Set forth below is the text of a comment that I posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

“You’re the one showing emotion in your comments, Sammy.”

You are the one making attacks. You want to blame someone for your failures. In addition to your endless diatribes on buy and hold, just look at your website. You call people “goons”. You tell people they are going to prison. You call Jack Bogle a con-man. After Wade Pfau rejected you, you sent out over 30,000 emails on him, despite him asking you to stop. You have had such an obsession over John Greaney exposing your errors and lies, that you even pretend that you are responding to him on your website.

“That’s the story here. “

The “story” is your non-stop attack on everyone else for your own retirement plan failure. No one did this to you. It was all you.

Okay, Sammy.

Please take good 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:

“Stocks were priced at three times fair value in 2000.”

Only if you believe that PE10 is an immutable number as are the constants from the physical world.

This does not follow.

Someone could use a different valuation metric and conclude that the market was priced at 2.6 times fair value or 3.4 times fair value or whatever.

You didn’t use ANY valuation metric in your study, John. It’s not that you are wedded to some valuation metric other than P/E10. You made NO adjustment. That’s why your numbers are so wildly off the mark.

Had you said in response to my May 13, 2002, post “Well, I used valuation metric x and I came up with a safe withdrawal rate of 1.8 but I of course see the need to let my readers know that, had I used P/E10 — the metric endorsed by Nobel-prize-winning economist Robert Shiller — the number that I would have produced would have been 1.6,” there would have been no problem. The community members who saw merit in metric x would have used 1.8 and the community members who saw merit in the metric endorsed by the Nobel-prize-winning economist would have used 1.6. There would have been no death threats. There would have been no demands for unjustified board bannings. There would have been no tens of thousands of acts of defamation. There would have been no threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs.

All of the financial fraud stuff followed because you included no valuation adjustment AT ALL in your “study” and you were not able to think up any way to defend this mistake within the bounds of the U.S. law. So you went down the dark path that you went down.

I told you at the time NOT to go down that dark path. You have no beef with me, my long-time abusive-posting friend. Your beef is with John Greaney. Your beef is with the man in the mirror.

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 don’t agree with you that Buy-and-Hold has a demonstrated track record of success, Anonymous.”

“It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, Anonymous.”

I have watched it play out. You can continue to live in your fantasy world. That is your right.

I don’t want to risk my retirement and have my family live in fear, so I chose the path that has a proven track record of success and that is what we see with buy and hold.

Given that those are your sincere beliefs (I certainly believe that they are), you are doing the right thing, Anonymous.

I naturally wish you the best of luck with it.

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 you needed heart surgery and a doctor said that he could do a procedure that has a demonstrated track record of success or, alternatively, he said that you could try this other surgery that might work, but has no track record, which would you choose?

I don’t agree with you that Buy-and-Hold has a demonstrated track record of success, Anonymous.

The U.S. stock market has generated an annual average return of 6.5 percent real for 147 years running. U.S. stocks should represent an AMAZING long-term value proposition.

But look at what happened in the four occasions in U.S. history when the Buy-and-Hold “strategy” became popular. On the first occasion, this “strategy” caused losses big enough to cause the first of the four economic crises suffered in U.S. history. On the second occasion, this “strategy” caused losses big enough to cause the second of the four economic crises suffered in U.S. history. On the third occasion, this “strategy” caused losses big enough to cause the third of four economic crises in U.S. history. On the fourth occasion, this “strategy” caused losses big enough to cause the fourth of four economic crises in U.S. history.

Huh? What the f?

I’m beginning to develop a funny feeling that perhaps going pure Get Rich Quick is NOT the answer, that perhaps going pure Get Rich Quick is actually the freakin’ problem, just as the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field indicates.

When the first heart surgery was performed, there was no “track record of success.” There was a mountain of scientific evidence showing that heart surgery would enhance millions of lives and the decision was made that as a society we would have to go with what the science said and let the track record of success develop naturally over time. Had advocates of the morticians lobby threatened to kill any doctors who employed the new scientific knowledge to help millions of people lead better lives, we would all be worse off today.

Fortunately, we have laws protecting us against that kind of behavior. Unfortunately, the Wall Street Con Men have for 36 years now been able to use their considerable wealth and power and connections to evade those laws. I think it would be fair to say that following the next price crash we will be working together as a society to insure that our laws are enforced, that those who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer, John Greaney and Jack Bogle will be put in prison cells where they belong so that the rest of us will be able to enjoy the benefits of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word), Nobel-prize-winning research for many decades to come.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, Anonymous.

I naturally wish you the best that this life has to offer a person, my hostile-to-scientific-breakthroughs friend.

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 VII had a superior and demonstrated track record (actually implemented), then I would have no problem supporting VII and investing my own money, as such. However, that is not the case. To the opposite, buy, hold and rebalance has a consider track record of success.

You are of course free to do as you please, Anonymous.

I am also free to do as I please. And I believe that the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is legitimate research.

I naturally 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:

To be honest. I have no idea who John Greaney is. Other than he must really knew how to yank Rob’s chain in a way that destabilized Mr Bennett.

John Greaney is a nobody. Rob Bennett essentially wasted 20%+ of his life because of some Internet nobody. I guess that would drive anyone loopy.

I don’t agree with you, Laugh. I think it would be fair to describe the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau as the most important research published in this field in the past 30 years. That research wouldn’t exist but for the “chain yanking” that you refer to here.

Greaney is not the first insanely abusive poster in the history of the internet. The question is — Why was he tolerated? Every site has published rules prohibiting the tactics that Greaney employed. Why were those rules not enforced? The answer is that we all have a little bit of Greaney within is. Greaney is a cartoon version of all Buy-and-Hold investors. His behavior shows us what the Get Rich Quick urge that resides within us all looks like up close and personal. Greaney is pure emotion, zero reasoning (when it comes to stock investing). We ALL are largely emotional creatures who like to flatter ourselves by telling ourselves that we are rational. Coming to understand why Greaney behaves as he does helps us all to understand why we make stock investing so much more risky than it needs to be.

And I do not agree with you that Greaney is a nobody. His retirement study was top-notch stuff. It was his study that got me interested in posting at the Retire Early board in the first place. And Greaney was very popular at that board, a board comprised of VERY smart people. How did he get to be so popular if he is such a nobody? And Greaney was smart enough himself to be able to retire at age 40. How did such a smart guy get so taken in by a pure Get Rich Quick approach? Greaney is a true believer. All of us who want to become more effective investors should be trying understand how ANYONE can be a true believer in Buy-and-Hold.

Greaney is a frugal guy. If you told him to buy a car without checking out the price, he would laugh at you. Yet he doesn’t bother checking price when buying stocks, something to which he devotes a lot more of his money than he devotes to cars. There’s something odd going on here and every person who cares about stock investing should want to come to a better understanding of it.

I haven’t wasted one day of my life during the past 15 years. I have generated powerful insight after powerful insight after powerful insight. I have achieved things that someone with my background has zero right to reasonably expect to be able to achieve. I did it because I realized early on that Greaney was not a nobody and that his behavior was telling us all something important about how stock investing works in the real world. He was telling us the same thing that Shiller’s 1981 research findings told us — investing is an INTENSELY emotional endeavor. Follow a strategy that ignores the emotional element (revealed in the P/E10 level) and you are following a strategy that leave out 80 percent of the story.

That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter in any event. 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:

Given that you are around 60 years old, don’t you think time is now running short for your plan to come together and that you should be looking for a “plan B”?

No. I love my country. That runs deep. I don’t think that that is something that changes because one finds a few obstacles placed in one’s path.

I am honored to be leading the effort to open up every web site on the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics. This is the most important work that anyone in the United States is doing at this time in the history of our nation, in my assessment.

And we are of course very close to success. The growing desperation of you Goons comes across in each additional abusive post that you advance. So it would be foolish in the extreme to retreat even an inch at this point in the proceedings. Or at least so Rob Bennett sincerely believes on the morning of July 4, 2017.

We will of course have to see how things play out to know for certain. I of course see things from my perspective and you Goons of course at least to pretend to see things differently. The truth of the matter will be revealed to all of us as we watch how our nation responds to the next price crash and the economic and political turmoil that is sure to follow the loss of trillions of dollars of additional middle-class wealth.

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person in any event, my long-time Goon friend.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

Rob,

You response is just more verbal diarrhea, consisting of the same repetitive nonsense.

I wish that you could find it in yourself to add the words “in my opinion,” Sammy.

Thousands of our fellow community members have had a very different reaction to my work. They have told me that my words changed their lives, that they learned from me things about how stock investing works that they never learned by reading anyone else.

Those people matter. My intent is to continue giving them my best efforts.

While also wishing you all the best that this life has to offer a person, to be sure.

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’s ironic that so many of your blog posts are replies to comments that you would have certainly deleted if you could. Without Sammy Soda, the well would dried up by now.

I understand the point you are making and I half agree, Anonymous. But I also half disagree.

You are right that, if I were king of the world, I would delete the pure Goon stuff. I would not delete the posts in which you Goons put forward legitimate questions. I learn from those and those provide others the opportunity to learn; so those are a plus. But, yes, you are right that I would delete a good percentage of the Sammy posts at the Value Walk site if I were the site administrator there. They waste people’s time and they scare away people who would otherwise engage in interesting discussions. So I see those as a pure negative that should be deleted.

The reality is that I am not king of the world. Perhaps you’ve noticed! So Sammy gets to put his posts up at the Value Walk site whether I like the idea or not.

I could ignore them, right? I could just not respond.

I ignore some of them. When they get to be ridiculously repetitive or pointless, I ignore them. That happens.

I don’t like to ignore intimidation posts. The entire problem that we are facing developed because Normals got into the habit of ignoring intimidation posts put forward by you Goons. The idea is “this is ugly stuff and I would rather not get involved, I’ll let someone else deal with it.” There’s no one else here but us chickens, you know? When we don’t call people out on their intimidation tactics, those using intimidation tactics enjoy tactical victories. That encourages them to rely more heavily on intimidation tactics. So things get worse and worse over time instead of better and better. I see this as a “a stitch in time saves nine” sort of thing. Putting forth a little extra effort on the front end spares us needing to put forward a whole big bunch on the back end. I want to set a good example by responding in an appropriate way to intimidation posts. So I usually do that.

Sammy also puts forward a lot of posts that refer to incredible things like the threats directed to Wade Pfau. We need to get the word out about things like that. So I don’t favor the idea of ignoring those. If there are too many in a row, they get monotonous and I do ignore them. But my general feeling is that the people who opposed those tactics have nothing to be ashamed of and so we shouldn’t act like we are ashamed when the subject comes up. The fact that those seeking to defend Buy-and-Hold feel that they need to resort to such tactics says something about the level of confidence they feel re their strategy. I think we all should be trying to bring that out. So again I am reluctant to ignore too many of those when they pop up.

Sammy is just out to cause trouble. I suppose that he could be called a “troll.” So I wouldn’t object if most of his comments were deleted and, if I were in charge, I would indeed delete a good number of them myself. But, given that they appear, I think that it usually makes sense to respond to them. The fact that they appear and that lots of others don’t jump in and demand that they be removed tells us something about where we stand as a society re the Buy-and-Hold question. Buy-and-Hold was discredited by the peer-reviewed research 36 years ago. Why are we so tolerant of nasty posts aimed at “defending” it?

That’s not a Goon matter. It’s you Goons bringing the question to the surface. But it is the tolerance of the Normals for Goon behavior that really is the root cause of why we are in an economic crisis today. You Goons couldn’t get away with the tactics that you employ in any field of human endeavor other than investing analysis. Why are our collective standards so low in this one field that this sort of thing can continue to go on for so long?

That’s the real question at play. I respond to a lot of the comments because I am trying to become clearer in my head about all of the various aspects of that question and because I am trying to help others listening in both now and in future days to become clearer in their heads re these matters.

As distasteful as I find the pure Goon comments, I do sometimes learn from them. For so long as that is true, my guess is that I will continue to feel drawn to respond to them. We need to know with great clarity how we got into this situation so that we can be sure that we never in the future get into a similar situation. We all have a Get Rich Quick urge residing within us. It is just more dominant in you Goons. So I think that we all can learn by looking at the tactics you employ and by noting our own reluctance to respond to those tactics how our Get Rich Quick urge does us harm and what we need to do to overcome its pull.

I do NOT blame the 15-year cover-up solely on you Goons. You are the instigators of the bad stuff. You serve on the front lines. But you couldn’t get away with what you get away with without a lot of help from a lot of Normals and a lot of people in positions of responsibility (like site owners). A big part of this story is how so many good and smart people permitted the Goon phenomenon to continue for so long. I cannot tell this story completely and fairly and honestly without exploring that aspect of the question. So when it comes up, I make an effort to engage.

I hope that helps you to understand a little bit better what’s going on from my end of the table, Anonymous. You are right that I would delete a good percentage of Sammy’s posts. But the fact that they are not deleted by others tells us something important about why we are in an economic crisis today. We need to know everything we can know about what caused the economic crisis and about why as a society we permit it to continue to do so much damage. So I see it as my job not to duck those questions when they appear before me but to struggle to make some sense out of what is happening when your nasty work is permitted to disrupt conversations that good and smart people would like to be having amongst themselves.

Also, after 15 years of this, I have my doubts as to whether the well will ever dry up. If it wasn’t Sammy, it would be something else. Probably something better. But perhaps not, you know? Perhaps the Sammy question is the one that I should be focused on because it is so distasteful that no one else wants to deal with it. Perhaps figuring out what makes a Sammy or an Anonymous tick is the most important question on the table.

I don’t see it as my place to make a decision re that one way or the other. I let the world decide it for me. I aim to put up solid column entries and, if the world presents me with comments by Sammy, I do my best to respond to them in a way that helps us all understand a tiny bit better the stuff we need to understand to become better long-term investors. That’s my thing. So that’s what I do. I cannot help but speculate about the big picture at times. But I try to keep my eyes focused on what is in front on me and to trust the process (which is ultimately rooted in our economic and legal systems and culture) to bring things to a successful conclusion over time.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, my old friend.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

Rob,

It is all just a silly story you have made up. You made all of this up AFTER you stopped working. It was only AFTER your plan failed that you started down this road of delusion in what appears to be a way to explain away your failures as well as what seems to be an attempt to avoid going back into the working world to support your family. Instead, you keep telling them that you will be receiving a big $500 million windfall from people that have doubted your story.

I wish you all the best in any event, Sammy.

Please take good care, my old friend.

Rob