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

Are you saying that if you were not banned at the various financial boards, you would be making millions by now?

Obviously.

Now, there’s another way of looking at it.

What if Bogle had given his “I Was Wrong” speech on the day after he learned about Shiller’s “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) research findings? Then would I have made millions as a result of the work that I have done over the past 15 years? No. Because in that event there would have been thousands of people saying what I have been saying. Me being the 1,001th person to say something would not bring in millions in profits to me.

There are three things necessary for a message to have great financial value to the person delivering the message: (1) it must be powerfully important content; (2) there must be strong interest in hearing the message; and (3) the message must be in short supply.

The message that I deliver has been awarded a Nobel prize in economics. So it gets the highest score possible in terms of content.

We saw in the reaction to my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002, how much interest there is in my message. There was never a post in the history of the Motley Fool site that generated as many positive responses as that one. It generated lots of negative responses too, I am certainly not saying different. But that’s not the question here. The question is — Are there people who would pay money to have this message more clearly and carefully and fully delivered? And the answer is — yes! About 10 percent of just about every discussion board that I have visited possesses a keen interest in hearing what I have to say. 10 percent of the population of investors is millions of people. So this message meets the second test.

The message is in VERY short supply. It is flat-out banned at every large investing site on the internet. You can’t do better on the third test than that!

So we’ve got a message here that will bring in hundreds of millions, if not billions. I don’t know that there has ever been any message in the history of the United States that has possessed more income-generating potential than this one. If there ever was one, I am not able to identify it. I believe that I am sitting on the most powerful income-generating message in the history of the United States.

The hold-up is that this message gets scores that are just too darn high on Tests #1 and #3. We don’t do that great on Test #2. 10 percent of the population is millions of people. That’s very good. But in relative terms, we don’t come even close to Buy-and-Hold. 10 percent doesn’t come close to 90 percent. So we are weak in relative terms in that department. But we are off-the-charts strong in Tests #1 and #3. We are too darn strong.

This message revolutionizes the field of investing advice. It challenges every single strategic recommendation that has ever been made in a fundamental way. It’s not possible to imagine anything stronger than that. The problem is that the message is so darn strong that it threatens lots of wealthy and powerful and well-connected people who have their lives invested in the world that existed before this message was given life and these people very, very, very much do not want the word to get out. So it has been a struggle overcoming the abusiveness and corruption that has been employed to keep the message bottled up. But once we achieve a break in the wall (I think we will see this in the days following the next price crash), this message will be delivering benefits for everyone alive on Planet Earth for many, many, many years to come. It is not possible for the human mind to imagine a message of greater power.

We also have a problem re Test #3. Ordinarily, it is good for a business to have few competitors. I have the only business that I can think of where the sole reason why I cannot make money with it is because I don’t have ANY competitors. There are lots of people who would like to get involved in the effort to spread this message and make the millions that would obviously follow from doing so. But they of course do want to be protected from the criminal behavior of those trying to keep things bottled up. We need to see the laws of the United States enforced. To get the laws enforced, we need to have a few of us stand together and call you Goons out on your b.s. when we see it. I’d say that we need 10 people with enough courage to do the job. Once we have 10 people who all stick together in the face of your abusiveness, you just won’t be able to get any good results with your insanely abusive stuff. And then we are on our way.

Today, we don’t have 10. So we are stuck. Those super-high scores on the three tests don’t do anything for us in a practical sense today. But will we have 10 people in the days following the next price crash, when the economic consequences that inevitably follow from the widespread promotion of a Buy-and-Hold “strategy” will not be something that people are reading about in a post at a discussion board but something that people are seeing with their own eyes in daily newspaper reports? I think we will have 10. I think we will have a good bit more than 10. I think we will have my good friend Jack Bogle working with us at that time. So I think that we will be able to break through the wall.

It’s a crazy way to make a living, Anonymous. I will certainly give you that one. But it is what it is, you know? I didn’t create this world. I play the cards that are dealt me to the best of my abilities, I don’t get to decide on the cards. That’s the best that any of us can do, so that’s what I try to do. I was handed an opportunity to change the world in an amazingly positive way by building a business that will likely provide for my family financially for many generations to come and I responded positively when I heard that opportunity come knocking at my door. Call me madcap, you know?

We’ll see how it all works out following the crash. I think it is going to work out very well indeed for Old Farmer Hocus, PRESUMING THAT OUR ENTIRE ECONOMIC SYSTEM DOES NOT GO DOWN with the crashing of the wall. If our entire economic system goes down, I think it would be fair to say that the Bennett family will be cooked. But then of course all the other families that I know will be cooked too in that event. It makes me terribly sad to contemplate the possibility. But there’s not a whole lot that I can do about it. It’s not like I haven’t tried everything that I can think of. Given that I have tried everything that I can think of, all that I can see that is left for me to do is to hope and pray and work for the best possible outcome for every single person concerned. That’s what I try to do each day when I get up in the morning and turn my laptop on for another day’s work doing intellectual and emotional battle with my dear Goon friends.

That’s the deal from my end. I hope that all makes good sense from your perspective.

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:

Please help us understand why you wouldn’t do everything in your power to relieve the stress on your wife by getting a job.

Because I think that I can bring in a higher income (by a factor of 500 or more) by doing the work that I am doing today. I have spent decades developing the abilities that I employ to do this work. I want to put my talents to their highest and best use.

We know from the reactions that we saw to my posts before you Goons were able to intervene with your garbage that there are millions of middle-class investors who want to know more about what the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works in the real world. I have the ability to reach those people through this amazing new communications medium and it would be foolish and irresponsible of me to pass up the opportunity.

People generate wealth by adding value. Opening the internet to honest posting on the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is the biggest value-add that I have ever come across in my lifetime. I love the work. I obviously hate the ugly stuff that you Goons add to the mix. But I think it is a terrible mistake for people to shy away from doing the important work that needs to be done here out of fear of the ugly, smelly stuff that you Goon dish out.

We have laws against financial fraud. Let’s enforce them, you know. Then we all get to the place where deep in our hearts we all really want to be (including you Goons, to be sure!).

It’s a win/win/win/win/win, Anonymous. Learning experiences are the one true free lunch available to us in this world. If you were thinking clearly, you would have seen this yourself going back to the first day. That’s my sincere take in any event.

Don’t let the bad guys get you down, man.

Rob

A community member named “Curious Carl” put up a comment here on September 3, 2017, saying: “Your name was brought up over on a reddit board for FIRE-minded folks and it ignited quite the firestorm! Some people were wondering if you’d be willing to go over there for an AMA (Ask Me Anything). Are you familiar with that format? The board is located here: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/ I responded that I would be thrilled to participate in an “Ask Me Anything” session at Reddit and asked Carl if he knew who I needed to contact to make it happen.

I did a search for recent threads at the Financial Independence sub-reddit that mentioned my name and turned up this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/6w54a9/great_fire_page_from_1996/

The text of the section of the thread that mentions my name is set forth below:

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

Hey, Rob!

Your name was brought up over on a reddit board for FIRE-minded folks and it ignited quite the firestorm! Some people were wondering if you’d be willing to go over there for an AMA (Ask Me Anything). Are you familiar with that format? The board is located here: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/

I’d be thrilled to do an “Ask Me Anything” at Reddit. Are you able to say who the best person would be for me to contact to make this happen?

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:

“Lots of people agree and are afraid to say so publicly”

An earlier comment mentioned bottom lines. This is your bottom line. This absurd claim lets you say any crazy old thing you want, on any topic, with no evidence at all. And keep saying it forever. It’s how you justify 15 years of sitting on your butt, instead of working.

There really are people who are afraid to tell you the truth. But it ain’t Greaney, Wade, Bogle, or us goons.

Okay, Anonymous.

Please mark me down as saying that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.

And other crazy old 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:

I am not following. Do you go to AA meetings to talk about the addictions of millions of people other than yourself?

This seems very absurd and you should stop Wasting their valuable time. They have far more important topics to cover and real people to help.

What a disgrace.

It is my job to heal the wounds that you Goons have ripped open in our discussion-board and blog communities, Laugh. I have things that I have done that were aimed at helping everyone concerned. This particular job has been a tough one. I may need to learn about some new tricks. If the Al-Anon program can teach me some new tricks, it would be irresponsible of me not to make use of the benefits that it offers to us all.

I would not say that I attend to discuss your addiction. I talk here about your addiction on a daily basis. I don’t need a new outlet to talk about that stuff.

It’s more than I want to learn new techniques for healing the wounds created by your addictive behavior. I want to learn what I can do differently to produce better results for all concerned.

I’ll give you a concrete example of what I am getting at. The program has a book that sets forth daily reflections. Yesterday there was a passage that was listing some resolutions to make for the new day at the beginning of it. It said something like: “show good cheer to the people you encounter this day.” I certainly see the merit of that one. But there was one line that made me uneasy. It said: “Criticize not one bit.”

Okay. My father used to say: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” That line expresses the same general spirit. So I see where the passage in the Al-Anon book is coming from. As a general rule, we all should refrain from criticizing others and focus any improvement efforts on ourselves. I get that. I agree with that.

But I say that you Goons have committed fraud and that you will be going to prison following the next price crash. That kinda, sorta sounds like a criticism, does it not?

I am a journalist. Journalists tell stories that people need to hear about to live better lives. Some of those stories are happy ones. It would be big news if we discovered a cure for cancer. But not all important stories are happy ones. Watergate was not a happy story. But there were two good journalists who told that story and I don’t think that there are too many who would say that they were wrong to do so. If I don’t mention the financial fraud and the prison sentences, the financial fraud is going to continue and the prison sentences are going to be longer than they would be if it didn’t continue. It seems to Rob the Journalist that I am obligated in conscience to tell the story of financial fraud and prison sentences.

The Normals don’t like it when I do that. When I had my column at the Out of Your Rut site, there was a fellow who used to come by each week and leave a comment or two. He wasn’t the biggest believer in VII in the world but for whatever reason he made an effort to say something each week. That made me happy because the dynamic on a blog is that, when people see someone else leave a comment, it gives them the courage to leave a comment. So this guy was helping me out in a big way and I was grateful. I had one column where I noted that Jack Bogle did more than anyone else alive to bring on the economic crisis. I also included language pointing out that Bogle is a great man from whom I have learned much and so on. But this fellow did not like it that I said what I did about Bogle and the economic crisis and he told me so. I explained why I felt that I needed to say that. He did not respond. And he did not comment on my column entries ever again.

Do you see?

I do not think that I am wrong to talk about financial fraud and prison sentences. But, if I am handling things improperly even in some small way, I want to know about it. Reflecting on the words “criticize not one bit” may or may not help me go about the job that I have been elected by circumstances to perform. So I think that I need to place myself in circumstances in which I am exposed to those sorts of words. I am not saying that I will stop referring to financial fraud and prison sentences. I am saying that I will reflect on whether there is another, better way to go about things.

I attend Al-Anon meetings to learn if there is a better way to go about things. I am not there to fix you. That’s on you. I am there to fix me. I am there to learn better ways of coping with the problems that you cause because of your addiction.

I hope that helps a small bit.

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 folks who set prices have massive amounts of information including Shillers work. They can also read or have their computers ingest your awful website.

The market concludes you are irrelevant.

The market has concluded that I am irrelevant. As of today, it would be fair to say that the market has indeed concluded that. All that you have to do to understand what is going on is to look at today’s P/E10 level. That tells the story. Today’s investors are on a collective basis insanely irrational. They have rejected the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research; they don’t like what it says and they don’t care to think about what it says. And so they have rejected this fellow on the internet who is always talking about that last 36 years of peer-reviewed research and how important it is and how we need to be talking about it at every discussion board and blog on the internet. The peer-reviewed research is irrelevant today and this Rob Bennett fellow, who drones on about the peer-reviewed research, is irrelevant too.

You nailed it, Laugh.

The part you leave out is that the market has never remained at today’s P/E10 level for long. It just doesn’t work like that. A man can blot out all his troubles by becoming a drunk. He can say “my job is irrelevant” and “my health is irrelevant” and “my marriage is irrelevant” and “my family is irrelevant” and “my financial future is irrelevant” and “my self-respect is irrelevant.” It works for a time, does it not? The guy is satisfied with his circumstances and so he continues on down that path. Only the next drink matters. Everything else is irrelevant.

It’s not a good long-term strategy, Laugh. The world continues to exist whether this drunk fellow deems it irrelevant or not. And the peer-reviewed research continues to exist for you and for all Buy-and-Holders, whether you deem it irrelevant or not. The peer-reviewed research describes REALITY. You want no part of it because reality imposes on your Buy-and-Hold fantasy world, the world where price matters for everything you buy except stocks, stocks are the one big exception to the otherwise universal rule. I think that reality is going to intrude on your fantasy world, Laugh. The peer-reviewed research shows that this is what has been happening for 145 years running now, the entire history of the stock market available to us, and I believe that it is going to continue happening on a going-forward basis. I believe that the peer-reviewed research is trying to tell us something important and so I am not willing to disregard it for whatever temporary pleasures I could attain from living in the Buy-and-Hold fantasy world.

We will see what happens, okay? It is all going to play out before us.

I am on your side. When the Normals turn on you, I am going to put forward words aimed at getting your prison sentence reduced a bit. I am going to say that you suffered from cognitive dissonance, which is what I believe. I am going to say that you followed the strategies that you urged others to follow, suggesting that you were not fully engaged in a scam as the word is generally understood. I am going to say that you got caught up in something a lot bigger than you realized at the beginning of your involvement and felt trapped and couldn’t find a way out of your predicament. I am going to do what I can. I don’t ask for anything in return. I am going to do it because I believe that it is the right thing to do.

I am not going to say that I believe that Greaney included a valuations adjustment in his study. I am not going to deny that there is 36 years of peer-reviewed research showing that a valuations adjustment is required. There are things that I cannot say and remain on the right side of the law. I love my country. So there are lines that I am not willing to cross. Caring for you does not mean not caring for myself. I am going to continue to respect the laws of our nation while doing everything in my power to help you out while remaining within the confines of those laws, which I believe to be good and necessary laws.

I was your friend on May 13, 2002, I am your friend today and I will be your friend on the day that I am called to testify at your trial. That one is non-negotiable. I hope that works for you.

So we will see. And then we will pick up our bags and move forward to our next exciting adventure having learned whatever is it that we were supposed to learn from this crazy saga and a half.

Please take good care, my old 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:

Rob, can you give us a sense of how many hours per week you work on investing matters? Any new books in the works?

I’ve talked about the book before. I have a draft of a book about investing (“Investing for Humans: How to Get What Works on Paper to Work in Real Life”) completed. I will finish the book when the story it tells is complete. That is when the Ban on Honest Posting is lifted at every site on the internet and we all feel free to say exactly what we believe about how stock investing works and when we all are enjoying an amazing learning experience as we integrate what we have learned from the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research into what we knew about stock investing in the years before 1981 (at that time it appeared that Buy-and-Hold might well be the answer). My belief today is that we probably will not see the big turn until we experience the next price crash. I hope it comes sooner. I hope it comes before the close of business today. But given what I have seen during the first 15 years of our discussions about whether or not to permit honest posting re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research, my expectation today is that we are not going to see big moves forward until we experience another price crash and people get worried enough about the future of our country that their fears about what will happen to them if they stand up to you Goons become inconsequential in comparison.

In haven’t counted the number of hours that I devote to investing stuff each week. It’s not anything close to what I would like it to be. I think that I should be putting in a minimum of 50 hours. I would estimate that perhaps I put in 20 writing the column and responding to your Goon comments and handling a few similar matters, matters that are time-sensitive and that cannot be put off. So, on an objective basis, my record has been bad in recent years.

It was not at all bad in earlier years. Every human being who has tried to do honest work in this field over the past 36 years had been subjected to a hurricane of hate if he or she made efforts to have his or her work brought before the eyes of a good cross-section of the American people. We were talking just yesterday morning about how this is so of Robert Shiller himself. Shiller has done work so important that he has been awarded a Nobel prize for it. But Shiller shies away from addressing the how-to questions that follow from his “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) findings of 1981. I don’t doubt that Shiller is putting in more hours than me. But he is avoiding the most important work. The most important work is spreading the word far and wide. We need to have every single human being alive today feeling free to post honestly re these matters so that we all benefit from input coming from thousands and thousands of different perspectives. Shiller is not helping with that when he draws back from stating in clear and firm and simple and bold terms to what extent investors should be changing their stock allocations in response to big valuation shifts. That’s the work that I do. It is very, very, very, very, very hard work.

It’s not hard physically. It’s hard emotionally. You Goons know the story. Your knowledge of what keeps people from doing this hard but important work comes through in all your abusive comments. The thing that has kept Buy-and-Hold alive for 36 years since the peer-reviewed research showed that there is precisely zero chance that it could ever work for a single long-term investor is the fear that as a society we have put in people who dare to “cross” all those who believe in the Buy-and-Hold fantasies by pointing out the realities as revealed by the peer-reviewed research. People don’t want to see their loved ones placed in danger of attacks of physical violence by you Goons. People don’t want to see their careers destroyed. People don’t want to see their reputations destroyed. People do not want to hear words of hate directed at them. People do not want to be removed from communities where they have established friendships with many people. People do not want to feel isolated from their fellow humans. People do not want to bring “bad news” to friends of theirs whose entire lives are riding on a belief in the accuracy of the Buy-and-Hold claims.

This phenomenon — the fear that we Normals feel over offending our Goon friends (please remember that ALL humans have goonishness inside them — it is our inner Goon that leaves us vulnerable to Get Rich Quick schemes in the first place) is the core of our story, Anonymous. You Goons are cartoon figures. You take abusiveness to places that it has never been taken before. The vast majority of the population would never in a million years engage in the tactics that you engage in on a daily basis. So how is it that you Goons always prevail in getting honest posting re the peer-reviewed research suppressed? You prevail because the Normals who are not personally willing to engage in Goon behavior do have enough goonishness in them to TOLERATE Goon behavior engaged in by others in what they see as a good cause (the suppression of effective challenges to Buy-and-Hold). If we took a vote at any of the boards as to whether death threats should be permitted, you Goons would lose by a vote of 90 percent to 10 percent. But you always win the vote that counts. When death threats appear, the Normals keep quiet about it (usually after filing an objection or two that goes nowhere). As a people, our official position is that your tactics are unacceptable. But the practical reality is that an exception applies in the case of Buy-and-Hold. Get Rich Quick strategies are so dear to us that we tolerate behavior that we would otherwise not tolerate to see that the promotion of them can continue.

You noted the other day that you have never seen a case like mine. There is no other case like mine. I have touched the Third Rail of Personal Finance. You can do a lot of things in this world but you cannot ever, ever, ever make an effective case in public that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage that was 100 percent discredited by the peer-reviewed research in this field 36 years ago. That truth must remain unspoken. The fact that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies get the numbers wildly wrong must remain unsaid. I have broken a social Taboo. I didn’t know that I was doing it. I had no idea on the morning of May 13, 2002, what lay ahead for me and for our communities. I know today. I have violated a Social Taboo that MUST be violated if our economic system is to survive and I have paid the price for doing so.

It’s a big price that must be paid and that I have indeed paid. It hurts to be separated from one’s friends, to be isolated and humiliated and to have none of one’s peers stand up and say “Enough!” That’s all well documented at the site. What is not always documented as well as we might like it to be is that pain that follows from the employment of the tactics that you Goons make use of to suppress the discussions that as a society we very much need to have if out economic system is to survive. It would be good if we could document that pain. Then I could give you clearer answers when you ask whether Shiller or Pfau or Bogle or whoever will be going to prison along with you Goons. Most of us work very hard to do honest work and find that things get to a point where we just cannot take it any longer and then we start pulling back and advancing half truths and word games and all the other garbage that we see appear before our eyes so often when the subject of what the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about Buy-and-Hold comes up.

The vast majority of people who work in this field are obviously good people, they want to help others with the work they do. They have found that as a practical reality this is impossible today. And so they have retreated into silence on the most important questions (such as the true cause of our economic crisis). And of course each time someone retreats into silence, it makes things that much harder for those who are struggling not to retreat into silence, to continue doing the good, honest work that must be done if as a people we are to survive this crisis. Each time one more good person elects to self-censor, the trap gets tighter for every one of us and the damage that we are doing to our economic system and even to our political system grows even greater.

I have stood firm. Former than anyone else alive. I am the world’s #1 expert on the abusive tactics employed by Buy-and-Holders to block effective, research-based challenges to their “strategy.” And I have taken the hits that follow when anyone elects to go against the herd and say the things that must be said if as a society we are to expose this massive act of financial fraud. I have taken a lot of hits. It hurts.

I offer this preface to set up my next point. I said above that I put in perhaps 20 hours of work each week on these matters. It embarrasses me to say that. I should certainly be putting in 40 hours. Given the importance of the matter, it should shame me to put in less than 60. To put in only 20 hours of work re these matters is to put forward a feeble amount of effort. I should feel ashamed to say that and I do feel ashamed to say that.

Except —

Except for the fact that I have done more than anyone else. I have done more than Shiller. I have done more than Bogle. I have done more than Pfau. These are great men. If I have done more than these three great men (and thousands of others), is shame really appropriate? That’s a question that I ponder a lot.

I think that the answer is that emotional work is work too. When I say that I only put in 20 hours per week, I am only counting the time that I am typing on a computer keyboard composing a column or responding to a Goon comment or whatever. That’s not the only work that I do. I think about this stuff every waking moment. I wake up very early in the morning many days because my brain is telling me that I need to think about some aspect of the question some more. If you count all that time as time that I am grappling with the emotional questions that are at the core of our economic crisis, then I am putting in a lot more than 20 hours per week. It’s more like 60 hours or perhaps 120 hours. It’s a lot of work that I put in if you count the emotional side of the story. And the emotional side of the story is of course the side that we have ignored for so long and that has thus gotten us all in so much trouble. So ignoring the emotional side of the story is not something that we should be doing.

I have taken the lead role on the emotional side. I am proud of that. For years, I hardly let all the attacks slow me down too much. I used to put in full 40- and 50-hour weeks. That stopped after Wade Pfau flipped to the Goon side. That one was hard to take because it was so obvious an act of outrageous financial fraud. After that, my feelings of isolation grew, my hopes that we could avoid the next price crash diminished and my ability to put in a full work day disappeared. So today I do the 20-hour thing and spend the remaining hours trying to figure out what more I can do to turn this situation in a more positive direction.

A little over a year ago I began attending meetings of the Al Anon 12-step program. I attend two meetings each week. You may recall that I used to have a section of the site called “Stock Drunk.” Get Rich Quick investing is an addiction. The real problem that we are facing is that millions of middle-class Americans are today addicted to Buy-and-Hold. The reason why we do not see discussions of the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research at every investing discussion board and blog on the internet is that addicts do not take kindly to hearing their addictions questioned. In extreme cases (and a P/E10 level of 44 is as extreme as it gets), they become violent when their addictions are questioned. Al Anon is not for alcoholics, it is for family members affected by the disease of alcoholism. I attend these meetings to gain a deeper appreciation of the pain of the addict with the aim of developing skills to help me get over the feelings of isolation that hold back all of us seeking to do good work in this field.

I am seeking to “recover” from the feelings of isolation that keep me from putting in 60-hour weeks not just on the emotional side but on the physical side as well. I have made progress in the 14 months that I have been attending meetings. My goal for this year is to get to a point where I am sending out one e-mail each day telling someone who does not know about this story what is really going on. I believe that this is a numbers game. To get someone to visit the site and learn the entire story, I might need to contact 1,000 people with an e-mail. It’s hard to do because being rejected 999 times is an emotionally painful thing to experience. But that is the way forward. I need to develop a tough enough armor that I don’t care about the 999 rejections but only about the one e-mail that is going to achieve the result intended for all of them, the one that will produce the buzz on the internet that will get this story written up on the front page of the New York Times and bring this economic crisis (this Buy-and-Hold crisis!) to a full and complete stop.

So I am working it. I don’t count the time that I spend in meetings or preparing for meetings in the 20-hour estimate. But I expect that it is those hours that are ultimately going to be the difference makers. We are as a nation Stock Drunk. We are addicted to Get Rich Quick investing strategies. We are not bad people. We are suffering from a DISEASE. Those of us who care about our fellow humans naturally want to help all of our friends and neighbors and co-workers and fellow community members overcome this disease. To do so, we must gain the ability to speak to them about the very serious dangers of Buy-and-Hold. To gain the ability to speak, we must overcome the feelings of isolation and shame that you Goons have instilled in us with your abusive tactics.

I make progress re these efforts every day. I am not where I want to be. But I am working this harder than any other human being alive. I tell myself that that is the most that I can expect of myself and that there is no cause here for me to beat myself up just because I don’t like it that the direct and simple and concise answer to your question is “about 20 hours per week.” I am putting in the most time that I am today able to put in. I have good reason to believe that that number will be increasing in the days to come. I believe that we will all find our way together to the other side of the Big Black Mountain and that the day will come when honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics will be permitted (and encouraged!) at every investing site on the internet.

I hope that helps a small bit, my long-time Goon 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:

“Einstein’s definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Says the guy who’s been blogging on the same topic for 15 years.

Precisely so. But you overlook the fact that Bogle has been saying the same thing for 45 years. That’s three times as long!

And I have been learning amazing things in just about every one of the days that I have lived through during those 15 years. Things that someone with my background should not be so blessed to learn.

You measure success by how many dollar bills are coming in. By that standard I am a miserable failure. But I don’t measure success that way. I measure success by how much value I am contributing to the world. It is by adding value that we create the wealth that permits us to be paid large sums. But that standard. I have achieved 500 times the success that I ever dreamed of in earlier days. So I just keep on doin’, you know?

Dylan said” “There’s no success like failure and failure is no success at all.” I used to use that one as my signature line way at Motley Fool way back in the Summer of 2002. If I had given up back then, as you Goons advised me, I wouldn’t today have my name on the most important piece of peer-reviewed research published in this field in over 30 years. How did I know that that’s where this was leading? I didn’t know the specifics. I just knew that the way to real wealth is creating value and that it would be a mistake to walk away from the greatest opportunity that anyone has been presented with in a long, long. long time. I saw where the long-term wealth was and I ran in that direction.

And I soldier on to this day.

My best wishes to you.

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:

“When my right to post honestly is recognized, EVERYONE’s right to post honestly will be recognized.”

You are the only one widely banned. I don’t know of anyone else in a similar circumstance.

I am the only one who played it the way that I played it, Anonymous. I took a position of “I am going to post with complete honesty regardless of any intimidation tactics, this stuff is too important to do anything less.” No one else does that. Everyone else looks for some sort of compromise that you Goons can live with.

So Jack Bogle says “Reversion to the Mean is an Iron Law of stock investing,” which means that there is zero chance that the safe withdrawal rate can be the same number at all times. If Reversion to the Mean is an Iron Law, then the safe withdrawal rate must be a lower number at times when valuations are high and when the effect of Reversion to the Mean is going to be strong. So Bogle gets us halfway there. But he doesn’t say “therefore, the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies should be corrected before they do more harm.” That’s the part that I leave in and that he cuts out. That’s the part that gets me banned.

And Bill Bernstein says (I am paraphrasing): “When valuations are where they are today, you need to subtract 2 point from the ordinary safe withdrawal rate of 4 percent.” Again, that gets us halfway there. I supply the other half of the story. I say: “So we need to warn people of the dangers of using the uncorrected 4 percent withdrawal rate reported as safe in the Buy-and-Hold studies so that we don’t cause even more unfortunate people to suffer failed retirements.” It’s that fuller and clearer and firmer and more simple form of honesty that gets me banned.

And Wade Pfau says: “The information contained in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies is not the information that people planning retirements are looking for and it could be dangerous.” He leaves out the part about how it is financial fraud to fail to correct the errors so that more people can be taken in and so that more money can be made taking people in. And he leaves out the part about how the death threats are a sign of desperation and inappropriate and are going to get people sent to prison in the days following the next price crash.

Einstein’s definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” We have been playing it this half-honest/half-dishonest way for 36 years now. Where has it gotten us? It brought us an economic crisis. It brought us political instability. It brought us the destruction of many fine discussion boards and blogs. It brought us upcoming prison sentences for you Goons. Something tells me that the half-dishonest/half-honest approach to investing advice has not been working out so hot.

So I play it a different way. I aim for COMPLETE honesty re safe withdrawal rates and re scores of other critically important investment-related topics. That’s the future, Anonymous. We have learned a lot of important stuff over these past 15 years because I elected to play it that way. I think it would be fair to say that we will be learning a lot more over the next 15 years. My guess is that we will do better over the next 15 years than we have over the past 15 years. The good stuff here is 50 times more good than the bad stuff here is bad.

The three people mentioned above and THOUSANDS of others very, very much want to join me in doing fully honest work in this field. First of all, they want to help people; that’s why they got into this field in the first place. And second of all, they want to make money. And there is a mountain of money to be made putting forward fully honest, research-backed investing advice. So, no, I am the first person to offer fully honest takes re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field but I am certainly not going to be the last. Once my right to post honestly is recognized, there will be an opening of the floodgates. I know that. You know that. Everyone watching knows that.

The problem is the transition. The many good and smart people who have been less than fully honest for 36 years now don’t want to go to prison. They don’t want to be sued civilly. They don’t want to see their reputations damaged. What to do, what to do?

I am open to anything that anybody comes up with that doesn’t require me to go to the wrong side of the felony line. We can put out articles pointing out how many of us suffered from cognitive dissonance because this new stuff is so “revolutionary” (Shiller’s words). We can point out the social pressures that many of us experienced because our readers and our clients want so much to believe that the numbers on their portfolio statements are accurate. We can work out some sort of amnesty program to be passed by Congress. We can do all sorts of things.

Our problem is that none of these things can be done by me alone. They are all things that can only be done by us working as a community. Others are afraid to join in because as of today they feel that posting with full honesty is career death. Again — What to do, what to do?

I am going to continue doing what I am doing. I am incapable of saying that I believe that Greaney’s retirement study contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. I just cannot go there. So I am going to continue doing what I am doing today.I love my country. I believe that we are a good and smart people. I believe that we will all pull together following the next price crash. Then things that seem so difficult today will seem easy to all of us.

I obviously wish that it wouldn’t take a deepening of the economic crisis to get us there. Obviously. But it takes what it takes, you know? I am not Superman. The transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is a big move. It is not something that can be achieved by one person. We are going to need at least 10 people to work up the resolve to stand up to you Goons. Once we do that and show people that it is safe to speak out honestly, we are going to see good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff and I am 100 percent confident that not a one of us will ever look backwards.

We all know where we need to take things. Now we just need to work up the courage to let things go there. Valuations affect long-term returns. We have all known that for 36 years now. Now we need to get down to the business of telling every investor alive on Planet Earth WHAT THAT MEANS in strategic terms.

I hope that helps a bit, Anonymous.

Rob