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,

There is a new subscription based forum where you can ask direct questions of Wade Pfau and other experts. You should join.

I know what Wade thinks of the Buy-and-Hold safe withdrawal rate studies. He said they are “dangerous.”

And I know what Wade thinks of Valuation-Informed Indexing. He said: “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!”

And I know what Wade thinks of market timing. He co-authored a research paper with me that shows that stock investors who are willing to practice long-term market timing can thereby reduce the risk they are taking on by investing in stocks by nearly 70 percent.

I don’t need to ask Wade questions. I need him to get over his fear of what Buy-and-Holders will do to him if he speaks openly about what he believes about stock investing. He tried doing that for a bit and those were the happiest days of his life. So it is something that he personally wants to do. But he does not want to suffer career setbacks for doing it.

That’s the change we need to see. As a society, we all need to make Wade Pfau and all others who work in this field feel safe to tell us what they believe about how stock investing works. It makes all the sense in the world that we would make them feel that way since we all need to know how stock investing works. But there’s a problem. Learning how stock investing works means giving up our Get Rich Quick hope that there might be some magical world where it is not necessary to practice price discipline when buying stocks.

There’s no fee that I can pay to get us to that new and wonderful world, Anonymous. I believe that we are going to get there. But I believe that it is going to take an ocean of human misery to get us there. If stocks continue to perform in the future anything at all as they have always performed in the past, we will be seeing that ocean of human misery in the not-too-distant future. I don’t think that we are going to need to be paying fees to get good people like Wade Pfau to speak out at that time. I think that Wade and others will be speaking out at that time because their hearts will have been touched by what they have seen taking place around them.

We’ll see.

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 the same person says two things that are opposites, that presents a puzzle. ”

Actually, it is his words versus your interpretation of what he said or meant.

“ We have to do better.”

There is no”we”. You are responsible for YOU. You want everyone else to change to your way of thinking. That is not how YOU get better.

Set forth below are some of Wade’s words. It is not possible that any reasonable person could read those words and conclude anything other than that Wade believes that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies are “dangerous” and that Valuation-Informed Indexing is gold. Those are the two most important issues that have been debated over the past 18 years.

I agree that I am responsible for me and only me. That’s why I insist that I be permitted to post honestly. When I see someone advocating the 4 percent rule and I fail to point out that there is 39 years of peer-reviewed research showing it to be false, I am failing my readers and myself.

I do not want everyone else to change to my way of thinking. I want everyone else to post their honest views just as I post my honest views. That’s how I learn from others. It would be horrible if everyone just agreed with me. I would hate that. That’s why I never engage in intimidation tactics against people who offer views that I do not agree with. But the fact that I like hearing views that I do not agree with from others does not mean that I like hearing views that I do not agree with from me. I believe that posts with my name on them should reflect accurately my views. That’s the thing that enrages Mel Lindauer and John Greaney. They want me to pretend to believe things that I just do not believe. And I do not feel even a tiny bit comfortable going there.

A) Academic Researcher Wade Pfau’s Statements Showing Interest In and Confidence in Rob Bennett’s Work

1) “I do cite you and John Walter Russell in my paper as the earliest and strongest advocates of this approach [New School safe-withdrawal-rate research].

2) “Are you aware of Shiller offering asset allocation advice based on PE10? …. If you read Rob Bennett’s stuff carefully, I think he did provide an important contribution in terms of describing a way for PE10 to guide asset allocation for long-term conservative investors. I also think he was right on the issue of safe withdrawal rates.” — Posted at the Bogleheads Forum discussion board.

3) “I am also extremely grateful to Rob Bennett for motivating this topic and contributing his experience and encouragement.” — Written in Acknowledgments section of Wade’s breakthrough research paper.

4)”You deserve much of the credit as the whole idea of Valuation-Informed Indexing belongs to you.”

5) “I definitely need to cite some of your work as the founder of Valuation-Informed Indexing, as I have not found anyone else who can lay claim to that. Shiller pointed out the predictive power of PE10 but never discussed how to incorporate it into asset allocation, as far as I know.”

B) Academic Researcher Wade Pfau’s Statements on the Superiority of Valuation-Informed Indexing Over Buy-and-Hold

1) “What you see in the top part of the graph for each year is the amount of wealth accumulated after 30 years for someone following Buy-and-Hold against someone following Valuation-Informed Indexing….Valuation-Informed Indexing provides more wealth for 102 of the 110 rolling 30-year periods, while Buy-and-Hold did better in 8 of the periods.”

2) “I will take steps in my final paper to test a wide variety of assumptions about asset allocation, valuation-based decision rules, whether the period is 10, 20, 30, or 40 years, lump-sum vs. dollar-cost averaging, and so on, and to show that the results are quite robust to changes in any of these assumptions.”

3) “Any data mining that I am doing is in favor of buy-and-hold, not in favor of market timing.”

4) “The findings for “market timing” are so robust anyway, that it hardly matters how we do it.”

5) “The maximum drawdown from market timing is much less. That is how far the portfolio drops from past highs to current lows. The Buy-and-Holder once experienced a 60.96% drop, whereas the worst drop for market timing was 24.16%.”

6) “Market timing provides signficantly higher returns at a comparable level of risk.”

7) “The market timer enjoys a far less risky strategy.”

8) “On a risk-adjusted basis, market-timing strategies provide comparable returns as a 100 percent stocks Buy-and-Hold strategy but with substantially less risk. Meanwhile, market timing provides comparable risks and the same average asset allocation as a 50/50 fixed allocation strategy, but with much higher returns.”

9) “If everyone increased exposure after a market fall and vice versa, then this would dampen out the big swings in the market aggregates, and we might get shallower boom/bust cycles.”

10) ““‘I’m excited about this, as depending on what you have already done, I think I can design a study using the Shiller data to provide historical simulations of Valuation-Informed Indexing strategies against fixed Buy-and-Hold strategies and also lifecycle strategies (declining allocation to stocks as one ages). If Valuation-Informed Indexing consistently outperforms fixed and lifecycle strategies, then the proof is in the pudding so to speak. Given how well valuations help to explain withdrawal rates, I think there is a lot of potential for this topic.”

11) “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing Works!”

12) “It makes complete sense to have an equity allocation that is in some way flexible. Having a completely inelastic demand for equities is a bit bonkers; no-one acts that way with life’s other important commodities.”

13) “I wrote up the programs to test your Valuation-Informed Indexing strategies against Buy-and-Hold, and I must say that the results look very promising…. I am quite excited about the findings so far. As you say in the podcast, Valuation-Informed Indexing should beat Buy-and-Hold about 90 percent of the time, and I am getting results that support this for various strategies.”

14) “I have been toying with the idea of sending the paper to the Journal of Finance, which is the most prestigious journal in academic finance.”

15) “Now that I am accounting for risk, I am even more amazed by how well Valuation-Informed Indexing works.”

16) You shouldn’t be too excited with great wealth accumulations if they happened due to unusually high valuations, and low wealth accumulations shouldn’t be as scary if valuations are also quite low.”

17) “My idea is to show many different tables with results over the whole period for returns and risks. Valuation-Informed Indexing always provides more returns for often less risk.”

18) “No matter what I try, Valuation-Informed Indexing will still perform better in 85-95% of cases for 30 years.”

19) “I have a new figure for showing this as well. And a nice figure showing the outperformance percentages across rolling periods of lengths between 1 and 40 years. I think it is all quite persuasive.”

20) “You haven’t seen anything yet! This was just the secondary study. I’m still working on the main one!”

C) Academic Researcher Wade Pfau’s Statements of Incredulity That He Was the First Academic Researcher to Examine the Valuation-Informed Indexing Strategy

1) ” I know that there is an extensive literature about the predictability of long-term stock returns dating back to Campbell and Shiller’s work in the mid-1990s. I also know that there is an extensive literature about short-term market timing strategies…. But my question is about LONG-TERM market timing strategies. In other words, using market timing over periods of at least 10 years to obtain better returns than a Buy-and-Hold strategy. The literature seems slim.”

2) “Let me just explain a bit more why I posted about this here. Valuation-Informed Indexing has had critics for years, but until Norbert did it in 2008, nobody seemed to have provided a serious investigation of it. I just couldn’t understand why. And that bothered me.”

3) “Two papers by Fisher and Statman are still all I can find that provide evidence against long-term market timing.”

4) “I’m so confused by why Fisher and Statman didn’t consider risk in their idiot switching tests. Valuation-Informed Indexing is much less risky by pretty much any standard I consider. I must wonder… did I make a mistake somewhere? Why haven’t academics already published research about this?”

D) Academic Researcher Wade Pfau’s Statements on the Dangers of the Conventional Retirement Planning Advice

1) “The traditional approach to retirement planning (as described on pages 10 and 11 of The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning, for example) is counterproductive and possibly damaging.”

2) “Retirees now frequently base their retirement decisions on the portfolio success rates found in research such as the Trinity study…. This is not the information that current and prospective retirees need for making their withdrawal rate decisions.”

3) “This article provides favorable evidence based on the historical record for long-term conservative investors to obtain improved retirement planning outcomes (lower savings rates, higher withdrawal rates) using valuation-based asset allocation strategies.”

4) Wade sent me a link to an article in Business Week that was published more than eight years after my post pointing out the errors in the Old School retirement studies and which he characterized as “quite sympathetic to the point you were trying to make all along”.

5) “Though I was only trying to do an Old School safe-withdrawal-rate study, all that I ended up doing was showing in a different way what you had been saying all along: the safe withdrawal rate changes with valuations.”

6) “Valuations are the driving factor. ”

7) “This is similar to your drunk driving analogy, which I agree with.” The discredited but uncorrected retirement studies find that in most circumstances a 4 percent withdrawal rate provides a huge cushion for the retiree using it. However, in each of the three cases in history when stocks reached insanely high price levels, retirements using a 4 percent withdrawal came within a whisker of failing. To say that this shows that a 4 percent withdrawal is “100 percent safe” (these words are used in the Greaney study) for a retirement beginning at a time of insanely high price levels is like saying that driving drunk is “100 percent safe” because 97 sober drivers drove their cars 20 miles without incident while 3 drunk drivers were paralyzed for life in car accidents but did not die. The fact that 4 percent only worked by a whisker in the cases in which valuations were high at the beginning of the retirement shows that a 4 percent withdrawal is high-risk at times of high valuations, not that it is “100 percent safe.”

8) ” Actually, this issue shouldn’t really even be all that controversial. It’s just common sense that the probabilities from the Trinity study shouldn’t be interpreted as forward-looking probabilities for new retirees.”

9) Naturally, I am finding that Valuation-Informed Indexing can allow you to reach a wealth target with a lower savings rate, use a higher withdrawal rate, and also have a lower “safe” savings rate, than a fixed allocation.

E) Academic Researcher Wade Pfau’s Statements Showing His Concerns that Continuing to Report Honestly on the Investing Realities in the Face of the “Hostile Environment” for Doing So Created by Buy-and-Holders Would Harm His Career

1) “I was trying to pay tribute to your accomplishments in what I knew would be a hostile environment.”

2) “Valuations and long-term investors is a somewhat controversial topic.” Wade posted these words to his blog in October 2011 as his explanation of why he was abandoning his plan of doing further research on the superiority of Valuation-Informed Indexing strategies over Buy-and-Hold strategies. He had told me in earlier days that “You ain’t see nothing yet!” when I praised his breakthrough research in this area. After his flip to the dark side, Wade removed the page containing this blog entry from his site.

3) “We have both read and met to discuss your paper. Unfortunately, we did not find the paper’s incremental contribution to the academic finance literature, assuming the analysis proved to be correct, rose to the level that we are seeking for papers in the JFR. Thus sending the paper to a reviewer would be inefficient.” These words are from an academic journal’s “desk reject” of Wade’s breakthrough research.

4) ) ““ I was discouraged when I first received the “desk reject” by the editors of the same journal that published the Fisher and Statman paper. I realized that I didn’t have a chance with one of the top journals.”

5) “I think I should stay publicly quiet for a while, as I really don’t want anyone sending messages about any topics to officials at my university.”

6) I don’t want them [the Goons] working behind the scenes to derail me.”

7) “I did warn the editor of the Journal of Financial Planning that they may receive some ‘hate mail‘ after I mentioned your name in the safe savings rate paper.”

Rob (Expressing the View of Rob, As Is Proper)

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

He is doing what he wants to do. Stop making things up.

I’m not making things up, Sammy.

I exchanged scores and scores of e-mails with Wade during the 16 months in which we were working together. I have posted the texts of most of them at my web site. He was like a kid in a candy store in the days when he was learning about Valuation-Informed Indexing and getting increasingly excited about it while he researched the subject deeper and deeper and found that it all checks out. And then he was threatened. And then he wrote to me that he was afraid of what would happen to his career if he continued down the road he was on and told me that he was going to pull back. And then he took down from his web site all of the articles that he has posted there about the work that we had done together.

That doesn’t just hurt me. It hurts every investor alive. We all need to know about the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s work. And the way we learn is by having researchers like Wade put their energies into helping us all out. If we threaten them into not doing that, we are only hurting ourselves in the end. We are better of learning the realities.

It is not only Wade that this has happened to. I have seen dozens of similar situations play out. Rob Arnott wrote to me to tell me that he knows of researchers who were doing work on his ideas who were taken aside and told that they would be doing harm to their careers to publish that research. That’s the same thing. Shiller says in his book that he was told by a television producer just before an interview went on the air that he had better be careful what he said or he could cause stock prices to fall. That’s not an effort to get him to say precisely what he believes about the subject, is it? It’s an effort to keep stock prices high, which is something very different.

This sort of thing is going on all the time to all sorts of people. Everyone cheers increases in stock prices and few cheer those who warn of the dangers of unjustified price increases. So the market cannot work in the way that markets are supposed to work. For the market to get the price right, there needs to be a battle between the side arguing for higher prices (the sellers) and the side arguing for lower prices (the buyers). The job of the market is to resolve the tensions between sellers and buyers and thereby to set the price properly. There is little such tension in the stock market. 90 percent of the population wants higher prices and those arguing that prices should be lower (those who believe that Shiller’s research is legitimate) are silenced. The price gets so far out of whack that eventually we see a price crash that hurts everybody.

I believe that we need to see more discussion of Shiller’s ideas. I believe that permitting more discussion of his ideas would provide more balance to the market and thereby benefit us all. But that obviously means criticizing Buy-and-Hold. Buy-and-Holders deny that there is ever a reason to lower one’s stock allocation They believe in complete price indifference. It is my view that that approach defies common sense (as well as 38 years of peer-reviewed research).

Your hostility to me and to Wade during the time that he was working with me is rooted in your hostility to Shiller’s ideas. Wade felt (quite understandably) that his career was at risk if he continued down the road that he was travelling when he worked with me, so he got off of that road. He was proud of the work that we were doing and he admired my work. He said so scores and scores of times. But he did not want to see his career damaged and so he chose a different course. I think that he made a tragic choice. I don’t think that any researcher should ever have to worry about such things. I see it as a serious imbalance in our system that needs to be corrected.

The research that Wade and I did is scary to Buy-and-Holders. I get that loud and clear. It is SUPPOSED to be scary to Buy-and-Holders. We didn’t publish that research to support Buy-and-Hold, we published it is show the dangers of Buy-and-Hold. As a Buy-and-Holder, that’s good for you. You need to know the weaknesses of your strategy. If you choose to stick with Buy-and-Hold despite what Wade and I said, that’s fine. But you should let each investor make that choice for himself or herself. It is only by seeing the research that people can make informed decisions.

It’s the things that you don’t know that hurt you as an investor, Sammy. You should want to know as much as you can possibly know. People who publish research that shakes you up are your friends, not your enemies.

I am your friend. I know that you do not see it that way. But it is 100 percent my intent to help you (as well as many others, to be sure) out.

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:

During the last two decades of waiting to see “how things turn out”, what has come out positive for you that would compel you to wait another couple decades to once again see how things turn out?

I have my name on the most important piece of peer-reviewed research published in this field in 30 years. That ain’t nothing.

I obviously have the greatest possible respect for Jack Bogle. Bogle has said on numerous occasions that the problem that he has with making use of the insights of Behavioral Finance in the development of investment strategies is that he wants to see concrete evidence that these insights will add something. Well, the Bennett/Pfau research shows in a clear and powerful way how much long-term timing adds. We showed that investors can reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent just by giving up their reliance on Buy-and-Hold and going with a research-based strategy.

That’s huge. If I had showed investors how to reduce risk by 10 percent, my face would be on the cover of Time Magazine’s Man of the Year issue. My only problem is that showing investors that they can reduce risk by 70 percent is so good that people find it unbelievable. Valuation-Informed Indexing is a stock investing strategy that is just too darn powerfully good!

But people will believe it once we open every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting. Then we will be able to answer people’s questions and bring them around gradually to what works. That’s what I did with Wade. He wasn’t a true believer when he contacted me. He was intrigued by my writings in this field, that’s all. He BECAME a true believer only in time as he explored one question after another and learned again and again and again that engaging in price discipline when buying stocks always gives the investor a huge edge (just as common sense would lead you to believe it should).

And we have laws in place in the United States to protect us all from the sorts of tactics employed by Goons like you, Anonymous. What do you think is going to happen when your prison sentence is announced? That is going to go viral. We are going to have site owners all over the internet writing up that development and trying to disassociate themselves from Buy-and-Hold in every possible way and trying to make the case that they have been secret believers in Valuation-Informed Indexers all along.

Wade would never have contacted me to become his co-author re that research had I not worked up the courage to post honestly re safe withdrawal rates on the morning of May 13, 2002. There can be huge benefits to posting honestly down the line! I didn’t know precisely what those benefits would be on the morning of May 13, 2002. But I knew that it did not feel good to sell out my fellow community members by failing to speak up about the errors in Greaney’s study. And, sure enough, I have seen victory after victory after victory (I am obviously not counting the setbacks caused by the criminally abusive stuff here) in the 16 years since. I have a funny feeling that I won’t be retracing my steps any time super soon.

My best and warmest wishes to you, dear Goon friend.

Triumphant (Not Counting the Criminally Abusive Goon Stuff!) 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:

“Wade didn’t disown me.”

He cut off all contact with you six years ago. That’s the definition of being disowned. Now, would you like to hear the definition of “denial”?

He cut off contact with me. That’s so. But the things we learned together are things that will shape the remaining years of his life in much the same way that they will shape the remaining years of my life. The circumstances are strange. But the bond between us can never be broken. You don’t forget that kind of learning experience. It changes you. And you can never change back, even if circumstances force you to pretend that you have.

The test will be what Wade says about me in the days following the next price crash, Anonymous. I have a funny feeling that I know how that one is going to go. We’ll see.

I think it is you Goons who are in denial. Thousands of people have looked at the Greaney retirement study in the 16 years since I put forward my famous post pointing out the error in it. Not one has been able to identify a valuation adjustment in it. I wonder why.

My best wishes.

Disowned and In Denial 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:

“We all have crosses that we have to carry in this life.”

“Have” to carry? Of course not. You have chosen your path and now you reject getting the help you need.

I have never had a choice. Do I have the choice to flap my arms in the air and fly to the moon? I have a better chance of doing that than I do of posting dishonestly re the numbers that my fellow community members are using to plan their retirements. It’s not in me. Good, bad or indifferent, that’s the way it is.

I haven’t asked for your help. I believe that there will be millions helping me in the days following the next price crash. If there are, then so bet it. If there are not, then again so be it. I will accept what comes. Part of that is accepting what I am. And I am not a person who can post dishonestly re the numbers that his fellow community members are using to plan their retirements. That one is a non-starter. It’s not something that I have ever considered even for two seconds. It’s not something that I ever will consider for even two seconds.

There are things that I can do. But that is not one of those things. Good, bad or indifferent, that’s my fate. I don’t complain about it. I don’t apologize for it. I am proud of it. There are things that other people are good at that I am not good at. That’s one that I am good at. I am grateful that I am not able to post dishonestly re the numbers that my fellow community members are using to plan their retirements. We wouldn’t all have the amazing peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau if I had been able to post dishonestly re the numbers that my fellow community members are using to plan their retirements. That’s my greatest achievement in this life. That’s the greatest contribution that I have made to this world. And I never would have posted the things that caused Wade to contact me had I been able to give in to the intimidation tactics and post dishonestly.

The only help that I am seeking is help getting every investing discussion board and blog on the internet opened to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics. If you are ever able to offer help in that regard, I’m here. If you are not, I hope that I will obtain that help elsewhere. If I don’t, I suppose that I will have to live with not obtaining the help that I hope to obtain. It is my understanding that worse things have happened from time to time in this mixed-up worlds of ours. Whachagonnado?

I haven’t chosen my path — I AM my path. Please feel free to quote me all over the internet. I would feel that you were doing a favor by doing so. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

My best and warmest wishes to you, dear friend.

Born-to-Follow-This-Path 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:

Matt Lauer? Someone needs to teach you how to do a proper analogy.

I think it’s a good analogy.

Lots of people knew about Lauer. They kept their mouths shut out of fear.

The problem with using intimidation tactics to keep a cover-up going is that, once a small number of people overcome their fear and speak out, the rest work up the courage to speak out too. Things can turn fast.

Lots of people understand that Shiller is saying something different from what Bogle is saying. Lots of people understand that, if valuations affect long-term returns, there is zero chance that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all valuation levels.

I think that it is a shame what happened to Matt Lauer. It is of course a shame for the women involved. But it is also a shame for Lauer, in my assessment. If he had never been led to believe that he could get away with such behavior, he would in all likelihood have engaged in less of it. So those who led Lauer to believe that he could get away with his outrageous behavior contributed to the problem.

So it is in the investing advice field. Everyone who follows the peer-reviewed research in this field has known since 1981 that the safe withdrawal rate is a number that changes with changes in the valuation level. People should have spoken up when the Trinity study (on which the Greaney study was based) was published in the mid-1990s. The Trinity study should never have passed peer review. The people on the committee knew about Shiller’s research. They should have spoken up.

We all played a role in creating the climate in which the things Matt Lauer did could happen. And we all played a role in creating a climate in which the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies could be covered up for 15 years.

When we want to know the realities of stock investing, we will come to know them. The peer-reviewed research we need to learn to realities has been available to us for 36 years now. We just need to give ourselves permission to talk about it on every investing discussion board and blog on the internet. I believe that we will make the change in the days following the next price crash, when it will become clear to all of us that we can no longer afford to pretend not to know what we all on some level of consciousness do know — valuations really do matter, in the calculation of safe withdrawal rates and in every other strategic question facing long-term stock investors.

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:

Liar. Here’s an old email to me in which Wade explains your hoax about his “academic career being threatened by anonymous internet posters” to an unfortunate fellow who bit on your 30k email jihad you waged against him in an effort to impugn his integrity and besmirch his good name. The only person who threatened Wade was Rob “hocus” Bennett.

“Dear Vivek, [the reference is to Business Week Columnist Vivek Wadhwa, who posted a tweet relating to the safe withdrawal rate saga]

 

I understand that Rob Bennett has sucked you into his drama. I’m Wade Pfau, the academic researcher who has allegedly been threatened. In writing about your tweet at his blog today, Rob even wrote, “(A number of Buy-and-Holders threatened to send defamatory e-mails to Wade’s employer in an effort to get him fired from his job for the “crime” of having published research showing the dangers of Buy-and-Hold investing strategies and several big names in the field [including Vanguard Founder John Bogle] failed to take action against those advancing the threats, thereby implicitly encouraging them [I have
sent Bogle four e-mails asking for his help with the matter])”

I can assure you that this is all part of Rob’s vast mythology in which he seeks to make himself into a super hero fighting the evils of Wall Street. It isn’t true. Rob magnified a very minor situation by 10,000x. The entire story he developed is based on the one minor comment found here at the start of this discussion board thread:

http://boards.fool.com/hocus-gets-college-prof-to-question-swr-studies-29265775.aspx?sort=whole

“I hope this doesn’t ruin that guy’s chances for tenure.”

That’s it. He imagined all of the subsequent details.

At any rate, I did indeed publish the studies which Rob claims I am afraid to publish. There is no issue. The main study is this one:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09603107.2011.648317

Rob lives in an imaginary world of death threats and threatened academic researchers and so on, as you would discover if you waste time reading what he writes. Just thought I’d let you know, straight
from the horse’s mouth.

Best wishes, Wade”

In ordinary circumstances, I would not post this comment, Long Time. Since you are a Goon, there is obviously a good chance that Wade never sent this e-mail and that you just made it up. If that’s the case, I shouldn’t post the comment.

However, the full reality here is that Wade has cooperated with you Goons on several occasions. I don’t personally believe that the chances that your report is accurate are zero. That’s a shocking statement. But it is the behavior that we have all seen from Wade in the days following the threats that were made against him that makes it seem at least somewhat possible that your report is an accurate one. So I believe that your comment should be posted and added to the record that your jury will review when your trial date arrives.

As always, I wish you all good things.

Rob

 

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

If you say Wade is a liar, then nothing he says is reliable. Therefore, you should no longer refer to his work.

We do not agree, Anonymous. Wade is a Hero of the First Order in my book. He called Lindauer out on his abusive garbage at the Bogleheads Forum, with all his Goons in the room. I have never seen anyone else except yours truly do that. I don’t forget things like that. Wade went to bat for the American people in a big, big way. He knew he was putting his career on the line when he did that and he went ahead and did it anyway.

I don’t rank Wade quite as high as Shiller and Bogle. But I rank him very high. He helped us all out in a huge way. And he will get credit for his many positive contributions in days to come, if I have anything to say about it. I will testify that he put his neck on the line for all of us when no one else around had the guts to do so. It will be easy in the days following the next crash to say that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage. It wasn’t such an easy thing to do back in the days when Wade was doing it.

The stuff that Wade said in the days before he flipped is HIGHLY reliable, in my book. It’s some of the best stuff out there, in my assessment. Please mark me down as saying that Wade Pfau was one of the most highly reliable figures in the field of investing until threats were made to destroy his career and he became worried that if he continued doing honest work in this field he would no longer be able to provide for his family. I don’t think Wade did the right thing when he flipped. But I am highly sympathetic to a man who does the wrong thing because he loves his family and he can see no other way out of a tight spot.

As always, this is my sincere take re these terribly important matters.

My best and warmest wishes to you.

Rob

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

Roughly right? Um, no. None of it makes any sense at all unless Wade was threatened. Wade says he was not threatened. You disregard that, without offering any remotely plausible evidence. There is no reason in the world for anyone to take your word over his.

The obvious conclusion: 1700 words wasted.

If he wasn’t threatened, he wouldn’t have changed his views 180 degrees on about 20 important issues overnight, Dan.

The man was threatened. Lots of people have been threatened. And lots more who haven’t been threatened in a direct way have engaged in self-censorship because they have picked up a vibe in the air telling them that it is not a career-enhancing move to post honestly re the far-reaching implications of the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.

It will all come out in a front-page story in the New York Times that will be published shortly after the onset of the next price crash. I have a funny feeling that Wade Pfau will be quoted as saying some very positive and encouraging and intelligent and helpful and life-affirming things in that article.

I hope that all works for you, my good friend.

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

Rob