The Old Ideas on Saving & Investing Don't Work -- Here's What Does
"Valuation-Informed Indexing Is the Same Song We Sing. Glad You Belong to the Same Choir We Do."
"Retirees Now Frequently Base Their Retirement Decisions on the Portfolio Success Rates Found in Research Such as the Trinity Study.... This Is Not the Information They Need for Making Their Withdrawal Rate Decisions."
"The P/E10 Tool Could Drastically Change
How the Entire Investment Industry
Operates and Measures Risk."
"The Your Money or Your Life Book
for a New Generation."
"A Newer School of Thought Believes That the Safe Withdrawal Rate Depends on How Stocks Are Priced at the Time You Begin Making Withdrawals."
"A Fascinating Retirement Calculator."
"The Evidence is Pretty Incontrovertible. Valuation-Informed Indexing...Is Everywhere Superior to Buy-and-Hold Over Ten-Year Periods."
"Every Detail Shows Rob's Respect
for His Information and His Reader."
"You’ve Accomplished Something Radical
With Your Idea of Passion Saving."
"Big Moves Out of Stocks Should Not Be Done at All. But Strategic Asset Allocation Can Be Done At Very Rare Times, Maybe Six Times in an Investor’s Lifetime, Three Times When the Market Is Stupidly High and Three Times When Stupidly Low."
"Valuation-Informed Investing and Passive Investing
Share More of a Common Ancestry
Than It Might Appear at First."
"It Is Great to See a Finance Journalist Who Understands That Valuations Matter. Efficient Market Zealotry Is Rampant in the Journalism Community. I Just Love Your Valuation-Based Return Calculator."
"There Is Always An Unlimited Supply of Complainers Against Any Good Idea."
"Rob: This Has Been One of the Most Insightful and Helpful Comments I Think Anyone Has Ever Posted. Thank You for This Lesson and for Sharing Your Knowledge on This Subject!"
"There Is An Extensive Literature About the Predictability of Long-Term Stock Returns. There Is an Extensive Literature About Short-Term Market Timing. My Question Is About Long-Term Market Timing. The Literature Seems Slim."
"Your Ideas Are Sound."
"For Years, the Investment Industry Has
Tried to Scare Clients Into Staying Fully Invested
in the Stock Market at All Times, No Matter
How High Stocks Go. It's Hooey.
They're Leaving Out More Than Half the Story."
"There Are Time-Periods Where Stocks Are a Terrible Addition to That Portfolio. Yet Inexplicably, We As Planners STILL tend to Suggest That It Is 'Risky' to Not Own Stocks When in Reality the Only Risk Is to Our Business."
"Valuation-Informed Indexing Provides More Wealth for 102 of 110 of the Rolling 30-Year Time-Periods While Buy-and-Hold Did Better in Eight of the Periods."
"There Is a Growing Behavioral Economics Movement, But It So Far Has Had Limited Impact. Economists Are Not Fond of the Softness and Imprecision of Psychology. These Notions Are Considered Vaguely Unprofessional and Flaky."
"I Would Occasionally Get a Response Post
Saying I Was 'the Best Since Rob Bennett
Challenged Us to Think.'"
"This [The Stock-Return Predictor]
Is a Very Handy Little Tool."
"A Much Simpler Way to Bring
the Valuation Issue to Focus."
(Referring to The Stock-Return Predictor)
"It's Informative, It's Based on Solid Data and It Provides Useful Results." (Referring to The Stock-Return Predictor)
"Meet Three Couples Who Left the Corporate World to Do the Kinds of Work That Satisfied Them."
"A Very Solid Approach to Investing."
"Rob Bennett Has Been on a Tear With One Outstanding RobCast After Another."
"It’s Time for a Different Way to Look at Investing, and Rob Is Onto Something Here."
"My Afternoon Train Reading."
(Referring to Rob's Article titled
Why Buy-and-Hold Investing Can Never Work)
"What Is It With Guys Named Rob?
Longtime Index Agitator Rob Arnott Has Now
Been Joined on These Pages by a
Vanguard Diehard Agitator Named Rob Bennett."
"He Offers a Fresh New Perspective
that Will Motivate You to Get on Track
With a Solid Savings Plan."
"While Browsing at www.PassionSaving.com the Other Day, I Discovered an Article Featuring Ten Unconventional Money-Saving Tips. Each of These Offers a New Way to See Money."
"Rob Has Ideas About Investing That Many Bloggers Find 'Interesting.' His Posts Are Often Controversial and Always Thought Provoking."
"Is There a Way to Turn Saving Into Something Fun? If There Was, I Bet a Lot More of Us Would Do a Lot More Saving. I Found a Website Where This Basic Premise Is Explored in Great Depth."
"I Have Much More Confidence in My Ability to Understand What Is Happening....I Thank You for Your Public Service, and, In Another Dimension, for the Personal Courage It Took to Make It Happen."
"I Was Hooked on the Idea of [Passive] Index Indexing, But Something Inside Made Me Wonder "Too Good to Be True?" and "What's the Downside?" I Happened on to Your Site and Valuation-Informed Indexing Seems to Make Sense."
"Reads Like a Casual Conversation
with a Likable Guy Who Wants Nothing More
Than to Help Others Experience the Same Joy
and Happiness He Has Found."
"Your 'Secrets' Are Exactly Like Magic Tricks: Once Revealed, They Look So Simple, Yet You Need Somebody to Show You How It Works."
"Rob's Da Man! Never in the History of the Diehards Forum Has One Poster, Always Making Civil and Well Thought-Out Posts, Managed to Irritate So Many Without Anyone Being Able to Articulate a Good Reason As to Why."
"I’ve Been Surprised at How Controversial This Idea Is, but If Most People Are Buying and Holding, They Are Emotionally Invested in This Strategy."
"The Findings for [Long-Term] Market Timing Are So Robust That It Hardly Matters How We Do It."
"The Elegant Simplicity of His Ideas Throughout Warms the Heart and Startles the Brain."
"Mr. Bennett Evidences an Unusual Skill....
You'll Have to Buy a Copy....Extraordinary....
A Massive Heap of Crap."
"By Reading All the Information on Your Website I Was Able to Develop a Part of Me I Didn't Know I Would Be Able to Become."
"Innovative Financial Thinking."
"Knowledgeable."
""He Offers Down-to-Earth But
Nevertheless Eye-Opening Insights About
the Why and the How of Early Retirement."
"Challenges Unfounded Assumptions."
"It’s Always Good to Read Something New That Challenges Your Way of Thinking."
"Rob, Thanks for All of Your Articulate, Well-Written and Well-Reasoned Commentary."
"Although Rob and I Don’t See Eye to Eye
on Every Detail, His Site Is a
Valuable Resource for Research."
"Thanks, Rob. I Love Seeing So Many
Personal Finance Bloggers Who Offer Such
High Quality Content on Their Own Sites Come Here
to Weigh In [on Your Ideas]."
"A Ton of Tremendously Useful Content."
"Your Enthusiasm Is Infectious."
"I Woke Up at 4:00 am and Stared at the Wall for 20 Minutes....Thank You for Doing What You Do."
"It Might Just Give You
a New Way of Looking at Saving."
"'Staying Too Long in a Job Where You Don’t Feel Relevant Takes a Toll,' Said Rob Bennett, Who Worked for Years in a Well-Paying Corporate Communications Job Where He Didn’t Have Enough to Do."
"You Have Started One of the Most Interesting
and Stimulating Discussions This Board has Seen
in a Long Time."
"A Respected Author and Commentator, Mr. Bennett has Dedicated Himself to Educating Average Investors to Avoid the Most Common Errors."
"I've Gone from Shattered Dreams of Early Retirement to Glimpses of Hope to Reassurance from Quantitative Research."
"Some of the Most Helpful and Insightful Market Discussions on the Web Take Place on These Pages."
"Rob is the Only Person I Know (If Only via Message Board) Who has Completely Opted Out of Participation in the Stock Bubble. And You Know What? He Has Benefited Immensely from Doing So."
"Makes the Subject of Saving Edgy and Fresh."
"Rob Bennett, the Author of a Book Called Passion Saving, Thinks the Saving Problem Is Partly One of Packaging. So He Prefers to Couch it in the Language of Freedom."
"I LOVE This Article and
Am Proud to be Publishing It!"
"Rob Bennett: Some People Disagree With Him, and He Rubs a Lot of People the Wrong Way. But He Has Interesting Ideas About Valuation-Informed Indexing, and He Delves Into a Lot of What Makes a Successful Investing Strategy."
"Rob….Wow…..Your Response Sent Shivers
Up the Ol’ Pilgrim Spine."
"I Have Counseled My Clients to Allocate a Percentage to Equities Based Upon Market Valuations....I Feel Like I've Found a Kindred Spirit. Fascinating Web Site."
“A Simple Age-Based Asset Allocation Formula Is Not Appropriate, and Any Sensible Asset-Allocation Formula Should Combine Both Age/Investment Horizon and Market Valuation Levels.”
"Had a Guest Post This Week from Rob Bennett, Where He Discusses the Benefits of Value-Informed Indexing, Which I Find Very Intriguing."
"I Can Appreciate Rob's Comments.... Buy-and-Hold?
For the Most Part, a Long Obsolete Theory."
"Utterly Brilliant!"
"Your Website Is So Enjoyable That It Is Keeping Me From My Research As I Am So Excited That I Have Found Such a Valuable Resource."
"What We're Talking About Here Really
...Is Empowerment."
"The Return Predictor Is Based upon the Principle that Over the Long Term, Stock Market Prices Will Reflect the Ten-Years Earnings Growth of the Underlying Companies. Prices Return to a Common Growth Pattern."
"Rob’s Arguments in Favor of Value Investing Actually Make a Lot of Sense In a Way That Should Make Any Rational Buy-and-Holder Uncomfortable."
"What I Don't Understand Is How Rob Can Correspond in Such a Sweet and Polite Way
-- Yet He Irritates Me to No End!"
"You Go About It in a Manner that is Catastrophically Unproductive by Adding Missionary Zeal that Inflates Your Importance and Demeans Others. The Whole Idea That There is a New School of Safe Withdrawal Rates Reeks of Personal Aggrandizement."
"Inflammatory."
“What Warren Buffett Did Was Essentially Quite Close to What Rob Bennett Has Written. Buffett Has in Fact Been Cleverly Incorporating Long-Term Market Timing Based on Valuation of the Market in His Allocation of Money to Stocks.”
"This Report Offers A Fresh Perspective That Is Rarely Found In Other Financial Literature."
"Rob Bennett Says That Market Timing Based on Aggregate P/E Ratios Can Be a Far More Effective Strategy. This Claim Is Consistent With Shiller's Analysis and I Can See How It Might Be So."
"Retiring Early Was A Concept I Did Not Entertain. I Was Going to Retire at 65 After Putting in 40 Years. Now I Am Glad To Say That All That Has Changed."
"In a Couple of Days, I Had
Devoured the Entire Book."
"FIRECalc May Not Be the Last Word
on Safe Withdrawal Rates."
"It Seems to Me That Some on This Board Feel Threatened by the Arrival of Rob and His Ideas. They Feel a Threat to Their Perceived Elite Status."
"You've Got to Say One Thing for Rob. He Has NEVER Lowered Himself to Ad Hominen Attacks -- Subliminal or Otherwise -- on Any Other Person on This Board. Not Once. Ever. At Least Give Him Credit for That."
"I Have Never Seen Rob Show Incivility. No Matter What. Truly Amazing. Either He Is Really the Output of an Artificial Intelligence Program, or the Man's on the Way to Becoming a Saint!"
"You're the Politest Guy on the Internet.
Such a Soft Touch!"
"Props for Keeping Your Cool in the Married with Debt Article. Best of Luck Combating Buy-and-Hold."
"I Caught Up [at the Financial Bloggers Conference] With a Fairly Controversial Financial Blogger
Named Rob Bennett, Who Struck Me As the
Nicest Guy Around. There -- I Said It!"
"In Rob Bennett's Case, He Was Banned for No Known Listed Forum Policy. Except His Viewpoint Was Different From Other Bogleheads and [He Was Perceived As] a Threat."
"Mr. Bennett, You Are Spot on About Integrating Some Type of Valuation Filter to One's Stock Allocation. Astute Investors Have Incorporated Some Type of 'Valuation Timing' Into Their Investment Decisions Since the Beginning of Time."
"His Insights Into What Is Really Going On In The Stock Market Are Quite Compelling."
"It Was an Epiphany...Valuation-Informed Indexing Beats Buy-and-Hold Over Most Long-Term Holding Periods at Much Lower Volatility."
"I Am Intrigued By Your Ideas."
"I Read the Book and I Loved It.
The Philosophy Resonated with Me.
I Am a Believer in Your Concept."
"If Your Investment Ideas Can Do for Investing
What Weston Price’s Ideas Did for Food,
You’ve Got Our Attention."
"I Have Looked at His Website and Reviewed His Research and Find It Both Compelling and Completely Logical and Common-Sense-Based."
"If Investors Paid More Attention to Valuations, We Would Have Fewer Boom-and-Bust Cycles. The Investing Institutions Are Definitely Going to Avoid It Because It Affects Their Income."
"The Calculators on Your Site Are Great Resources. It Amazes Me How So Many People Can Say 'Valuations Matter' Yet, in the Next Breath, They'll Say That We Should Ignore Valuations."
"Must Read As Per My Viewpoint
For All Value Seekers."
"His Approach Is Both Mathematically Rigorous
and Easy to Understand."
"Difficult Subjects Can Be Explained to the Most Slow-Witted Man If He Has Not Formed Any Idea of Them. But the Simplest Thing Cannot Be Made Clear to the Most Intelligent Man If He Believes He Knows Already What Is Laid Before Him."
"I Am Not Afraid. I Was Born to Do This."
"I Certainly Have Seen the Academic Profession Squelching Unfashionable ideas and Have Often Been on the Wrong Side of It. Kuhn Shows How Most Pathbreaking Scientific Ideas Are Rejected at First, Usually for Decades.”
"First They Ignore You, Then They Ridicule You, Then They Fight You, Then You Win."
"We Cannot Assume the Existence of Predictability Just Because There Are No Studies That Fully Reject It."
"I Am Also Extremely Grateful to Rob Bennett for Motivating This Topic and Contributing His Experience and Encouragement."
"Rob Bennett Was an Early Pioneer in 3rd Generation Modeling by Advocating (Through Various Online Forums) that Withdrawal Rates Must Be Adjusted for Market Valuations Consistent with Research by Campbell and Shiller."
"I Am Fascinated by the Growing Body of Research that Revolves Around the P/E10 Ratio by Robert Shiller, Doug Short, Wade Pfau, Michael Kitces, John Hussman, Crestmont Research, Jim Otar, Mike Philbrick, Adam Butler & Rob Bennett."
"Rob Is an Enigma in the Personal Finance World. He Has Interesting Theories on Investing Based on Market Valuations. But He Weaves a Tale Which Makes the Stories of Alexander Litvinenko & Gareth Williams Seem Tame by Comparison."
"In Recent Years, the 4 Percent Rule
Has Been Thrown Into Doubt."
"A Safe Withdrawal Rate Is Very Dependent
on the Valuation of the Stockmarket
at the Retirement Date."
"I Have Read Everything I Can About Valuation-Informed Indexing. Buy-and-Hold Is Extremely Problematic. I Respect the Passion, Hard Work and Research That You Have Put Into This Very Important Issue. Your Work Has Huge Value."
"The World of Personal Finance Blogging Needs More Rob Bennetts. He’s Passionate. He’s Intelligent. He’s Writing Things That Go Against the Grain."
"Beyond Awesome."
"The Wealth Management Industry Seems Intent on Containing This Discussion for Fear Clients Might Discover that the Emperor Has No Clothes."
"Recommended Reading."
“All Who Are Still Holding Equities at Present Levels Because Their Financial Adviser Insists that Timing Market Cycles Is Impossible to Do -- Read This!"
"The Fact that Aggressive and Short-Term Market Timing Was Unproductive Did Not Mean That There Were Never Times When It Would Be Wealth-Maximizing to Get Out of the Market."
"The Amount of Return You Can Expect From a Diversified Equity Portfolio Is Inversely Correlated to the Market Valuation at the Start of the Holding Period. It Is One of the Most Robust Statistical Relationships in Modern Finance."
"Why Would Your Job Be Jeopardized
By Such a Sensible Claim?"
"Received Worrisome E-Mail from Rob Bennett. Warns of Risk with Buy-and-Hold Investing
-- I Have No Clue."
"As Attorney, Tax Expert and Financial Writer Rob Bennett Told Us, the Problem Is That, By the Time Shiller Published His Research, Many Big Names Had Already Endorsed Buy-and-Hold."
"This Seems to Me to Be a Fundamental Challenge to Some of the Most Basic Tenets of the Boglehead Paradigm."
"You Want to be Very, Very Wary of Anything Connected with Rob Bennett, the Most Infamous Troll in the History of Investing Forums on the Internet."
“I’ve Had My Fill of Those Long-Winded Posts that Include Distortions, Unsubstantiated Claims, Misquotes and Comments Taken Out of Context.”
"Haven't You Noticed Yet That NO ONE Discusses Your Ideas, NO ONE Mentions Your Name, NO ONE Goes To Your Web Site."
"I've Had Similar Experiences. I Know of Two Young Professors Who Wanted to Do Research on Fundamental Index and Reported to Me That Their Colleagues Advised Them That This Line of Research Could Derail Their Career Prospects."
"As with Drug Studies Funded by Drug Companies, It Would Be Churlish to Suppose that the Chicago School of Business Was in the Bag. But It Would Also Be Idealistic to Assume That There Was No Funding Bias at All."
"This Sort of Intimidation Is Not Acceptable. The Cigarette and Pharmaceutical Industries Found Research Supporting Their Products By Funding It. But That Was Big Money Supporting Outcomes, Not Dissuading Others."
"Financial Economists Gave Little Warning to the Public About the Fragility of Their Models. There Is No Ethical Code for Professional Economic Scientists. There Should Be One."
"The Situation [Referring to the Intimidation Tactics Used to Silence Academic Researcher Wade Pfau's Reporting of the Dangers of Buy-and-Hold Investing Strategies] Seems Well Below Any Professional and Academic Acceptable Standards."
Many Academics Can Become Quite Strident When Their Views Are Challenged. Academia Is Often Subject to Self-Serving Bias That Obliterates Ethical Bounds."
"I Don't Like Too Much the Conspiracy Idea. I Am Not Pressured By Anyone in My Research."
"This Is What Investing Should Be -- Calculated, Deliberate, Confident, Informed and Simple."
"It Is Obvious that Rob, in Attempting to Identify New Safe Withdrawal Rate Strategies...Is Goring Your Ox. If Rob Improves on [the] Safe Withdrawal Rate Methodology, the Implication Is Clear: You Are All, Metaphorically, Out of Business."
"I Applaud His Effort to Inject Another Piece of Objectivity Into a Very Complex, Highly Subjective Topic -- Making Money in the Market."
"Naturally, I Am Finding That Valuation-Informed Indexing Can Allow You to Reach a Wealth Target With a Lower Saving Rate and to Use a Higher Withdrawal Rate in Retirement Than You Could With a Fixed Allocation."
"A Careful Examination of Past Returns Can Establish Some Probabilities About the Prospective Parameters of Return, Offering Intelligent Investors a Basis for Rational Expectations About Future Returns."
"The Ability to Estimate the Long-Term Future Returns of the Major Asset Classes Is Perhaps the Most Important Investment Skill That An Indivisual Can Possess."
"The Stock Market Resembles Roulette. In Both Cases, the Accuracy of Sensible Forecasts Rises Over Time."
"Returns Are for the Most Part a Matter of Simple Arithmetic...Much of Our Industry Seems Fearful of Basic Arithmetic of This Sort."
"How Can It Be That One-Year Returns Are So Apparantly Random and Yet Ten-Year Returns Are Mostly Forecastable? In Looking at One-Year Returns, One Sees a Lot of Noise. But Over Longer Time Intervals the Noise Effectively Averages Out and Is Less Important."
"The Notion That Rich Valuations Will Not Be Followed By Sub-Par Long-Term Returns Is a Speculative Idea That Runs Counter to All Historical Evidence. It Is an Iron Law of Finance That Valuations Drive Long-Term Returns."
"It's January and the Temperature Is Below Freezing. If You Asked Me Whether It Will be Warmer or Cooler Next Tuesday, I Would Be Unable to Say. However, If You Asked Me What Temperature to Expect on April 9, I Could Predict "Warmer Than Today" and Almost Surely Be Right."
"If the Response Is "Who Knew?", It Won't Be Much Comfort for Retirees in the Employment Line at Wal-Mart. This is Especially True Since a Rational Understanding of History and the Drivers of Longer-Term Stock Returns Can Help Retirees To Avoid That Surprise."
"New of the Demise of the Random Walk Has Only Very Slowly Spread, In Part Because Its Overthrow Came as a Shock. If the Random Walk Hypothesis Were Correct, the Most Likely Return Would Be the Historic Average Return. The Evidence, However, Is Strongly Against This."
"I Don't Think We Can Debate the Merits of This Type of Forecasting [Referring to the Numbers Generated by The Stock-Return Predictor] Unless We Believe 'This Time It's Different.'"
"I've Seen Absolutely Nothing From You That I Can Use in a Tangible Fashion to Formulate an Investment Plan. Your Ideas Are So Mushy That It's a Complete Waste of Time to Even Consider Them."
"Do You Really Think Your Tool
[The Stock-Return Predictor]
Is 'Wiser' Than the Market?
If It Was That Easy,
Everybody Would Be Doing It."
"The Expected Return of Stocks [As Reported By The Stock-Return Predictor] Needs To Be At Least the Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) Rate for Stock Investing To Make Sense."
"I Have Used Valuations to Adjust My Asset Allocation For Many Years With Very Favorable Results."
"I Don't Care If You Do or Don't Believe That the Market Will Behave Similarly in the Future As It Has in the Past. Either Way, This [The Stock-Return Predictor] Is an Excellent Way to Understand What the Market Has Done In the Past."
"My Role Is To Give People Who Don't Like What the Historical Stock-Return Data Says About the Effect of Valuations on Long-Term Returns Somebody To Yell At On Internet Discussion Boards."
"It Really Is a Shame and Indefensible That So Many Feel the Need to Jump Into It With No Interest of Posting on the Topic But Just to Disrupt. Are You That Insecure? Some on the Forum Have an Interest in This Topic. If You Don't, Stay Out!"
"Irrational Behavior Does Follow Patterns. But How Many Experts in Behavioral Finance Believe That Such Knowledge Can Be Used to Predict Markets? Basically, None. Your Model Cannot Attain the Level of Predictive Value You Claim."
"The Safe Withdrawal Rate Studies Are Based on History. This [The Retirement Risk Evaluator] Shows, Based on the Same History, What the Probabilities Are for the Future at Various Starting Points. If the First Has Value, Then Surely This Does Too."
"There Are Hundreds of People Who Contributed to This. This Calculator [The Stock-Return Predictor] Demonstrates in a Compelling Way the Power of This New Internet Discussion-Board Communications Medium."
"A P/E10 of'26' Is Bad. Now Look at the 30-Year Return Predicted by the Calculator -- 5.4 Percent Real. That's Not Bad. There Are All Sorts of Strategic Implications That Follow From Understanding That Stocks Provide Different Sorts of Returns Over Different Sorts of Time-Periods."
"I Would Never Invest in Anything Without Having Any Idea What the Expected Return Is. For Instance, I Would Not Walk Into a Bank And Say "I'll Take One Certificate of Deposit, Please" WIthout Asking What Rate They Are Offering."
"I've Seen Things Said on Investing Boards That I Have Never Heard Said in Discussions of Any Non-Investing Topic. The Question of Whether Valuations Affect Long-Term Returns Is a Topic That Causes People More Emotional Angst Than Does Abortion or Impeachment Proceedings or the War in Iraq."
"It's Not Possible For Those Who Have Come to Believe That Stocks Are Always Best to Accept that Valuations Matter. The Two Beliefs Are Mutually Exclusive. If Valuations Matter, There Is Obviously Some Valuation Level At Which Stocks Are Not Best. The Two Paradigms Cannot Be Reconciled."
"The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Is Over. Rob Bennett Has Won.The Technical Evidence Supporting This Assertion Is Rock Solid."
"I Am Afraid that the Emperor SWR [for "Safe Withdrawal Rate"] Has No Clothes."
"I Cite You and John Walter Russell in My Paper as the Earliest and Strongest Advocates of This Approach [New School Safe Withdrawal Rate Research]."
"Dear Rob -- I Just Became Aware of Your Past Research in September. Since Then, I've Read Archives From Many Discussion Boards and Websites, and I Always Find Your Writing to Be Very Interesting and Intriguing."
"I Think Rob Bennett Did Provide An Important Contribution in Terms of Describing a Way for P/E10 to Guide Asset Allocation for Long-Term Conservative Investors. I Also Think He Was Right on the Issue of Safe Withdrawal Rates."
"What Studies Show This [That Long-Term Timing Doesn't Work]? In Particular, Are There Some Academic Studies That I Haven't Found Yet? That's All I Want to Know."
"Because the Precise Timing of This Mean Reversion Is Not Known in Advance, Expecting the Result to Happen in the Short-Term Will Not Be Possible. But Long-Term Investors Who Can Be Patient Can Wait for This Mean Reversion and Will Eventually Come Out Ahead."
"Your Work Is at Odds with the Ethos of the Board -- Here the Theme is John Bogle's Philosophy, Which Eschews Market Timing. This Board Came Into Existence to ESCAPE One Individual, the Very Individual With Whom You Have Openly Aligned Yourself."
"The Problem With Long-Term Market Timing Is That It Takes Too Long to Find Out If You Are Right or Wrong."
"Why Is It Such an Odious Violation of the Tenets of Bogleheadism to Explore Whether Someone Who Has Enough Patience Might Be Able to Benefit from the Transitory Nature of Speculative Returns (the Idea That the P/E Ratio Eventually Ends Up Where It Started)?"
"Let Me Explain Why I Posted About This Here. Valuation-Informed Indexing Has Had Critics for Years. But Until Norbert Did It In 2008, Nobody Seemed to Have Provided a Serious Investigation of It. I Couldn't Understand Why. That Bothered Me."
"If You Really Don't Like Market Timing in Any and All Forms, You May Not See Any Point in an Empirical Investigation. You View Me as One of a Long Line of Hucksters Trying to Sell You Some Snake Oil. I Don't Want to Be Such a Person."
"Having a Completely Ineleastic Demand for Equities Is a Bit Bonkers. No One Acts That Way with Life's Other Important Commodities. Campbell Advocates a Linear Valuations-Based Strategy so That You Wouldn't Be Making Big Changes. This Would Be Like Rebalancing But More Flexible."
"The Whole Idea of Valuation-Informed Indexing Belongs to You. Do You Mind if I call the Paper 'Valuation-Informed Indexing'? I Would Give You Credit. I Have Been Toying With the Idea of Sending the Paper to the Journal of Finance, Which Is the Most Prestigious Journal in Academic Finance."
"I Definitely Need to Cite You as the Founder of Valuation-Informed Indexing, As I Have Not Found Anyone Else Who Can Lay Claim to That. Shiller Pointed Out the Predictive Power of P/E10 But Never Discussed How to Incorporate It Into Asset Allocation, As Far As I Know."
"I Tested a Wide Variety of Assumptions About Asset Allocation, Valuation-Based Decision Rules, Whether the Period Is 10, 20, 30 or 40 Years, and Lump-Sum vs. Dollar-Cost Averaging To Show That the Results Are Quite Robust to Changes In Any of These Assumptions."
"Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing Works!"
"I Wrote Up the Programs to Test Your Valuation-Informed Indexing Strategies Against Buy-and-Hold and I Am Quite Excited. You Say in the RobCast That VII Should Beat Buy-and-Hold About 90 Percent of the Time. I Am Getting Results That Support This."
"Never Underestimate the Power of a Dominant Academic Idea to Choke Off Competing Ideas, and Never Underestimate the Unwillingness of Academics to Change Their Views in the Face of Evidence. They Have Decades of Their Research and Academic Standing to Defend."
"There's So Much That's False and Nutty
in Modern Investing Practice."
"Following Conventional Wisdom Has Led a Generation of Investors Down the Road to Ruin."
"It Is Sad That the Idea That Price Doesn't Matter...Should Ever Have Been Seriously Considered".
"The Conventional Wisdom of Modern Investing Is Largely Myth and Urban Legend."
"Economics Is a Dog's Breakfast of Theoretical Ideas and Alleged Causal Relationships That Are At All Times Unproven and In Dispute."
"Since They Did Not Diagnose the Disease, There Is Little Popular Confidence That They Know the Cure. What If Economics Is, Actually, At the Same Level as Medicine Was When Doctors Still Believed in the Application of Leeches?"
"One of the Most Remarkable Errors
in the History of Economics."
"Everything Has Fallen Apart."
"We Wonder Why Funds and Banks, Full of the Best and Brightest, Have Made Such a Mess of Things. Part of the Reason Is That We Have Taught Economic Nonsense to Two Generations of Students."
"Perhaps Most Scandalously, the Theory [Behind Buy-and-Hold] Remained Received Wisdom Long After Empirical and Theoretical Arguments Had Demolished It Within the Academic Community."
"I Love the Humans Dearly (the Title of the Book I Am Writing Is Investing for Humans: How to Get What Works on Paper to Work in Real Life) But They Can Be a Trial at Times. Hey! Helping the Humans Learn What It Takes to Invest Effectively Is Not All That Different From Being Married!
"We Are Going to See Hearts Melt Following the Next Crash. I Will Be Working Side-By-Side With All of My Many Buy-and-Hold Friends to Rebuild Our Broken Economy."
"Wow, I Did Not Realize You Had Achieved This Much Success and Had Many Devoted Believers/Followers. That’s Great, Then Ignore the Opposition. It Is Great to Have Opposition: That Means You Are Doing Something Right."
"I Do NOT Believe I Know It All. I Believe That Shiller Discovered Something Very Important and It Appalls Me That More People Are Not Exploring the Implications of His Findings. My Aim Is To Launch a National Debate."
"I Can See How Many Readers Would Be Put Off by the Somewhat Sensational/Scandalist Tone and Would Not Persevere to Read, Thinking You Are Losing Your Mind."
"I LOVE Everything About Buy-and-Hold Other Than the Failure to Encourage Investors to Take Price Into Consideration When Setting Their Stock Allocations. That's a Mistake That Was Made Because Shiller’s Research Was Not Available at the Time The Strategy Was Being Developed."
"Valuation-Informed Indexing Sounds Like a Real Thing. If It Is and I Can Thoroughly Understand It, Then It Will End Up In My Classrooms and in My Students' Minds (Of Course, With References to You and Wade)."
"I Can Confirm Wade Pfau's Experience. Whenever I Send My Papers to the Financial Analysts Journal or Similar Traditional Journals, I Get Rejected."
"As a Fan of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, I Know That Progress Can Be Frustratingly Slow and What Is Typically Needed Is Either a Crisis or the Ascent of a New Generation of Scientists Who Did Not Build Their Careers on the Old Models and Theories."
"We Trace the Deeper Roots [of the Financial Crisis] to the Economics' Profession's Insistence on Constructing Models That, By Design, Disregard the Key Elements Driving Outcomes in Real World Markets."
"Rob Gets Himself So Worked Up Over What Someone Else Is Doing With Their Own Money and Not Bothering Rob in the Least. As Long As They Aren't Knocking on Your Basement Door, What Do You Care? They Are Happy and Content. Leave Well Enough Alone and Focus on Your Own Account."
"I've Been on Forum Since the BBS Days and I Think Rob is Special. He Could Be an Internet Meme If He Put Some Effort Into It. Someday, He Will Realize That the Only Thing He's Good At Is Being an Epic Loser. He Just Needs to Embrace That Idea and Run With It. Watch Out, LOLCats, Here Comes Pathetic Guy!"
"Your Lies Are Not Even in the Realm of the Possible, Much Less Actually Credible, Much Less Actually True."
"I'm Your Friend. I Am Not a Boil on Your Ass."
"You Guys [the Greaney Goons] Are the Same Jokers Who Have Done This Before, Sparring with Rob Over Nonsensical Issues On This Site and Others, Leveling Personal Attacks, and You Don't Even Use Real Names! Rob Is Entitled to His Opinion, But the Fact That You Challenge Every Jot and Tittle of What He Says Makes It Clear You Have An Unholy Agenda. Please Take It Elsehwere."
"Rob, Take This As Friendly Advice. You're a Smart and Articulate Guy and You Could Be Making Valuable Contributions to This Discussion. I've Dealt with the Mentally Ill Before and I've Found That They Sometimes Can Be Reasonable If Gently Redirected."
"Always Remember Others May Hate You, But Those Who Hate You Don't Win Unless You Hate Them, and Then You Destroy Yourself."
"I’m a Numbers Guy. And I Believe I Understand Rob’s Thesis, that Future Returns, Over the Next Decade, Have a Tight Inverse Correlation to the PE10 for the Starting Point. Remember, Correlation Doesn’t Need to be 100%, Only That There’s a Bell Curve of Potential Outcomes that Shift Meaningfully Based on the Input."
"What a Difference a Threat to Get the Father of Two Small Children Fired From His Job Has on an Investing Discussion, Eh? Long Live Buy-and-Hold! It’s Science! With a Marketing Twist!"
"I Respect Rob and His Analysis. He's Bright, Energetic and Passionate. [The Goon Stuff] Is Really Nonsense. I Enjoy a Thought-Provoking Conversation With People I Respect."
"The Fact that Shiller is a Proponent of the Approach Takes it from a Fringe View to Mainstream, in my Opinion."
"I Have had Academic Researchers Tell Me That They Dream of the Day When They Will be Able to do Honest Research Once Again. I Have had Investment Advisors Tell me That They Dream of the Day When They Will be Able to Give Honest Investing Advice Again."
"Let’s Call a Spade a Spade, Shall We? Wade Pfau Stole Your Research and Put His Name on it, Throwing You Just a Tiny Crumb of Acknowledgement to Ward Off a Lawsuit. He’s Profiting Handsomely By His Theft, Leading a Charmed Life, Widely Published, Widely Respected. While Rob Bennett Continues to Toil in Total Obscurity. It’s So Incredibly Unfair, I Think If It Happened to Me, It Could Actually Drive Me Insane."
by 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:
“ It’s disagreeing with 41 years of peer-reviewed research.”
No, because it is only your opinion of what 1 guy said. It is not 41 years of peer-reviewed research.
Right. It’s only my opinion that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research from 1991 showed that valuations affect long-term returns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Shiller
Rob
by Rob
I’ve posted Entry #640 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Much of the Wealth Destroyed Through the Creation of Irrational Exuberance Is Never Recovered.
Juicy Excerpt: Say that as investors we create $12 trillion of irrational exuberance in a long bull market and then watch it disappear in a price crash/economic crisis. That sounds bad. But is it really so terrible? Had there never been a bull market, we never would have experienced neither the phony gains nor the sudden loss of them. Skip both the exciting bull market and the scary price crash that inevitably followed it and we would have broken even. Isn’t that right?
Not quite.
The dollar values that appear on our portfolio statements send signals re all sorts of economic behavior. When the signals are wrong, the behavior is wrong. And making bad economic decisions causes financial losses.
by 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:
So you are now saying that these guys are right? They each disagree with you on very major issues. Wade even sent you a scathing email not only explaining how you are wrong, but he also spoke about the harm you caused him.
I believe that people in the investment advice field are like people in every other field — they would like to be free to do honest work, they would like to be able to go to bed at night feeling that they had helped people.
Shiller has described the intellectual leap from the finding that short-term price changes are unpredictable (University of Chicago Economics Professor Eugene Fama showed this in research published in the 1960s) to the Buy-and-Hold belief that the market sets prices properly as “one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economics.” Humans did not come to Planet Earth with perfect knowledge of how stock investing works. The way it is done in every other field of human endeavor is that people take educated guesses and then learn over time where they have gotten something wrong and then fix it.
The “fix it” part is broken in the investment advice field. The feeling is that making a mistake in this field would be such s terrible thing that the “experts” must keep it zipped when new research shows that they have made a mistake. So the mistake just keeps compounding and compounding. Precisely 100 percent of the evidence available to us today shows that long-term market timing (price discipline!) is always 100 percent required and presisely 0 percent of the evidence supports the “idea” that they might be some mystical, magical alternate universe where market timing (price discipline!) is not 100 percent required. Gee, I wonder why so many Buy-and-Holders feel the need to resort to abusive posting to “defend” the idea that long-term market timing is not always required.
Everyone in the field would like to see every site opened to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. But who is going to be the one to pin the bell to the tail of the cat? Who is going to be the site owner brave enough to permit honest posting and take on the wrath of the Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads? I believe that someone will appear in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I believe that that fellow or gal will live to see his or her head carved on Mount Rushmore in recognition of the great good that he or she will have done for millions and millions of people who need access to honest and accurate and research-based advice on how to plan their retirement. We’ll see.
Rob
by 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:
Yep. Everyone else has been wrong for the last 20 years and continues to be wrong. Meanwhile, only Rob Bennett is right. Because of a secret society of goons, Rob Bennett has been kept from the spotlight as the one and only financial guru that has figured it all out.
I’m not the only one. We have seen thousands of our fellow community members express a desire that honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research be permitted at every site. Bill Bernstein wrote in his book that the 4 percent rule was wildly off the mark at the top of the bubble. Rob Arnott wrote to me and we had a back-and-forth discussion in which he said that all of my ideas about stock investing check out. Wade Pfau spent 16 months researching my ideas and concluded that: “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” Robert Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize for his research and his book was a best-seller. And on and on and on.
About 10 percent of the population today believes that long-term market timing (price discipline!) is required. Once we open every site to honest posting, I believe that we will be able to get that number up to 20 percent within about six months. It will take much longer to get it to 40 percent but in time we will do it. And then eventually we will get it to 80 percent. We will all be able to live better and fuller and richer lives from that point forward than we ever imagined possible during the Buy-and-Hold Era.
But it needs to be every site permitting honest posting. We all have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold impulse residing within us. We would like to believe that market timing is not absolutely required, that for the first time in history we might be able to get away with creating a mountain of irrational exuberance and not pay a terrible price. It has never yet happened and our common sense tells us that it is impossible that it could ever happen. But, like an alcoholic who tells himself that maybe it won’t be such a terrible thing if he takes just one drink, we do very much want to believe it. If we are going to tune out the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold noise, we are going to need to have some people citing the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research at every site we visit.
I believe that we will get there in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. It will be interesting to see how things play out.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
by Rob
Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thred for another blog entry at this site:
All hail “Rob the dictator”.
To say “we should be open to hearing what the peer-reviewed research says” is not to be a dictator. I was once a Buy-and-Holder. The thing that drew me to the strategy is that it was promoted as being a research-based strategy. Research is a quest for truth. Yes, following research can sometimes mean having to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” because new research can teach us new things. But it is not a dictator demanding that you follow the new path. It is your own desire to live in the truth that pulls you in the new direction. There is a part of the Buy-and-Hold minset that craves truth. If that were not so, the Buy-and-Hold concept would never have been promoted as reseaech-based.
Deep down we want the same things, Anonymous. You won’t acknowledge it but it is so. You just don’t like the scary part of acknowledging that there was a time when as a people we did not know everything there is to know about stock investing, so we got some important thing wrong. But, if you had never come to stake your life on those wrong understandings, you would be perfectly happy to learn about the research-backed understandings today. You became dogmatic before all the research had been published. That’s the story here. The new research was not put out to make you feel bad. It was put out to help you to come to a better understanding of an important subject.
Rob
by 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:
And you deserve every single board banning when you refuse to listen to others and block posts.
We disagree, Anonymous.
The thing that I most loved about Buy-and-Hold in the days when I was a Buy-and-Holder was the idea that it was rooted in peer-reviewed research. When new research is published, it needs to be incorporated into one’s understanding of the subject matter. I have included everything that is in Buy-and-Hold in Valuation-Informed Indexing with the sole exception of the claim that market timing is not required. I left that out because there is now 41 years of peer-reviewed research showing that it is a false claim.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
by 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:
With the emotions overwhelming you, why haven’t you sought out mental healthcare services?
I’m not the one who pushed the CAPE value up to 29, Anonymous. It is the community of U.S. stock investors who did that. That’s an insanely dangerous thing to do. It’s the community of U.S. stock investors who need mental healthcare services.
The way to correct for the insane Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold inclinations that push the CAPE value up to 29 is to permit honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research at every discussion board and blog on the internet, without a single exception. I have been advocating that since the afternoon of May 13, 2002.
My only problem is that I am advocating for rational research-based investment strategies at a time when millions of people have a huge emotional investment in the continuation of Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick ones. If Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research had been available in the days when Buy-and-Hold was being developed, it would always have been the first principle of Buy-and-Hold that all investors always practice price discipline/market timing, Unfortunately, thats not the way things lined up. So we all found ourselves living though this crazy time-period in which we have 41 years of peer-reviewed research telling us how things work but we dare not say anything about it on the internet for fear of what the Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads will do to us if we do. Humans!
My best wishes to you.
Rob
by 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:
Since your divorce have you had more or less time to work on the book?
The number of hours that I can devote to the project has not changed. But the emotional angst caused by the divorce has showed me down in a huge way. My biggest obstacle BY FAR is the emotional angst that I feel as a result of the divorce and the board bannings and the death threats and the extortion and all the rest. Intellectual work has been 20 percent of this project. Overcoming the emotional angst that follows from telling people research-based truths about stock investing that some very, very much do not want to hear has been 80 percent of the “work.” The core “job” here is overcoming that emotional angst and getting words down on paper that can be used to help millions of others overcome their own emotional angst.
Buy-and-Hold was developed by people who believed (based on the Efficient Market Theory) that investors are engaged in the rational pursuit of their self-interest, that stock prices reflect economic realities. Shiller showed that investors are at times highly emotional and that it is not possible to get any of the numbers used in an investment analysis right without taking the emotional realities (reflected in the CAPE value) into account. The Buy-and-Hold “idea” the market timing/price discipline is not required is pure emotion. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the first model for understanding how stock investing works that permits consideration of the factor (investor emotion) that is 70 percent of the story.
The board bannings and all the rest result from this conflict between emotion and reason. People who make the case for permitting reason to have a place in the investment advice field are going up against powerful, entrenched interests who very much do not want millions of middle-class investors to learn how important it is to take valuations/investor emotion into consideration. So we are made to feel like social pariahs. There are millions of people who want to hear what we have to say. But there are a larger number of very determined people who want very, very much to supress us. So it becomes painful just to give voice to simple truths (it’s not possible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate without taking the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins into account — who ever would have thought it?!!!). So I’ve experienced a great deal of emotional angst and it has held me back a great deal for a long time now. The divorce is just one part of that but it is of course the most crushing, painful part of it.
Rob
by Rob
Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
You only learn by reading your own words? So you really aren’t interested in posting anywhere else on the internet, right?
No. That’s not even close to being true. I learn by thinking. It’s when my own thoughts come into contact with different thoughts offered by others that I learn. That’s why I say that I would be an amazing learning experience if you Goons had any interest in engaging in civil discussion, But I gave up thining that that was a possibility a long time ago. Every now and again, however, you just can’t help yourselves. Those moments are gold. I put up with all of the garbage to be able to enjoy those rare moments when you permit something real to show through the Goon persona.
If I learned about some place on the internet where people were having a discussion about how Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research overturns our old understanding of how stock investing works in a fundamental way, then, sure, I would want to be a part of that. The comment that Sensible put up re the Reddit discussion does not suggest even a tiny bit that that is what is going on over there. So, no thanks, you know? Shiller revolutionized the field or he did nothing. He didn’t show that the old safe withdrawal rare calculations are a little off. He showed that they are wildly wrong. A showing that valuations affect long-term returns is not a small advance over a belief that the market is efficient (that market timing is not required). It is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. To benefit from the advance (to make the changes that we need to make so that we can all live fuller and better and richer lives from this point forward), we need to talk about the how-to implications of Shiller’s amazing research findings in realisitc ways.
I am happy to talk to anybody. But I am not going to pretend that I believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is only a small advance. That would be dishonest. I have had many of those sorts of discussions in the past and they ultimately lead nowhere. To obtain the benefits that Shiller’s amazing research promises, we need to be able to let in that we did not always know everything there is to know about this subject and that the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research is the most important 41 years of peer-reviewed research in the history of investment analysis. Those are the discussions that matter. We have already squandered 41 years. Engaging in silly discussions of whether Shiller achieved some small advance just causes us to squander more time that we should be devoting to learning how we all can live fuller and better and richer lives by making the shift to the first true research-based investment strategy.
Rob
by Rob
Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Your posting is not honest. But let’s say everyone decides that you can post whatever you want to their website. It doesn’t change a thing. You are broke and it won’t give you an income. Everyone else will keep doing their thing, just like they have after reading your repetitive nonsense. Don’t believe it? Just go to any currently open board, like Reddit or City data. Post all you want and see what happens. It will just be more of the same and you will not earn a dime.
We need to have national recognition of the 20-year (or 41-year if you go back to when Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research) cover-up. There needs to be a series of articles on the front page of the New York Times that tell the entire story from beginning to end.
We should have launched a national debate on the how-to implications of Shiller’s amazing research on the day it was published. Had that happened, we would today be 41 years ahead of where we are today in our understanding of how stock investing works. We can’t get the 41 years back. Sadly, that’s gone. But we need to recreate the spirit of excitment about the discovery that Shiller made, that valuations affect long-term returns, that stock investing risk is not stable but varible, that market timing is always 100 percent required for every investor, that the safe withdrawal rate is a number that changes with changes in valuations.
The problem that we are facing is that, the longer the cover-up continues, the harder it becomes to pull that off. In the early days, the Buy-and-Holders were just embarrased for people to learn about the mistake they made., Now, it is 50 times worse. They are looking at civil and criminal penalties for participating in a 41-year cover-up. It’s not a good situation.
But it obviously does not get any better as the length of the cover-up is extended. The best that we can do today is to bring it to an end after 41 years. To let it continue into a 42nd year would be a catastrophe. So we all need to pull together and do what needs to be done. I did my part on the morning of May 13, 2002, you know? What have you done to help out, Anonymous?
My best wishes. But, I mean, come on.
Rob
This is Dynamik Widget Area. You can add content to this area by going to Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress Dashboard and adding new widgets to this area.
feed twitter twitter facebook