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, besides dismissing comments here, it appears you have been deleting all comments posted to your blog for several weeks. Any particular reason for this?

I have deleted several abusive comments. That’s not a new policy. I have always done that. Almost every board and blog at which I have posted has a policy of deleting abusive comments. They don’t serve any positive purpose. They intimidate people and drive good people away from the site. If you want to encourage a learning experience for your readers, you need to delete abusive stuff.

I delete more today than I did in earlier times. That’s not because I feel stronger about the need to rein in abusiveness. It’s because I used to leave up a good number of comments that contained some worthwhile questions in addition to some abusiveness. I am less inclined to do that today because many of the worthwhile questions that are raised by the Goons have already been asked and answered on numerous occasions. It’s become repetitive to answer them again and again. So I now delete questions that have been asked on at least several occasions in the past. I still permit new questions to go up.

For example, the Goons often ask “Do you think that the cover-up of the errors in the Buy-and-Hold strategy revealed by Shiller’s research is a conspiracy?” That’s a good question. It’s one that many good and smart people wonder about. The Goons don’t ask that question out of a genuine desire to learn the answer to it. They are just trying to cause trouble. But it is a good question all the same and so in the past I have responded to that one many times for the benefit of the many people who do possess a genuine desire to know the answer.

I am not inclined to respond that one today. If the question were put forward by a non-Goon, I would respond to it. Or if one of the Goons approached it from an angle that has not been explored in the past, I might respond to it. But I see no purpose being served by responding one more time to a Goon question that has been asked and answered on many prior occasions. Those who are looking for an answer to the question can do a search at my site and find the blog entries in which I have set forth answers to it in the past. So those people are getting what they need. To continue to respond to the Goons re this point is a waste of my time and of their time and it clutters up the site.

I still respond to new Goon questions. The Goon always proceed with bad intent. But that doesn’t mean that they never ask questions that deserve answers. They have asked good questions on many, many occasions. The Goons truly believe (at least on one level of consciousness) in Buy-and-Hold. They follow the strategy themselves. It is important that everyone understand this. So, even though they are not seeking to learn new things, they can and do identify aspects of the Valuation-Informed Indexing strategy that both Goons and non-Goons need to understand. In this regard, I think they have been a big help to all of us in their posing of various questions that I have answered here and at my site and at other sites. All worthwhile questions help us all to learn, even when they are posed by people with no genuine desire to learn the answers to them.

There has been no change in policy on my part. I have always deleted comments that served no positive purpose. The change that has taken place is that the Goons are either no longer able to come up with questions that have not been addressed before or else are no longer willing to put forward such questions. None of the Goons are banned at my site. If they present questions that would help us all to enjoy a learning experience, I will certainly let those comments appear. I am grateful for those sorts of questions. I hold no animus toward the Goons. I just don’t want the site being cluttered up with stuff that has been addressed on many earlier occasions.

I hope that helps a bit, Dan. Thanks for stopping by.

Rob

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

“We need to incorporate the new findings into EVERY conversation.”

That has been the core of your problem. Prior to getting kicked off the boards, you would fill up every thread with what you say are the “new findings” regardless of the topic or the opinions of others. People eventually grew tired of it.

“We all want the same things. ”

Uhm, no, I don’t think so. Again, it shows that you want to force your opinions on other people. You really don’t have any interest in a real conversation. Instead, you only want to people to agree with what you say as the “dear leader”.

“Whether you threaten to kill my wife and children as my “punishment” for doing so or not.”

You have repeated this line for many, many years, yet you don’t offer proof. Guess what. Someone made a REAL death threat against me approximately 10 years ago. Due to a work issue, I had to fire an employee. He did not take it well. I was attending a conference at a hotel in a major city. He was at the hotel (attending on behalf of another company). While meeting with other people, he walked up and told me that he “would get a gun and kill me”. I had actual proof of this threat and reported it to the authorities and that was it. I don’t use this story as a crutch like you do and I also have the ability to prove that it actually happened, unlike you do. My advice is to get your proof and report it, but stop using it like it makes you out to be a saint or is some kind of support for your position, because it isn’t.

My policy was to put up one post on each thread relating to the valuations topic. I didn’t “fill up” threads. I put forward one post.

There were times when people interested in the topic would ask questions. In those cases, I would respond to the questions. That’s a good thing. In most cases, there were also questions being directed to the Buy-and-Holders who posted on the thread, so the questions directed at me and my responses to them did not “fill up” the thread.

In a small number of cases, the issue being addressed on the Valuation-Informed Indexing side of things was of such widespread interest that the VII aspects of the question did indeed come to dominate the thread. But that was not at all common. And, when it did happen, it happened for the perfectly legitimate reason that interest in those questions was great. So, again, this was a good thing.

There were also times when you Goons would ask one serious question mixed in with lots of abusive garbage. My policy in those cases was to respond to the serious question while either ignoring the abusive garbage or asking those putting forward the abusive garbage to rein it in. Those threads did not get dominated by the abusive garbage because you Goons were unwilling to rein in your insanely abusive tendencies and because the site administrators were reluctant to take effective action. The problem there is that there is a lot of money to be made promoting Get Rich Quick strategies and Buy-and-Hold is the purest Get Rich Quick strategy ever concocted by the human mind. Once Valuation-Informed Indexing becomes dominant, this obviously will not be a problem anymore.

I would be happy not to post on valuation-related threads at all if only we had enough Valuation-Informed Indexers participating at every board and blog that my contributions were not needed. But it is important that there be at least one research-based post on every thread relating to an issue re which valuations plays a role. If people see a discussion and do not see any post coming from the VII perspective, they are misled into thinking that the Buy-and-Hold perspective is the only perspective that exists. That creates a dangerous situation. It is because millions of middle-class investors believe that Buy-and-Hold is rooted in something real that we are in an economic crisis today.

We can’t instantly make VII the dominant strategy. But we all need to work together to make sure that VII is represented at every board and at every blog and indeed at every discussion thread. It’s a bad idea to have me always being the person putting forward the VII perspective and I want to change this. The way to change it is to educate millions of people re what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research in this field says. Once we do that, we will have thousands of posters doing what I do today.

But of course the Buy-and-Holders HATE that idea. It’s not Rob Bennett that you Goons hate. It’s the peer-reviewed research of the past 34 years. You oppose ANYONE putting forward posts that are rooted in an understanding of the last 34 years of research. You didn’t just post abusively in threads in which I participated. You posted abusively in threads in which John Walter Russell participated. And you posted abusively in threads in which Wade Pfau participated (in the days when Wade was posting honestly). And you posted abusively in threads in which Microlepsis participated. And you posted abusively in threads in which John C. Craig participated. And on and on and on.

There never should have been a cover-up. Bogle should have come clean within a few weeks of the day in 1981 in which Shiller published his 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 either in this solar system or in some far distant one. The cover-up is contrary to everything our nation stands for. It had made Buy-and-Holders ashamed of themselves. And the greater the shame they feel, the more abusive they become when they see posts relating to the post-1981 peer-reviewed research.

I dd not create this dangerous situation, Reality. I have for 13 years played the lead role in trying to change it. Jack Bogle played the lead role in creating the dangerous situation. He is the lead Wall Street Con Men. Please take your beefs to him.

People eventually grew tired of it.

People LOVED the honest discussions we have re the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. Thousands said so. I have articles at this site quoting many of the wonderful comments that were advanced saying so.

What people HATED was the insane abusiveness of you Goons. You need to be put in prison. That will end the nasty stuff and free the rest of us to learn what we very much need to know about what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research shows us. I am sure.

it shows that you want to force your opinions on other people.

I want every investor alive on this planet to be aware of both sides of the story before investing their hard-earned money to finance their retirements. I will make it happen. Count it.

Instead, you only want to people to agree with what you say as the “dear leader”.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I learn more from people who find weaknesses in my arguments that I learn from people who pat me on the back. I LOVE reasoned posts from my Buy-and-Hold friends.

I do NOT love death threats. Or demands for unjustified board bannings. Or tens of thousands of acts of defamation. Or threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. Those sorts of posts get my Goon friends placed inside prison cells when they destroy the lives of millions of middle-class investors with their insane abusiveness. I HATE that smelly garbage. I OPPOSE the rationalizations engaged in by sites that tolerate such ugliness on the grounds that its an easy way to turn a buck to exploit the Get Rich Quick urge that resides within each of us. Not this boy. Find somebody else. No can do.

stop using it like it makes you out to be a saint or is some kind of support for your position, because it isn’t.

It absolutely shows the weakness of the case for Buy-and-Hold that you Goons employ death threats to block discussions of the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research in this field and that nationally recognized experts like Jack Bogle are too afraid of the emotional monster that they have created to do anything about the problem. I have NEVER seen a Valuation-Informed Indexer use a death threat to make his or her case. We use research because we have research that supports our case. The Buy-and-Holders often employ death threats and other insanely abusive tactics. I wonder why.

Buy-and-Hold is a con, Reality. That’s the core source of the friction. It’s a money-making thing. There has never been a sliver of support for this preposterous strategy anywhere in the peer-reviewed research. Wade Pfau checked that one very carefully. He was of course amazed by what he found. But the fact that your response was to destroy his career shows that his findings re this point were indeed backed by the data.

When the con has been exposed, we all will be freed to discuss the first true research-based strategy at every discussion board and blog on the internet. Good for us!

This is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. I am proud to be the leader of the effort to open the entire internet to honest discussion of what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research says.

I have a funny feeling that even Jack Bogle will applaud those of us who have fought so hard to open the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and other critically important investment-related topics once we all make it together to the other side of The Big Black Mountain.

But we’ll see, you know? We are all going to need to be patient enough to see things play out before us as we respond collectively to the next price crash and witness the grave damage it does to our confidence in our economic and political systems.

I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, my old 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,

I am happy to answer your points, even though you usually fail to answer anyone else’s questions.

You stopped using the common sense button around many years ago when you quit your job without sufficient savings. With a failed retirement plan, you started your long campaign of blaming everyone else for your problems,

If you really know how stock investing works, you wouldn’t have a retirement plan that has fallen short.

Your 13 years have been wasted time and you have been predicting a 65% crash year after year, continuing to push out the predicted crash date. Nothing changed for you during the downturn in 2008/2009.

The abusive posting comes from you. You are the one with the prison threats. You are the one that made a death threat (yet claim others did without showing any proof). You are the one that sent out over 30,000 emails about Wade Pfau, despite Wade asking you to stop as you were causing him great harm. You are the one that has slander d many we’ll know experts, including Jack Bogle.

As for board banning so, you were banned from those boards long before I even knew who you were. I have looked into the history of those banning a and I agree with the board owners. You behavior is horrible. It is one thing when 1 or 2 board owners decides to ban you. However, when we see this consistently done by dozens of board owners, it shows a pattern that cannot be disputed. Simple Google searches tell the story. We can read your words and see your poor behavior ourselves. It is so bad, people created a board to document your bad behavior.

Setting all that aside, here is the bottom line. We spend our lives saving and investing in order to support our families and secure our retirements. We have all had a front row seat to our public comments on your plan and watched it fail miserably. You seem to reject the idea of going back to work and pin your hopes on some kind of fantasy of a financial windfall. That is why people cannot take you seriously.

You are certainly right about the pattern you cite, Sammy. I have not been banned at one or two places. I have been banned at at least 20 different sites. That is a significant fact. I don’t deny it. Everyone trying to figure out what is going on here needs to know that fact and to try to make sense of it.

It could be that I am just a nutcase, as you argue. That’s one explanation. It’s an obvious possibility. I think it would be fair to say that it is the most likely possibility if all that you have to go on is that one fact.

But that’s not al that we have to go on.

I became famous on the internet as the result of a post that I put to a Motley Fool board on the morning of May 13, 2002, saying that the 4 percent rule set forth in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies is in error. No one else was saying that at the time and many Buy-and-Holders attacked me for saying it. Hundreds of people encouraged me to continue posting because they said that the discussion that I launched was the most important discussion re stock investing that they had ever seen. But the Buy-and-Holders were in the majority and they demanded that the site owners ban me and most of the site owners eventually did go along with those demands. A number sent me apologies for doing so, saying that they personally thought my work had huge value. But the Buy-and-Holders told them that they would destroy their sites with abusive posting if they did not ban me and they eventually did indeed do so.

It’s now 13 years down the line. Every major publication in this field has run an article saying that the 4 percent rule is in error. That includes the Wall Street Journal, the Economist magazine, Smart Money Magazine, the Financial Mentor site, and on and on. None of the studies that we now know to be in error have been corrected. The Buy-and-Holders have not apologized for the error they made or offered to compensate the millions of people who will be suffering failed retirements as a result of that error for their financial losses. But there is a universal consensus that the studies indeed were in error (they contained no valuation adjustments).

That’s odd. That’s weird. That’s strange.

I don’t think that I am a nutcase, Sammy. If I were, I probably would not see it. So, if someone wants to conclude that I am, I cannot say with 100 percent certainty that they are wrong. But I think that something else is going on here. There is too much weirdness for the answer here to be just that there is one nutcase saying crazy things.

What I think happened is that the Buy-and-Holders published peer-reviewed research in 1965 showing that short-term timing never works. They didn’t even check on long-term timing because index funds were not available yet and long-term timing works only with index funds. Vanguard made index funds available in the mid-1970s and then Shiller was the first researcher to test long-term timing in 1981. He found that long-term timing always works and is always 100 percent required for investors seeking to keep their risk profiles roughly constant. The Buy-and-Holders ignored Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) finding and continued pushing the now-discredited strategy ruling out both forms of timing. I took issue with them starting in 2002. I have argued that Shiller is right and that his finding requires the exercise of price discipline (long-term timing). The Buy-and-Holders have demanded that I be banned at every web site on the internet and have threatened the site owners who have been reluctant to go along until they submitted to their abusive demands.

I think this will all flip following the next price crash. Millions of people have been hurt by the error at the center of the Buy-and-Hold strategy. Those people are going to insist that this all be brought out into the open once they see how much financial harm has been done to them as a result of this 34-year cover-up.

But I obviously cannot say for certain. We are just going to have to wait for the crash to see how things play out.

I love you guys. I think that Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future and there would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing if not for the amazing work that was done by the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers. So I certainly am going to do all that I can to pull everybody together. We all want the same things. We all should be working together to spread the word re what the peer-reviewed research in this field really says. I intend to do my part, both by exposing the 34-year cover-up and by telling people about all the wonderful insights that have been generated by my Buy-and-Hold friends and about all the pressure that they feel to continue the cover-up given how much destruction it has caused and how bad they feel about the idea of people learning how they have contributed to it.

I hope that helps a bit.

Please take good care, 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:

i guess the delete button isn’t working for you, Rob.

It’s not, Sammy.

But the common sense button is working. The people reading these words possess common sense and they are able to figure out what is going on. They don’t know all the details. But they get the drift.

We know how stock investing works today. Prior to 1981, we did not know. We knew a lot but we were missing one critically important piece. Shiller supplied us with that critically important piece in 1981. It turns out that short-term timing really doesn’t work; we have the Buy-and-Holders to thank for showing us that. But it also turns out that long-term timing is price discipline and that price discipline ALWAYS works and is always 100 percent required. Now we just need to combine what we learned in 1981 with what we knew from the research done before then and we are all off to the races. We all get to live better lives from the point that we grant ourselves permission to explore the far-reaching implications of that powerful insight forward.

I think we are going to grant ourselves permission to live better lives. I’ve bet 13 years of my life on that belief. You haven’t yet let in how important this is and you cannot bear to accept that you made a mistake in earlier days. So you hate the idea that I direct my human energies to telling people about this. That’s where it stands. That’s where it has stood for 13 years now.

I guess we will see how it turns out following the next price crash. I think that enough people will be scared by what happens to them in the next crash that we will be able to break this standoff and get the word out to every investor alive as to what Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) finding means re how ordinary people should invest their retirement money. But I of course don’t know everything. I could be wrong. I am going to act on my belief. We will have to see how it all turns out.

You’ve gotten me banned from lots of places with your abusive behavior. It might be that you will be able to get me banned from one more place. I have seen too much to rule out the possibility. But there are always lots of other web sites. There are millions of people who need to know about the practical implications of Shiller’s revolutionary findings. I’ve had thousands of people tel me that they want to learn from me. And, given the tiny percentage of the population that I have personally spoken with over the 13 years, that shows me that there are millions with an interest in accessing the information.

I think those people are going to get what they need no matter what you do. But I do acknowledge that there is at least a chance that I will be proven wrong. All that I can do is all that I can do. I am going to give it my best shot. And I really do wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.

I obviously hope you fail re the abusive stuff. But I have no reason not to extend my best wishes to you. There is zero that is personal about this from my end of things. I think that I would be hurting myself if I made it personal in any way. I love what the Buy-and-Holders did and I love how Shiller revealed their one big mistake and I love how our system of government permits us to get the word out to everyone and I love how we all will be living richer lives once the word get outs. I have seen lots of bad stuff from your end. But the good stuff that I have seen from others (and in some cases even from you Goons!) overwhelms the bad stuff by a factor of 50.

I can live with that, you know? I wish that I didn’t have to. I don’t believe that I should have to live with ANY bad stuff re this matter given how much it helps people for us all to learn how Shiller’s revolutionary finding changed the world in a positive way. But things are what they are. There has been bad stuff and all signs are that there will continue to be bad stuff until we see the next price crash. I have to accept that reality whether I like the idea or not. But I also need to keep my eye on the good stuff, which overwhelms the bad stuff by a factor of 50.

That’s the job. That’s how these things are done. That’s how a society advances from one understanding of how stock investing works to a new and better and truly research-based understanding.

All 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:

Then (2013): “I can give the reasons why I view the end of 2015 as being an outside date…But the entire historical record indicates we should see the crash by the end of 2015.”

Now: “I never said that it was certain that we would see a crash by the end of 2015…The data says that we should see it by the end of 2018. But that’s the farthest-out date…”

“But it’s not a blown call.”

Nothing but your own quotes. If that’s goonish, doesn’t that make you the goon?

Do you think that Shiller was wrong when he said near the end of 1996 that investors who were heavily invested in stocks would come to regret it within the next 10 years?

We didn’t see the crash until near the end of 2008. Shiller was off by two years.

He was technically wrong. But he got something very important very right. We were headed toward an economic crisis. He saw it coming. Few others did. Jack Bogle certainly was not saying what Shiller was saying.

Had we listened more carefully to what Shiller was saying in 1996, we could have avoided the economic crisis that began in 2008. Millions of people who are unemployed today would not be unemployed today. Millions of entrepreneurs who have seen their businesses fail would not have seen their businesses fail. Millions of people on both the left and the right who have begun to lose confidence in our political system would not have begun to lose confidence in our political system. Millions of people who are on their way to suffering failed retirements would not be on their way to suffering failed retirements.

I think we should have listened more carefully to what Shiller said in 1996. That’s my sincere take, Anonymous.

If you want to say “Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, Shiller was off by two years.” I guess you can do that. I cannot stop you. But it is my view that you are focusing on the small error contained in Shiller’s words and ignoring the huge breakthrough insight also contained in Shiller’s words. He got something wrong. That’s so. But he also got a much bigger thing right. That’s part of the story too. Both things are realities and both realities need to be taken into consideration by every investor alive today.

If you follow me around and press me to make short-term predictions about how the market is going to perform in future days, I am going to get some of them wrong. You shouldn’t be surprised by that. The entire historical record shows that anyone trying to predict the future turns of the market is going to get some of them wrong. I have no better ability than anyone else to get them all right. So I am certainly going to get some of them wrong.

If I want to maintain a perfect record, I am just going to have to refuse to make predictions. But I don’t intend to play it that way. You ask me to make predictions because you want to be able to hold me accountable. I think it is healthy for me to be held accountable. So there are circumstances in which I will agree to make predictions. And in some cases I will get them wrong. There’s nothing that I can do about it. That’s just the way it works.

Now –

If you were fair-minded, you would put the wrong prediction in its proper context.

I said on the morning of May 13, 2002, that Greaney got the numbers wildly wrong in his retirement study. You Goons pretended to believe that I was the one in the wrong. Ten years later, the Wall Street Journal ran a story saying that the 4 percent rule is a big pile of garbage. So did the Economist magazine. So did Smart Money magazine. So did the Financial Mentor site. So did about 30 other leading publications in this field. Greaney ruined thousands of lives with his false claims about the safe withdrawal rate. I told the world about his mistake. That’s a big deal. I would have saved millions of people from suffering failed retirements had my May 13, 2002, post been given the publicity it merited and would have received had it not been for the insanely abusive and indeed criminal behavior of you Goons.

Is my exposure of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies more important or less important than my wrong prediction? It is 500 times more important. The prediction of when the next crash will come is a parlor trick. It means nothing. The crash is going to do us all bone-crusing damage regardless of whether it comes by the end of 2015 or by the end of 2016 or by the end of 2017. I got the year wrong but I did not get the bigger point wrong — We are headed for a massive price crash that will deepen the economic crisis and may even land us in the Second Great Depression and we all should be working 24/7 to lessen its impact. That’s what matters, not knowing the precise day and hour that the crash is going to come.

We can know some things and we cannot know some things. We know that practicing price discipline when buying stocks is 80 percent of the game. There has never in 145 years of stock market history been an investor who practiced price discipline and who achieved a poor long-term result. And there has never in 145 years of stock market history been an investor who failed to practice price discipline who achieved a good long-term result.

Buy-and-Hold always dramatically increases risk while also dramatically reducing return. Buy-and-Hold is the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind. Valuation-Informed Indexing, in contrast, is the first true research-based investing strategy. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the strategy that Bogle thought he was developing when he developed Buy-and-Hold plus a whole lot more than he did not even imagine as within the realm of possibility. Buy-and-Hold is the past, Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future.

Perhaps there will come a day when we will know more about how stock investing works than we do today and when it will be possible not only to make effective long-term predictions but also to make effective short-term predictions. I have my doubts, but you never know, perhaps that day will come. So my advice is that you take any short-term predictions that I or anyone else puts forward with a huge grain of sale.

The same mountain of peer-reviewed research that shows why you should not place too much confidence in short-term predictions shows why you MUST pay very close attention to long-term predictions rooted in consideration of price levels. Those predictions ALWAYS work. It is not possible for the rational human mind to imagine some alternate universe where price would not play a huge role in determining the merit of a stock purchase and of course the entire historical record confirms that what common sense tells us must be so really is so. The Buy-and-Holders have destroyed millions of lives by telling lies re this matter and they destroy thousands more with each day they continue doing so. They should knock off the funny business. Now. Today.

I am going to continue posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics, Anonymous. I have never given two seconds of consideration to playing it any other way, and, if I am true to myself, I never will.

I intend to say a few words at your trial aimed at getting your prison sentence reduced a bit. I ask nothing in return from you for doing so. I think it is the right thing to do given the circumstances that apply, so that is the way that I am going to play it. But I will of course testify honestly. Going to prison is not high on my bucket list. So that one is 100 percent non-negotiable.

I naturally wish you the best of luck in all of your future life endeavors, 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:

” I also acknowledge that I have been wrong before and that it could be that it is happening again.”

Yes you are wrong. Wade Pfau pointed that out to you a long time ago (as did many others), but you have chosen to ignore it.

Because you decided to ignore it, you have suffered substantially for a very long time. You somewhat acknowledge that in a recent post at your blog in which you say the following:

“I’m not making any money, Reality. You got that one right. I haven’t made a dime in 13 years. That makes me very, very, very sad. It makes my wife even sadder!”

Instead, you have banked your future on some kind of windfall coming from what you describe as “settlement payments” (all part of a fantasy).

It’s true that I haven’t made a dime in 13 years.

I believe that I will be seeing settlement payments. But it’s not right to say that I have “banked my future” on that belief. I say what I say about investing because that’s what I believe about investing. I believe that everyone should be saying what they believe. That’s how we handle things in every other field of human endeavor. That’s what would work in the investing realm too, in my assessment. When we all say what we believe, the people listening in get to hear all sides and eventually people figure things out.

That brings us to Wade Pfau. Yes, Wade has said that I am wrong. But he said that after working with me for 16 months and saying that I was right over and over again and praising me to the skies and saying that he couldn’t sleep at night because he was so excited about the stuff he was learning from me and saying that he was going to submit the research paper that we co-authored to the leading journal in the field. And it so happens that he said that he thinks I am wrong only after a group of you Goons threatened to destroy his career. And I am supposed to believe that he was shooting straight the one time he said I was wrong and not shooting straight the hundreds of times he said the opposite? No, Sammy. I don’t believe that. Not for two seconds.

Wade isn’t the only one who has behaved that way. I have had numerous investment advisors call me on the telephone after reading material at my site and pick my brain about all sorts of questions. I have spoken to several of these people for hours at a time. And then at the end of the call several of them have said to me “please don’t tell anyone that I spoke to you, okay?” Huh?

And I have had numerous site owners ban me from their sites after telling me that they think that my stuff has huge value. I ask them why and they say that hearing what I have to say upsets their readers too much, their readers want to believe in Buy-and-Hold and seeing my research-based arguments just causes them too much pain. Huh?

And I have talked to academics who have told me that lots of researchers in this field want to do research showing how dangerous Buy-and-Hold is in the long term but that they have been taken aside and warned that it would be a career-limiting move to publish such research. Rob Arnott is one of the ones who told me that and Rob served for several years as the editor of the Financial Analysts Journal. He is no dummy. He has a well-deserved reputation as a straight shooter. Huh?

And I have had thousands of my fellow community members put up posts expressing a desire that you Goons knock off the funny business. They are not the majority. There are lots of Buy-and-Holders who hate my stuff. But a lot of the people who express a desire that honest posting re the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research be permitted are among the smartest and most popular posters at the various boards. They get quiet once they see that the site owners are not willing to take action against you Goons. But they often say what they believe before it becomes clear that they will be punished for standing up to you Goons. Huh?

Buy-and-Hold was once a wonderful thing. It stopped being a wonderful thing when Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research and the Buy-and-Holders failed to update their strategy to reflect the new findings. The result is that, 34 years later, the Buy-and-Holders are too ashamed to come clean re the mistake they made and most of us have been intimidated into not demanding that they do so. That’s too sad, in my opinion. I think we need to stand up to them and that they need to come clean. I think that’s best for everyone.

I could be wrong. That’s always a possibility. But I haven’t been dishonest. I say what I truly believe. That’s important to me. You say that I have “suffered substantially for a very long time.” I’ve suffered financially. I’ve suffered lots and lots of hits to my reputation. I’ve been defamed tens of thousands of times. I’ve lost contact with lots of good friends when I was banned from discussion boards where I played a leadership role for years (I was once banned from a board that I founded — beat that!). But I can go to sleep at night knowing that I have insisted on my right to post honestly for 13 years running and that I’ve been able to develop hundreds of amazing insights as a result and that lots of good and smart people have praised my work product to the skies because they appreciate how important it is that we explore the implications of Shiller’s revolutionary findings in great depth.

All of that matters to me. I see myself as a huge winner re this matter despite the financial and reputational hit. I would do it all again, you know? Despite all that I have been through, I would do it all again because the good side of this story is 50 times more good than the bad side of this story is bad. We have seen more advances in our understanding of how stock investing works over the past 34 years than we have seen advances in computer technology over that time-period. By a factor of 20! And I have played a leading role in developing many of the insights and in spreading the word about them. That’s pretty heady stuff for a guy who never went to investing school and who never managed a big fund. I have achieved things on the content side many, many times beyond anything that I ever thought it might be possible for me to achieve in the days before May 13, 2002.

I believe that I will see those settlement payments. I don’t think that’s a fantasy at all. I believe that everyone in this field wants this nasty stuff to go away. I think thats true of Jack Bogle, who is the lead Buy-and-Holder. I got started on this journey because of things I learned from reading Jack’s book. That tells me that deep down he wants to help people. So I believe that following the next price crash, he is going to look deep down and decide that he needs to come clean about the doubts that he feels about his claim that it is not necessary for investors to exercise price discipline when buying stocks.

And I believe that this story is going to lead to legislative changes that will limit the ability of you Goons to ruin sites and to ruin people’s reputations and to intimidate good people into not posting their sincere views at web sites. I believe that this new communications medium is going to be freed to achieve its full potential as a result of how many lives you Goons have damaged over the course of your 13-year Campaign of Terror against our board and blog communities.

I talk to people at the annual personal-finance bloggers convention (FInCon) each year and I can tell you that lots of people would like to see these matters addressed in a responsible way. There’s lots of money to be made giving people accurate and honest and research-based investing advice and lots of people would like to be earning good money while helping people out if only they do not have to go up against you Goons to do so.

We’ll see how it all turns out, Sammy. I believe that we are going to see some exciting developments following the next price crash. I believe that most people are basically good. And so I am not able to imagine how things could ultimately go down any other way. There is too much potential for good here and the nasty stuff has caused too much human misery.

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

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:

Warm wishes? How does that align with your comments about prison sentences, Bernie Madoff comments, made up death threats, goons, $500 million settlements and all those other silly comments you make on your own website? Why is it that your site is filled with that, but you seem to avoid it here? Is it because you are worried that people will think you are a nut-job?

The stuff that you are referring to is process stuff, Sammy. My site is not filled with process stuff. I do indeed address the process side of things there and there is indeed a lot of material there on the process side at this point. In particular, the daily blog entries mostly deal with the process side of things. I report on my conversations with you Goons, which sometimes deal with substantive questions but which more often than not deal with process-oriented issues. There is a lot of process stuff at the site. But there is even MORE substantive-oriented stuff. The site is balanced. I don’t ignore either side of the overall project of moving us from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing and I don’t think it would be right for me to do so.

I do have warm wishes for you. I do wish the best for you. The suggestion in your comment is that it would be more charitable for me to ignore the process side of the matter. That is not so. We all want the same things. We are all on the same side. We all should be working together to enhance our understanding of how stock investing works in the real world and to share what we learn with all other investors. We are not doing that today and that needs to change. The only way to change things is to address the process side of things. This is not optional. It is imperative.

The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers made a good number of amazing contributions. You certainly have never heard me say otherwise. I feel the greatest respect and affection possible for all of my many Buy-and-Hold friends. The big problem on the process side of the question is that as a society we have let the Buy-and-Holders down.

The Buy-and-Holders made one huge mistake. They proved with peer-reviewed research that short-term timing never works. Then they jumped to a hasty conclusion that long-term timing (price discipline) doesn’t work either. Nothing could be further from the truth. Long-term timing (price discipline) is 100 percent required. It ALWAYS works. There has never been a single exception in the 145 years of stock market history available to us for study today. The peer-reviewed research has shown this to be the case for 34 years now.

We need to tell people. We need to stop saying that timing doesn’t work or that timing isn’t required and start saying instead that short-term timing doesn’t work and that long-term timing is price discipline and always works and is always 100 percent required. Then we all begin obtaining far higher returns at dramatically reduced risk. Which is what we all want.

The only thing holding us back are these process-oriented matters that you suggest I not discuss. Bogle made a mistake back in 1981, when Shiller published the peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns and that thus long-term timing (price discipline) always works and is always 100 percent required for all investors seeking to keep their risk profiles roughly stable and Bogle failed to step to the front of a big room and acknowledge his mistake in thinking that long-term timing might not be required. Bogle’s failure to do that put us on the track we are on today, where we have 34 years of peer-reviewed research saying one thing and the vast majority of “experts” saying the opposite. We have to get off this track.

We cannot get off this wrong track by discussing only substantive issues. We certainly should be discussing substantive issues and I do and I encourage all others to do so as well. But we must deal with those process-oriented issues as well. Shiller doesn’t discuss how-to-invest questions in his amazing book Irrational Exuberance.. Why do you think that is? It’s because he knows that it would upset Buy-and-Holders for him to do that. They have their lives staked on Buy-and-Hold and they believe that it is a research-based strategy when in reality it has not been that for 34 years now. People get very upset when they learn that. So Shiller (and countless others) keeps it zipped.

We all have to stop keeping it zipped. We need to have a national debate about the IMPLICATIONS of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings. What Shiller added to the story of how stock investing works in the real world is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. We cannot afford to pass up the benefits that come from making practical use of this advance (which means engaging in in-depth analysis of the implications of his findings). But, given the 34-year cover-up, the statements made by those who do this come off as shocking to most investors hearing them. The Old School retirement studies get the numbers wildly wrong? We now know how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent? The promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies caused the economic crisis? Huh? Huh? Huh? That’s the reaction we commonly see from ordinary investors when they are exposed to those kinds of claims.

We need to change that. The only way to do it is to launch a national debate. The Buy-and-Holders should of course be part of that debate. There are lots of different viewpoints on all these questions and they all need to be heard. But each of those three claims (and lots of others that generate almost an equal amount of controversy) are perfectly reasonable statements given what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research in this field shows us re how stock investing works in the real world. They come off as shocking only because they have been so rarely heard. And they are rarely heard because of the 34-year cover-up. That cover-up MUST be addressed for us all to move forward.

The Buy-and-Holders did not directly intend to engage in a cover-up. They truly believe in Buy-and-Hold. They follow it themselves. They are good people, not bad people. They are smart people, not dumb people. They didn’t appreciate the far-reaching significance of Shiller’s findings when first exposed to them. But here we are all the same.

The easy way to see that there has been a 34-year cover-up is to ask yourself what changes Bogle has made in the Buy-and-Hold Model in response to Shiller’s findings. There have been no changes even though Shiller’s research is deemed of such huge importance that he was awarded a Nobel Prize for it. It may well be that Bogle truly believes that it is safe for investors to ignore Shiller’s findings (that’s what I believe to be the case). Bogle still has a responsibility to address the Shiller findings, to tell all those who follow his advice WHY he thinks it is safe to ignore these findings.

Bogle also has a responsibility to do everything in his power to insure that Shiller’s findings are discussed in an open and forthright manner at any discussion board or blog that purports to be telling people how to invest in stocks. That’s a responsibility that applies to anyone who puts himself forward as an expert in this field. Shiller’s research has been public information for 34 years now. All experts have an obligation to keep up on the new research as it is published. Bogle has failed to honor this responsibility. He is obviously aware of Shiller’s revolutionary findings. He has not said why he has failed to update the Buy-and-Hold strategy to reflect these important findings.

I write about the process-oriented stuff at this column. My focus here is on the substantive side of things but I do not ignore the process side of things here (this very comment is obviously process-focuced). The most important reason is that the process side is hard for people to take. People HATE it when I talk about the process side. So I tend to play down the process side. My aim is to get people interested in Valuation-Informed Indexing by showing them what a huge advance it is. Once people get interested, they will be inclined to explore the process-side questions on their own. And, as you note, I have a mountain of material re the process side at my site. I don’t duck those questions, I just tend to play them down at places other than my own web site.

That’s the story. We all want the benefits that follow from permitting open and full discussion of the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. But the cover-up has gone on so long that it makes the Buy-and-Holders look bad when we talk about these matters in a clear way. I do not want to make the Buy-and-Holders look bad. I want to make the Buy-and-Holders look very, very good. We wouldn’t have Valuation-Informed Indexing today had Buy-and-Hold not come first. We all owe the Buy-and-Holders a huge debt for building the foundation on which VII has been built.

But those darn process-oriented issues are standing in the way of the Buy-and-Holders getting the credit they deserve for all of their many powerful insights! I am trying to bring the nasty business to a full and complete stop. Once we bring the cover-up to an end, it is downhill sledding for all of us, good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. These are exciting times. We all are on the threshold of achieving a far better and more rewarding understanding of how stock investing works in the real world. Good for us!

But we must as a society deal with those nasty process questions first. Most people are today afraid to talk plainly about their true beliefs about how stock investing works. I have spoken to many academics who are afraid. I have spoken to many journalists who are afraid. I have spoken to many investment advisors who are afraid. This must change. This is unacceptable.

No one can do his or her best work so long as he or she is afraid to speak plainly and clearly and honestly. So the cover-up really must be brought to a full and complete stop, the process questions really must be addressed in a frank although charitable way.

But not in every single column entry! The substantive questions are of huge importance too. So the substantive side of things is going to continue to be my focus here. Those who want to know more about the process side of things should go to my blog, where I explore those questions in more than half of the daily entries that I put forward.

Does that help?

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

Rob

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

So it is really about Mel and John.

Yes and no.

Everyone benefits if we move forward. Everyone. We all want the same thing.

That’s the good news. And the good news is very good indeed.

The bad news is that we didn’t always know everything. So lots of people were given bad information. And those who have come to understand this are afraid to speak up because people are going to be angry when they learn what has happened.

Once we educate people, nothing that you Goons do will make any difference. People handle internet Goons all the time.

But until people are educated re the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research, you Goons have enough power to keep us all from moving forward.

If it were not for you Goons, we wouldn’t be experiencing an economic crisis. You Goons have destroyed millions of people’s lives.

But, no, it isn’t all about you Goons. If Motley Fool had honored its word to deal with you, you could never have done what you have done. And of course it is the same with Bogle. Had he behaved responsibly, you Goons would have been taken out of the story a long time ago.

So, no, I would not say that it is entirely about Mel and John. The Wall Street Con Men played a big role. They failed to honor their responsibilities. And the journalists in this field played a big role. They should have asked Bogle a lot of hard questions that they have failed to ask him for 34 years now. And even Shiller has played a role in permitting this cover-up to go on so long. He should have included a chapter in his book pointing out how dangerous Buy-and-Hold is. That would have made a difference.

I played a role. I was afraid to speak up from May 1999 until May 2002. That was cowardly. I’m like everyone else. I don’t like to tell people things they don’t want to hear because they won’t like me if I do.

Everyone played a part.

But we wouldn’t be where we are today but for Mel and John. We had enough people who wanted to move forward that, but for Mel’s and John’s criminal acts, we would have all moved forward a long time ago.

Mel and John did lots of bad stuff and they need to be held accountable for us to put the ugly side of this to rest. But I don’t think it is fair to say that it was only Mel and John who messed up. This was a society-wide mess-up. Mel and John did worse than just about anyone else. But their behavior was not entirely inconsistent with behavior we have seen from lots of others in higher positions of responsibility.

That’s my sincere take, in any event.

I hope that helps a bit.

Rob

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

Your inability to tame your self-love of hearing/seeing your own words, and instead create a PROPER brief descriptive ‘headline’ or “title” for an article speaks volumes about your mental incapacity, Rob. It’s just one tiny thing, but like a tell-tale tassel in the wind for a sailor, it is enormously informative for those paying attention.

It’s not self-love, Anonymous.

Yes, the headlines are long in the items that items that I post to the blog under the category of “Goon Conversations.”

The reason why they are long is that they explore micro-issues. In ordinary circumstances, there might be an item that would have a headline of “Old-School Retirement Studies Fail to Include Valuation Adjustments.” That’s shocking. All you need are those few words to convey a shocking truth that every investor on the planet needs to know about. So, in that ordinary sort of case, all that you need is a headline of short length to convey the information that needs to be conveyed.

Those are not the circumstances that apply in the investing realm today. I have posted articles at a good number of sites containing short headlines conveying that message. Those articles should have been picked up by every investing site on the internet. They should have been featured on the front page of the next day’s New York Times.

It didn’t happen.

If it had happened in the way that it should happen if things were proceeding as normal, there would be no need for these blog entries that report on our Goon Conversations and that contain such long headlines. The circumstances that apply here are not in the slightest way normal. We are dealing with a very strange phenomenon, a massive case of cognitive dissonance that has affected pretty much all of us (including Rob Bennett up until the evening of August 27, 2002).

What has happened here is that as a society we got off track in our quest to come to understand how stock investing works in the real world. The Buy-and-Holders did amazing work building the foundation of a model to help us all out. The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers are heroes to the middle-class. They got one thing wrong. They didn’t understand the effect of valuations at the time they were building their model. Shiller added that missing piece in 1981. But by that time the Buy-and-Holders had been describing their mistaken view of how things work for 16 years and had a hard time accepting that they had gotten such a critical piece of the puzzle wrong. So they went into cover-up mode. The bull market caused people to be happy with Buy-and-Hold and so there was little motivation to develop a new model until the economic crisis that began in 2008 scared people. And then the Federal Reserve stepped in and pumped up stock prices again so that even today there is limited interest in finding out what truly works.

It’s not just that people like to believe that the Pretend Gains created by high stock prices are real. It’s that the people who work in this field have been telling the false story of how things work that they feel that they will be sued or perhaps even imprisoned if they come clean now. And the investors whose lives have been destroyed become angry when they hear how they have been tricked for so long. That makes it even harder for the “experts” to come clean. So we are living in a time when deception and intimidation have become commonplace in the investing advice world.

It is my job to tell that story.

Part of the job is to expose the corruption that had permitted this massive cover-up to remain in place for so long. Part of the job is to describe the pressures that caused so many generally good and smart people either to participate in the cover-up or at the minimum tolerate it. I post these Goon Conversation blog entries to help people come to a full understanding of what happened. We need to understand the Goon mind, which is really just a cartoon version of the Get Rich Quick mindset that we all carry within us. It is by coming to an understanding of what happened that we will come to peace with what has happened. These Goon Conversation blog entries are going to help me get your prison sentence reduced a bit, Anonymous. This is important work.

But there are now so many of these Goon Conversation blog entries in the Post Archives that the new ones deal with extreme micro-issues. All of the basic, general stuff was addressed years ago. I don’t want to hold back on posting these items because as a society we very much need to come to a full understanding of what drives you Goons and no one else is doing this kind of work. So I have to post the items. But it is not possible to sum up in a few words the points made in the items that are going up today, which are examining minute details of the story rather than addressing general matters which could more easily be summed up with a small number of words.

So the headlines are a lot longer than those you see at other sites.

As the idea of looking at investor emotion becomes more commonplace, people’s understanding of what is going on will become sharper and fuller and it will become possible to get by with shorter headlines. We are not there today. These are the pioneer days. This is the future of investing analysis. But we are very much in the early days of coming to an understanding of what it means to use peer-reviewed research (ALL of the peer-reviewed research, including that published in the past 34 years) to guide one’s investing strategies.

That’s my sincere take re this matter, in any event.

I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, my long-time Goon pal.

Rob

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

“The way to do it is to produce the study the way that Greaney did and then to add a note saying: “This study does not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. There is peer-reviewed research indicating that that is an important factor….””

Ok, so if I create a SWR study that ignores valuations, as long as I include this note, I’m OK. If I leave it off, I’m headed for prison. Does that about summarize it?

That’s not the entire story. But, yes, it’s a pretty good summary.

There are millions of good and smart people who believe in and follow Buy-and-Hold strategies today. That’s a well-establied fact. I believed in Buy-and-Hold myself prior to the morning of May 13, 2002. So I am hardly in a position to say that Buy-and-Holders are dumb or evil by nature or anything like that.

What I have learned beginning on May 13, 2000, has amazed and stunned me. It’s a story of huge importance to our entire nation. So I need to tell it. But it helps no one if I am unfair to my many Buy-and-Hold friends. Buy-and-Holders believe in Buy-and-Hold. I must say that. But Buy-and-Holders lack confidence in the strategy they are following. That has been demonstrated in thousands of ways. I must tell that part of the story as well.

I believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing. But I accept that I could be wrong. Any human can be wrong about anything. So I worry that I might be giving people bad advice without meaning to. What do I do about that?

I do just what you point to in the words that you are quoting. I make sure that people reading my stuff are aware of the other side of the story. That way I am covered. If VII fails and people are angry with me, I can point them to the article in which I pointed out why VII might not work. If they followed my advice anyway and suffered financially as a result, then it’s on them. I cannot be sued. I cannot be sent to prison.

That’s how my Buy-and-Hold friends should play it.

You believe in Buy-and-Hold, Anonymous. I am convinced of that. I don’t want you to be sent to prison and, if you must go to prison, I want your sentence to be as short as possible. So, yes, I would like to see you do the sort of thing you refer to in the words quoted above.

If Greaney included language describing the Retirement Risk Evaluator, no one could accuse him of deception, could he? In that case he would be letting people know that there is another way to look at things. He believes in Buy-and-Hold. That’s no crime. By letting people know of the other side of the story, Greaney would be shifting the burden from himself to the person reading his study. The reader can just go by what Greaney says or he can look deeper into the VII stuff, his choice.

It’s very different when Greaney does everything in his power to block people from learning what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research says. That’s the sort of thing that will sway a jury to vote to put you away. If I were on a jury and I heard that the guy who authored a retirement study that cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars advanced death threats to keep people from learning about peer-reviewed research that produced very different numbers, I would be very strongly inclined to put that person away for a long time. There is no excuse for such behavior. It would be the easiest thing in the world to provide a link to the other kind of study and it would be insanely irresponsible to fail to provide such a link.

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

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

Rob