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

ValueWalk informed me this morning that they will no longer be running my weekly column on Valuation-Informed Indexing. This makes me sad. I have learned a great deal and had a lot of fun writing the column.

I am grateful to ValueWalk for running it as long as they did. It’s been going for 15 years.

Rob

I’ve posted Entry #729 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Is There a Limit to How Long a Bull Market Can Continue?

Juicy Excerpt: There’s a dark side to this theory. If the next price crash hits hard enough to overcome these new heights of confidence, it could come as a shock. The longest bull could be followed by the longest bear. Let’s hope not. I’d like to see prices return to more reasonable levels. But extremes are bad news.

I’ve posted Entry #728 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Irrational Exuberance Is Bad.

Juicy Excerpt: That’s why I think it is useful to make the simple observation that irrational exuberance is bad, as dumb of an observation as that is. It doesn’t take any intellectual power to recognize that irrational exuberance is bad. But becoming aware of that reality is a remarkable and powerful thing. We know from looking at today’s CAPE value that few appreciate the point today. And we know from our experience with other addictions that it is a liberating step just to become aware of the addiction. People change their lives in amazing ways by becoming aware of their addictions. They free themselves to accomplish things that they never dreamed they could accomplish during the time when they were slaves to the addiction.

I’ve posted Entry #727 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called If Price Crashes Are Avoidable, We Should Work Hard to Avoid Them.

Juicy Excerpt: Price crashes are optional! That is what Shiller is saying when he says that valuations affect long-term returns. There is nothing in the nature of the stock market that requires that it produce price crashes. They are just something that happens when too much irrational exuberance is generated.

I’ve posted Entry #725 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called The Hardest Thing About Following Research-Based Investment Strategies Is That It Requires Acknowledging Human Fraility, Which Is a Scary Thing to Do

Juicy Excerpt: Shiller’s research tells a more disturbing tale. Stock investors are human. That means that they are at times highly emotional. They like thinking that they are doing better financially than they really are. So they push stock prices above the levels justified by the economic realities, thereby creating irrational exuberance gains. Unlike gains justified by the economic realities, irrational exuberance gains are not real and do not last. People who count on them to finance their retirement always end up regretting it. The only way to combat irrational exuberance is through valuation-based market timing.

I’ve posted Entry #724 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Those Who Believe Valuations Matter Should Make It a Habit to Challenge/Provoke Buy-and-Holders.

Juicy Excerpt: So we have a battle for the mind of the U.S. stock investor going on. Common sense and the peer-reviewed research tells us that timing always works and is always required. But the Buy-and-Holders say otherwise. The Buy-and-Holders have a lot of influence. Buy-and-Hold is the dominant investment strategy today. Lot of people repeat Buy-and-Hold dogmas without ever personally checking them out. The more often other investors hear these dogmas repeated, the more credibility they acquire. Lots of us today believe in a way of investing in stocks that doesn’t really make sense.

I

I’ve posted Entry #723 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called The Buy-and-Holders Failed to Distinguish a Theory from a Finding.

Juicy Excerpt: I wish that there the idea that market timing is not required or does not work was rooted in research. If it were, we could examine the research and point out whatever flaws there were in it that caused the Buy-and-Holders to reach their unfortunate conclusion. But there is no such research! Trying to refute the claim that market timing doesn’t work is like fighting with a ghost. Since the belief is based on nothing, there is nothing that can be argued to refute it.

I’ve posted Entry #722 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Stock Markets Can Remain Irrational for a Long Time — But We Can Change That.

Juicy Excerpt: We are the market. Investors make up the market. Saying that the market has been irrational for a long time is another way of saying that we have been irrational for a long time. We can of course do things about that. Humans have been known to evidence irrationality in lots of areas other than stock investing. I cannot think of another area where we tell ourselves that it’s okay just to continue with the self-destructive behavior. When we see reckless driving, we create public service commercials advising people not to use cell phones when driving. When we have loved ones drop dead from heart attacks, we ask the doctors if there are changes we could make in our diet to avoid suffering the same unfortunate fate. In areas other than stock investing, we understand that irrationality hurts us. So we make an effort to rein it in.

I’ve posted Entry #721 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Buy-and-Hold Destroys Wealth, But Only Very Slowly.

Juicy Excerpt: It really does always produce good results at the end of 30 years. But most of us don’t focus on what is good for us 30 years down the road. If we did, we would exercise more and take better care of our teeth and eat less sugars and carbs. We respond to negative reinforcement that descends on us quickly after we engage in problematic behavior. Bad results that we don’t see for 30 years often don’t influence our thinking very much.

I’ve posted Entry #720 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Buy-and-Hold Is a Thrill Ride.

Juicy Excerpt: We’ve gotten accustomed to the thrill ride. The market has been operating in the same manner for so long that we have come to believe that it’s the only way it could operate. Not so! Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize for his research because it tells us something important. What it tells us is that the market operates as it does not because that’s the only possibility but because our lack of knowledge of the realities caused us to invest in ways that frequently caused the market to become dysfunctional.