A Rich Life

The Old Ideas on Saving & Investing Don't Work -- Here's What Does

“I Told My Ex-Wife the Story. She Stiffened. She Did Not Like Hearing About the Goon Attacks. People Do Not Like That Stuff. It Is Poison. We Will Have to Decide As a Nation of People What To Do About It.”

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

<i>We don’t need the details of the divorce. I think we can draw our own conclusions. Just curious to when this happened.</i>

I am not going to go into it.

I will tell you that the first time that there was an issue was the morning of May 17, 2002. It was late the night before when I advanced my apology post. I told her the story. She stiffened. She did not like hearing about the Goon attacks. People do not like that stuff. It is poison. We will have to decide as a nation of people what to do about it.

Rob

Buy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: “You Have Lost All Sense of Reality.” Rob’s Response: “Today’s CAPE Value Shows Us That Stock Investors Have Lost All Sense of Reality.”

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

Like I said, you have lost all sense of reality.

Today’s CAPE value shows us that stock investors have lost all sense of reality. What if we permitted honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research at every site? Would that change things?

I believe that it would. Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research revealed a critically important reality (that valuations affect long-term returns) that the people who developed Buy-and-Hold in the 1960s did not know about because it was widely believed at the time that the market is efficient and that this market timing was not required for the market to continue to function properly.

My best wishes.

Rob

“If You Were Confident That the Buy-and-Hold “Strategy” Could Prevail in Civil and Reasoned Discussions, You Would Welcome Such Discussions. Your Behavior Tells Me That You Have Serious Doubts.”

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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 are broke, you lost your house and your wife divorced you.  Results tell us who is right.

I don’t buy it, Anonymous. If you were confident that the Buy-and-Hold “strategy” could prevail in civil and reasoned discussions, you would welcome such discussions. Your behavior tells me that you have serious doubts.

I do believe that you follow the strategy. But your common sense causes you to experence doubts. And you cannot bear to hear questions asked that cause those doubts to grow.

My sincere take.

Rob

“70 Percent of Stock Investing Success Is knowing When You Need to Engage in Market Timing and How Much You Should Change Your Stock Allocation When Changes Become Necessary. Given That That’s 70 percent of What It Takes to Succeed, That Should Be 70 Percent of the Conversation at Every Discussion Board and Blog.”

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

The season is over.  You are in your 60’s and you depleted your savings.  That’s the problem with timing.  You have to be right about when you buy and when you sell.  With Buy and hold, you don’t have to worry about timing.  You just know that the market always goes up in the long term and that a 4% SWR has never failed to work for any 30 year period.  Shiller knows this and that is why he warned you against timing the market with CAPE.  You just wouldn’t listen.

No. All that you need to know is what your proper risk profile is and how much you need to change the stock allocation you went with when prices were reasonable to get it back to the proper place when stock prices have risen to insanely dangerous levels. 70 percent of stock investing success is knowing when you need to engage in market timing and how much you should change your stock allocation when changes become necessary. Given that that’s 70 percent of what it takes to succeed, that should be 70 percent of the conversation at every discussion board and blog.

We should be talking about what matters. Market timing is what matters. Market timing is price discipline and price discipline is the key ton success in every market that has ever existed. All that Shiller did was to show that what common sense tells us must be so really is so. Once we bury the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold stuff 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things, we can all get about the business of discussing the stuff that matters.

My sincere take.

Rob

“The Season Isn’t Over Until the CAPE Value Returns to Fair-Value Levels and Below and Then Remains at Those Low Levels for Some Time.”

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

“ I don’t buy it, Anonymous.”

There is no disputing the facts. You already told us that you depleted your savings and that you are divorced, property records show us that you are no longer an owner of the house.

Results are the only thing to tell who is right. At sporting events, they keep a scoreboard . The results of the game (score) tell us who won. You can claim that you think that the Chicago Cubs were the best team in baseball last year, but it doesn’t matter what you claim. We would just look at the record for last year and the outcomes would determine the winner.

The season isn’t over until the CAPE value returns to fair-value levels and below and then remains at those low levels for some time. We’ll see what people think when the secular bull/bear has come to a conclusion.

Rob

Buy-and-Hold Goon to Rob: “I Am Guessing Your Own Wife Agrees More With Me Versus You.”

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

I am guessing your own wife agrees more with me versus you.

I don’t agree with that. She hates the Goon stuff. She has total contempt for it. The sense in which she agrees with you is that she believes that a husband and father needs to be bringing in money, that there’s just no getting around that core reality.

She doesn’t understand the investing stuff well enough to see how it affects the lives of millions of people in very serious ways. If she saw that, I think she would agree with me all the way. She’s like all of the Normals in that respect. 90 percent of the Buy-and-Holders would never dream of advancing a death threat. So they do not support the Goon stuff. But they do not feel a sense of urgency re opening every site because they are not able to picture what the conseiences are likely to be if as a society we continue to fail to do that.

That’s why I believe that the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will be the turning point. I believe that that will shock people out of their complaceny. They will be able to see with their own eyes how much Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick has been hurting us all for as far back as the stock market has been in business. So long as prices remain high, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal to permit honest posting. It will be clear to everyone why it is important when Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick does harm to millions of human lives. as it always does sooner or later.

But I don’t know everything. We will have to be a little patient to see how it all plays out.

Rob

“The Story of My Divorce Offers the Explanation. Until Every Site Is Opened to Honest Posting, There Will Be a Heavy Price To Be Paid for Telling the Truth About Stock Investing. That Scares \People. So Lots of Smart People Who Could Be Helping Us All Pull Their Punches.”

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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’ll delete this of course, but one has to wonder why you are pretending to still be married.  What possible purpose does that serve?  For someone who brags about his honesty, you have some glaring exceptions.

I do not pretend. This is an investing site. The investing question is — Should we or should we not open every internet site to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. I have answered that one on thousands of occasions. in very clear and forceful terms.

I discuss the divorce in the opening pages of my book. Most people would not think of an author’s divorce as an investing topic. But in this particular case, it is one. That hardest thing to understand about this story is, why are there still people saying 41 years after the peer-reviewed research was published showing that market timing (price discipline!) is always 100 percent required for every investor that there might be some alternate universe where stock investing works just the opposite to how it has always worked here on good old Planet Earth. The story of my divorce offers the explanation. Until every site is opened to honest posting, there will be a heavy price to be paid for telling the truth about stock investing. That scares people. So lots of smart people who could be helping us all pull their punches.

You Goons occasionally ask questions about my wife’s views. I respond to them to the extent they are relevant. As I said in a recent comment here, my ex is like millions of other Americans re this matter. She and they have never seen a cover-up of this magnitude. So it is more than a little hard to take in. People just cannot believe that something like this could happen. It’s one of my primary jobs in the book to explain how it did happen.

Other than that, my divorce is none of your business. To the extent that it is relevant to the investing issues that the site was formed to address, I discuss it. Outside of that, I do not.

Fair enough?

Rob

“There Is Today Zero Intellectual Support for Buy-and-Hold. What Keeps Buy-and-Hold Going Is the Mountain of Institutional Support that Buy-and-Hold Enjoys.”

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

Well, the goons didn’t make you quit your job and your wife and priest pleaded for you to go back to work.  The investment community told you it was a bad idea to quit. Who else can you blame for your unemployment?

It wasn’t me who published Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. That was Robert Shiller.

Once such research exists, everyone in the United States needs to know about it. Our political system cannot survive unless people find out about it. Say that stocks perform in the future somewhat as they always have in the past. In this event, millions of people are going to experience crushing losses. How do you think that they are going to feel when they learn that there was 41 years of peer-reviewed research that would have showed them what they needed to do to avoid those losses and that there were thousands of people who would have been thrilled to help them out except they lived in fear of what a gang of internet goons would do to them if they dared to “cross” them by posting honestly. Continuation of the 41-year cover-up benefits no one.

So why does it continue? It coninues because the 10 percent of the population that believes that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research lives in fear of you Goons and of the negative reactions of Buy-and-Holders in general. There is today zero intellectual support for Buy-and-Hold. There is support for every aspect of Buy-and-Hold except the injunction not to engage in market timing/price discipline. But there is zero support for that one and that’s the most important thing (it is price discipline that permits markets to function– the stock market is like every other market in that respect). What keeps Buy-and-Hold going is the mountain of institutional support that Buy-and-Hold enjoys. If you point out the error that was discovered 41 years ago, the “experts” who have been either participating in the cover-up or at a minimum tolerating it, go into freak-out mode. When something this important has been covered up for 41 years, the people who have engaged in the cover-up or tolerated it look very, very, very bad.

Which is good for no one. Millions of investors are left without sensible, research-based investment advice. And the experts are at risk of civil and criminal penalties ‘sin the days following the inevitable Buy-and-Hold Crisis. I don’t want to be a part of that, Anonymous. I want to help every single person involved (including you Goons!) by opening every site on the internet to honest posting re the past 41 years of peer-reviewed research. I cannot do that by myself. But I can do what one person is able to do. I can post AS IF the same laws that apply in every field of human endeavor other than the investment advice realm applied in the investment advice realm as well.

There is a saying that one should become the change that one is seeking to achieve. That is what I seek to do. I sincerely believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s site lacks a valuation adjustment. So I say that. That’s what everyone should do. If everyone did that, people would have lost confidence in the Greaney study many years ago and Greaney would have either corrected the study or deleted it. We can never get to the place where deep in our hearts we all want to be until a larger percentge of the 10 percent who believed that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research work up the courage just to say what they believe regardless of what you Goons do in response. I only get one vote. As one person who believes that Shiller’s research is legitimate, I can only do so much. But I endeavor to actually DO that. I can do no more and I can do no less.

My best wishes.

Rob

“I Blame Human Nature. We All Have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold Urge Residing Within Us. The Primary Job of Investment Advice Is to Help Us Overcome That “Something for Nothing” Urge.”

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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 want to blame Shiller for your problems.  Got it.

I blame human nature. We all have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge residing within us. The primary job of investment advice is to help us overcome that “something for nothing” urge. Shiller helped me to understand that. And, yes, by doing that he caused me to get in trouble with the members of the various Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads.

I believe that there will come a time when we will as a nation be entirely united on the issue of permitting honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. At that point, no one will be blaming Shiller. We will be celebrating him, as we would have been all along if we had been thinking clearly.

Hang in there, my old friend.

Rob