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

Even if you did not violate specific rules of these boards you made them so absolutely unbearable the mods had to ban you or else everyone else would simply stop coming to the board.

You just respond to other peoples question by rambling off topic about what YOU want to talk about. I would love to be a fly on a way and see you interact in real life with someone. I would be curious to see if you are as socially inept even when discussing things other than finance.

How can you seriously claim their is a Buy and Hold Mafia preventing open discussion when you were allowed to speak at FINCON. You spoke, people listened, and everyone thought you were an idiot. What’s hard to understand about that?

I didn’t violate any rules. Not once. That’s a stone cold fact. Even a number of Buy-and-Holders have acknowledged this.

It is true that the moderators have been put in a tough spot. It is true that many community members have told site owners that they would leave their sites if I was not removed. That’s ALSO a stone cold fact. And I DO have sympathy for those site owners (even though I do NOT believe that they are right to ban honest posting).

I NEVER go off topic. That claim is false.

I have zero problems interacting with all kinds of people in real life. And I of course had zero problem on the internet until the morning of May 13, 2002, when I put up my famous post pointing out the errors in the Old School SWR studies. I was the most popular poster at the Motley Fool site on May 12, 2002. By September 27, 2002, there were 200 of my fellow community members endorsing a post containing threats to kill my wife and children if I continued to post honestly re the numbers that people use to plan their retirements. It’s the investing issue that is the problem here.

Not one person at FinCon said that they thought I was a idiot. Not one. I received loud applause when people heard the title of my talk (“How to Become the Most Hated Blogger on the Internet”). A number of people came up to me afterwards and told me how impressed they were. We sat around and talked and ate for several hours. It was all friendliness, no friction. A woman who I was planning to hire to help me with marketing efforts told me that she asked people sitting near her what they thought and they told her I sounded “bitter.” She told me that she would be thrilled to work with me once you Goons were no longer in the picture. She does not want to have organized groups attacking here site and destroying her business.

I agree with your point that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia does not possess absolute power. It’s not just that I talked at FinCon. Shiller published his book and it was reviewed in major publications and it was a best-seller. He even won a Nobel prize. And people like Todd Tresidder have sites where they openly discuss implications of Shiller’s finding that valuations affect long-term returns. So word IS getting out. But far too slowly. We very much need to pick up the pace here.

The core problem is that there are two academic models that explain how the stock market works. Most of the experts in this field have led people to believe that there is only one. That is simply false. There is Buy-and-Hold, the model rooted in a belief in Fama’s research. And there is Valuation-Informed Indexing, the model rooted in Shiller’s research. Both Fama and Shiller have been awarded Nobel prizes. Every community member’s right to post honestly re his or her belief in EITHER model must be respected at every discussion board and blog on the internet. There can never be a single exception.

All of the trouble that has come about is because of decisions that were made long before I came on the scene. Bogle should have given a speech within one week of the day that Shiller published his “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) research. He should have told people that there was now research that threw doubt on the Buy-and-Hold Model. If he still personally believed in Buy-and-Hold (I believe that he did), he should have said that too. But he should have let all his followers know that there were now reasonable grounds for doubt.

Had he done that, no one would have been shocked when I questioned the Greaney study. Had Bogle given that speech back in 1981, every study published after that date would have contained language indicating what model it followed and directing people to literature providing background on the alternative model. Then there would have been no grounds for charges of fraud. Everything would have been done out in the open. We all would be friends. We all would converse with each other in an environment of mutual respect and affection, We all would have for 33 years now have been enjoying a wonderful learning experience together.

It didn’t play out that way. Humans are not angels. We made some mistakes and things got on the wrong track. Now we have millions of people whose retirements are riding on the validity of the Buy-and-Hold Model. It makes those people sick to think that they have been following a strategy that may not work out in the long run. I am not wrong to tell them that. It is our society as a whole that has failed them by keeping the truth from them for so many years.

People need to hear both sides, Anonymous. There are no grounds for legitimate controversies here. People MUST hear both sides to be able to make informed decisions as to how to invest their retirement money. I am 100 percent happy to work with any responsible parties to figure out how to get us from the horrible place where we are today to the wonderful place where we all long to be tomorrow.

Are you willing to lend a hand, Anonymous? Do you want to work with me to take this matter in a constructive and positive and life-affirming direction?

If you are, please let me know and we can get to work right away.

Rob

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

What has enabled you to remain impervious to the all powerful Buy and Hold Mafia something not a single other person on this planet has been capable of?

This is a super question.

First of all, it is of course not the case that I am the only one who has not been influenced by the intimidation tactics of the Buy-and-Holders. There are lots of people who have made brave statements. I think it would be fair to say that I have made more of an effort to overcome the feelings of wanting to hold back that all humans feel when faced with this sort of social pressure. But lots of people have made some effort.

A big part of it is what you suggest, that the Buy-and-Holders cannot intimidate me because I have no status in this field and thus have nothing to lose. I obviously want my internet business to succeed. You Goons have made a point of doing everything in your power to see that it does not and then of celebrating whatever financial setback you have caused and reminding me of it over and over again. But it’s not like you can call my employer with a word from Jack and get me fired from my job because I made him “look bad” re some topic or another.

I am in unusual circumstances. If I break through and gain recognition of my right to post honestly, I go from being a nobody in this field to being the biggest name in it. So I stand to make tons of money on the other side of the line and am not able to make any at all until the Goon matter is successfully resolved. That’s obviously an odd set of circumstances.

It’s the product of the creation of this powerful new communications medium. Many people do not respect the work product of internet discussion boards and blogs. So they don’t worry about censorship in the new medium to the extent they would be concerned about censorship in newspapers or books or whatever. That is indeed one of the reason why this bad situation has been permitted to drag on so long.

I do not share these views even a tiny bit. I believe that the new communications medium is a VERY powerful and important one. I believe that people should be talking about the interactions on our boards on a daily basis in all of the other communication mediums. The new medium does a better of showing how people put investing strategies to use and specifically how emotion influences them. Investor emotion is the great unexplored issue in this field. So we should be seeing newspaper articles and speeches and research papers about the ins and outs of our 12-year saga showing up at new places on an almost daily basis.

We haven’t seen that. One gets the feeling that the results of such explorations would be so fruitful that people are afraid to be the first to go there. Everyone is holding back to see someone else (other than me) try things out and show whether this new ways of doing things can bring in a payoff or not. Most would conclude that it has not thus far brought off a payoff for me. On the day when I get that $500 million paycheck, I think it would be fair to say we are going to see an explosion of new efforts along the lines that I have been engaging in for years.

That reality makes it all the more urgent both that I stick to what I have been doing and that you Goons stick to what you have been doing. We have fallen into an all-or-nothing sort of battle here. Either I am totally crushed and end up with nothing and you Goons get off with no prison sentences or I become one of the richest men in the United States and it is you Goons who end up ruined.

That reality makes it pretty darn hard to work out a compromise, eh?

I don’t know how to change that reality, Anonymous. If I could think of something, I would put it forward. It’s pretty darn hard to come up with anything truly promising.

The one thing that I can say (and that I do say over and over again) is that we all are in the same boat. I believe that this started out as a mistake and that there are many big-name figures in the field who would like to bring an end to the cover-up. I believe that the cognitive dissonance argument can go a long way to helping address their concerns re what would happen to their reputations when that happens. And I believe that the rewards that would be experienced by the millions of middle-class investors would be so great that they would be in a forgiving mood if the transition was achieved prior to the onset of the next crash.

I don’t say that that addresses every concern on your end. It does not. There’s just nothing more than I can do than that.

I am of course 100 percent happy to address every concern that I can possibly address. Re that, there is no issue here. And I think it would be fair to say that I can be pretty darn creative and effective when I put my mind to placing things in a positive light. I am happy to do it because I believe that that is a life-affirming way of going about things. And of course I feel genuine respect and affection for all of my many Buy-and-Hold friends.

But I am not Superman, you know?

The circumstances that apply to me are different than the circumstances that apply to anyone else. That’s the short answer to your question.

I hope that 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:

A contributing factor of you getting kicked off all those sites is the factbthat also don’t listen. You have your agenda and want to spread it on every thread, even when it is not the subject being discussed. You think that your points are more important than what anyone else has to say, yet give no consideration to the opinion of others. If it doesn’t mesh with your line of thinking, you say that people are lying or “afraid” and that is just a bunch of bull.

I plead “guilty” to having an agenda and wanting to spread it far and wide. No apologies whatsoever.

I plead “not guilty” to pushing that agenda on any thread in which it was not relevant. That is something that I would never do. That is something that I would never consider doing. I am a very big believer in following rules, Anonymous. And that is a rule which is needed and makes sense and which I endorse. I never, ever break that rule.

All that said, there is a small bit of legitimacy to what you are saying here.

Shiller’s findings are relevant to a LOT of threads.

That’s not my doing. That’s just the way it is. Shiller’s findings are of fundamental importance. They are relevant to many, many. many discussions.

I plead “guilty” to believing that my points are more important than the points being made by most others. Everyone is guilty of that. If I didn’t think my points were important, they wouldn’t be my points. I obviously always show respect and affection to those making other points. I obviously always try to learn from those making different points. That’s as far as a human can go. We all have biases. We all are influenced by the life experiences that have comprised our lives and by the particular skill sets that we bring to the table.

I plead “not guilty” to saying that people who don’t believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing are lying or afraid. I have said 10,000 times that there are millions of good and smart people who believe in Buy-and-Hold. I was a Buy-and-Holder myself prior to the evening of August 27, 2002. Do you seriously believe that I called myself a liar and a fearful person prior to that date?

I plead “guilty” to saying that those who engage in Goon behavior (death threats, demands for unjustified board bannings, tens of thousands of acts of defamation, threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs) are liars or fearful. Those behaviors are over the line of what is considered acceptable or tolerable in a free society.

The root problem here is that Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing are opposite strategies that both claim to be rooted in the peer-reviewed academic research. If VII weren’t rooted in research, the Buy-and-Holders wouldn’t get so upset. They still wouldn’t follow VII strategies. But they wouldn’t see VII as a threat. They see it as a threat because they believe that their ideas are rooted in research and those advocating VII are advocating a strategy that is the opposite in every possible way that is ALSO said to be rooted in the research. Huh?

The answer is for Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers to show respect and affection for each other and to try to learn from each other.

That’s the way that this would have played out if getting this investing stuff right weren’t so darn important. If it were a small thing, the Buy-and-Holders could say “well, this new stuff doesn’t sound quite right, but let’s hear what these people have to say, it sure can’t hurt just to listen to them.” In this case, it CAN hurt. If the Valuation-Informed Indexers are wrong, they could cause people to suffer failed retirements. So the Buy-and-Holders feel a need to come on very strong.

The other side of the story is that, if you believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing, it is the Buy-and-Holders who are causing failed retirements! We believe just as strongly in what we believe. Buy-and-Hold is every bit as dangerous in the eyes of Valuation-Informed Indexers as Valuation-Informed Indexing is in the eyes of Buy-and-Holders.

We have to find some way of having a conversation without yelling at each other.

I am game for anything that doesn’t require me to say something that I do not believe. I don’t want to tell lies. That’s normal and understandable, right?

Now –

The problem comes with what you say up front. Shiller’s findings are “revolutionary.” They turn our old understanding of how stock investing works on its head. They change every strategic consideration.

It’s not my intent to jump on every thread in which the Buy-and-Holders are having a conversation amongst themselves and ruin it for them by turning it into an argument. It is NOT my intent to do that.

But it is not only confirmed Buy-and-Holders who participate on our boards and blogs. About 10 percent of our community members follow VII strategies. Those people should be able to hear the VII side of the story on all the threads on which it applies (and that is most of them). And there is a much larger percentage of the community that remains in the Buy-and-Hold camp but would like to hear the other side of the story from time to time as well. Those people have rights. The Buy-and-Hold dogmatics don’t get to decide by themselves how things go down.

Say that the Buy-and-Holders wanted the right to label some threads “For Buy-and-Holders Only” so that they didn’t need to get in arguments re basic points with the Valuation-Informed Indexers. I have no problem with that so long as the same right is extended to the Valuation-Informed Indexers. We get to have our threads where the Buy-and-Holders stay out too. And of course there would be other threats (most threads) in which both Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers would participate.

The core thing here is that there needs to be a general recognition that there are TWO schools of academic thought re how stock investing works, not one. Buy-and-Holders are not dumb. Buy-and-Holders are not evil. But it is NOT true that Buy-and-Hold has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. Fama won a Nobel Prize. So did Shiller. Both schools of thought are valid today. Every board and blog on the internet must be open to discussion of both schools of thought.

No one who comes to the table with a halfway reasonable mind is going to have a hard time working out details with me. I am 100 percent happy to bend over backwards to be reasonable and accommodating to my Buy-and-Hold friends. Put forward reasonable suggestions and we can lock this down in 24 hours.

It is NOT reasonable to expect me to sit in the audience for years while John Greaney pushes his retirement study on a daily basis and not say anything even though I am aware of the 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing that that study gets the numbers wildly wrong. I am not saying it that way as some sort of dig. I am saying it that way to make you aware of the very real problem here. You put me in an impossible situation when you apply intimidation tactics to silence me re something like that.

Greaney may well believe in the study. I believe that he does. Bogle may well believe in the investing strategy. I believe that he does.

But it is NOT the case that the Old School SWR methodology is beyond dispute proven. It is NOT that.

I have every bit as much right to advocate Valuation-Informed Indexing as Bogle has to advocate Buy-and-Hold. That right MUST be respected. There can be zero negotiation re that one.

Work with me and I will do everything I can to make things proceed smoothly.

Pull out intimidation tactics and I will call out your sorry ass on it. Every time. I am FAMOUS for it.

It has to be said that way because the bad stuff has been going on too long now for it to be ignored.

But, if you want to work together, I am 100 percent on board. I LOVE the good that the Buy-and-Holders have done, which is considerable. I care deeply about all of my Buy-and-Hold friends. It is my strongly held belief that VII is just a new version of Buy-and-Hold. We are not enemies. We are friends. We should be working together. It is a national tragedy that things ever got so far off track that there are people who today think of the two sides as working toward different purposes. We want the same things. And we can only obtain the things we want by working together.

I DO listen.

I listen to reasoned and civil arguments.

I do NOT listen to intimidation. Not ever. Intimidation tactics are a total and complete turn-off for me. My ears clog out when some Goon comes forward with dirty, smelly, disgusting intimidation tactics.

Your move.

Please THINK before posting your next words. We all have to live with the consequences of what you put forward. Please listen to that voice within you that is telling you to take things in a positive and constructive and life-affirming direction. If you listen carefully to that voice, you will see all good things come back to you in return.

Rob

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

Rob,

For what it’s worth, and obviously not on the scale of what you have accomplished and achieved, but on the all-things-money blog I have frequented for the last couple of years, and debated against common stock market mantras, there have been several calls for me to be banned or my comments ‘moderated’ simply because I rally against what’s popular and the feel-good cheerleading.

A bit of background, I was a buy-and-holder until 2008/09. That shock woke me up and I said “There *HAS* to be a better way of investing and growing wealth!” The quest was on…

Funny thing is, I bring reams of data and research to the table — even if I have interpreted it in error, the data is still presented so anyone can see for themselves and correct me, make their own ascertains, etc. The nay-sayers almost always bring nothing to the table — no data, no research, no facts, not even an angry commentary, just name calling and requests for banning/moderation (and some of these people are financial industry “professionals”!). Brainwashed and fearful.

Discovering your work has been enlightening for me; it’s given clarity to my own ideas. Most people out there are all about self-preservation, even if it means shutting down the “truth”. Few people are about true discovery at any cost. I’m still playing catch-up with the large volume of work you’ve produced (and the reviews), but it seems to me that your theory is just as valid, if not more so, than what’s popular right now. Even if it’s not 100% perfect 100% of the time (what human function is?!), it definitely furthers the scope of investment knowledge.

Don’t worry, obsession on its own may not be good, but coupled with a higher goal can produce significant results. Aren’t we all super happy Mr. Edison was a highly obsessed S.O.B.? 😉

Canuck:

You are hitting on all the important points.

I hope you will continue posting here. It would be great if you posted on a daily basis. If there is anything that I can do to make that happen, please let me know. I will take what I can get. If you can only post once per week or whatever, that’s of course fine. Or if you choose not to do so at all, I will understand. It is boring to have only me and the other Goons posting here.

But please let me explain why in time I believe that we could make it less boring and why you could play a HUGE role making life better for MILLIONS of people if you spent some time here.

All that you say about how you have been treated is 100 percent in line with what I have seen at HUNDREDS of places. It is too sad.

It is very important that all understand that the people who have improperly called for you (and so many others) to be banned are IN GREAT PAIN. They are not bad people. They are not dumb people. They are hurting people.

Why are they hurting so much?

Because this stuff matters so much. They want to be able to retire someday. And they all have common sense. They know on some level of consciousness that it is pure nonsense to believe that price discipline doesn’t matter when buying stocks. The idea makes precisely zero sense. It is absurd. And of course we now have 140 years of historical return data CONFIRMING what our common sense tells us. There is zero chance that Buy-and-Hold can ever work for a single long-term investor. Zero. And all the Buy-and-Holders know it!

They do. I have been watching this stuff very carefully for 12 years now and I am 100 percent sure of this. The Buy-and-Holders know that Buy-and-Hold can never work. They get that loud and clear.

There is an obvious puzzle attached to what I am saying. The Buy-and-Holders follow Buy-and-Hold strategies. It’s not that they say one thing and do something else. No. They practice what they preach. The Buy-and-Holders BELIEVE in Buy-and-Hold. They believe enough to risk their retirement money on it.

Wait.

I am contradicting myself.

I first said that the Buy-and-Holders do NOT believe in Buy-and-Hold. Then I said that they DO believe It cannot possibly be both! Either I am a liar or I am nuts. It’s not only the Goons who say that. I am proving it with my own self-contradictory comments. No?

No.

Humans are capable of believing in two completely opposite things at the same time. This is actually a common phenomenon.

Say that you have a friend who is an alcoholic. He is in the process of destroying his life. His wife has left him. She took the kids. She took the house. His health is failing. His boss is close to firing him. It’s a bad scene. So you have lunch with him and tell him that he has a problem and that he needs to do something about it.

He starts screaming at you and banging the table. He has no freakin’ problem! He is just fine! He doesn’t need your friendship and he will axe you in two seconds if you ever again suggest that he has a problem. Get the hell out of his life!

That settles it. He doesn’t have a problem. He should know, right? He is closest to the situation. And he has told you clearly that he doesn’t have a problem. What else do you need to know?

He SAYS that he doesn’t have a problem. That’s the addiction talking. The very reason why he gets so upset is that he of course knows very well that he has a big problem. Suffering an addiction doesn’t make someone a moron. He knows with 100 percent certainty that he has a big problem. And he also swears on a stack of Bibles that he does not have a problem. Why? Because he cannot face it. He is hurting. Denying the problem gives him a little temporary emotional relief. That’s why he continue to deny the obvious. The obvious is too darn painful a reality for him to face.

That’s where the Buy-and-Holders are today, Canuck.

They kicked you off the blog not because you broke any rules or because you didn’t present enough evidence or because they have so much evidence supporting their views. They kicked you off the blog for precisely the opposite reason. You have ALL the evidence. They have ZERO evidence. And that’s a panful place to be. That hurts. They kicked you off the blog to make the hurting stop. You were posting real stuff and that stuff makes a Buy-and-Holder suffer incredible amounts of psychic pain.

I once had a poster who summed this up perfectly (and in a comical way). I was getting all kinds of static at this board. People were demanding that I be banned. And this guy stepped forward and said (I am paraphrasing): “Rob is probably the politest and warmest and most gentle person I have ever come to know. And he irritates me to no end!”

The guy couldn’t stand me. Not because I am a meanie. Not because I am dumb. He couldn’t stand me because he tried to tell himself that he followed research-based strategies and the strategy that he was following (Buy-and-Hold) was the farthest thing from a research-based strategy ever developed by the human mind. He couldn’t ignore what I was saying because it was so obviously true. And yet he couldn’t bear to hear me say it because, if he heard it, he had to make changes and, if he was going to make changes, he first had to acknowledge that he had made a mistake at an earlier time, and acknowledging that he had made a mistake about how he invested his retirement money was just too painful a reality to bear.

This is what is going on.

I don’t mean just with the Goons and with the people who demanded that you banned from that board. This is what is going on with Jack Bogle. And all the others. This is what is going on with every Buy-and-Holder out there.

All of them really do believe in Buy-and-Hold on one level of consciousness. And all of them really do follow Buy-and-Hold strategies themselves. And all of them lack confidence in the strategy they are following. And all of them suffer great pain as a result when they hear anyone discuss true research-based strategies.

That’s the underlying dynamic here. The implications are HUGE. And most of them are positive. The positive stuff here outweighs the negative by a factor of 50 to 1. People get hung up on the Goon stuff and we all need to get past that and get on to enjoying the benefits of the good stuff, which is so positive that most people cannot even imagine how positive it is.

I am going to stop here for this post. But I will post a follow-up or two that explores where I think this is going and why I believe that you have a HUGE opportunity to do good for MILLIONS of people if you care to take advantage of it.

Rob

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

Rob, serious question here: do you think you’re obsessing about this topic? I agree with the idea that you believe in: buy and hold isn’t the best way to invest. Seriously, though, you must’ve thought to yourself, at least a few times…..that “perhaps I could broaden the range of topics beyond the one idea I talk about daily….that buy and hold is not the best way to invest.” ?

My primary message is not: “Buy-and-Hold is not the best way to invest.”

My primary message is: “Honest posting should be permitted on every discussion board and blog on the internet so that we can all discover together whether Buy-and-Hold is the best way to invest.”

Do you see the difference?

If we permit honest posting, we will have thousands of good and smart people helping us to learn the best way to invest. We can’t possibly go wrong with all that help.

For so long as the Ban on Honest Posting remains in place, we are at the mercy of the Wall Street Con Men. It’s all about making a buck and there is no place in this field for people of personal integrity.

I didn’t write about investing for the first three years in which I posted at Motley Fool. I was very popular. I was doing good and important work and I was happy about it. I have never been “obsessed” about investing issues. I could pretty much take or leave discussions of investing, all else being equal.

But all else is NOT equal. My “obsession” began on the evening of August 27, 2002, when Greaney threatened to kill my wife and children if I continued to “cross” him by posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates. And when 200 of my fellow community members endorsed his post.

That ain’t right, James.

Those people are in pain.

They need our help.

The people who promote Buy-and-Hold are also in pain. I have great respect for these people. I have learned wonderful things from them and I care about them. I want them doing good, clean, honest work again. I know that deep in their hearts they want that for themselves too. I don’t have any doubt about it.

Buy-and-Hold is not just a bad investing strategy today. It is a threat to the survival of our free-market economic system. It is also a threat to the survival of our political system. You saw the reaction to the economic crisis (caused by the continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies for 33 years after the peer-reviewed research in this field showed that there is precisely zero chance that Buy-and-Hold can ever work for a single investor) on both the left (the Occupy Wall Street Movement) and the right (the Tea Party Movement). We are likely going to see something ten times worse following the next price crash, a price crash that will put us in the Second Great Depression if we don’t open the internet to honest posting soon after it unfolds.

I love my country, James. I want my two boys to be able to grow up in the same sort of country that I grew up in. One with our economic system. One with our political system.

I have a funny feeling that I am not the only one who wants that.

I have a funny feeling that you want that.

To get it, we need to be able to stand up to the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads when they push their smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. I understand that you (and lots of others) are afraid. But there is no other way.

I am afraid too. I am just like you.

Do you want to know the difference?

The difference is that I am even more afraid of what happens to us all if we continue to duck this problem.

I do this not just for me. I do it for you. And I do it for my boys. And I do it for the Goons. And I do it for the Wall Street Con Men. And I do it for the millions of middle-class investors whose lives are in the process of being destroyed.

I wish someone else would do it, you know? It’s not the most fun job in the world. If someone else would step forward, that would make me very happy.

Do you see someone else stepping forward?

Someone needs to do this job. No one else has stepped forward. So I continue to give it my best shot. I can do no more and I can do no less.

None of the other good stuff that we all enjoy continues to exist unless we set this right. We all want to see it set right. But someone has to get the ball rolling in the right direction for good things to happen. It seems that somehow the Fates or God or Evolution assigned me to that job. Blame them, you know?

I love my country.

That’s the bottom line here, James.

That’s the reason for the “obsession.”

I wish you all good things.

Rob

Set forth below are the texts of several comments that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:

Only a complete troll sits around trying to point out other people’s mistakes all day.

We couldn’t possibly disagree more, Anonymous.

Getting the mistakes of the Buy-and-Holders fixed is huge. There’s a lot of good stuff in the Buy-and-Hold Model. When we get the mistakes fixed, it works in the real world.

I love working to get those mistakes fixed. I only wish we could do get things done faster!

Hang in there, man.

Rob

I should add that someone who is not man enough to correct his mistakes when they are pointed out to him does not possess the minimal level of integrity needed to work in the investing advice field.

That goes for John Greaney. That goes for Mel Linduaer. That goes for my good friend Jack Bogle. That goes for all of the individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of these three over the past 12 years.

Personal integrity has to come first. Intelligence without integrity doesn’t get the job done. Power without integrity doesn’t get the job done. Money without integrity doesn’t get the job done. Experience without integrity doesn’t get the job done.

Yes, even in the investing advice field.

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

Rob

My experience has been that I have often learned a lot from identifying my mistakes and acknowledging them and correcting them. I try to feel grateful to the people who help me out by pointing out my mistakes. That’s a good test of true friendship. People who don’t really care about you on a deep level aren’t going to go to the trouble to point out your mistakes, they are more inclined to flatter you. Your true and lasting friends hate to see you do harm to yourself. So they are more inclined to stick their necks out.

That’s another way of telling the same basic story set forth in the above two comments, just coming at it from a different angle.

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

Rob

Please remember that we wouldn’t have the amazing Bennett/Pfau research paper (peer reviewed!) showing millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent if I hadn’t worked up the courage to point out Greaney’s mistake back in May 2002.

I was scared then like everybody else is today. But I think it would be fair to say that that one act of courage by a somewhat frightened fellow has led us all to some amazing places in the 12 years since.

Fair enough?

Rob

I have a question for you, Anonymous.

Say that you were me. Say that you loved the core Buy-and-Hold concept (focusing on the long term and rooting your strategies in the peer-reviewed research) but that you became convinced that your Buy-and-Hold friends had made a terrible mistake that caused an economic crisis, wiping out years of the accumulated savings of millions of middle-class investors.

Would you keep it zipped, knowing that you would be able to make a lot more money in the short term by aiding the cover-up?

Or would you try to persuade your Buy-and-Hold friends to correct the error so that they could feel good about themselves again and so that we could bring the economic crisis to an end and bring on the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history?

You know what I feel bound in conscience to do.

I would be grateful if you would ponder the question a bit and tell us what you sincerely believe you would do if you were placed in the circumstances in which I find myself.

Rob

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

What they take issue with is the way you seek to take over every discussion and make it about yourself and your views.

I don’t seek to take over any discussions, Sensible.

It just happens.

The reason why it happens is that the things I say make so much sense to most people and most people have never before heard anybody say these things. So they naturally are interested and want to learn more. So they naturally ask lots of questions. And the next thing you know one of the Buy-and=Holders feels bad that I have yet again “taken over” a discussion.

There is a solution to this problem. The solution is to open the entire internet to honest posting on the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research. Then there will be hundreds or perhaps thousands of people saying all the same things that I say. No one will need to ask lots of questions because they will have had all their questions asked and answered many, many times. People will have access to all the information they need and they will decide for themselves what to believe and there will be no problem.

The problem today is that there are just not enough people advocating Valuation-Informed Indexing. So it shocks people when I advance perfectly natural and understandable claims like “the Old School SWR claims get the numbers wrong” or “the promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies caused the economic crisis” or “we will likely see a price crash of 65 percent within the next year or two or three.”

There’s nothing odd or radical or extreme about these claims. They follow logically from an understanding of the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research. But they SOUND odd and radical and extreme to most people because they have never heard such claims before. The claims scare people because they have their retirement money invested pursuant to Buy-and-Hold principles. So these claims are always going to attract a lot of attention until we reach a point at which everyone has heard them and understands what is behind them.

To get to that place, we need to open every site to honest posting. There is no other way to get the job done.

I have been advocating this for 12 years now. Stop opposing me and support me instead and we can make this happen together. That’s the answer. If you don’t want people to be shocked when they hear research-based stuff, you need to stop supporting the Ban on Honest Posting. People are not shocked by claims they hear on a daily basis. Let’s work together to insure that every investor on the planet hears about Valuation-Informed Indexing on a daily basis and therefore no longer feels the tiniest bit of shock when these ideas are advanced at internet boards and blogs.

This came up just the other day. One of you Goons made a good point by saying that I wouldn’t be banned at any site if I limited myself to expressing these ideas only on rare occasions rather than on every thread at which they are relevant. I want to express them on every thread! That’s how we will all get to a point where no one will be shocking by the ideas. We all want that. You don’t want the discussions to be about me and I don’t want the discussions to be about me. Let’s get to work! Let’ get THOUSANDS of people talking about these ideas.

People need to be incentivized to advance these ideas. You Goons punished Wade Pfau for publishing honest research showing the dangers of Buy-and-Hold. Let’s take it in the other direction. Let’s applaud him for the research that he co-authored with me. Let’s award him a Noble prize. Let’s invite him to post honestly re what he really believes at the Bogleheads Forum. Let’s write threads about his e-mail to the authors of the Trinity study asking them to correct the errors in their study and ask the Trinity authors to respond.

Let’s change the world! For the better!

I’m ready to get started today.

Are you?

If you’re not, then stop complaining that I get so much attention when I put forward these ideas. The only reason why I am not sharing the attention with thousands of others is that you Goons have intimidated the thousands of others into silence. STOP DOING THAT!

Rob

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

Let’s play Jeopardy.

Answer: the peer-reviewed research of the past 33 years needs to be discussed in every THREAD in which Buy-and-Hold “ideas” are advanced.

Question: Why has Rob Bennett been banned from every major finance board?

That’s a super comment, X. You cut through a lot of b.s. and got straight to the heart of things with that comment. Good for you.

I understand the point you are making.

And I stand by what I said.

The findings of the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research need to be discussed in EVERY FREAKIN’ THREAD in which they are relevant. That is indeed the Rob Bennett position.

And, yes, I think it would be fair to say that that is a big part of the explanation of why I am banned at every major finance board. What you are saying is true enough in that it explains the reality. But I am right on the ethical matter.

You Goons are correct in a hyper-techncal sense when you say that Shiller’s ideas are discussed at the Bogleheads Forum. There are people there who believe in Shiller’s ideas. And they post. And the posts stay up. And people read them. All of that is so.

But the comments they make are superficial. When the comments go deep (as they must if people are to be persuaded of the merit of Valuation-Informed Indexing strategies), the Buy-and-Holders step in and send out signals that these posters have “gone too far.” If the poster pulls it back, he remains to post another day. If the poster ignores the warning, he is removed. That’s the way it works.

The Valuation-Informed Indexers have been placed in a ghetto. It’s a ghetto in which they do not possess the same rights as Buy-and-Holders. It’s a ghetto in which they keep their most powerful insights to themselves. It’s a ghetto in which they do not say “Buy-and-Hold is dangerous” or “that claim is wrong” or “Bogle is contradicting himself.” It is a ghetto in which they watch their step and are careful not to offend their betters.

Not this boy, X.

Not ever. Not by a long shot.

Do Buy-and-Holders feel free to post in every freakin’ thread?

Has that ever been in question? Has there ever been any controversy about it?

Then why are there questions and controversies about whether Valuation-Informed Indexers should be permitted to do the same?

You have hit the mark with this comment. The question you raise here is the question that has been on the table for 12 years now.

I post honestly or I post not. If I see someone asking for a link to a retirement calculator and then I see some Buy-and-Holder link to FIRECalc, I am going to respond with a link to The Retirement Risk Evaluator. I’ll do it every time. I will never offer any apology whatsoever. If asked, I will explain that the reason why I post honestly re these matters is that I do not want to see my friends suffer failed retirements. I will add that I look forward to the day when we ALL post honestly and when Buy-and-Hold has been buried 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.

No apologies whatsoever. None.

Now —

The Buy-and-Holders have the same right. The Buy-and-Holders believe what they believe and they have every right to share what they believe with others.

So what do we do?

Both sides have to respect the other side.

That’s how this ends.

The reason why it upsets people when I post about Valuation-Informed Indexing insights on every thread on which they are relevant is that many investors HAVE NO IDEA that there is 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing that Buy-and-Hold cannot work. I know this to be so because I had no idea of this myself prior to May 13, 2002. People don’t even know that there is a controversy. So it upsets them to find out that there are DOUBTS about this Buy-and-Hold stuff that they are using to finance their retirements.

The Buy-and-Holders are playing a very, very, very dangerous game. They are tricking people. They are leading people to believe that there is a consensus that Buy-and-Hold works when in reality there is now 33 years of peer-reviewed research very much cutting the other way.

EVERY INVESTOR ON THE PLANET NEEDS TO KNOW THAT THERE ARE TWO ACADEMIC SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT AS TO HOW STOCK INVESTING WORKS, NOT ONE.

When that is out in the open, we won’t see the ugliness that has characterized the first 12 years of our discussions. At that point, Valuation-Informed Indexers will be commenting on every thread at every board and no one will blink an eye about it. Everyone will understand that that’s just what we all should expect given the 33 years of peer-reviewed research supporting the new model.

And that’s when we will start to see the popularity of Valuation-Informed Indexing grow by leaps and bounds. People are not going to risk their retirement money on a strategy until they have heard it explored from many angles and in great depth. It is when as a society we acknowledge that those promoting research-based strategies have EVERY RIGHT IN THE WORLD to post at every thread on every board and blog on the internet that VII will take off on its way to becoming the dominant model for understanding how stock investing works.

Bogle has to give an “I Was Wrong” speech. Or, at the very least, he needs to give an “I’m Not Sure” speech. That will get written up on the front page of the New York Times. And then the ugly side of this comes to an end. From that point forward, it’s good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. For every last one of us. We are all on the same side in the final analysis, to be sure.

Every freakin’ thread, X.

That’s what I ask.

And that’s what I will get.

The length of your prison term will be determined by how long it takes me to pull it off. I vote for the close of business today, the timing choice that produces the shortest possible prison sentence for you and your Goon pals.

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

Rob

 

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

I’ve known that I was holding a winning hand going back to Day Six, the day that John Walter Russell posted his sensitivity analysis of the Greaney retirement study.

I never thought it would take this long. You guys got me re that one. You got me one-hundred times over re that one.

But I knew how it would end going back to the first week of our discussions. I never experienced a moment’s doubt re the general ending point after I saw the Russell sensitivity analysis way back in May 2002. I believe in research. I believe in numbers. I believe in objective truth. I believe in science.

It was the death threats of August 27, 2002, that caused me to abandon Buy-and-Hold. I believed from May 2002 through August 2002 that the Old School SWR studies could be corrected and Buy-and-Hold reformed. It was the death threats that told me that we needed to replace Buy-and-Hold with a new model rooted in Shiller’s research. But I knew the general ending point going back almost to the first day.

Even on the very first morning, the anger of the Buy-and-Holders set off my spidey sense. But I wasn’t sure whether to trust my spidey sense until I saw John’s sensitivity analysis. From that point forward, it’s just been a question of going deeper and deeper and deeper.

Hang in there, Goons. There is someone out there in this world who cares about your welfare a whole big bunch more than you care about your own welfare.

And he works it hard! Yowsa!

Rob

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

No one has to do a thing to please you. We can’t help it if you are too stupid to understand things. We have significant data and facts supporting a buy, hold and rebalance strategy and don’t need some market timing scheme. We are big boys and girls and can make our own judgements and have plenty of information to make up our own minds. You need to take responsibility for ourself and family, which you failed to do up to this point, and we will take care of our own. Stop blaming other people for your own failings in your investment strategy.

Do you live in the United States, Anonymous?

If you do, you are subject to the laws of the United States.

That’s the rub.

I didn’t write the laws of the United States. They were written by lawmakers, who represent the people of the United States.

Take it up with the lawmakers. Or take it up with the people. Take it up with whomever you like.

But please do not expect me to be responsive when you demand that I participate in your huge act of financial fraud.

I do not want to go to prison. Zero interest.

You are going to have to try to find somebody else. This boy is not interested.

I wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors. I can give you that much.

But not the committing-acts-that-constitute-felonies-under-the-laws-of-the-United-States thing.

It’s not my particular cup of tea.

No can do.

Rob