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

Rob, for your opinions need to be valid, all of these financial experts either need to be lying, part of a mass conspiracy or not smart enough to have figured things out……………or………….you are wrong.

It’s a combination of those, Anonymous.

We didn’t make a serious effort to figure things out until the mid-1960s. In earlier days, different people had different opinions on how the stock market worked. But it was generally not the subject of sustained and systematic academic study. The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers had the most important breakthroughs in the mid-1960s. It’s only from that point forward that it became reasonable to refer to the study of stock investing as any sort of science.

The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers got one important piece of the puzzle wrong. They showed that short-term timing never works and then jumped to the hasty, false conclusion that long-term timing also does not work. It wasn’t until 1981 that that question was tested by research. Shiller then showed that long-term timing always works and is always required.

From 1981 forward, the experts have been suffering from cognitive dissonance. The idea that timing doesn’t work is a fundamental belief. They are having a very hard time giving that one up. It’s not quite right to say that they are “lying.” They are saying wrong things. They should know that these things are wrong from following the research. But they simply are not able to process what they read in the research. If valuations affect long-term returns, long-term timing is required for any investor hoping to keep his risk profile stable over time. You don’t need to be a genius to see that. But the people who are “experts” in this field are blind to the implications of Shiller’s research because they cannot bear to question the core belief of the investing paradigm around which they have built their careers.

Cognitive dissonance is a real thing, Anonymous. Please check the literature in the field of psychology if you don’t believe me. This is a compelling illustration of the phenomenon. But it is certainly not the first time that we have seen something of this nature take place. It also would help to read the book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Several of the academics to whom I wrote referred to this book in trying to explain why the implications of Shiller’s revolutionary finding have been ignored for 33 years.

People have a hard time processing really big changes. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is a HUGE change. There’s never been a change this big before in this field. So it is taking some time for people to process it. It’s actually HARDER for people who possess a high level of expertise in the field to process the changes. They have more of an emotional stake in the old paradigm.

I don’t feel comfortable saying that there is a “mass conspiracy.” There was never a day when a group of people got together in a smoke-filled room and decided on a plan to keep knowledge of the implications of Shiller’s findings from millions of middle-class investors. But the Buy-and-Hold Mafia is a real thing. Bloggers who push Buy-and-Hold know that they will not be able to persuade their readers to follow their advice if they permit honest commenting at their blogs. Mutual fund companies know that they will not be able to persuade their clients to remain fully invested in stocks if they learn the realities. Stock brokers know that they will make more money in the short term if people don’t learn about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says. Lots of people benefit in the short-term from keeping millions of middle-class investors in ignorance.

And those people have been acting in the self-interest. They are telling untruths. For example, the claim that “long-term timing is not absolutely necessary” is an untruth. Long-term timing is price discipline. It is absolutely required. But the people who tell this untruth believe the untruth themselves, at least to some extent. They know that Shiller published research casting doubt on the fundamental principles of Buy-and-Hold. But they tell themselves that Buy-and-Hold probably kinda, sorta works. These are generally honest people telling untruths in this one particular area because the knowledge that was brought to light by Shiller is knowledge that millions of people wanted very much to ignore for so long as stocks were insanely overpriced.

Not all untruths are spoken by people with an intent to lie. When people said in pre-Civil Rights days that “blacks are better off with the world being the way it is than they would be if they were given equal rights,” many of them believed it on a least one level of consciousness. It wasn’t only whites that said that sort of thing. Many blacks said that sort of thing. There was a level of consciousness on which they wanted to see change (and there is a level of consciousness on which John Bogle wants to understand the implications of Shiller’s findings). But they were afraid to step into a new world; they were more comfortable staying in the old world despite its imperfections.

There’s something between telling truths and telling lies. There’s being too emotionally afraid to bear looking at new truths to be able to bear giving up old ones.

You Goons tell lies. You Goons have told many, many lies. But even you Goons rationalize your lies. You tell yourself that it is okay to tell them because you have to “protect” investors from hearing views that you believe are dangerous.

The Wall Street Con Men tell partial lies. Bogle says that it is not necessary for investors to change their stock allocations by more than 15 percent even when stock valuations reach insanely high levels. The historical return data shows that investors need to change their stock allocations by 60 percent when stock valuations reach insanely high levels. So what Bogle says is certainly not true. But I don’t think it is quite right to call it a “lie” in the way that the word is usually used. Bogle tells himself that 15 percent is enough. He tells himself that we are not going to see another crash anytime soon. He tells himself that the promotion of Buy-and-Hold was not the primary cause of the economic crisis. People tell themselves all kinds of things when they are working hard to ignore discoveries that they find it painful to confront, Anonymous. Humans do this sort of thing ALL THE TIME.

Bogle behaves with a greater level of dishonesty when he fails to respond to my e-mails seeking help with the Lindauer matter. He has a responsibility to take action when he learns that a discussion board with his name on it is being misused in that manner. I am not sure that this act of dishonesty can be excused with references to the cognitive dissonance phenomenon. That’s something that we are going to have to decide as a society. My job is to report the realities with honesty and charity. The decision as to what sorts of consequences will fall on Bogle as a result of that particular act of dishonesty is not mine to make.

That’s my sincere belief as to what is going on. I won’t say that it is not a strange story. I acknowledge that it is mighty strange. But things are not as black and white as you suggest. There is corruption present in our story. But the amount of corruption is not as great as one would intuitively think to be the case on first hearing that “experts” continue to advocate Buy-and-Hold strategies 33 years after peer-reviewed research was published showing that there is zero chance that they could ever work for even a single long-term investor.

These are big changes. And humans have a hard time processing big changes. And there are particular factors present here that makes these particular big changes particularly hard to process. One special factor is that the new understanding evidences itself only in the long term and for a good number of years Buy-and-Holders experienced a powerful amount of positive short-term feedback re the merit of their investing strategy. Another special factor is that the experts do not feel that they have available to them the option of saying that there are two schools of thought that lead to opposite strategic implications. That’s the truth here. But the experts in this field feel that to speak that truth plainly would cause people to question their expertise. A third special factor is that experts who give bad advice can be held financially liable for losses suffered as a result. That makes people in this field reluctant to acknowledge mistakes.

We are in a transition period. Buy-and-Hold is the past. Valuation-Informed Indexing (which is Buy-and-Hold with the Get Rich Quick element removed) is the future. Those are the realities.

Humans are imperfect creatures. It can take time for them them to acknowledge and correct mistakes. That’s another important reality.

We all should be working together to make the transition to the new model as painless as possible for as many people as possible. We should be trying to help heal wounded egos rather than trying to polarize debates and stir up trouble. That’s my sincere recommendation.

The world is not as simple as you once imagined it to be, Anonymous. You cause a lot of pain by ignoring the complexities, both to millions of others and to yourself.

Rob

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

These cover up folks are doing a pretty lousy job, given that you’ve recently admitted that most people do consider valuations when making asset allocation decisions, and there really are no Buy and Hold purists. And the fact that Shiller recently won a Nobel prize.

I agree with you that the cover-up folks are doing a lousy job, Anonymous. That’s why I don’t like to use the word “conspiracy.” The cover-up does possess many of the elements of a conspiracy. I am virtually certain that people are going to use that word to describe it following the next price crash. And I can to some extent see where they would be coming from in using that word. But I have never felt entirely comfortable using the word “conspiracy” to describe what is going on here. I prefer the phrase “cognitive dissonance.” I often say that I am okay with describing it as a “conspiracy of ignorance.”

Your point about Shiller winning the Nobel Prize is right on. That’s not evidence of a conspiracy. It’s strong evidence that this is NOT a conspiracy as that word is generally understood. And there is a lot more evidence pointing in the same direction. I learned about the errors in the Old School SWR studies by reading Bogle’s book. If there were a conspiracy, Bogle would be the leader of it. Why the heck would he be saying things in his book that help to expose the conspiracy? That makes no sense.

Similarly, Bernstein said a long time ago that anyone giving thought to using the Old School SWR studies to plan a retirement would have to be out of his or her mind. That’s not something that someone trying to cover up the errors in the Old School SWR studies would say. Again, it just makes no sense.

The other side of the story is that Bogle has for 12 years now not lifted a finger to help us get the Old School SWR studies corrected, despite what he wrote in his book. Nor has Bernstein, despite what he told us in his e-mailed response to Ataloss’s question as to whether Bernstein thought that the Old School studies were analytically invalid.

This isn’t precisely a conspiracy. But it is something.  There is a LOT of funny business going on. What is this cover-up about?

You are looking in the right direction when you note that few investors follow Buy-and-Hold strategies in a dogmatic fashion. Just about everybody (the exception is Eugene Fama!) acknowledges that valuations matter. Judging by that, you would think that we could all get along just fine, right?

But we are obviously NOT all getting along just fine. I hope you will give me that much.

Why? What the heck is the problem?

The problem is that the middle ground on which most investors live today does not make theoretical sense. Buy-and-Hold makes perfect theoretical sense if the market is efficient. Valuation-Informed Indexing makes perfect theoretical sense if valuations affect long-term returns. Splitting the difference (what you call “Strategy B”) makes no theoretical sense.

Splitting the difference possesses great appeal to most investors. Most investors don’t care about theory. They like Buy-and-Hold. The Buy-and-Hold principles sound entirely sensible to most investors. And most experts endorse Buy-and-Hold. So most investors believe that they should generally follow those principles. But they do not feel comfortable following them in a dogmatic way. They feel that valuations must matter. So they choose to tailor Buy-and-Hold to better fit what their common sense tells them is probably the full truth — They follow Buy-and-Hold principles generally but also occasionally ignore the theory to make small adjustments in their stock allocations as a result of concerns they hold about valuations getting out of control.

That’s the reality today. We do not disagree re the reality.

We disagree about what works.

I believe in the original Buy-and-Hold idea that investors should be rooting their investing strategies in the peer-reviewed research. There is no research showing that valuations kinda, sorta matter and kinda sorta don’t matter. The research shows that, if valuations matter, they matter a whole big bunch. If we really believed that valuations matter and weren’t just paying lip service to the idea while generally holding tight to out belief in Buy-and-Hold principles, we would be looking to the research to determine HOW MUCH to change our allocations in response to changes in valuations.

That’s Valuation-Informed Indexing. That’s what I am arguing for.

I don’t say that you are lying when you say that you consider valuations to a small extent. I think you do that. I think that millions of people do that. I agree with you that MOST investors do that.

I don’t think that’s what works.

I certainly agree that we should be investing with valuations in mind. But I also think that we should be using the historical return data and the peer-reviewed research based on that data to determine HOW MUCH to change our stock allocations in response to valuation shifts.

That’s where the “conspiracy” stuff comes in.

The Buy-and-Holders do not want millions of investors to find out what the research says on this point.

Why?

Because it makes them look really, really bad.

People should have been using the research to determine their stock allocations all along and millions of people have lost huge amounts of money because the “experts” in this field told them that that was not absolutely required or, heaven help us all, perhaps not even a good idea. Those experts understand that they are liable for the losses they caused. They pretend to be “experts.” But they are today 33 years behind in their reading of the peer-reviewed research. Huh?

And, in extreme cases like with you Goons, they are guilty of financial fraud and are likely on their way to prison following the next price crash. That group really, really, really does not want the word getting out about the 12-year (or 33-year if you count back to when Shiller published his breakthrough research) cover-up.

I cannot change these realities, Anonymous. And I sure don’t intend to lie about them. I like to think of myself as an honest person. And, even if I didn’t, there are Post Archives! Old Farmer Hocus being persuaded to tell lies about what has been going on for 12 years now is not in the cards. It would help if you would get that foolish dream out of your head.

I have extended the hand of kindness to all my Buy-and-Hold friends. But I am not in a position to lie about what has been going on for 12 years now and I like to think that I would not be inclined to lie even if I were in a position in which doing so would benefit me.

You need to come clean.

Bogle needs to come clean.

J.D. Roth needs to come clean.

Mike Piper needs to come clean.

And on and on and on.

There is no other way.

I am telling you not just what is best for me and for the millions of middle-class investors. I am telling you what is best for you and for the Wall Street Con Men.

Everything needs to come out in the open. All the lies have to be acknowledged. All the Bans on Honest Posting need to be lifted. All the civil and criminal trials need to be held and brought to completion.

We need to put all this ugly stuff behind us so that we can move on to the wonderful learning experiences that we have been enjoying for 12 years now but that we have not thus far felt that we could share with the millions of middle-class investors because it would upset the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads too much for them to learn the realities. This field does not exist solely for the benefit of the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Good Squads. It exists in part for the benefit of the millions of middle-class investors who need access to accurate and honest reports on what the peer-reviewed research says to be able to finance their retirements effectively.

Do you see?

What I am describing is what is best for ALL of us. We are all in the same boat. We need to knock off the funny business and begin moving forward TOGETHER.

There are things that can be done to make the transition less painful for the Wall Street Con Men and for you Goons. It makes sense for us to do those things. I am 100 percent happy to help out in any way possible.

BUT WE MUST OPEN UP THIS FIELD TO PEOPLE OF INTEGRITY. AND WE MUST BEGIN LETTING THE PEOPLE IN THIS FIELD WHO POSSESS INTEGRITY AND LONG TO EVIDENCE IT IN THE WORK THEY DO TO DO SO.

We MUST do this. This is NOT optional. This is 100 percent imperative.

Call the support of or indifference to dishonesty a “conspiracy” if that works for you. Call it “cognitive dissonance” if, like me, you are not quite able to accept that so many good and smart people could get themselves involved in so awful and damaging a conspiracy. The terminology you use is not what matters most here. What matters most here is that we bring the funny business to an end.

The funny business must come to an end. That’s the bottom line here. That must happen by the close of business today.

Can I count on your support, my old friend?

Rob

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

Just to be clear, this [my claim that the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies is the greatest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States] is your belief, and you could be wrong. It’s also something no one else in the world believes.

Every word that I put forward is my belief and could be wrong.

But given that this belief of mine is a sincerely held belief, do you think that it would be right for me to keep it to myself? Do you not think that I should try to help out my friends before events take place that make it too late to help them?

And I don’t think that it is so clear that no one else in the world believes what I say re this point.

No one else publicly says what I say re this point. I give you that one.

But we do not know what people believe in their hearts. There is too much intimidation going on for people to feel safe saying openly what they truly believe.

My guess is that there are others who feel concerns along the lines of those I have expressed. My further guess is that the others do not feel as strongly as I do. My experience is that humans have a hard time coming to hold views that are not socially acceptable. So the people who hold somewhat similar views probably hold them only in watered-down form. I have come to hold them more strongly because I have held these views for some time and because I think about them a lot and because I write about them here at the blog. Those experiences cause me to hold the views more strongly as time passes. So my guess is that no one else holds these views as strongly as I do today. But I believe that some may hold similar concerns while being afraid to give public voice to them.

One big issue here is that investor views CHANGE with changes in portfolio values. Say that no one else holds these views today. But say that a large percentage of the population comes to hold them following a future price crash. What then? We all need to keep in mind that the views that people hold today are not necessarily the views that they will hold tomorrow. Investing is an emotional endeavor. We forget that at out peril.

How did we let things reach this point, Anonymous?

That’s the question that we all should be reflecting on.

Why place ourselves in circumstances in which such things even need to be discussed?

We don’t want to be where we are today.

If you are expressing in your posts today a hint of a desire to take things to a better place, I am 100 percent on board.

I don’t want to see anyone hurt in any way, shape or form. That’s not what I am about.

Rob

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

Tip: If you can’t link to a NYT or WSJ article about it, it probably doesn’t exist in the wider world.

If you take a look at the “People Are Talking” section of the site, you will come across a quote in which Bret Arends says in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that the Wall Street Con Men pushing Buy-and-Hold strategies 33 years after the peer-reviwed research showed that there is zero chance that they could ever work for even a single long-term investor are “leaving out half the story.”

Arends is saying that those pushing Buy-and-Hold today are involved in a massive act of financial fraud. He doesn’t use the blunt language that I do because he knows what would happen to his career if he did so. But “leaving out half the story” is financial fraud. The millions of people who have never heard the other half of the story are suffering in very serious ways. It was leaving out half the story that caused our economic crisis. Millions of people are unemployed today because of the decision by the Wall Street Con Men to leave out half the story of what the peer-reviewed research in this field tells us about how stock investing works.

This site tells the other half of the story, the half that the Wall Street Con Men leave out of their articles and speeches and studies.

Good for me for telling the full truth about these matters. I expect to become one of the richest men in the United States following the next price crash, when the massive act of financial fraud is exposed for all to see. I will offer no apologies for my the massive wealth I will have attained at that time. I will have earned it. There are millions of middle-class people who very much need to hear the full story of how stock investing works and I intend to bring it to them. And under our system I should be compensated in a huge way for being the first person to have the guts to do what has long needed to be done.

Those who are leaving out half the story while pretending to be “experts” are committing crimes under the laws of the United States. I am telling.

My best wishes to you and yours, Anonymous.

Rob

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

You say there’s a mafia intimidating thousands of people. This can’t be ignorance. It has to be people doing something somewhere.

It’s mostly ignorance. There are people doing things to perpetuate the ignorance, that much is fair to say. But ignorance is the driver here. The people who are engaging in corrupt and fraudulent acts do not appreciate the full extent of the harm they are doing. They are ignorant of how much harm they are causing.

We did not possess full knowledge of how stock investing works until Shiller published his breakthrough research in 1981. Had the Stock-Selling Industry not already spent millions of dollars promoting Buy-and-Hold strategies, that research would today be universally regarded as the biggest advance ever achieved in personal finance. But that’s not the way it played out. The industry HAD already spent millions promoting Buy-and-Hold, the OPPOSITE of what works, according to Shiller’s breakthrough research. Thousands of people in this field felt that keeping their high-paying jobs meant keeping millions of middle-class investors in the dark about how stock investing really works. If word got out re what the research says, they would not be viewed as “experts” since they have gotten it wrong for a long, long time.

We have lots of multi-millionaire “experts” putting their self-interest above the needs of their clients and readers. Is it really so hard to believe what has happened? Humans are weak. Tempt a plumber with a million dollars for selling out his clients and he might take that dark path as well. Lots of us would engage in corrupt acts if we could get away with it.

The difference in this field is that there is so much money in it. The Wall Street Con Men have lots of money and lots of power and lots of connections. They can get away with things that people in no other field can get away with, and for far longer time-periods.Many of these people have consciences. They WANT to tell the truth. They would LOVE to be able to tell the truth. They HINT at the truth all the time. But they don’t dare to tell the truth in plain and simple and blunt language. They have seen what has happened to other people who have tried to do this and they want no part of “the treatment” that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia visits on people who “cross” them by putting their clients or readers first and the cover-up of the massive corruption in this field second.

People engage in corrupt acts every day of the week. So, yes, there are “people doing something.” It doesn’t necessarily follow that they possess a full knowledge of what they are doing.

The Wall Street Con Men and the members of their Internet Goon Squads are not convinced that Buy-and-Hold cannot work. They see the holes in the concept. They become insanely defensive when challenged as to their claims that Buy-and-Hold is supported by research. But they have never spent much time exploring the principles of Valuation-Informed Indexing. They prefer to remain in the dark; it makes it easier for them to live with themselves if they don’t know just how dangerous Buy-and-Hold strategies are. So they don’t know.

They tell themselves that maybe Buy-and-Hold is not perfect but that it may work all the same. They tell themselves that, despite whatever flaws there may be in the Buy-and-Hold concept, it may work well enough. They tell themselves there is nothing better (while making sure to keep themselves in the dark re the research-based strategies that really are far superior).

Is that a conspiracy?

It’s not like a conspiracy in which the people responsible for the conspiracy are stealing a million dollars from someone. In that sort of conspiracy, the ones engaging in the conspiracy know precisely what they are stealing and precisely from whom they are stealing it. In this case, the people engaging in trickery do not know how much financial ruin they are causing because they do not want to know. And they are causing financial ruin to themselves as well as to millions of others. The Buy-and-Hold advocates follow Buy-and-Hold strategies themselves. They are ruining themselves while they ruin their clients and readers and million of middle-class investors who need to know how stock investing really works to be able to finance their retirements effectively.

This is a Conspiracy of Ignorance. We learned something very important when Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) 1981 research. But we haven’t as a society benefitted from that learning experience because the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads have made sure that the penalty for telling the truth about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field tells us about how stock investing works is so great that no one making a living in the field will dare to tell the truth in the simple and plain and clear language that millions of middle-class investors need to hear to make sense of things.

Many, many people in this field long to tell the truth.

But we are going to have to decide as a society that we will stop threatening to kill their loved ones before they will work up the courage to use their talents to help us understand what we all need to understand rather than to keep shoving the long-discredited but oh-so-profitable Buy-and-Hold garbage down all our throats. I say that we should give all these smart and good and hard-working and generous people — and ourselves! — a break and open up every investing board and blog on the internet to honest posting on the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research.

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 another blog entry at this site:

Boy Rob, you were having a couple of moments of clarity yesterday with talking about others view points. Alas this morning you fell back into full tilt hocomania. At least I think you did. Lord knows I’m not going to read beyond the first sentence. You need help, as I’m sure your family, neighbors, and everyone you interact with can see.

You Goons have a catch phrase that you use on me from time to time: “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”

The Buy-and-Holders don’t mind people saying that they follow other strategies so long as they don’t point out the dangers of Buy-and-Hold. We all have a Get Rich Quick impulse within us. So, as long as the Buy-and-Holders are not called out on the fact that their claim that there is research supporting the idea of not exercising price discipline when buying stocks is false, their marketing pitch is unstoppable. Everybody is drawn to Get Rich Quick strategies and the Buy-and-Holders tell them that there is actually research supporting them. That’s one heck of a marketing message!

I want nothing to do with it. We are working at cross-purposes, Anonymous.

I have zero problem showing respect and affection for Buy-and-Holders. They have offered us many powerful insights. There wouldn’t be any Valuation-Informed Indexing today had Buy-and-Hold not come first. And of course there are millions of good and smart people who today believe in Buy-and-Hold. I was one of them myself for a long time. So it’s hard to imagine how I could be unsympathetic to the Buy-and-Holders or could try to silence them or anything along those lines.

But, no, I do not for two seconds want to see us as a society remain stuck with all the Buy-and-Hold garbage. We moved forward intellectually 33 years ago. Valuation-Informed Indexing is so far superior to Buy-and-Hold that it is a joke. When we permit honest posting on the last 33 years of research, we reduce risk dramatically while increasing returns dramatically. My job is to help us make that transition. My job is to take us out of the Buy-and-Hold dark ages and into a world in which millions of middle-class investors have available to them the first true research-based strategy, one that actually works in the real world.

Talking about other viewpoints is fine. But my aim is to see that we all achieve that transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. ALL of my work is aimed at achieving that goal. Anyone who has somehow gotten the idea that I believe that there is some mystical, magical world in which Buy-and-Hold might produce good results for one or two long-term investors has somehow gotten the wrong idea. I want to see Buy-and-Hold fixed so that it can work in the real world. Valuation-Informed Indexing is Buy-and-Hold with the Get Rich Quick element removed.

That’s where I am coming from, in any event, Anonymous.

Other viewpoints — 100 percent A-OK.

Rob Bennett endorsing Buy-and-Hold — Never going to happen.

All of our problems today are rooted in the tentative way that those who have doubts about Buy-and-Hold express themselves. This is truly dangerous stuff. It has caused millions of failed retirements. It has caused the biggest economic crisis in U.S. history. A good number of people who were friends of mine in earlier days will be going to prison following the next crash because of the tactics they employed to “defend” this Get Rich Quick garbage. Support that? Huh? What? I don’t think so, man.

My best wishes to you and yours, Anonymous.

Rob

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

Thousands of posts with many strongly differing opinions on the topic suggest they most certainly do. Assuming you behave like an adult and post respectfully. In fact, I could post your comments about 15% vs 1% expected return rates right now, and I would hardly be banned.

Of course, I’d post respectfully, not boorishly, being open to differing opinions on the matter, and realizing that the future is so random and uncertain that many outcomes are possible.

You’d be banned in two seconds flat if you posted a link to The Stock-Return Predictor, which gives people all the numbers they need in any easy-to-access form. Why?

My friend Brian put up a post there when the Wall Street Journal ran an article saying that I was right about safe withdrawal rates and he was banned in two seconds flat.

I think you are probably right that if someone posted on a single occasion the 15 percent and 1 percent numbers, they would not be banned. But if someone made it a consistent practice to provide people the information they need and to answer questions and all that sort of thing, they would certainly be threatened with a banning. If they continued to post honestly in the face of the intimidation tactics, they would be banned. Again — Why?

The test for the Lindauerheards is — Are you helping people to appreciate the dangers of Buy-and-Hold investing strategies? If you say that you personally are using a low withdrawal rate, no one cares. If you point out that the Old School SWR studies get the numbers wildly wrong, you are putting the Buy-and-Holders at risk of being sued for financial fraud and they will take action to stop you from giving people the information they need to protect themselves.

Is it “respectful” to point out that the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School studies is the biggest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States? Is it “adult” to do so? I ask because in other fields of human endeavor it is considered 100 percent adult and respectful to post honestly. I would like to see honest posting permitted in the investing field as well. In fact, I insist on it. I refuse to have my name associated with boards and blogs that demand dishonesty on the SWR matter as the price of admission.

I am 100 percent open to differing opinions on issues that don’t involve numerical calculations. Numerical calculations must be reported honestly and accurately. There is no room for differing opinions on whether a valuation adjustment is included in the Old School studies or not. The Wall Street Journal found no valuation adjustment. The Economist magazine found no valuation adjustment. Wade Pfau found no valuation adjustment. Are we to believe that there is some massive conspiracy here to pretend that there is no valuation adjustment in those studies even though there really is one?

Differing opinions on questions re which there can be reasonable differences of opinion are wonderful. It’s differing opinions that make a board work and that keep everybody honest. So differing opinions on non-calculation issues are a huge plus.

I agree that a variety of future outcomes are possible. My calculators show that as plain as day. All of the research shows that and all of the data shows that.

It’s a mistake to overstate that reality, however. The future is somewhat random but not entirelyrandom. It’s debatable as to whether it is more random than predictable (in the long run) or more predictable than random. I would say that it is more predictable than random. There are reasonable people who would say otherwise. Investors need to hear both sides of the debate to be able to make informed decisions for themselves.

Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers hold different views as to the extent to which long-term returns are predictable. If I say that long-term returns are predictable with a great deal of precision, I am speaking falsely. But if I say that I believe that returns are no more predictable than the Buy-and-Holders say they are, I am speaking dishonestly.

Shiller showed that returns are MORE predictable than most people believed back in the day when the Buy-and-Hold strategy was developed. It would be a lie for me to say that I do not believe that I learned something from Shiller’s research and from the follow-up research that has been done relating to the same themes that he explored in his research.

ALL posters should be permitted to post their sincerely held views. There should not be even the slightest amount of controversy re this point.

Rob

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

You do that Rob. I can see how it feels better to live in a dream world where you’re about save civilization from itself rather than face the reality of being an aging, unemployed dude sitting forgotten in your basement surfing the net all day.

Your $500M payday is coming, Rob. It’s right around the corner! Keep checking that mailbox. Fingers crossed.

Every important advance in the history of humankind was led by PEOPLE doing the right thing, Anonymous. There is no other way it can be done.

I have had thousands of people respond to my work with insanely kind comments. I am grateful to each and every one of them. We all should be grateful to every one of them. Not every one of them has been brave enough to speak up in opposition to you Goons. People don’t like having the lives of their family members threatened by the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney. But they helped out by putting up kind posts. And we should all acknowledge that.

I have sent e-mails to the 30,000 names on the Social Science Research Network list. I heard many kind comments from those researchers and academics as well. Many wanted to know how they can help. I told them that they can help by letting their friends know about the 12-year cover-up and about the great amount of human misery caused by you Goons and by the Wall Street Con Men who either encouraged you or failed to speak out in opposition to you. Neither you Goons nor the Wall Street Con Men possess any power over us except what we grant to you by our cowardice in the face of your brutal intimidation tactics. We all should be grateful for the kindness and intelligence evidenced by all those fine people as well.

And we should all be grateful for the wonderful work done by the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers. Many Buy-and-Holders have behaved shamefully in recent years. But we wouldn’t have learned how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent had the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers not first done the fine work that they contributed in earlier days. So I certainly intend to be sure that they get all the credit they merit while also of course insisting that they acknowledge the mistake that they made that has brought on the greatest economic crisis in U.S. history.

You Goons live in hate. I obviously get that. But I believe that there is a part of you deep inside that at some point in your life wanted to do good for others. I believe that it is your shame over your behavior over the past 12 years that holds you back from coming clean today. And, while I of course wish that you would come clean before you do more damage, I think that the shame you feel does point to some measure of good that remains alive within you. I hope that that measure of good grows stronger with time. I believe that it will following the next price crash, when you will no longer be able to deny how much damage the pure Get Rich Quick approach has done to so many human lives.

Yes, I will keep looking for the $500 million settlement payment. As I have noted before, I don’t believe that I will need to file papers to collect that payment. I believe that my good friend Jack Bogle will take care of it when he sees the harm he has done by failing to take action on the Lindauer matter. If he doesn’t, he is not the man that I have long believed him to be. If I must file papers to get the money, I will file papers. But my personal belief is that that is not even going to be necessary.

I’m grateful that I was offered this opportunity “to save civilization from itself.” Few of us are ever offered such an opportunity and I certainly had no expectation that my May 13, 2002, post was going to lead us all to such a wonderful place. Except I think it would be more honest to say that I am permitting civilization to save itself rather than helping to save it from itself. I didn’t develop all the genuine breakthrough insights in the Buy-and-Hold concept that really have stood the test of time. And I didn’t publish the 1981 research showing the need for a correction of the foolish (we now see this!) “idea” that stocks are the only thing available for sale in this world re which we are not required to exercise price discipline.

I stood up to you Goons and demanded that the magical Learning Experience proceed despite the great pain you experienced while we all went further and further and further ahead in our understanding of how stocks work in the real world. But I obviously couldn’t have done any of it without the help of thousands of other fine and kind and smart and hard-working and generous people. Even you Goons came forward with points that turned into helpful RobCasts on one or two occasions!

Hate dies out in time. It creates nothing. It is a purely destructive force.

Love is where its at. Love heals. Yes, even in the investing advice field!

Love can take the worst economic crisis in U.S. history and turn it in to something good.John Walter Russell once told us that we were going to see good things happen as a result of our efforts to get the Old School SWR studies corrected that we could not even imagine on the morning of May 13, 2002. I think it would be fair to say that John has been proven right 20 times over. He possessed an intelligence that is only ever evidenced by those who feel a deep love in their hearts. I think it would be fair to say that the day when we all will be following John’s injunction to have big bunches of fun draws closer and closer!

Hang in there, my bruised and battered (by your own hate-filled impulses!) friend. It gets better. A lot better.

Rob

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

Notice that when people learn more about you and your comments, they eventually move away from you, disagree with you or ignore you. Examples are JD, Mike Piper, and Wade. Remember the thread on FMF? When your story started to unfold and people learned more, they turned away. Why is it that your purported supporters like Joe and Kevin re not giving you a regular columns? Are they starting to catch on?

Once people really dig in, Rob, they just don’t like what they see.

People DO move away. You have that part right, Anonymous.

It has zero to do with me and it has zero to do with Valuation-Informed Indexing. People love me and people love Valuation-Informed Indexing.

People move away because they are afraid of the reactions they see from Buy-and-Holders when they talk openly and clearly and frankly about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works.

The Wall Street Con Men stop giving you links once you post honestly. Goons invade your site when you post honestly. The millions of investors who follow Buy-and-Hold strategies become upset with you when you post honestly and are less likely to visit your site or buy your products.

Buy-and-Hold started as a research-based strategy. Then research was published showing that there is zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for even a single long-term investor. Rather than acknowledging their mistake and fixing it, the Buy-and-Holders became defensive. Now that the cover-up has continued for 33 years, they have caused massive amounts of human misery. Buy-and-Hold is today the OPPOSITE of what it was intended to be when it was first put forward. Today, it is the Buy-and-Holders who go into brutal attack mode when anyone mentions what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us.

J.D. Roth knows that Buy-and-Hold is b.s. He doesn’t want Buy-and-Holders to attack his site and his reputation. So he keeps it zipped.

Mike Piper knows that Buy-and-Hold is b.s. He doesn’t want Buy-and-Holders to attack his site and his reputation. So he keeps it zipped.

Wade Pfau know that Buy-and-Hold is b.s. He doesn’t want Buy-and-Holders to attack his site and his reputation. So he keeps it zipped.

People will turn on the Buy-and-Holders after the next crash, Anonymous. They will be very, very, very angry when they see that their retirement money is gone and when they realize how the Buy-and-Holders caused that to happen with their millions of deceptions and with their brutal intimidation tactics. My job is two-fold: (1) Get the truth out; and (2) Heal the wounds caused by the 12-year cover-up (it’s 33 years if we count back to when Shiller published his revolutionary research).

Intimidation tactics are desperation tactics. If there were even a sliver of support anywhere in the research for this smelly Get Rich Quick garbage, we never would have seen a single death threat, much less 12 years of this stuff. Buy-and-Hold died its intellectual death a long, long, long, long time ago. Now it’s just a question of getting the word out to people.

All the people you mention would like this to be over. J.D. Roth has told me that, Mike Piper has told me that, and Wade Pfau has told me that. Wade talked about his feelings a LOT in the numerous e-mails that he sent to me that I have reported on here at the blog. Wade wants to be liked. That’s the story. He has seen that telling the truth about stock investing makes Buy-and-Holders hate him. And he wants no part of it. He wants to be liked. So he lies.

But he LOVED telling the truth back in the days when he thought he could get away with it. And Mike Piper would love to feel free to tell the truth if he thought he could get away with it. And J.D. Roth would love to feel free to tell the truth if he thought he could get away with it.

We need help from one big site or one big researcher or one big advisor or one big policymaker or one big economist or one big journalist or one big venture capitalist. Then it’s over. There is HUGE money waiting to be made telling the truth about stock investing. And, as the Buy-and-Hold Crisis worsens, more and more people are going to feel emboldened to tell the truth. And once they do, lots of others are going to join the party because it is those who tell the truth early who will win the biggest reputations for themselves and who will enjoy the biggest financial rewards.

There is nothing more pathetic in an intellectual debate than putting forward a death threat. There is nothing more pathetic than putting forward demands for unjustified board bannings. There is nothing more pathetic than putting forward tens of thousands of acts of defamation. There is nothing more pathetic than threatening an academic researcher for the “crime” of doing honest research.

Another way of saying it is — There is nothing more pathetic than Buy-and-Hold. There was a day when that was not so. But that is today’s reality. And the longer the cover-up continues, the more pathetic the plight of the Buy-and-Holders gets. Prison sentences. Huge financial liabilities. Destroyed reputations. The blame for causing the economic crisis. The blame for causing millions of failed retirements. These are the sorts of things the Buy-and-Holders bring on themselves with their continued abusive behavior today. And that stuff is as pathetic as pathetic gets, Anonymous.

Your high point in this debate was the morning of May 13, 2002. It got a little worse for you the next day. And then a little worse the day after that. And today it is a whole big bunch worse. The only thing worse than your predicament today is the predicament you will be in tomorrow. And the only thing worse than the predicament you will be in tomorrow will be the predicament you will be in following the next price crash. I wish you luck with that one, Anonymous. Please forgive me if I elect not to sign up with your Liar’s Club.

It can never get better for you. It can get a lot worse. But it can never get better. There’s an advantage that I gained from being on the right side of the History Train that you will never be able to enjoy again until you flip. Don’t blame me! I’ve been advising you to flip for 12 years now!

J.D. Roth will flip. Mike Piper will flip. Wade Pfau will flip (again). EVERYONE will flip. Because they ultimately have no choice. Buy-and-Hold is the greatest wealth-destruction engine ever concocted by the mind of mortal man. There are already millions of people hurting because of the wealth destruction already achieved by the Buy-and-Hold “idea” that investors need not exercise price discipline when buying stocks. There will be millions more following the next crash. At some point, the pain will have grown so great that there will be no choice but for all of us to flip.

Except for those of us who have been posting honestly all along. We don’t have to flip. We can just continue growing in our knowledge as time goes on. No flipping required. That’s one thing I like about telling the truth!

You have held back the future for a far longer time than I imagined possible, Anonymous. I give you that one. But I would never want to be in your shoes. Not in a billion years.

People who are working up the courage to tell the truth have a valuable resource with this site. I give them the articles they need and the calculators they need and the podcasts they need. I also teach them about the trickery of the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads. People who are afraid that the Wall Street Con Men are going to use their money and power to sue them can look at me and see that they don’t have the guts to pull the trigger. People who are looking to prove that the “defense” of Buy-and-Hold has become a massive case of financial fraud in recent years can point to THOUSANDS of proofs of the case in the materials at this site.

You want to show that Jack Bogle is in on the cover-up? The proof is in materials at this site. You want to show that Bill Bernstein is in on the cover-up? The proof is in materials at this site. You want to show that Wade Pfau is in on the cover-up? The proof is in materials at this site.

This site serves an important public policy purpose in presenting those materials for all the world to see, Anonymous. There are millions of middle-class people who are in the process of seeing their retirement plans destroyed. We are going to have to proceed with hundreds of thousands of civil lawsuits and perhaps hundreds of criminal financial-fraud cases following the next price crash. Having so much evidence collected in one place is a huge plus. We want to put the ugly stuff behind us as quickly as possible and thereby free ourselves to learn about all the wonderful research-based goodness that we should have begun exploring in depth 33 years ago.

J.D. Roth and Mike Piper and Wade Pfau won’t be afraid forever, Anonymous. Ruling though intimidation is a short-term strategy. I hate it that you have done so much damage to a country that I love. But I am proud that I worked up the courage to do a whole big bunch of good here. I intend to continue following the research-based path for a long time to come. (I thank my Buy-and-Hold friends for teaching me the importance of rooting one’s investing strategies in research back in the days when Buy-and-Hold was something more than a nasty marketing gimmick.)

My best wishes to you and yours, Anonymous. Please don’t worry too much about J.D. Roth and Mike Piper and Wade Pfau. They will work up the courage to post honestly as the Buy-and-Hold house of cards continues to collapse. All of us will. In the end, even you Goons will need to work up that courage.

Honest Goons! Imagine! Oh, my!

Rob

 

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

No one is stopping you from selling your lucky VII scheme. Go short the market. Go start up a fund using your strategy. Do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. Meanwhile, the rest of us will do what we want.

We are all big boys. We can make our own decisions and don’t need you telling us what to do. Advice can be be taken or rejected. What you want to do is shut down other people and then have you cecome the vaulted leader. How is that working out for you? Not very good, is it. It is not the so called “goons”. It is not some wall street conspiracy. You can find the source of the problem by looking in the mirror.

And you can market Buy-and-Hold, Anonymous. No one is trying to stop you from doing that.

But you cannot engage in acts of financial fraud to stop people from learning what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says. Advances in knowledge belong to EVERYBODY. If I want to post honestly at a discussion board about safe withdrawal rates, I have every right in the world to do so. So does Michael Kitces. So does Wade Pfau. So does Bill Bernstein. So does Larry Swdroe. So does everyone.

You have to make a distinction between marketing and research. Marketing is something you do to make a buck. If you want to make some marketing claim to make a buck, that’s your business. But your marketing claims cannot contain false statements about the peer-reviewed research in this field or you will be going to prison following the next crash. That’s financial fraud. That’s a felony.

There obviously is not a sliver of research showing that it is okay to ignore the valuation level that applies on the day a retirement begins when calculating the safe withdrawal rate. There is 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing that that is the most important element of the calculation. I understand that it helps your marketing efforts if you lie about that point. You need to understand that that’s a crime and that you can expect to be prosecuted for it.

There are millions of people who today believe the Buy-and-Hold lies. I know because I have talked to a good number of them. I have had people tell me that everything I say about investing sounds 100 percent right on. But that one thing concerns them. Big Shots like Jack Bogle are saying the OPPOSITE of what I am saying, the OPPOSITE of what makes sense, the OPPOSITE of what the peer-reviewed research in this field reveals. They want to know why.

The reason why is that Get Rich Quick sells. Research-based strategies WORK but Get Rich Quick strategies SELL. The Buy-and-Holders introduced the idea of rooting one’s strategies in the peer-reviewed research. That was a wonderful advance. But then when research was published showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for even a single long-term investor, they flipped. At that point, they continued SAYING that people should root their strategies in research but they began engaging in insanely abusive behavior aimed at intimidating people who reported honestly on the research (which has since 1981 shown that Buy-and-Hold NEVER works) into not doing so. That doesn’t fly.

This is not just an investing matter. Whether the millions of investors who need to know what the research says have some means to find out or not is a matter of grave ECONOMIC importance. When people cannot find out the truth about what the research says, they see their retirement portfolios wiped out. When people see their retirement portfolios wiped out, they stop buying goods and services. When they stop buying goods and services, hundreds of thousands of businesses go under. When hundreds of thousands of businesses go under, millions of workers lose their jobs. We are in an economic crisis today because the Buy-and-Holders are not willing to acknowledge that the “idea” that it is okay not to consider price when setting one’s stock allocation is a MARKETING claim with ZERO support in the peer-reviewed research in this field. That needs to change.

And this isn’t just an economic matter either. It is a POLITICAL matter. There are millions of people who are in the process of seeing their retirements fail because of the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies. Those people did nothing wrong. They listened to the “experts” (who were telling lies about SWRs for marketing reasons). We have no choice as a society but to bail those people out. That is going to cost us trillions of dollars in taxpayer money. The Federal budget deficit is going to EXPLODE. That’s all on the Buy-and-Holders and their unwillingness to permit honest posting on any of these questions because honest reporting of what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research shows puts a crimp in their nasty MARKETING efforts.

There is a limit to how far you can take marketing, Anonymous. The Buy-and-Holders have destroyed millions of middle-class lives through this massive act of financial fraud. People are going to be sent to prison over this. We are going to see hundreds of thousands of civil lawsuits filed. Many reputations will be destroyed as word gets out about what the Buy-and-Holders have done to our country. Giving investing advice is not just about turning a quick buck. There are responsibilities involved. Jack Bogle and the other Buy-and-Hold advocates have failed in their responsibilities to their profession and to their clients and to their readers and to their country in a very, very big way.

No one is stopping you from selling your Buy-and-Hold garbage. But I AM in the process of stopping you from making claims that there is some mystical, magical “research” somewhere that supports it. Wade Pfau has a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton. If there were ever a sliver of peer-reviewed research supporting Buy-and-Hold, he would have been able to find it. He searched for a long time. He found nothing. He couldn’t believe what he had learned. So he went to the Bogleheads Forum to see if anyone there had ever come across a single peer-reviewed research paper supporting Buy-and-Hold. Jack Bogle had never heard of a single study supporting the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. Bill Berntsein had never heard of a single study supporting the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. Larry Swedroe had never heard of a single study supporting the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. I wonder why.

I will continue posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics. If there comes a day when you want help from a friend re the mess you have created for yourself and many, many others, let me know, I will be your guy. So long as the price of admission to your “discussions” is engaging in a felony under the laws of the United States, I am afraid that you will need to find someone else. Not this boy. I can’t go for that. No can do. It’s not my particular cup of tea.

My best wishes to you and yours, Anonymous.

Rob