic is all based on what Shiller says.

Of course, you will say that the goons got to Shiller and he is being controlled.

I’m grateful for the link, Anonymous.

Shiller is expressing an opinion when he says that he does not think we will see a repeat of the Great Financial Crisis anytime soon. He could be right. He’s certainly an informed person and I certainly think that people trying to figure out what is going on should be taking his opinion into consideration. I obviously hold a different opinion. And my opinion is every bit as much rooted in Shiller’s research as Shiller’s is. Stock prices are today at two times fair value. If we see a drop to fair-value price levels, that’s going to wipe out the retirement hopes of millions. I sincerely believe that the consequences could be devastating.

Is Shiller being controlled by you Goons? He is. I say that we should open every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics. Are you able to say what Shiller’s views re his own research would be today had the entire internet been open to honest posting for the past 16 years? You cannot. It’s a hypothetical. We had a chance to find out and we blew it by failing to work up the courage to stand up to you Goons. We don’t get the benefits of open debate for so long as we do not permit open debate.

On the morning of May 13, 2002, I was a Buy-and-Holder. I am obviously not that today. What changed? What changed is that I saw John Greaney advance his first death threat on the evening of 17, 2002 and then I saw 200 of people who long had been friends of mine endorse that death threat. Huh? What the f? When you see something like that, your mind forces you to try to come up with an explanation. My explanation is that Buy-and-Hold is not science at all, that it is a purely emotion-based strategy. It parades as science because the Buy-and-Holders want to persuade both themselves and others that it is real. But the science stuff is a cover. The reason why the Buy-and-Holders ignore the 37 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations matter is that they possess an emotional desire to believe that the numbers on their portfolio statement are real and lasting. It is the Get Rich Quick component of the strategy that is the driver of the strategy, the primary source of its widespread appeal.

Shiller wasn’t there at the Motley Fool’s Retire Early board on the evening of August 27, 2002. So he didn’t see what I saw. My personal circumstances caused me to be exposed to a type of “research” to which Shiller has probably never been exposed, The thing that is “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) about Shiller’s research is that he showed that it is investor emotion that drives stock prices, not economic realities. What better way to test whether that premise is valid than to talk about Shiller’s research at a discussion board at which people are hoping to begin early retirements because of the numbers they see on their portfolio statements? If you get an insanely emotional reaction, that shows that Shiller is right. If the aspiring early retirees respond with a calm confidence that their strategy is rooted in research, that would support the Buy-and-Hold claims.

What happened at the Retire Early board should have been written up at every investment discussion board and blog on the internet. The violent reaction of the Buy-and-Holders to my showing that Greaney’s study got the safe withdrawal rate numbers wrong is EVIDENCE as to whether it is Shiller or Bogle who is right about how stock investing works. That evidence should have been considered at every site at which stock investors congregate. It was not. 90 percent of today’s investors are Buy-and-Holders and they become embarrassed for people to learn about the death threats and the career threats and all the other garbage that their fellow Buy-and-Holders have dumped on us all in their effort to keep us all from learning how stock investing really works.

So Shiller is probably not aware of a lot of things that have influenced my thinking. I am certain that he has seen his own share of abusiveness. I believe that he could probably write a book on what he has seen. But I doubt that he has seen Buy-and-Hold abusiveness as up front and in-person and for as long a time as I have seen it. He doesn’t interact with you Goons on a daily basis, as I do! I have seen evidence that Shiller has never seen. And that evidence has influenced my thinking on how all this stuff works.

Could I be wrong? Sure. If Bogle could be wrong, I could be wrong. And I certainly believe that Bogle is wrong about some important things. So I have to acknowledge that it is possible that I am wrong about some important things. That’s the fate of us poor humans. We can believe something with all of our hearts and minds and still end up being wrong about that something. It’s a humbling reality.

I think that’s why we have laws protecting us from the sorts of tactics that you Goons employ to keep us all from learning things we very much need to learn. Since any of us can be wrong about anything, we permit honest discussion on all subjects other than stock investing. That way, we learn about those subjects over time as different people coming at things from different perspectives offer their sincere thoughts and we come to discover our mistakes and fix them. Shiller has not learned all that he would have over the past 16 years because that learning experience got cut off on the day when I pointed out the error in Greaney’s study and he went into freak-out mode and lots of good and smart people failed to work up the courage to stand up to him and demand that he take a chill pill. Nor has Bogle learned all that he should have learned. Not have I. Not have you Goons. The Ban on Honest Posting has hurt each and every one of us in very, very serious ways.

I hope we don’t see anything as severe as the Great Financial Crisis. I hope that Shiller is right. I am not personally convinced. I think it is entirely possible that we will see something WORSE than the Great Financial Crisis (I presume that he is referring to the 2008 crash with these words). There was talk at the time that the 2008 crash might bring on the Second Great Depression. When stock prices headed back upward in not too long a time, the panic subsided. I am worried that it will be harder to address the panic the next time stock prices crash. But I certainly hope that Shiller and all others taking a more optimistic view turn out to be right and that I turn out to be wrong. My biggest fear is that we will all need to live through a Second Great Depression before we are able to open up every site on the internet to honest posting and reap all the benefits of the last 37 years of wonderful peer-reviewed research in this field.

As I have noted on many earlier occasions, it will be interesting to see how things play out.

And, as I have also noted on many earlier occasions, I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, my dear Goon friend.

Non-Dogmatic Shillerite 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:

Your analogy is flawed, not to mention stupid, not to mention horribly insulting to sexual assault victims.

Cosby’s victims really did do all they could. You haven’t. You could create new accounts on every single board you were banned from TODAY. You could start writing your next book TODAY. You could start making a difference TODAY. No one is stopping you. You simply choose not to. As you should have realized by now, society doesn’t have much sympathy for someone who chooses to be a helpless victim.

I’m not willing to create new accounts.

If I did that, would I use my real name or not? If I used my real name, I would just be banned again. If I didn’t, I would essentially be lying. I would be appearing at a board that banned me under another name, knowing that I would be banned if I appeared under my true name. Huh? What the f?

I have done nothing to justify a ban. Not once. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I have helped people. I have pointed out the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies. People need to know about those errors. A failed retirement is a serious life setback.

I am happy to lend my efforts to any board that will have me and where I can help out. But I don’t approve of games-playing re these matters. I am Rob Bennett. I pointed out the error in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies in a post that I put to the Motley Fool board on early retirement on the morning of May 13, 2002. The post generated a huge reaction, some insanely positive and some insanely negative. I am happy to answer any questions that anyone has, both those advanced by my supporters and those advanced by my critics. But I am not interested in pretending to be someone other than who I am. I am the fellow who put forward that famous post, I am proud of it, and I see no reason to make an effort to appear anywhere under another name.

I hope that helps a small bit, my dear Goon friend.

The True Rob Bennett (and No One Else)

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 comment was present tense. You immediately shifted to past tense. The question was why are you doing nothing NOW? Your answer: “I have never done one smidgen less than all that I can do.” So right now, nothing is absolutely all you can do. You’re as helpless as a newborn babe in the snow.

You may not have noticed, but newborn babes in the snow generally aren’t rich and famous. And they have the excuse of being newborn. What’s your excuse for your helplessness?

We live in communities. The community in which I live has not offered the amount of help that I need to bring down Buy-and-Hold and replace it with Valuation-Informed Indexing. That’s my explanation for why I am not rich and famous today, for why I am instead a newborn babe in the snow.

Say that you were one of the women who was attacked by Bill Cosby. And say that you tried to do something about it when it happened. And that no one cared. He just kept committing his crimes because no one cared enough to take effective action. The world would be telling you that you were helpless, right? That’s the message that the world has been sending me for 16 years.

Now —

If the world sends you a message that you are helpless, should you give up on your efforts to do good?

In some circumstances, you should. If a woman who was attacked by Bill Cosby in 1965 made efforts to seek justice and received no help, I certainly wouldn’t have blamed her if she stopped making those efforts. And I wouldn’t blame someone who has made efforts to tell the world how stock investing really works if they ran into the sort of resistance that I have run into. We are all given only so many years of life and we have to make judgments as to how to employ those years of life energy. There’s a case for me saying after 16 years:”Oh, I gave this a good shot and it hasn’t yet paid off, I think I will direct my energies elsewhere.”

But there is also a good case — I think a much better case — for me soldiering on.

Bill Cosby wouldn’t be in prison today if a few of the women who he attacked did not eventually work up the courage to testify against him. They were no doubt afraid that the community of people around them would ignore them once again. But that’s not what happened this time. Cosby is now in prison. The community came through. It took a long time for that to happen. But it eventually happened. By continuing to fight the good fight, those women made the world a better place. Good for them, you know?

That’s what I expect to be able to do in time. The community of people around me has not helped me to the extent that I need it to help me to get the job done. But it has sure helped me in hundreds of very exciting ways. The research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau is the most important research published in this field in 30 years. That research wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t made efforts to do the right thing without having certainty in advance as to what the payoff would be. My decision to do the right thing in the face of uncertainty as to what the payoff would be paid off big time in that case.

And that is of course not the only time that happened. There are hundreds of cases in which something similar happened. The catch-phrase that I use is that the good news here has been 50 times more good than the bad news here has been bad. I don’t deny the bad news. I don’t say that the community of people around me has done enough for us as a society to bring down Buy-and-Hold and replace it with Valuation-Informed Indexing. But I don’t deny the good news either. I try to let in both realities.

The fact that we as a people have enacted laws against financial fraud reveals what we think of the tactics employed by you Goons, Anonymous. If you Goons are so powerful, why don’t you get those laws repealed? You can’t do it. You are newborn babes in the snow in your own way. You are helpless in the face of a community of people not willing to help you out when it comes to getting the laws against financial fraud repealed.

Will I be able to get more people to help me out in the days following the next price crash? I sure think so. I am not the only person who loves this country. There are millions of us. We will all be working together in the days following the next crash to do good things.

You are the Bill Cosby of Investoworld. Not this boy, you know? The women who testified against Cosby did a good thing. They made the world a better place. We will see fewer cases of people behaving as he did as a result of their courage. Good for them.

I believe that I can make the world a better place by insisting on my right (and the right of all others) to post honestly re the implications of the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. So I am going to soldier on. I won’t ever make it to the other side of The Big Black Mountain without more help from the community of people around me than I have seen in the first 16 years of this, I believe that I will enjoy more help in the days following the next crash. I believe that we will all make it together to a better place and that the Bill Cosby’s of InvestoWorld will end up in prison cells.

We’ll see, you know? Me saying it doesn’t make it so. I have been wrong before. If it were happening again, I would probably be the last to know.

But that’s what I believe. I believe that as a society we are very close to making some amazing leaps forward in our understanding of how stock investing works in the real world. Good for us. And good for me for hanging in there despite some temporary setbacks on the road to that better place.

I wish you all good things, dear Goon friend.

Newborn Babe 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:

“Yours comes with death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs.”

Death threats? You mean this link you sent to the police that is obviously not a death threat?

https://boards.fool.com/sydsydsyd-theyre-taking-them-down-as-fast-as-we-18207722.aspx?sort=postdate

I did indeed show that to the police. And, yes, that is indeed a death threat.

Posts like that do not belong in discussions of how stock investing works. And it is ALWAYS the Buy-and-Holders who advance such posts. It is only a small number of Buy-and-Holders who do that sort of thing. But it is a LARGE percentage of the population of Buy-and-Holders who TOLERATE that sort of thing.

Motley Fool should have banned the person who advanced that post. The post is clearly in violation of their published rules. They didn’t ban the person who advanced the post because the majority of the population of the board was Buy-and-Holders and Motley Fool wanted the money that came in as a result of having those people at the site.

This is why Buy-and-Hold is so dangerous. It is an emotion-based strategy. It cannot survive in a world in which posting based on the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research is permitted. So it is not just that the Buy-and-Holders get it wrong. Getting it wrong is a small thing in relative terms. It is that the Buy-and-Holders cannot tolerate anyone else getting it right. Buy-and-Holders attack those who advocate research-based strategies because, when people come to see the merits of research-based strategies, it makes the Buy-and-Holders look bad for promoting the OPPOSITE of what works. What works is to always practice price discipline when buying stocks. Buy-and-Holders tell investors NOT to exercise price discipline (long-term timing). Huh? What the f?

I OPPOSE that sort of post, Anonymous. Please feel free to spread the word all across the internet. I would feel that you were doing me a favor by doing so. That sort of thing is not my particular cup of tea. It’s not a close call. The primary reason why I chose to build the Retire Early at Motley Fool is that they had the strongest rules on the internet protecting people from that sort of posting behavior. Motley Fool should have enforced its published rules in a reasonable manner despite the fact that it would cost them a few bucks in the short term to do so. You Goons wouldn’t be going to prison had they done that. So we would all be better off had Motley Fool just done its job.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event. I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, in any event.

Death-Threat Critic Rob