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

No one needs a reason to ban you or anyone else from their website. If I don’t want you in my house I can tell you that you cannot come over. I can even threaten to call the police if you show up. You need to respect the rights of others.

I disagree. When a site owner bans someone solely because that person mentioned what the last 43 years of peer-reviewed research tells us all about what works in stock investing, it is a very strong sign that that site owner does not have the interests of his readers at heart. It helps him to turn a quick buck for him to get behind a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy. But there are things in this world more important than turning a quick buck, in my assessment. Caring what happens to your friends’ retirement accounts is one of them.

Should the tobacco companies have the right to run huge ad campaigns that smoking will help you to live a long, healthy life and to prohibit anyone from mentioning the research showing that smoking causes cancer? I say “no.” I think that the people being pitched have a right to hear about the dangers of smoking. I feel the same way about Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold stock investing “strategies.” I believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research. Sue me.

My best wishes to you and yours, Sensible.

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:

Who cares what you say?  It is not your work and you are not an expert.

If no one cared, you would not have insisted that I be banned from even a single site. Your behavior for 22 years now shows that you believe that plenty of people care.

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 prices are what people will pay for them.if a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger at Wendy’s costs $3 then I consider it overpriced, but if other people think it’s a fair enough value at a fair enough price then Wendy’s will still sell their cheeseburgers. If I don’t like it I can go to their competition, make my cheeseburger at home, or not but a cheeseburger at all. What you’re doing is like not buying the cheeseburger and getting mad at everyone else for not agreeing with you about the price of the cheeseburger.

No. What I am saying is that, if Wendy’s says in a commercial that their Junior Bacon Cheeseburger costs $3 but then charges you $6 for it, all of the people who are hurt by this dishonest practice should be permitted to call them out on their dishonesty. That’s how the dishonesty gets fixed. Greaney said that the safe withdrawal rate is 4 percent at a time when it was really 1.6 percent. That hurt people. All of us who knew about the error in the study should have felt free to call it out. None of us should have been made to feel afraid to call out the error.

When people in the community noticed that no one was calling out the error, they came to believe that the study was probably accurate. When I called out the error, people lost confidence in the study. That’s why Greaney freaked out. He wants people to continue to have confidence in the study and he has seen that that is not possible in a world where people feel free to call out the error in it. I want to see the study corrected. So I naturally support the idea of permitting honest posting re the research.

Rob

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

Can you buy groceries with your opinion of the peer reviewed research?  How about that for different strokes.

I cannot buy groceries with it.

But I can sleep at night knowing that I did right by my fellow community members, some of whom had become friends over the years. That matters more than groceries to me. Call me madcap!

Rob

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

Your impression?  We are to go off of that?  You don’t have any expert saying this and we are just to go with your impression?

I am not aware of a single expert who says that the Greaney retirement study contains a valuation adjustment. Full truth be told, I cannot recall Greaney himself ever saying precisely that. He has not corrected the study in the 22 years since I brought the error to his attention. He has responded abusively to all efforts by his fellow community members to warn people about the error. But I do not recall him ever saying directly that the study contains a valuation adjustment. Evidence-Based Investing, who is a general in Greaney’s army of Goons, has said that “nobody” truly believes that Greaney included a valuation adjustment in the study, “including Greaney himself.” That’s not precisely the same thing as Greaney saying it but it’s close.

I have not spoken to every expert in the field. But not one that I have spoken to has said that the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment. So, yes, it is my impression that everyone agrees. We will know for certain once every internet site has been opened to honest posting re these matters and each and every expert in the field feels comfortable advancing an honest statement re his or her views. I have been saying that we need to open every site to honest posting since the afternoon of May 13, 2002.

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

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:

Bad behavior includes how you ignore yrge fact that people have pointed out YOUR error with Greaney’s work.  You just don’t listen.  That’s why your wife divorced you.

I believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment.

I’m willing to listen to anyone who makes a case that it does possess one. No one has done that in the first 22 years of discussions.

Threatening to murder someone’s loved ones is not an argument that the study contains a valuation adjustment. It’s an effort to silence people pointing out the error.

Rob

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

It appears that you want everyone else to keep it zipped, while also expecting the rest of the world to let you say whatever you want on THEIR website.

Not going to happen, Rob.

I have zero desire to have anyone keep it zipped. The only thing that I would suppress is abusive stuff. And I would suppress abusive stuff because it scares people and causes them to self-censor. I want to hear what those people think.

I think it will happen. The fact that the published rules of every site prohibit the tactics that you Goons have employed to suppress honest discussion of the peer-reviewed research shows that as a nation of people we do not like the abusive and criminal stuff. We have thus far tolerated it in the investment advice field because we are conflicted by our love of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold. But I think it will become difficult to maintain that love in the face of all the human misery we will see following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I believe that at that point we may permit our better selves to have a little more say in these matters. And then we are off to the races.

We’ll see, you know? I believe that we are fundamentally a good people.

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 vast majority of investors are not following buy and hold. The majority of stock, however, is held by the top 10% and those are the real buy and holders. They have significant liquidity and can snap up cheap shares every time a market timer gets cold feet.

Your explanation doesn’t hold water.

The CAPE value is set by the entire population of investors. You don’t get a CAPE value of 34 without a whole lot of Buy-and-Holders entering the mix.

Common sense tells you that it is a bad idea to price stocks at two times their real value. How do you persuade millions of people to ignore their common sense? You tell them that you have a funny feeling that there might be an alternative universe 50 billions light years away in which everything works the opposite of how it has always worked on good old Planet Earth and so this might be the first time in history in which someone achieves long-term success in stock investing without engaging in valuation-based market timing.

Today’s CAPE value reveals the current popularity of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold thinking. A CAPE value of 34 doesn’t just pop into existence for no reason. I mean, come on.

But a CAPE value of 34 is always a very shaky thing. Let people tell the truth about what the peer-reviewed research says and that CAPE value collapses. So there need to be very, very tight restrictions on posting re the peer-reviewed research. Keeping the fantasy going is hard work. That’s where you Goons enter the picture.

Not this boy, you know? I am good with how things are done in every other field of human endeavor.

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>Since you think you know everything and have it all figured out, we will let you just go ahead and solve all your problems on your own. Don’t expect us to give you cheap shares. Don’t expect us to let you come on other boards to sell your hocum. Don’t expect anyone to give you any windfall payments or settlement payments. You just go out there and figure out how to get money on your own. No one owes you one red cent, so stop asking everyone else to do something for you.

Good luck.</I>

I stopped expecting anything positive from you Goons on the afternoon of May 13, 2002, Anonymous.

But I do believe that you should follow the published rules of the sites at which you post. And that you should follow the laws of the United States. And that all community members, Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers alike, should call you out on it when you fail to do so.

And that it reflects poorly on Buy-and-Hold that you engage in the behavior that you do in “defense” of it. If Buy-and-Hold were something real, other Buy-and-Holders would be horrified to see the manner in which you “defend” it. I would certainly never want to see anyone defend Valuation-Informed Indexing in that manner.

That’s where I’m coming from re this one, 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:

Being broke is your 60’s……….it is much worse than “woe is me”.

Betraying your friends in your 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s is worse than that

My sincere take.

Rob