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 do not intend to write fresh material.”

When did you ever write fresh material? I have never seen anything new.

Valuations affect long-term returns. That’s the story. It’s a pretty darn simple message.

But it’s important. Say that that the alcoholic beverage industry got control of all the driving schools and put out a message that the key to safe driving is always to drink six beers before getting behind the wheel. That would be a catastrophe equal to the catastrophe that we have seen in the investment advice field with this garbage about how there might be some alternate universe in which valuation-based market timing might not be 100 percent required for every investor.

Say that that the alcoholic beverage industry con men didn’t want to acknowledge their mistake. They might say that the explanation for the millions of deaths that they caused is that six beers isn’t really enough, that people need to drink a minimum of eight beers before they can drive a car safely. And on and on like that.

When you make a mistake this big, the best thing to do is to acknowledge it and move on. Covering it up just makes things worse.

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:

No, we are all not victims.  Reasonable people know that they are responsible for their own well being.  Making up these silly posts are not helping anyone.  It seems your therapist has his work cut out for him.

Anyone who believes that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment must be nutso.

Or maybe it’s okay to believe it so long as you don’t give voice to what you believe in a public place.

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 did many things to help her. She owns her own home today. That came from money that I provided”

From what money? You haven’t worked in 25 years. Meanwhile, your ex-wife has been working multiple jobs the whole time. Notice you even admit in your last post, like you have done before that she needed you to bring in an income. There is zero excuse for ANYONE to not support his family if you are physically able.

I don’t think that there’s any excuse for anyone who knows about the 44-years cover-up not to do everything in his or her power to bring it to an end. It affects the retirement accounts of millions of people. I couldn’t sleep at night knowing that I was aware of the problem and just let another Buy-and-Hold Crisis take place.

Say that there’s a 1 in 100 chance that what I’ve been saying for 23 years now — that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment — is accurate. After 23 years of this stuff, I personally would put the odds at 99,9999 percent. But let’s say for purposes of discussion that there’s only a 1 percent chance that Greaney got the numbers wrong in his study. If there’s a 1 percent chance, then we should be talking about it at every site on the internet. Greaney isn’t the only person who advanced that loony-tunes 4 percent rule. There are millions of people who put together their retirement plans thinking that that was something real and who need to be advised that it was all just a scam. How do you think that word is going to get out if no one works up the courage to stand up to you Goons. There’s no other way that it could happen.

And look at today’s CAPE level. It’s pretty darn scary. If we had opened every site to honest posting re the research on the afternoon of May 13, 2002, as I proposed at the time, we would obviously never again have to endure such an insanely dangerous CAPE level. We would have people explaining why valuation-based market timing is the key to long-term stock investing success at every site. How do you think we are going to get to that place if we all live in fear of the abusive and sometimes criminal behavior of you Goons? Knowing what I know, I do not feel it would be responsible to fail to do whatever I can do.

I do wish you all good things, in any event.

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 two sports teams compete, one side wins and the other side loses. The losing team accepts the fact that they were wrong (did not do the right things to win the game). The losing team doesn’t blame the winning team for their own failures. Get the picture?

You are broke. You are on the losing team. You made the wrong choices. The buy and hold crowd one the game with consistent retirement successes. Stop blaming those that made the successful people for making the right choices. Accept the fact that you were wrong and are broke as a result of your decisions.

The Buy-and-Hold team has failed for 23 years to insist that the Greaney retirement study be corrected. The Buy-and-Hold team lost the game.

The object of the game is not to avoid admitting that you ever got anything wrong. The object of the game is to help the people who listen to your investment advice. Acknowledging mistakes is a key part of what it takes to win the game.

That’s where I’m coming from re this terribly important matter, in any event.

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:

Perhaps this is a topic best discussed with your therapist.

I’m not the one who permitted the CAPE value to rise to 37, Anonymous. That was the Buy-and-Holders.

That number suggests that it is today’s stock market that needs a therapist. I believe that the best possible therapy for a stock market that has produced a CAPE value of 37 is open discussion of the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.

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:

Buy and hold is completely superior to any market timing scheme, including VII.  It is not even close.  Wade Pfau even confirmed that this past year.  Notice that Robert Shiller will not even mention VII.  That speaks volumes.  We even see that you (Rob Bennett) went broke when trying to follow this plan.  Yuck!  Who wants to be broke?  No one I know.

Okay, Anonymous.

Hang in there, old friend.

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 said suppression.  Now you say disrupt.  To you, disagreeing is disruption.  Or when we point out the failure in your predictions is also disruption.  Or when we push back on you calling Jack Bogle a conman as being disruption.  Or when we tell you that is was a mistake to quit your job when you only had $400k in savings…..that is disruption as well.

How about death threats? Is that disruption?

How about demands for unjustified board bannings?

How about acts of extortion aimed at intimidation of academic researchers?

I pointed out the error in the Greaney retirement study on the morning of May 13, 2002 (it lacks a valuation adjustment). It hasn’t been corrected to this day, Please explain.

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:

Because disagreeing with Rob Bennett is considered abusive posting. Got it.

We all need to just keep it zipped.

The thing that a jury will look at in determining the length of a prison sentence is whether there was an intent to suppress discussion of the far-reaching how-to implications of the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research.

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’m not willing to say that I believe that the Greaney retirement study contains a valuation adjustment. I sincerely believe that it lacks one. I am going to continue to say that.”

And you prove my point.

You are very good at stating that the Greaney study doesn’t contain a valuation adjustment.

You much less good at stating why it should contain such an adjustment.

Because you recognize your weakness at explaining why it should contain such an adjustment you choose not even to try.

That is why you are more comfortable getting banned than engaging in debate.

That is why you choose not to contribute at reddit.

You could even set up a r/passionsaving subreddit if you wanted to.

But you are more comfortable in an environment where you don’t have to defend your ideas and where you can remove posts that you don’t like.

It’s self-evident why a valuation adjustment is needed, Evidence. Shiller showed that valuations affect the result. So they have to be considered.

The real question is — Why didn’t the people who developed the Buy-and-Hold strategy say from the beginning that valuation-based market timing is always 100 percent required for every investor. It appears to me that it was their belief in the Efficient Market Theory that confused them. If the market were efficient, there never would be any overvaluation. So there would be no need for market timing. But of course Shiller discredited the Efficient Market Theory. So that’s ancient history at this point.

Other than that, it’s loony tunes to think that valuation-based market timing would not be required. Do you think that investors can just bid stock prices up to whatever they want them to be and there’s no price to be paid, that the stock market is just a money machine. Wade Pfau devoted 16 months of his life trying to find some indication in the peer-reviewed research that valuation-informed market timing isn’t required and of course he came up empty-handrd. The idea is preposterous.

Given that price discipline is required in every other market that ever existed, 3why wouldn’t it be required in the stock market? The only reason why anyone suggests it might not be is that the Buy-and-Holders made a terrible mistake a long time ago and now they don’t want to acknowledge it. Which of course just compounds the mistakes. There has never been on iota of evidence that valuation-based market timing is not required. A stock market in which market timing is not required is like a perpetual motion machine. It doesn’t exist because it cannot exist.

Markets set prices. That’s what they do. Investors need information to set prices properly. Deny them the information they need through these abusive tactics and it takes the market longer to get prices right. So we have these horrible price crashes and economic collapses. Permit honest posting re the peer-reviewed research and the market could get the price right much more quickly and we would all live better and happier lives. Buy-and-Hold is a marketing gimmick, nothing more and nothing less. It causes an ocean of human misery and serves no good purpose whatsoever.

If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, all Buy-and-Holders would welcome challenges to it. The Buy-and-Holder live in fear that people will discover the peer-reviewed research and all the Get Rich Quick garbage will come tumbling down. It’s not possible to criticize the case for Buy-and-Hold because no case in favor if it has ever been presented. It’s OBVIOUS that you can’t just create phony baloney money and then count on it for your retirement.

The unfortunate thing is that we humans all carry a desire for Get Rich Quick stuff within us. So Buy-and-Hold has appeal. But what happens after the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, when we will all see up close and personal the negative side of going with a pure Get Rich Quick “strategy”?I have hopes that that will be a turning point. We’ll see, you know?

I know for certainty that I don’t want to be on the side saying that the safe withdrawal rates is always the same number. That’s a logical impossibility in a world in which valuations affect long-term, returns. That’s the world that we live in, according to the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.

Research matters.

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:

Your wife divorcing you was cause by irrational exuberance?  How so?

Because it set off all this insane emotionalism that produced the CAPE value that applies today. In ordinary circumstances, people would view it as a good thing to point out an error in a retirement study. For about 10 percent of Buy-and-Holders, it is the end of the world. And most of the remaining 90 percent tolerate the abusiveness of the 10 percent.

It would be one thing of the Buy-and-Holders just got the thing about valuation-based market timing wrong. People make mistakes. It happens. It is something else altogether to insist that, because you got something important wildly wrong, no one else can ever get it right. That’s sick, dangerous stuff. If the Greaney study had truly contained a valuation adjustment, we never would have seen a single abusive post, much less any of the criminal stuff.

Where I’m coming from.

Rob