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

It seems that you want to offer up unlikely scenarios with each answer that does not fit your story.

If you had told me that the cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies would continue for 11 years on the morning of May 13, 2002, when I put forward my first post, I would have said that the odds against such a thing happening were 1 billion to one.

So, yes, I guess it is fair to refer to what has happened here as “unlikely.”

Still, it happened, Questions.

It doesn’t help for us to let that paralyze us. We need to try to UNDERSTAND the factors that caused this unlikely turn of events.

Part of it is the money. There is a ton of money to be made in their field and people don’t want to give that up. So they rationalize that getting retirement numbers wildly wrong isn’t such a terrible thing.

Part of it is our litigious society. The Buy-and-Holders are afraid of being held liable for the financial damages they have caused to so many millions. Unfortunately, their fears make them all the less willing to admit mistakes. So the damages keep piling up higher and higher and higher. Perhaps we should seek congressional action to give those who truly just made mistakes some sort of amnesty from civil lawsuits. At least that would be constructive action.

Part of it is that the people drawn to this field tend to be good with numbers but don’t feel comfortable examining the effects of emotions. Well, let’s recruit new people to the field, people who have the skills needed to get the job done.

Part of it is that the advance we have achieved is so huge that it makes the Buy-and-Holder feel envious that they didn’t come up with it. Let’s praise the Buy-and-Holders for their many genuine achievements and invite them to help us come up with more powerful insights, many of which they can get their name on.

The are indeed unlikely events that have taken place, Questions.

That’s no excuse for not behaving in an ethical manner. We MUST behave in an ethical manner. And we must insist that our Buy-and-Hold friends do so as well.

Behaving ethically is the starting point. Without some minimal level of ethics in this field, all of the I.Q. points in the world count for precisely zero. We need to be smart. But we must also be honest.

I am sure.

Rob the Ethical Investing Advisor

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

The information has been out there for many years. People have had time to make considered opinions, Rob. The only one needing to make the “I was wrong” speech is you.

We certainly agree that the research we need to come to a better understanding of how stock investing works has been out there a long time, Deleted. It’s been 32 years!

The problem has not been a shortage of time to make considered opinions. The problem is a shortage of DESIRE to make considered opinions.

Say that there is a machine with a lever you can press. Say that we put it in the hands of the Wall Street Con Men. Each time they press the lever, they get $10. And each time they press the lever, $100 is taken out of the pockets of middle-class investors and destroyed.

How often do you think the Wall Street Con Men are going to press that sucker?

That’s the experiment that we have been running for 32 years now.

We KNOW that Buy-and-Hold cannot ever work for even a single long-term investor. ALL of the research ever done points to this finding. There is ZERO research pointing in the other direction.

But we ALSO know that Buy-and-Hold is the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind and that Get Rich Quick schemes possess great appeal to the weak humans. There has never in the history of personal finance been an “idea” with so much power to destroy middle-class wealth while enriching the Wall Street Con Men beyond their wildest dreams.

Now we know what happens when we put that sort of temptation before people!

We also know the solution to the problem.

Car makers would like us not to look at the price of cars we buy, just as the Wall Street Con Men like us not to look at the price of stocks we buy. How have we avoided the big mess we have in The Stock-Selling Industry from infecting The Car-Selling Industry? Why is it that the sleeziest used-car dealer in the country possesses ten times the ethics of the most respected stock-selling expert in the field today?

The difference is US!

There’s an old saying that applies here: “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man.”

Car dealers know they cannot get away with what the Wall Street Con Men get away with. If some sleezeball car dealer were to say that he was run across some mystical, magical “research” showing that it is possible to get a good deal on a car without even taking price into consideration, we would as a society laugh him out of business.

That’s what we need to do when we hear some sleezeball investing “expert” tell us that he has a sneaky feeling that all of the rules that have governed stock investing for 140 years are going to be turned on their heads and that this is going to be the first time in history when a pure Buy-and-Hold strategy is going to end up working out well for one or two long-term investors.

Huh? I don’t think so. SHOW US THE URL.

If the Con Men really had a “study” showing that the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage could work, they wouldn’t be shy about sharing the URL with us, Deleted. I mean, come on. There are billions of dollars to be made here. And you say they are holding back?

They are not holding back.

There do not provide a URL for the magic study because the magic study does not exist.

Wade Pfau was right. Buy-and-Hold is garbage. Valuation-Informed Indexing works.

We need to get prison sentences announced for you Goons. Then Wade will feel safe doing honest research again. He and I will work together to get that research written up on the front page of the New York Times. Once everyone knows how they have been conned, I have a funny feeling that no one hoping to be able to get a job in this field is ever again going to want to be associated in any way, shape or form with Buy-and-Hold. I mean. come on.

My best wishes to you, old friend.

Rob, the Fellow Who Thinks We Should All Be Working Together to Bury the Smelly Buy-and-Hold Garbage 30 Feet in the Ground So That We Can Spread the Word About the First True Research-Based Strategy, Which Reduces the Risk of Stock Investing by 70 Percent

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

Michael Kitces and Wade Pfau continue to post honestly on investing in retirement!

http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=123070&newpost=1802104

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

we can clearly look at the Internet and see that all those opinions are out there, including yours.

I am not aware of a single case in which the advocates of any other investing strategy behaved in the manner in which I have seen Buy-and-Holders behave for 11 years now. Never have I seen a non-Buy-and-Holder make use of death threats or board bannings or tens of thousands of acts of defamation or threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs.

These are criminal acts, when employed as part of an 11-year cover-up of errors made in retirement studies. That’s why only Buy-and-Hold advocates will be going to prison following the next price crash and not the advocates of any other investing strategy.

The Buy-and-Holders are in a unique position. The claim that it is not necessary for investors to consider price is of course 100 percent absurd. THere has of course never been even a tiny sliver of support for this absurd claim anywhere in the peer-reviewed academic research. Wade Pfau, who holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton searched the literature and confirmed that this is so. Just to be 100 percent sure, he went to the Bogleheads Forum and asked if anyone there knew of a single study that supported the Buy-and-Hold “strategy.” John Bogle was not able to come up with anything. Neither was Bill Bernstein.Neither was Larry Swedroe. Neither was Rick Ferri.

That’s because there is no such study. The claim that there is is a lie. It is a lie that has put hundreds of billions of dollars in the pockets of the Wall Street Con Men. But it is also a lie that has put millions of middle-class people out of work.

Those who committed felonies in support of that lie will go to prison as a result. What else would you expect?

What makes Buy-and-Hold different is that it is one of only two investing strategies (Valuation-Informed Indexing is the other one) that claim to be rooted in peer-reviewed academic research. Millions of middle-class Americans like the idea of basing their investment decisions on the findings of peer-reviewed academic research. The problem, of course, is that there is zero support in the academic literature for a pure Get Rich Quick approach. To make the claim that there is research supporting a pure Get Rich Quick approach, you HAVE to lie. There is no honest research-based claim that can be made in support of pure Get Rich Quick strategies. This is why Valuation-Informed Indexing is viewed by Buy-and-Holders with such alarm. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the first TRUE research-based strategy.

For Buy-and-Hold to survive, Buy-and-Holders MUST engage in criminal acts. Otherwise, there are going to be thousands of people telling the truth about what the academic research says. But those criminal acts will lead to prison sentences following the next price crash. People do not take kindly to seeing their retirement accounts destroyed by the tactics employed by the sorts of individuals who have posted in “defense” of Mel Linduaer an John Greaney.

For obvious reasons.

Rob,the Fellow Who Believes That the “Experts” in This Field Should Be Telling the Truth About Stock Investing to the Millions of Middle-Class People Who Need to Know It (Or at a Very Bare Minimum Permitting Others to Tell the Truth)

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

If they have done what you have said and you can identify them, then why have charges and/ or lawsuits not been filed?

Why weren’t charges filed against people who hung blacks from trees in the days of segregation in the South, Mr. Rational?

People feel “you can’t fight City Hall.” People rationalize that “it’s not my fight.”

It’s everyone’s fight.

We all work in the same economy. We all need to see it recover its health if we are to achieve our hopes to be able to retire someday.

The Buy-and-Hold Mafia is ruthless. The more the evidence mounts that Shiller is right, the more vicious become the tactics that are used to keep the millions of middle-class investors who need to know how dangerous Buy-and-Hold is from learning what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research says on the subject.

When a few patriots work up the courage to stand up to the Mafia, lots of others will come forward. That will bring on a great learning experience for many and then even more will come forward. And then more. And then more.

And then your prison sentence will begin.

Live by bull market emotions, die by bear market emotions.

The good news is — There will be no more bull markets and bear markets once we open the internet up to honest posting. We have grown beyond them. And we have our Buy-and-Hold friends, who taught us the value of rooting our strategies in the peer-reviewed academic research, to thank for that.

Hang in there, man.

Rob

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

The “buy and hold mafia” blocks your success at every turn. It sends death threats to your millions of followers to keep them from commenting here, and has gotten away with all this for years. Not one arrest. That is one smart mafia. Yet they can’t stop your daily rants against them. That is one stupid mafia.

I agree with your suggestion that the members of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia are both very smart and very stupid, X Files.

I’ve never met a dumb Buy-and-Holder. They are aces in the I.Q. department. All of them. They possess far more firepower than what is needed to take on the job they have assigned themselves.

So far, so good.

What has tripped them up is that intellectual firepower can be used to reason or to rationalize. How intellectual firepower is employed depends on the human will. If our wills tells us that we don’t want to know the answer to a problem, it is the most intellectually skilled among us who do the best job of persuading themselves that they don’t know the answer.

The Buy-and-Hold Mafia isn’t just destroying the lives of millions of middle-class investors. It is destroying the lives of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia at the same time. The members of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia follow the advice they offer to others; they are not dishonest in that respect.

It’s all very tragic.

And very human.

I look forward to the day when I have the intellectual firepower and determination of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia helping me spread the word about Valuation-Informed Indexing, X Files. I could use some strong and hard-working troops fighting on my side!

Don’t let the bad guys get you down, man.

Rob the General Surrounded on All Fours Sides by “Enemies” Who Want All the Same Things He Wants

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

Really, what do you think you’re accomplishing?

Buy-and-Hold was not always a horrible thing, Goon. It was once a truly wonderful thing. It got us halfway to where we need to be to change stock investing forever in a very, very, very positive way. Our economic future is bright indeed.

There is one problem. Had Robert Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research in 1971 instead of 1981, we would be in the Garden of Paradise today. There never would have been any Buy-and-Hold. The name of the famous book would have been “A Valuation-Informed Walk Down Wall Street.” It didn’t happen that way. Buy-and-Hold, the mistaken and terribly dangerous approach, came first. The research-based approach that works in the real world — Valuation-Informed Indexing — came along a few years later.

The people who work in this field are EXTREMELY proud people. And they are wealthy and powerful and well-connected people. They don’t take to the idea of admitting mistakes. So, for 32 years now, we have been playing a stupid game where “experts” act as if they think Buy-and-Hold might end up working for one or two long-term investors when they know from reading the peer-reviewed academic research in this field that there is precisely zero chance of that happening. They know that Buy-and-Hold has caused an economic crisis every time the Wall Street Con Men have touted it and they know that the stock market affects more lives today than it ever did before (millions of middle-class people now depend on it to finance their retirements). So this economic crisis is going to be far worse than any earlier one. We are looking at a Second Great Depression that will be twice as long and twice as deep as the first one.

Just about everyone in the field knows this on at least some level of consciousness. And of course that means that they want to speak out and get us out of the economic crisis and bring us to the greatest period of economic growth in our history. But everyone in this field also knows something else. Telling the truth about what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research says is a career-ender. Those who don’t want the word getting out will all act in concert to destroy anyone who gets it in his or her head to tell the truth to the millions of middle-class investors who need to hear it. There’s a lot of money to be made in this field. So most go along.

But most have consciences. So they drop lots of hints. Just about everybody drops hints, including those who push Buy-and-Hold the most strongly in their usual public comments. Jack Bogle drops hints that Buy-and-Hold is the biggest pile of smelly garbage he has ever come across. That’s why I was able to learn from Jack why the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies are so off the mark. Scott Burns drops hints. That’s why his first reaction when I told him that the Old School studies get the numbers wrong was to write me an e-mail saying “you’re right, Rob” and to ask me my telephone number so that he could write an article on what I told him. Wade Pfau drops hints. That’s why his reaction when he saw that 140 years of historical data supports Valuation-Informed Indexing and zero supports Buy-and-Hold was to imagine himself getting published in the Journal of Finance and winning the Nobel Prize in Economics. This was the breakthrough he had dreamed about discovering since he was a boy.

Still, all of these people are afraid. They have seen the brutality of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. They know that it does not feel bound by the laws of the United States and is capable of just about anything. They know that a cornered animal is a dangerous animal and that Buy-and-Hold, with 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing that there is precisely zero chance that it could ever work for a single investor, is the most cornered animal there has ever been.

So they rationalize. They drop their little hints. That eases their consciences. But they are careful not to make the Buy-and-Hold Mafia angry. As you Goons would put it, they watch not what they say but how they say it. The Mafia doesn’t like it when people say that Buy-and-Hold doesn’t work. So they don’t say that. They say lot of things that lead inevitably to that conclusion. But they don’t say the words that would mean the end of Buy-and-Hold if they were spoken firmly and clearly and publicly and proudly and without compromise. I do that sort of thing all the time. That’s what makes me different.

What do I hope to accomplish? I hope to give encouragement to those on the verge of telling the truth and bringing on the collapse of this poisonous investing strategy.

I give people numbers. I give people data. I give people calculators. I give people podcasts. I give people research. I give people comments from others in the field. I give people quotes from you Goons. I give people everything they need to understand how the con works and why it is destroying us and how great our future will be together if a few of us work up the courage to use our Constitutionally protected right to speak out honestly on what the Wall Street Con Men have done to our country with their relentless and reckless and ruthless promotion of the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind.

Most of all, I give people an example.

I don’t ever speak in an unbalanced way about the Buy-and-Holders. I don’t deny their great accomplishments. I always note that they are good and smart and hard-working people. So I show people that you don’t need to become a Goon yourself to fight the Goons. A person can defend his country from this most brutal attack on it and maintain his or her dignity while doing so, despite the ugliness and smelliness of the tactics employed on a daily basis by you Goons.

And I show people that those who work up the courage to speak out will not be paying a price for doing so much longer.

I speak honestly all the time re stock investing, no? What price have I paid? I have not been sued by Jack Bogle and his rich, powerful friends. I am not in prison. What power do these people really possess anymore? After the next price crash, they will have no power whatsoever. “Buy-and-Hold” will be a dirty phrase. People will be running from it as fast as their little legs can carry them. They can come here and read the story of someone who began running on the night of August 27, 2002, the night that John Greaney threatened to kill my wife and children if I continued to “cross” him by posting honestly on the SWR matter.

We will rebuild our country, Goon. The Goons lose on the last page. The story is in the process of playing out. There is only one possible way that it can play out, given what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research shows us. So it will play out that way. Our nation will enter the greatest period of economic growth in its history. A group of patriots will take us there. And you Goons will end up serving long prison terms.

And I and the other patriots will retain our humanity until the last day. I will see you carried off to prison, my old friend. But never will I delight in it. Until the last moment, I will work to persuade you to do what you need to do to have your prison sentence shortened a bit.

Why?

Because that’s what the humans do.

We are not just Get Rich Quick savages. We have good within us.

That’s what you forgot when you signed up with Mel Lindauer and John Greaney.

I naturally wish you all good things, my long-term Goon friend.

Rob the Human

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

On what basis do you think there will be Congressional hearings over your disagreements with the Bogleheads? Other types of investors such as the Graham disciples have been able to espouse their views openly and without the sort of harassment that you allege.

NO ONE is speaking with 100 percent honesty on stock investing matters today, Goon. NO ONE.

I even apply that statement to myself. I TRY to say what I truly believe. I try very hard. But I know from experience that I do not always manage to pull it off.

We ALL are affected by what our peers say about us. And the Buy-and-Holders are so vicious and ruthless in their hateful comments about those who recommend research-based strategies that there is not one person alive today who has demonstrated a willingness to take them on.

That includes Robert Shiller, the Yale Economics Professor who published the research discrediting the Buy-and-Hold strategy 32 YEARS AGO. Shiller pulls his punches ALL THE TIME.

I am the person who discovered the errors in the Old School SWR studies over 11 years ago. That was one of the most important discoveries in the history of personal finance. Millions of middle-class retirements are at stake. NOT ONE OF THE DISCREDITED STUDIES HAS BEEN CORRECTED to this day.

Academic Researcher Wade Pfau worked with me for 16 months to correct this problem. He saw the need for the studies to be corrected. He wrote to the authors of one of the studies. The response of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia was to threaten to get Wade fired from his job. NO ACADEMIC RESEARCHER SHOULD EVER BE INTIMIDATED IN THAT WAY. We are talking about the biggest case of financial fraud in the history of the United States.

My job is to see to it that as few people as possible go to prison. The key to that task is getting some of the leading figures in this field (people like my good friend Jack Bogle) to come clean. When Bogle speaks out about the 11-year cover-up of the errors in the retirement studies, it is all over. The next day, we will see articles in every major newspaper letting people know that informed people in this field have known for YEARS now that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage.

But Bogle is very afraid to speak out. He worries that, if he does tell the truth, the same sort of tactics that were used against Wade Pfau will be used against him. We are in a Catch-22. We are ALL afraid to post honestly. But we will all remain afraid to post honestly only so long as we all remain afraid to post honestly. Once a small number of us work up the courage to tell the truth about what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research says, NONE OF US WILL BE AFRAID ANY LONGER. Because we all will see that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia cannot do a thing to a group. Their power to intimidate us comes to an end when a group of us vow to stick together and protect each other when the Buy-and-Holders attack us.

The Graham disciples don’t think that death threats are appropriate in discussions of stock investing. They don’t think that board bannings not justified by the published rules of the investing sites are appropriate. They don’t think that tens of thousands of acts of defamation are appropriate. They don’t think that threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs are appropriate.

Do you hear the Graham disciples speaking out on those important issues?

Neither do I.

The Graham disciples are afraid to take on the Buy-and-Hold Mafia and all its power and wealth and connections.

All of us are.

But we cannot bring the economic crisis to an end without working up the courage to do so.

Please do all you can to help us all work up the courage.

Take care, my old (Goon) friend.

Rob, the Graham Disciple

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

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

Isn’t that what you are trying to do here? How’s that working out for you?

It’s certainly what I am trying to do, Pink.

I have not succeeded in building the community I want to see in place as of this moment in time.

Thanks to you Goons! And your pals in The Buy-and-Hold Mafia!

The investing advice that “works” for those giving investing advice is the opposite of the investing advice that works for those hearing the investing advice. Those giving advice receive a short-term financial benefit from going with a pure Get Rich Quick approach. We all are drawn to GRQ approaches and the appeal is intensely emotional. All salesmen know that the way to make a sale is to form an emotional connection with the sucker — er, the customer!

The problem with Get Rich Quick is that, while it feels wonderful in the short term, it wipes you out in the long run. What works for the salesmen doesn’t work AT ALL for the customers. That’s why today’s investing advice is so poor. That’s why we are in an economic crisis today.

The answer is to get the case for the true research-based approach (Valuation-Informed Indexing) well-known enough that anyone who calls himself an “expert” would be ashamed to be seen promoting Buy-and-Hold “strategies.” The peer-reviewed academic research has shown for 32 years now that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor. The trouble is — most people do not know this! And the Buy-and-Hold Mafia very, very much wants to keep it that way! The Buy-and-Hold Mafia is on the hook for trillions in legal liabilities once people learn what has been done to them.

My job is to get the word out.

Today, we have a Catch-22. People are afraid to tell the truth about stock investing because the Buy-and-Hold Mafia will destroy them if they do. But the thing that gives the Buy-and-Hold Mafia the power to destroy them is that very few know the realities. If people knew what the research said, those who engaged in the tactics engaged in by the Buy-and-Hold Mafia (death threats, board bannings, tens of thousands of acts of defamation, threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs) would be put in prison for these acts of financial fraud. But not enough know today to make an effective stand. And those who do know are destroyed if they speak up because they don’t have enough others speaking up for them.

So, yes, we need a community where people openly speak the truth about what the academic research says without fear of what the Buy-and-Hold Mafia will do to them. Once we have a community, there’s not a thing the Mafia can do. They will have to flip themselves and start giving research-based advice. Which of course is exactly what deep in their hearts they very much want to do! So everyone wins once that community is in place. It’s a win/win/win/win/win.

The hard part is — How do we get the darn bell on the cat?

We need some people with influence speaking up. That’s it. Once we get an article on the front page of the New York Times, it’s over. We all win! Or once Bogle gives his “I Was Wrong” speech. Or whatever. It all comes to the same thing.

I am sending 50 e-mails each day letting people in various fields (economists, academics, policymakers, bloggers, investing professionals, journalists, etc) know about the threats that were made by the Lindauerheads and the Greaney Goons to get my buddy Wade Pfau fired from his job because he published honest research in this field. Once that story gets big play, it’s over. The economic crisis comes to an end. We enter the strongest period of economic growth in our history. We all are working together to develop the first true research-based model and to mine more and more powerful insights from it.

I want a big, honest community here. Just as I wanted a big, honest community at Motley Fool. JUst as I wanted a big, honest community at Early Retirement Forum. Just as I wanted a big honest community at Bogleheads. And on and on. That’s been the idea going back to the first day.

It needs to be a community that is not controlled by the Wall Street Con Men. So long as what we all say is controlled by the Wall Street Con Men, our communities are negative forces rather than positive ones. The Bogleheads Forum today is encouraging Buy-and-Hold rather than warning people of its dangers. We obviously don’t need any more of that.

So, yes, I am trying to build a community here, and yes, it has been a very, very, very, very hard thing to pull off.

You know what?

It’s worth it.

When the community is in place, we will all be able to live richer lives than we ever dreamed of being able to live before.

That includes you Goons.

And that includes all of my good friends in the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. People like Jack Bogle. And Bill Bernstein. And Scott Burns. And Larry Swedroe. And on and on and on.

All of those people got into this field because they wanted to help people. They wanted to do good and honest work. They cannot do it today. After I get this community off the ground (and after they serve whatever prison sentences we as a society determine are appropriate), they will be able to do it.

It’s good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. It’s not even possible for the rational human mind to imagine any possible downside.

So, yes, that is the goal.

Do I wish it were an easier goal to pull off?

I sure do. You got me re that one.

But what’s the alternative?

Engage in financial fraud myself? Huh?

I wish you all the good things that this life has to offer a person, Pink.

Rob the Community Builder