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 wrote a long posting about how someone should ask shiller a question. well, gee, why don’t you just ask him? what’s stopping you?

I have written to Shiller.

There was one occasion when John Walter Russell and I were working on a calculator and John sent him an e-mail asking about him about how he developed his data-set. Shiller responded to that. There was at least one other occasion (I think there might have been two) in which I sent an e-mail to Shiller letting him know about the problems that I have experienced with you Goons. He did not respond to those.

That’s the problem. That’s why we are in the mess that we are in today. Shiller’s discovery that valuations affect long-term returns (that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for even a single long-term investor) was not the first breakthrough in the history of scientific investigations. But it is the only one that I know of that has been largely ignored for 38 years. In ordinary circumstances, you would expect that everyone on the planet would be rushing to ask Shiller questions about the implications of his findings. Every last one of us needs to know how stock investing works. But in this case it’s not only that not everyone is asking Shiller questions. Shiller actually goes out of his way to avoid discussing the implications of his research. There is not one word of practical how-to advice in his book. Huh? What the f?

Shiller leaves out the how-to stuff because that is the stuff that enrages the Buy-and-Holders. We should have enjoyed a national debate on this stuff shortly after he published his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings, in 1981. We didn’t see that. I think that what happened is that as a society we experienced cognitive dissonance. The change in going from an understanding that the market is efficient (that market timing does not work) to an understanding that valuations affect long-term returns (that long-term market timing is REQUIRED for those seeking to keep their risk profile roughly constant over time) was so big that we just couldn’t let it in. So we entered this strange Twilight Zone world where for the first time in history we knew intellectually how stock investing works but in which we did not permit ourselves to talk about what we knew so that for practical purposes most of us continued doing the OPPOSITE of what works (the Buy-and-Holders not only do not encourage long-term market timing, they discourage it — in fact, they engage in criminal acts to block millions of investors from learning how important it is to exercise price discipline when buying stocks).

As the length of the cover-up has grown, the Buy-and-Holders have become more and more nuts about making sure that it remains in place. Now we are in a situation where it is likely that a good number of Buy-and-Holders will be going to prison when the national debate is launched. People who are at risk of going to prison are highly motivated to block discussions of the peer-reviewed research. As you know.

Shiller would of course be 100 percent happy to share everything he knows and thinks about the far-reaching implications of his research. He published the research to help people. And he needs to answer people’s questions about it to help people to the fullest extent possible. But he needs to know that the discussions that follow will be conducted pursuant to the laws of the United States. He needs to know that there are not going to be any death threats or any demands for unjustified board bannings or any acts of defamation or any threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. He needs to know that as a society we have buried all this intimidation stuff ten-thousand miles in the bottom of the ocean. For obvious reasons. Anyone who has seen any of what has gone on at our boards and blogs over the past 17 years will have no difficulty understanding where Shiller is coming from re that one.

When we see an article on the front page of the New York Times talking about all of the financial fraud stuff that has been stopping the national debate from taking place for 17 years now, Shiller will feel comfortable speaking out on hundreds of critically important issues. When we see prison sentences announced for you Goons, Shiller will feel comfortable speaking out. When I receive my $500 million settlement check, Shiller will feel comfortable speaking out. When Wade Pfau is awarded a Nobel prize for the peer-reviewed research that he co-authored with me showing that “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!”, Shiller will feel comfortable speaking out.

We need to speak out as a society letting all interested parties know that the coast is clear to launch the national debate. We want to have it. We know that we need to have it. We wouldn’t have reviewed Shiller’s book in all of the top publications if we didn’t want to have it. We wouldn’t have awarded Shiller a Nobel prize if we didn’t want to have it. We wouldn’t have seen thousands of our fellow community members express a desire that honest posting on the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field be permitted at every discussion board and blog on the internet if we didn’t want to have it.

We want to have that national debate and we don’t want to have it at the same time. We want to have it because it would teach us so many important things about how stock investing works. And we don’t want to have it because we understand on some level of consciousness that we are going to learn when we have it that our portfolios are not worth what we were led to believe they were worth during the Buy-and-Hold Era. Our intellects tell us that we need to have the debate. Our Get Rich Quick urges tell us that having the debate would ruin everything. As of this moment in time, our Get Rich Quick urges are remaining dominant.

The question is whether that will continue to be the case after the next price crash. Once our portfolios are priced at their real value or at something less than that, what the heck good does Buy-and-Hold do anyone? At that point, we will be able to see with our own eyes that Buy-and-Hold doesn’t work. So why would we not be willing to have that national debate over the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field? I believe that the debate will go forward at that time.

Shiller will be answering questions. And thousands of other good and smart people who have been intimidated out of coming forward during the Buy-and-Hold Era will be answering questions. It will be a blast. I wish that this had all gone forward on the afternoon of May 13, 2002. That was my vote. My vote doesn’t always win the day. Perhaps you’ve noticed.

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 I collect my $500 million settlement check, my setting myself up so that I could go 17 years without a paycheck is going to look very, very good. ”

But let’s say you get to the age of 70 and you don’t get that $500 million, You would look pretty foolish, don’t you agree?

Yes, I agree.

But I don’t see that I have ever had any alternative courses of action available to me. What would you have me do, Anonymous? If I say that I believe that Greaney included a valuation adjustment in his retirement study, I am guilty of fraud myself (and obviously so as I have said on thousands of occasions that I do not believe that the study contains a valuation adjustment). That would obviously be an insane thing to do.

I am always trying to figure out what you Goons would like to see me do. The best guess that I am able to come up with is that you would like me not to mention this stuff anymore, neither the fact that none of the Buy-and-Hold studies contain valuation adjustments nor the fact that there has been a 17-year cover-up of that reality.

Is that a viable option?

I don’t think so. Say that Shiller is right. I believe that he is. If Shiller is right, we are going to see a devastating price crash. In the past three bull/bear cycles, we dropped to a CAPE level of 8 before the irrational depression that always follows a period of irrational exuberance came to an end. That’s a 70 percent drop from where we are today. Millions of retirements will fail. Hundreds of thousands of businesses will go under. Millions of people will lose their jobs. It is possible that we will experience a Second Great Depression. I obviously pray that we do not. But, given what I know about Shiller’s research, I cannot rule out the possibility.

I love my country. I live in this country. My boys are going to be starting their own lives in this country. Should I just keep quiet about what I know and let millions of people suffer as a consequence? I am not able to rationalize doing that. If you knew in advance about the 911 attacks, would you have kept your mouth shut? I think you would have tried to do something. A Second Great Depression would have effects on our country worse than those we experienced with the 911 attacks. I don’t see how I can in good conscience keep my mouth shut about what I know given the likely consequences to millions of people of me doing so.

The story needs to get out. Of this I am 100 percent sure. If we could go back in time, the Buy-and-Holders would vote for it getting out way back in 1981. It is my belief that the story did not get out when Shiller published his research because the Buy-and-Holders were suffering from cognitive dissonance and just elected to look the other way. Now they cannot stand the thought of word getting out because they feel that it will look bad that there has been a cover-up going on for so many years. But, if the story is going to get out sooner or later in any event, the Buy-and-Holders and everyone else are better off if it gets out as quickly as possible. So for 17 years I have been doing everything in my power to see that it gets out as quickly as possible.

I have paid a big price for what I have done. Obviously. I certainly do not say different.

But what sort of price will we all pay if I elect to keep my mouth shut? It seems to me that that price is likely to be many times bigger. I wish that there were no price to pay whatsoever. But it appears to me that my only options are to pay a very, very big price or to pay a price many times higher than that. For 17 years I have chosen to pay the smaller price no matter how painful it has been to pay that price (and it of course has been painful indeed).

We need to solve this problem. I need that. You need that. Shiller needs that. Bogle needs that. Bogle needs that even now that he has died. Bogle needs that to protect his reputation. As a Bogle lover, I want to see his reputation protected. So I work to help Bogle out as much as I work to help all the rest of us out.

I just am not able to imagine any possible good that could come from a continued cover-up. We are talking about unimaginable amounts of pain being inflicted on people. I fell into circumstances where I can help those people and be compensated very, very handsomely for doing so. That is the course of action that makes sense to me. I acknowledge that I have been hurt very badly and I of course do not like it. I just am not able to see any course of action that would not lead to more hurt, both for me and for millions of others. So I soldier on.

I hope that all of that makes at least a tiny bit of sense.

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

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:

Uh oh, Rob. There is a SWR discussion going on without any mention of you, VII or CAPE. these people are banking on their cotton candy nothingness. You better jump in there and rescue them from this fraud.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/investing/3036136-kitces-4-swr-sequence-risk.html

Thanks for the link, Anonymous.

I don’t think that those people are engaged in fraud because I don’t think that they are aware of the problems with the studies. We need to have a national debate re these matters so that everyone knows about the problems with the studies that yielded the 4 percent rule. The fraud is when people like you engage in abusive behavior to block those discussions from taking place.If you were truly confident that the Buy-and-Hold studies were legitimate, you would have no problem with letting people engage in civil and reasoned debate.

Bill Bernstein doesn’t think that the safe withdrawal rate is always 4 percent. Nor does Wade Pfau. Nor does Rob Arnott. Nor does Todd Tressider. Nor did John Walter Russell. Even Bill Bengen lost confidence in the 4 percent rule in the days following the 2008 crash. Please mark me down as agreeing with all those people. I think that the studies claiming that the safe withdrawal rate is always 4 percent are dangerous and should be corrected. At the very least honest posting should be permitted at every site so that those who would not follow the 4 percent rule if they knew the case against it could be alerted to the dangers before their lives are ruined.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

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 was reading an article at another spot on the internet and I came across this quote from Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” That’s the deal. Buy-and-Hold is a money-maker. It appeals to the most base human emotions and thereby it brings in the bucks by the truckload.

I don’t think that we can afford it anymore. Too many human lives are in the process of being destroyed by this massive con. I think that after the next price crash we are going to have to realize that we need to move forward as a nation. I think we will.

But I don’t know everything. I could be wrong. It has happened before and, if it were happening again, I would probably be the last to know. So we are just going to have to wait to see how things play out in the days following the next crash.

My best wishes.

Upton Sinclair Fan 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:

What guaranteed real returns are available in CDs, TIPS, IBonds etc. today?

I looked on Bankrate and there is a 3% APY for a CD with a 2-year term and a deposit of $2,500.

I presume that the point that you are seeking to make is that that return is not good enough to generate the level of compounding needed to finance a solid middle-class retirement. I’ve heard that concern expressed many times.

It’s a whole lot better than a loss of 70 percent, okay? A whole lot better.

Now you will come back and say that I cannot give you the precise date that we are going to see the loss of 70 percent. I cannot do that, that’s for sure. But 70 percent losses don’t just pop up randomly. They always take place at times of insanely high prices, like those that apply today. So I can say that the RISK that we are going to see a 70 percent loss in stocks is far higher today than it would be if we were at reasonable price levels. And I can give you the historical data you need to assess how big a risk that is and whether it is worth going with the 3 percent (non-inflation-adjusted) return that is available with CDs today.

Investing is a risk-assessment exercise. That’s the name of the game. You cannot build a retirement account earning 3 percent non-inflation adjusted. I certainly acknowledge that. But there is no reason to believe that you would ever need to do that. If you put a portion of your money in an investment class earning 3 percent at a time when there is a strong likelihood of a 70 percent price drop in the more heavily promoted asset class, you have protected that money during a bad time for investors. If stocks suffer a 70 percent loss (as they will if the CAPE level drops to the level to which it has dropped at the end of every earlier bull/bear cycle in U.S. history), the most likely annualized 10-year real return for stocks going forward from that point will be 15 percent real. If you earn 3 percent for a year or two on a certain amount of money and then 15 percent real for the next 10 years, your 12-year return is plenty good enough to support a solid middle-class retirement.

Valuation-Informed Indexing is about taking risk and return into consideration when making allocation decisions instead of going with what the Wall Street Con Men say regardless of whether or not it makes sense for you. There was a fellow at the Bogleheads Forum who said “no one would go into a bank and say ‘I’ll take a certificate of deposit” without first asking about the return being offered. That’s exactly right. No one should buy stocks without first checking the likely return either. It’s never a plus to fail to inform yourself of how your investment class is likely to perform.

If you inform yourself, you will do better in the long term. That’s been so for 150 years now, as far back as we have records. There’s never been an exception to the general rule. The Buy-and-Hold stuff is just a marketing gimmick. It is a money-making thing. The idea is just to keep you dumb so that you will do what you are told. If a car dealer told me not to ask about the price of his car before buying it, I would feel that he was insulting my intelligence. I think that you should feel the same way when the Wall Street Con Men come up with all these marketing slogans aimed at keeping you in the dark as to whether stocks offer a strong value proposition at a given point in time or not. I am trying to make you rich, not our Wall Street Con Men friends. Our Wall Street Con Men friends are rich enough already, in my assessment.

Anyway, that’s the concept. I wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.

Educated-Consumer-of-Stocks 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:

“But I have my name on the most important piece of peer-reviewed research published in this field in the past 30 years. That’s a five-star outcome.”

And how much money have you made from that?

I haven’t made a dime, Anonymous.

But I should have made a lot.

There are hundreds of other people who are aware of what the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world who would like to be helping us all out and making money doing it. But they are holding back because they have seen how Buy-and-Holders react to people who do honest work in this field. I want those people helping out. I want them making money. I want to see the acts of financial fraud that have been employed by Buy-and-Holders to stop millions of people from learning what they need to learn to come to a full and complete stop by the close of business tomorrow.

That’s the deal here. I want the massive act of financial fraud to be exposed and you want it to continue. We are working at cross purposes.

I want to be able to make money doing honest work and I want lots and lots and lots of others to be able to do the same. For that to happen, we need to come together as a society and bring an end to the death threats and to the demands for unjustified board bannings and to the thousands of acts of defamation and to the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. Financial fraud is a crime in the United States. It is a felony. It is my intent to bring this massive act of financial fraud to a full and complete stop.

Does all of that not make perfect sense?

Rob

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

I am not really following. Are you comparing yourself to women who were assaulted by bill cosby?

And are you saying that they were correct to not come forward?

Yes, I am making the comparison. Cosby committed terrible crimes. He deserves to be in prison.

I wish that the women would have come forward immediately after the crimes were committed just as I wish that every single person who witnessed the crimes that you Goons have committed would have come forward immediately. I certainly understand why the women did not come forward. Cosby was a powerful person and there is often a big price to be paid for coming forward about crimes committed by powerful people. We saw the same phenomenon play out when Wade Pfau became afraid of what would be done to him if he sought to have your threats against him prosecuted. Would Bogle have helped? Or would Bogle have kept his mouth shut in support of you Goons? We know which way Wade moved. So we know he had doubts about how much he could count on Bogle’s help.

The financial fraud thing is a very big deal. I would say that 70 percent of the problem with investment advice today is just ignorance. I mean no dig by that. Humankind is born in ignorance. Shiller provided us a big piece of the puzzle in 1981 and his research could have been put to use dispelling lots of ignorance. But that doesn’t mean that the people who remain in ignorance today are to blame for their condition. We all learn by talking things over. And you Goons have been working hard for a long time to make sure that the price for dispelling ignorance in this field is very high. So millions of people know less than they want to know and less than they need to know.

Another 20 percent of the problem is cognitive dissonance. The experts cannot plead ignorance. They are paid to know about stuff like Shiller’s research. So they possess at least a surface understanding of it. But cognitive dissonance makes it hard for them to develop a fuller understanding. Cognitive dissonance is a very real thing. I think it is a terrible mistake to attribute mistakes that the experts make to fraud when there is a chance that it may instead by attributable to cognitive dissonance. The charitable thing to do is to attribute it to cognitive dissonance if there is any possibility whatsoever that that is the real cause. I don’t call something “fraud” until I see clear evidence of bad intent — death threats or demands for unjustified board bannings or thousands of acts of defamation or threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. Even in those cases, cognitive dissonance is usually the cause of the mistaken position. But in those cases you clearly have fraud at work too in regard to the cover-up of the mistake.

I would say that outright fraud is 10 percent of the problem. It’s a relatively small percentage. But it is a small percentage that causes a huge amount of human misery. Ignorance is an unfortunate reality but it is just one of those things. The full reality is that we all should be jumping for joy that Shiller provided us the means to overcome our ignorance 38 years ago. We are all on the road to becoming far more effective investors. It’s a shame that the vast majority of us remain stuck in a pre-1981 understanding of how stock investing works. But the trend line is looking very positive.

Cognitive dissonance is hurting us more than ignorance. If it were not for the cognitive dissonance, we could clear up the ignorance in no time. It certainly would not take 38 years to get the word out re how stock investing works in the real world! But cognitive dissonance is a real thing and I think we just have to accept that, however long it takes for the experts in this field to overcome their cognitive dissonance, that’s how long it takes. We need to do what we can to keep things moving forward. But we should not make harsh judgments in cases in which they are not 100 percent justified and required.

The fraud stuff is different. It is the fraud stuff that permits both the ignorance and the cognitive dissonance to do us so much harm. We can dispel the ignorance and we can dispel the cognitive dissonance. And it should not take all that much time to make the good stuff happen. But we cannot get to first base until we come together as a people and adopt a 100 percent firm position re the financial fraud garbage. That’s 100 percent critical. That’s the entire ball of wax. Our laws against financial fraud are good and necessary laws. We need to enforce them.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, 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:

If you and VII have been so successful, why are not famously wealthy by now?

Because there have been thousands of books published advocating Buy-and-Hold. And there are thousands of experts who have built their careers promoting the Buy-and-Hold concept. And because millions of investors have bought into the concept (never even having heard of Valuation-Informed Indexing) and can’t stand the thought that their retirement hopes are riding on a strategy that was discredited by the peer-reviewed research 37 years ago.

The research-based case for Shiller’s finding that valuations affect long-term returns is rock solid. But the opposition to open discussion of the implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is rock solid too.

We have a standoff for the time-being. All of the evidence is on one side of the table and all of the power is on the other. Will some of the power move to the side that already holds all of the evidence in the days following the next price crash? I sure hope so. I sure expect so. But we are going to have to wait and see to find out for certain. You Goons are not going to buy in just because I say that that’s where I sincerely think things are headed.

My best wishes to you.

Not Famously Wealthy (Yet!) 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 article explains who I am and how I came to be the world’s leading expert on the 37-year cover-up of the dangers of the Buy-and-Hold Model.”

So you wrote a long winded article about how great you think you are with an expectation that someone might be interested in publishing your self promotion of your greatness.

That’s certainly not how I see it, Anonymous.

I have made an amazing contribution to the field, there’s no question about that. People use safe withdrawal rate studies to plan retirements. A failed retirement is a serious life setback. There are thousands of people who have looked at the Greaney retirement study over the past 16 years. Not one has been able to identify a valuations adjustment in his study. So what I said in my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002, has stood up to scrutiny. A LOT of scrutiny.

So, yes, I have done something great. Good for me, you know? But I sure have not ever done anything to try to negate the huge accomplishments of lots of other great people. I have said all along that Greaney’s study was a big advance over the safe withdrawal rate analyses that came before it. So Greaney is also great, no? I have said that I learned about the error in Greaney’s study by reading Bogle’s book and that there would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing without Bogle’s many amazing contributions having come first. So Bogle too is also great, no? My aim in opening every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting on the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is to bring more attention to Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research. So I obviously think that Shiller is great too, no? I told Wade Pfau that he was “insane” to work with you Goons because he was well-positioned to be awarded a Nobel prize for the research that I prepared with him. So I obviously think that Wade is great too. no?

Lots of people are great. So why do we see friction in our discussions and why did we recently live though an economic crisis although we now have available to us the research findings that would permit us to put economic crises behind us if only we would explore their implications? It’s because some of us (you Goons!) so much want to be sure that no one recognizes my greatness that you were willing to burn numerous discussion board communities to the ground and to bring on another economic crisis and even to go to prison to stop that from happening. Huh? What the f?

The problem here is not that I did something great in pointing out the error in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies. The problem is that a bunch of Buy-and-Holders have become so defensive about an error that they made many years ago that they are willing to do absolutely anything to keep the word from getting out. And it is of course going to get out anyway. When the next price crash arrives, we are going to see millions of people lose 50 percent of their life savings. Do you seriously think that they are not going to ask questions? I think they are going to ask question. And I think that you Goons are going to look back then and wonder what drove you to engage in such insane behavior.

I don’t apologize for discovering and then pointing out to people the error in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies. I think it would be fair to say that that was my finest moment. It took a lot of courage to do that. And it is something that very much needed to be done. If Greaney had been thinking clearly, he would have thanked me. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have recalled that his reason for creating his study was to help people and that he obviously was not helping people by getting the number so wildly wrong. So he would have been grateful to me for pointing out the error and helping him to get it right.

I did something great. Lots of people did. We all should celebrate that. We should all resolve to do everything in our power to bring the death threats and the demands for unjustified board bannings and the thousands of acts of defamation and the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs to a full and complete stop by the close of business today and then to just celebrate our collective greatness in doing our part to create and develop and promote the first true research-based model for understanding how stock investing works. Yes?

My sincere take.

The Truly Great (and the Happy and Full-Throated Recognizer of Other True Greats) 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 hope that helps a bit. I have heard of the Coffeehouse Portfolio. I don’t know what the Cowards Portfolio is. I obviously get it that a three-fund portfolio would include three funds but I couldn’t tell you what those three funds would be. These questions don’t interest me too much.”

So you don’t really know what is in all those portfolios as well as their strategy, yet you say that they will all lose 50% of their value and that VII is superior.

I don’t say that. It’s the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field that says that. I REPORT it. I am a reporter. That’s the kind of thing we do. We don’t just push smiley-face marketing slogans. We REPORT realities.

What if these funds went by the name of “The Irrational Exuberance Portfolio”? Do you think that would sell? Why do you think they don’t do it that way? It’s because they want to turn a quick buck. Valuation-Informed Indexing is what works. Buy-and-Hold is what sells.

It can’t all be about marketing. When millions of middle-class people see their lifetime savings wiped out, they are going to get angry. When they learn that there were people trying to tell them what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing works in the real world, their anger is going to intensify. The Buy-and-Hold marketing slogans will be spoken as obscenities in those days. Not a good thing.

There’s plenty of money to be made in this field telling the truth. You could have all these funds and still tell people the truth about the need to practice price discipline (long-term timing) when buying stocks and the funds would actually work and people would like them. The problem stems from the fact that we didn’t always know everything there is to know about how stock investing works, and when Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research, the Buy-and-Holders elected to ignore it rather than to work up the courage to say the words “I’ and “Was” and “Wrong.” Now we are in a trap. It is now 500 times harder for Bogle and the other Buy-and-Holders to say those words than it would have been to say them 37 years ago.

Am I responsible for any of that? I was a Buy-and-Holder myself on the morning of May 13, 2002. I was just trying to point out an error in a retirement study because I had come to care about my fellow community members at a discussion board at which I posted and I didn’t want to see them get hurt. I gave up on Buy-and-Hold on the evening of August 27, 2002, when Greaney advanced his first death threat and 200 Buy-and-Holders endorsed it. Huh? What the f? Does that sound like science to you? I became a Buy-and-Holder because it was promoted as being rooted in peer-reviewed research and I believe in science. Death threats ain’t science. Endorsements of death threats ain’t science. No way, no how. It’s not a close call.

Part of the scientific process is learning new things and acknowledging your mistakes when you do. That’s how human knowledge advances over time. Shiller didn’t hurt the Buy-and-Holders when he published his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings. He helped them. He gave them a chance to avoid all of the embarrassment that they are feeling today. That’s what I did for Greaney when I pointed out the error in his retirement study. He should have thanked me. He didn’t. But he should have. If your aim is to help people with a retirement study, you want to know if you have made a mistake. Greaney has made it look like he INTENDED to cause millions of failed retirements, that he was working a con from the first day. It is Greaney who is making Greaney look bad, not Bennett. I have described his study as a big advance over what came before that happened to include an error because lots of people in the field had not come to terms with Shiller’s findings at the time that Greaney prepared his study. I was Greaney’s best friend. And I still am. I am still trying to help him out 16 years later, whether he is able to see that or not.

If you invest in any of those funds without exercising price discipline, you are going to hurt yourself. I am 100 percent sure. Of course that’s true of any good or service that you could possibly buy. If you buy cars or sweaters or bananas without exercising price discipline, you are going to hurt yourself. The idea that stocks are the one exception to the otherwise universal rule was a MISTAKE that in an ideal world would have been corrected when it was uncovered by the peer-reviewed research in 1981. Shiller has described the intellectual leap from the finding that short-term price changes are unpredictable to the Buy-and-Hold belief that the market sets prices properly as “one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economics.” That’s the story here. When you make a mistake re an important matter, you need to correct it. The Buy-and-Hold claim that there is no need to exercise price discipline (engage in long-term timing) is the biggest mistake ever made in the history of personal finance. It is hurting us all. It is in the process of potentially bringing our economic system to its knees.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event, Anonymous.

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

Mistake Correcting (and Proud of It!) Rob