I’ve posted Entry #718 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called The More Frequently Irrational Exuberance Is Discussed, the Less of It We Will See.

Juicy Excerpt: The alternative to talking about the dangers of high stock prices and taking action to get them back to reasonable levels again is Buy-and-Hold. Buy-and-Holders say that there’s no need to engage in market timing. They don’t directly say that high prices are good. They say that there’s no need to do anything about them when they get out of control. If investors really were rational, that would follow. However, the reality is that investors are often highly irrational, and the only way to keep the irrationality from getting out of control is to encourage market timing. To fail to do so, given what has happened on earlier occasions when prices were permitted to get out of control, is reckless and irresponsible. Buy-and-Hold is a reckless and irresponsible investment strategy.

I’ve posted entry #717 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Both Big Stock Market Gains and Big Stock Market Losses Are Artificial.

Juicy Excerpt: What Shiller’s research shows does not make sense. Actually, it does. But to see how it does, you need to give up the conventional way of thinking about how stock investing works and see things from an entirely new perspective.

I’ve posted Entry #716 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called How Valuations Affect Long-Term Returns (and Why It’s a Big Deal).

Juicy Excerpt: As a nation of people, we pat Shiller on the head and praise him for doing good work. Then we go right back to investing as we did in the days before this amazing, Nobel-prize-winning research appeared on the scene. Irrational exuberance, irrational exuberance. We like big numbers on our stock portfolio. So what if the research shows that they will disappear in time? We like that thrill we experience for the time in which they remain big.

I’ve posted Entry #715 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called There Is No Rational Case to Be Made for Buy-and-Hold.

Juicy Excerpt: There’s no rational case that can be made for Buy-and-Hold. I think that that’s the primary reason why the people who developed and promoted the strategy have been so reluctant to acknowledge their error in the 43 years since it was revealed by peer-reviewed research. These people place a great deal of value on rationality, and it blows their minds for them to think of themselves as having made such a basic and terrible mistake.

I’ve posted Entry #714 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called How Long Will Stocks Remain Undervalued After Prices Drop Below Fair-Value Levels?

Juicy Excerpt: The most unnerving thought is that the length of the bull market may signal the length of the bear market that inevitably follows from it. This has been an astoundingly long bull market. As I noted above, prices were high in 1996. They have remained high ever since, with the exception of about 12 months in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 crash. So, if long bull markets produce long bear markets, the next bear market may be a doozy.

I’ve posted Entry #713 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called We Need to Fight Our “Get Rich Quick” Urge.

Juicy Excerpt: Buy-and-hold will remain a thing as long as flawed humans walk the planet. These flawed humans need to learn how to laugh at their unfortunate weaknesses, get back on the horse, and go to battle once again.

I’ve posted Entry 712 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s callled Your Stock Investing Strategy Should Be Simple — But Not Too Simple.

Juicy Excerpt: My objection to the idea of failing to engage in valuation-based timing is that, in a world in which valuations affect long-term returns (that’s the world we live in, according to Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research), that’s not staying the course. A world in which valuations affect long-term returns is a world in which stock investment risk is not stable but variable.

I’ve posted Entry 711 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Irrational Exuberance — Would Buy-and-Hold Exist Without It?

Juicy Excerpt: Investors don’t want to hear what the research says. They say that they do. They think that they do. It sounds good to say that you are following an investment strategy that is rooted in the findings of the peer-reviewed research. But the last 43 years of research in this field threaten to spoil all the fun. Irrational exuberance is the thing that gives stock investing the appearance of a thrill ride. Take away irrational exuberance, and there will be no more bull markets, which means that there will be no more bear markets. This means that there would likely be no more economic crises. A stock market in which Shiller’s research findings were widely discussed would be a very different stock market than the one we have become accustomed to.

I’ve posted Entry #710 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site.  It’s called Practicing Valuation-Based Market Timing Permits an Investor to Go With Higher Stock Allocations.

Juicy Excerpt: What if the valuation-informed investor is happy to expose himself to as much risk as a Buy-and-Holder? In that case, he could buy more stocks than the Buy-and-Holder. The one big negative of the stock investment class is that stocks are a high-risk asset. The research that I produced with Wade Pfau shows that investors who are open to engaging in valuation-based market timing can thereby reduce their stock investing risk by nearly 70 percent. Reducing risk by that much permits the investor to go with an allocation strategy calling for more stocks than the 30 percent/60 percent/90 percent plan that permits the valuation-informed investor to match the lifetime stock allocation of the Buy-and-Hold investor.

I’ve posted Entry #709 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Getting the Stock Price Wrong Is Never a Positive, It’s Always a Big Negative.

Juicy Excerpt: I’ve had people argue with me that the many years of bad pricing that we have seen in the U.S. market in recent decades shows that Buy-and-Hold is a sound strategy. An investor who lowered his stock allocation because prices rose so high would have “missed out” on these years of high prices. Double gak! One cannot miss out on a mistake! Mispricing is bad. Always. No exceptions.