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

No one agrees with you, but it really has nothing to do with you not getting a job.  Why is it that everyone else is responsible for bringing in an income to support before and after retirement, but you don’t think that it applies to you?  Why should you not have to get a job?

I’ve got the most important job in the United States today, Anonymous. My job is to open every site to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research, without a single exception. Executing that job successfully will permit everyone to live a fuller and richer and more fulfilled life than he or she imagined possible back in the Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick days. We all need to move forward and we need to get every site opened to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research to make it happen.

My sincere take.

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 fact that you allege there is an error and nobody else agrees has nothing to do with getting a job.  Normal and responsible American’s get a job and provide for themselves and family members so that they are not a burden.  This is even more critical when the overall topic is providing for a successful retirement as well.  Why should it be different for you?

Thousands of people agree, Anonymous, including a number of the biggest names in the field. We need to begin applying the same laws that apply in every other field of human endeavor other than the investing advice field in the investment advice field as well so that people will feel comfortable posting honestly re what the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research is trying to teach us all. I think that’s the answer. I know it is!

It’s different for me because I have seen the entire story up close and personal for 21 years running now. I can tell the story better than anyone else. And it is very important to everyone who lives in the United States that this story be told clearly and completely and fairly. I intend to give it my best shot.

I hope that works for 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:

You have certain beliefs and others have their beliefs.  So what.  It has nothing to do with getting a job.  Why should things be any different for you versus every other American.

I’m the only person who advanced a post on the morning of May 13, 2002, that pointed out the error in the Greaney retirement study (it lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins) and then saw the cover-up that followed for the next 21 years. Any decent person who saw what I saw would be doing the same thing that I am doing. I just happened to be the lucky one that the universe selected for the job!

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:

Do you regret it enough to say that you made the wrong decision?

No.

I live in a nation of people. Many of those people have helped me live a better life. Doctors. Scientists. Teachers. Policemen. On and on and on and on. I would not be able to sleep at night if I sold those people out. I sincerely believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.

I am 100 percent certain that my ex would feel the same way about it if she had studied these matters as closely as I have and knew what I know. She knows that there is some funny business going on. But she does not know the full extent of it. It is hard for anyone who has not devoted themselves full time to these matters to appreciate the realities. I know that I did not appreciate them on the morning of May 13, 2002. It’s a hard-to-believe story. But a very, very. very important one. For me to stop talking about it would make it worse. We need more people talking about this story, not fewer.

Rob

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

If you were confident in your market timing scheme, you wouldn’t keep attacking the buy and holders.  If you were confident in your market timing scheme, you would keep making up death threat accusations.  If you were confident in your market timing scheme, you would keep banning posts at your website.  If you were confident in your market timing scheme, you wouldn’t lie about all the successful outcomes from buy and hold.

I believe that the Buy-and-Holders are great people. I like them as individuals. I want to be friends with them. I don’t agree with them on the market timing/price discipline question. I think that they made a mistake re that one because Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research had not yet been published at the time Buy-and-Hold was being developed.

I have no problem with people advocating Buy-and-Hold because I believe that the people advocating it sincerely believe in it and there are obviously many people who want to hear about it. I have a big problem with efforts to suppress the discussion of Valuation-Informed Indexing. The reality is that there are today two schools of academic thought re how stock investing works. I want Valuation-Informed Indexing to grow in popularity. That’s not going to happen unless the people who believe in it feel free to openly share their thoughts at every discussion board and blog.

Stocks are an amazing investment class. Since Buy-and-Hold recommends investing in stocks, it has provided those who follow it a measure of success. But the Bennett/Pfau research shows that a decision to avoid maret timing/price discipline never adds and always subtracts. So I don’t believe that that particular aspect of the Buy-and-Hold experience has ever contributed to an investor’s success.

Valuation-Informed Indexing offers all of the benefits of Buy-and-Hold (since everything except the market timing thing checks out and has been incorporated into Valuation-Informed Indexing concept) without the serious negative of the idea that market timing/price discipline might not always be 100 percent required for every investor. Valuation-Informed Indexing is really just an improved version of BUy-and-Hold, a Buy-and-Hold reformed to include the amazing findings of the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research.

My best wishes.

Rob

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

“ I felt intense social prssure to conform”

I don’t think you have ever “conformed” to anything. If you did, you would not be broadly banned from the investment community, nor would you be broke or divorced.

I’ve conformed to U.S. law, Anonymous. I’ve conformed to what the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world. I’ve conformed to the expressed wishes of thousands of our fellow community members who have indicated a desire to see honest posting re the peer-reviewed research permitted at every site.

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:

“ Say that there is a 1 in 100 chance that I was right in what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002 — 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. Personally, I believe that the odds are more like 99.9999 percent. But let’s say for purposes of discussion that the odds are only 1 in 100.‘

Let’s say it is 0 out of 100. Wouldn’t you say that you just wasted the last 2 decades of your life repeating a lie?

No. I sincerely believe that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment. If it turns out that there was a valuation adjustment there all along that I just couldn’t see, then I made a mistake but i did not tell a lie.

And, if it was all a mistake, there was still great value in the 20 years of discussion that have followed from my question of whether we should be taking valuations into consideration. If it was all a mistake, I won’t be collecting a settlement check of $500 million, that much is so. But I often put up a link to that article that I prepared in the very early days in which I quoted 101 of our fellow community members gushing about how excited they were to examine these matters, how I had launched the most exciting debate in the history of the Retire Early board. Those people were enjoying learning experiences and those learning experiences remain even if it turns out that the question that prompted them was a mistake. And of course the hundreds in time became thousands and would have become millions if we had never seen any abusive posting from you Goons.

Questioning is healthy. It is a sign of life. Dogmatism is a sign of death. Something in the human spirit dies when questioning is no longer permitted. Buy-and-Hold was born in a spirit of questioning. It was developed as a scientific approach to stock investing. That’s why I fell in love with it and became a Buy-and-Holder myself once upon a time. The death threats that I saw on the evening of August 27, 2002, were aimed at putting an end to the questioning. They were the opposite of science, the opposite of what Buy-and-Hold was intended to be when it was developed.

We never will know everything. We always need to remain open to new learning experiences. Thats why I say that I want to see every site opened to honest posting, without a single exception. That will be the rule not just for Valuation-Informed Indexers but for Buy-and-Holders too. We can learn from people who we think are wrong. In fact, there is no other way in which it can happen. Every learning experience that ever takes place begins with some lacking in one’s knowledge. If there were no lacking, there would be no space to fill.

If learning is wonderful, then not knowing is wonderful in its way. The job of the journalist is to help us all learn about life and the world we live in. Sometimes people get annoyed at journalists because they ask questions that people want to tell themselves are settled. But I of course love the journalism profession with all my heart. I love learning and I love being able to bring learning to others when I am able to do so.

When I was a boy and my parents brought me to church, I was required to genuflect before I got into the pew. I did it but my heart was not really in it. When I visited a library and was surrounded by all those books asking all those questions and providing all that learning, that was when I felt an internal impulse to genuflect. The library was my church.

That’s where I am coming from re this matter, Anonymous.

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:

“A failed retirement is a serious life setback.”

“Yes, it is very, very, very painful that I am broke and divorced.”

Would you consider your current situation a failed retirement?

No.

My Retire Early plan worked like a dream. The plan is described in my book “Passion Saving; The Path to Plentiful Free Time and Soul-Satisfying Work.” The idea was to save enough so that I could leave corporate employment and shift to more fulfilling work that probably would not produce as much income in the short term but that would in all likelihood produce much more in the long run. I never could have developed the Valuation-Informed Indedxing concept had I not first develpped the Passion Saving concept.

The abusive and criminal behavior of you Goons has blocked me from earning an income for 20 years. But, assuming that I obtain a $500 million settlement in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, I will be insanely well off financially. That won’t make up for the divorce and the other emotional pains that I have experienced. But our system does not really have a good way of compensating people for those sorts of pains. It is easier to compensate for financial losses.

I wouldn’t have chosen this path if I had known all that was coming. No rational person could have anticipated what was coming — never before in U.S. history have we seen a story like this play out. So I don’t say that I am ahead of the game in an overall sense even after receicing the $500 million settlement payment. But I will be in super fine financial shape after receiving the settlement. And I think it would be fair to say that God or the Universe or Evolution or the Fates understood that someone needed to do this extremely important work before the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis hit and that I was the one elected to do it. So I am not happy with the stuff that caused anguish but I accept it as my fate to have that awful stuff directed at me as part of a bigger story in which our nation achieves a huge economic advance.

My retirement was not from all work. It was only from corporate work. I love work. I just wanted to be able to direct my hours to more fulfilling work. I have achieved that goal 500 times over. I am not able to imagine how there could be any work more fulfilling than thr work that I am doing today, opening tje entire internet to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. We will all be living better and fuller and richer lives in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, as horrible as that event will be. I am amazed and humbled to have been able to play the role that I have played in helping us all to get to a better place. I have experineced enough fulfillment to cover 50 lifetimes.

I of course didn;t and don’t like any of the ugly stuff. But the good stuff has been 20 times more good than the bad stuff has been bad. Solzhenitsyn said of the years he spent in the Soviet prison system, which brought on his conversion to Christianity, “Bless you, prison!” My variation on that is: Bless you, Goons!” I couldn’t have done it without you!

My best wishes.

Rob

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

Since your divorce have you had more or less time to work on the book?

The number of hours that I can devote to the project has not changed. But the emotional angst caused by the divorce has showed me down in a huge way. My biggest obstacle BY FAR is the emotional angst that I feel as a result of the divorce and the board bannings and the death threats and the extortion and all the rest. Intellectual work has been 20 percent of this project. Overcoming the emotional angst that follows from telling people research-based truths about stock investing that some very, very much do not want to hear has been 80 percent of the “work.” The core “job” here is overcoming that emotional angst and getting words down on paper that can be used to help millions of others overcome their own emotional angst.

Buy-and-Hold was developed by people who believed (based on the Efficient Market Theory) that investors are engaged in the rational pursuit of their self-interest, that stock prices reflect economic realities. Shiller showed that investors are at times highly emotional and that it is not possible to get any of the numbers used in an investment analysis right without taking the emotional realities (reflected in the CAPE value) into account. The Buy-and-Hold “idea” the market timing/price discipline is not required is pure emotion. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the first model for understanding how stock investing works that permits consideration of the factor (investor emotion) that is 70 percent of the story.

The board bannings and all the rest result from this conflict between emotion and reason. People who make the case for permitting reason to have a place in the investment advice field are going up against powerful, entrenched interests who very much do not want millions of middle-class investors to learn how important it is to take valuations/investor emotion into consideration. So we are made to feel like social pariahs. There are millions of people who want to hear what we have to say. But there are a larger number of very determined people who want very, very much to supress us. So it becomes painful just to give voice to simple truths (it’s not possible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate without taking the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins into account — who ever would have thought it?!!!). So I’ve experienced a great deal of emotional angst and it has held me back a great deal for a long time now. The divorce is just one part of that but it is of course the most crushing, painful part of it.

Rob

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

People will surely challenge your views on investing but you should not fear challenges. Iron sharpens iron, right?

I sure hope that this one turns out to be true!

Rob