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

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“Wade Pfau is Smart, Hard-Working, Ambitious and Generous. I Am Proud to Be Able to Call Him ‘Friend.’ He is ALSO Dishonest. Wade Has Played a Big Role in a Huge Act of Financial Fraud. There Is a Good Chance That He Will be Going to Prison Following the Next Price Crash. Is He Mad? Yes, He Is Mad. We All Are to Some Extent.”

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

I am curious as to your reaction to Wade being named to Investment News’ 40 under 40 list? Among other things they state that “his Retirement Research blog (WPfau.blogspot.com), which he launched in 2010, became a big hit with advisers interested in retirement strategy.”

http://www.investmentnews.com/section/40-under-40/profile/26/Wade-Pfau

Everything that I know about Wade tells me that he deserves the honor, Interested.

Wade is smart, he is hard working, he is ambitious (I mean that 100 percent as a compliment — we need ambitious people to make good things happen in the world), and he is generous in giving compliments to those who help him out. He is a great guy all the way around. I am proud to be able to call him “friend.”

Now –

He is ALSO dishonest. Wade has played a big role in a huge act of financial fraud, the biggest act of financial fraud in U.S. history. There is a good chance that he will be going to prison following the next price crash.

Does that cover it, Interested?

If you find that mix of views strange, then there’s a sense in which I am with you. I find it strange myself.

But you know what? If you read great novels, you won’t find it quite so strange after you take some time to reflect on what is going on here. When you hear that one of the greatest investment researchers alive today may be on his way to prison, your first reaction is to think: “How odd.” But when you reflect on how humans behave in the real world, you see that this is really not so strange as it seems on first impression.

Richard Nixon achieved amazing things with his life. He opened relations with China. He brought the war in Vietnam to an end (in a messy way, but still). He ended the gold standard. He greatly increased the size of the programs adopted by Johnson as part of the Great Society. He won one of the biggest landslide victories in U.S. election history. And on and on.

Richard Nixon would likely have landed in a prison cell had he not been pardoned by his successor. As it was, he resigned from office in disgrace.

Sound familiar?

Nixon ruined himself over a stupid pride thing. No one cared about the break-in. It was a political prank. The story would have been in the news two or three days had he simply come clean when it was discovered. He didn’t want bad press for two or three days. So he went in to cover-up mode. He committed crimes. Felonies. He ruined himself. He ruined lots of people associated with him. He messed up big time.

That’s what my good friend Jack Bogle has done. Jack is one of the giants in this field. I rank him second only to Robert Shiller and there are lots of others who would rank him first. He has changed the world of stock investing in hugely important and positive ways. The work he has done will be helping millions of middle-class investors for many decades to come (because Jack’s work is the foundation for Valuation-Informed Indexing, the investing model of the future).

And Jack too may be headed for a prison cell. Jack too has committed felonies (financial fraud is a felony). Mel Linduaer was using threats of physical violence to stop posters at the Bogleheads Forum from posting their honest views since long before I came on the scene. Bogle knew about it. And he turned his head. He pretended that he didn’t see. And things got more and more and more out of control over time. Now Buy-and-Hold has caused an economic crisis. Up ahead we have another price crash coming, one that may put us in the Second Great Depression. We are looking at one of the most destructive acts in the history of the United States.

And at a time when Bogle’s ideas (one of his most important ideas was the one arguing that we should all root our investment strategies in the findings of the peer-reviewed academic research) are bearing fruit more exciting than anything he ever dreamed of when he was a young man. Huh? Bogle’s ideas take us to places he never even imagined possible and Bogle then decides to turn on them, to reverse course? To join forces with the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney? Is he mad?

Yes, he is mad.

We ALL are to some extent. We are all humans. And all humans have a bit of madness within them.

Maybe Wade will be spared prison because his lawyers will cite his madness and a jury will let him off. Maybe the same will happen with Jack.

I don’t know. I cannot say.

My job is to tell the story. Straight. True. As it happened.

I love Wade Pfau. And so I am obviously going to say every positive thing I can think of to say about him.

I love Jack Bogle. So I am obviously going to say every positive thing I can think of to say about him.

But I ALSO love the millions of middle-class investors whose lives have been destroyed by the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies. Those people need to know the truth about what has been done to them. They need to know who to sue to recover damages. They need to know who to send to prison so that they can make some peace with what has happened and feel that justice has been served at least to some extent. The lawyers who will bring their cases need evidence to present to the juries. My job as a journalist is to document what has gone down so that that evidence is available to them.

So I am not in a postion in which I can ignore the crimes in which my good friends Wade and Jack have participated. I need to tell the story HONESTY. Charitably too. To be sure. But honestly also. Both charity and honesty are called for here. There is no other way by which we can all get from the horrible place where we find ourselves today to the wonderful place where we all deep in our hearts hope to reside tomorrow.

I hope that helps a bit, Interested.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob

Goon Poster to Rob: “Rob, Does Anyone Read This Blog Beside the Goons Who Like to Poke Fun at You? I’ve Never Seen a Comment by Anyone Else.”

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

Rob, does anyone read this blog besides the goons who like to poke fun at you? I’ve never seen a comment by anyone else.

Comments by non-Goons are rare, Anonymous. There have been some here and there. But we often go a long time before seeing a fresh one.

That’s evidence of the core problem, no?

LOTS of people engage me in discussion when I post at a large board or blog. So many that you Goons complain that to let me post at a large board or blog is to create a “Rob Bennett Show.” When I posted at Bogleheads, my posts where the star attraction nearly every day for months on end. There were times when there were four or five separate ongoing threads relating to the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept.

You would think that some of the people who are so interested in the concept would follow me to my own site and ask their questions there, would you not? But they don’t. Huh? How come?

Humans are social creatures, Anonymous. That’s the thing that the Buy-and-Holders missed. It’s a very, very, very big deal. People do not like to engage in taboo conversations. Posting at a board owned by a fellow that has been banned from 15 different sites is engaging in taboo conversation. People don’t feel comfortable with it.

People’s minds tell them that there must be something wrong with the message of a fellow who has been banned at 15 different sites. Perhaps it is not clear what is wrong , perhaps people cannot put their finger on the problem. But there is something within them that tells them that they don’t want to be involved with the taboo. And being banned at 15 different boards is a signal of taboo behavior. Saying that the Old School SWR studies get the numbers wildly wrong is taboo. Saying that Buy-and-Hold caused the economic crisis is taboo. Saying that Jack Bogle is at risk of going to prison for financial fraud is taboo.

The fear of the taboo is the driver of all this. At the heart of our economic system is a belief that humans are rational actors. It’s not Jack Bogle who came up with that one. It’s freakin’ Adam Smith! That one has been around a long time. And that one is the one that was disproved by freakin’ Robert Shiller, Nobel Prize Winner.

Shiller changed everything. And it’s a very, very, very good thing that he did so. Our children and their children will live far richer lives than we lived because of the blessings that will be bestowed on us as a result of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings. It’s good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. It never ends (as least not as far as today’s eye can see). So lucky us!

But when we achieve that big an advance, there are a lot of people who get their feathers ruffled. All of the people who believed in Jack Bogle get their feathers ruffled. Heck, all the people who believed in Adam Smith get their feathers ruffled a bit! When you improve everything, you change everything. When you change everything, you ruffle a lot of feathers.

We have taboos against doing that sort of thing. Big Shots don’t like having their feathers ruffled. So they fight and they fight and they fight and they fight.

To no purpose. We HAVE to ruffle their feathers because our economy is bigger today than it was the last three times that Buy-and-Hold caused an economic crisis and so this economic crisis is likely going to be a lot worse than any of those before it is over unless we work up the courage to ruffle a few feathers. And one of those three put us in a Great Depression! So the cost of avoiding feather ruffling is getting pretty darn high.

Still, the humans are social creatures and the humans don’t like violating taboos and telling the truth about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works is the biggest taboo of all. So I am doomed, right?

I don’t think so, Anonymous.

I think we are as a society going to work up the courage to violate that taboo following the next price crash. Then I don’t just get average traffic here. I get off-the-wall insane traffic, traffic big enough to make me one of the richest men in the United States. Why? Because I have no competition! Everyone else is playing it the other way. Everyone else is saying “Why fight the taboo?” I violated the taboo 12 years ago and have been fighting it harder and harder every day since. On the day the taboo comes crashing down, I have a 12-year (or bigger) edge on everyone else.

I want the traffic. I want it bad. But I am not intimidated by anything you do to limit my traffic or to point out to me how small my traffic is. I am writing for the post-taboo days. They are not here yet, but they are getting close. I’d say that we are one price crash away. That’s the path I chose on the morning of May 13, 2002, and that’s the path I intend to stay on for at least another 12 billion years. Just so you know.

I get precious little non-Goon traffic here. I don’t dispute what you are saying.

I am going to continue posting honestly re SWRs and scores of other critically important investment-related topics all the same. I am never even going to flinch.

I think it’s the right thing to do. And I think it will make me very rich and very famous to take this path.

So the intimidation tactics don’t work on me. They hurt. I am not saying different re that. I am saying that they do not achieve their aim, getting me to stop violating the taboo. I think this taboo has caused huge human misery for millions of middle-class people and I want to see it torn down and I am proud of the efforts that I have put forward to tear it down and humbled that I was chosen by God or Evolution or the Fates or Whatever to be the one to bury it 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.

I intend to lead a Celebration of the Death of the Buy-and-Hold Taboo when this is over. I intend to do a jig and sing a song and laugh.

And it won’t be one of those empty, cynical laughs that you Goons are famous for either. It will be a laugh of joy. You Goons will be joining me in the laugh. My good friend Jack Bogle will be joining me in the laugh. We all will be laughing together.

Because there are no sides. We all want to know how to invest effectively. There is not one true exception, no matter how fearful many of us are re violating big taboos.

I hope that helps a bit, old friend.

Rob

“Everyone Acknowledges That Shiller Did Amazing Work. But No One Can Point to A Single Change in the Investing Advice They Give That Was Made As a Result of Shiller’s Findings. This Question Is The Third Rail of Personal Finance — Those Who Touch It Experience Career Death.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to a thread at the The Good Phight site, a site on the Phillies baseball team:

This is my life. I am happy to respond to any and all questions so long as the overall community continues to feel that that is a good thing to do.

Here is the paper:

http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/wp-content/uploads/MPRA_paper_35006.pdf

It’s all worth checking out. But it is Table One on Page 18 that absolutely blows my mind. Wade compares the Maximum Drawdown Percentage for Valuation-Informed Indexing and for Buy-and-Hold. The Maximum Drawdown is the greatest percentage loss in portfolio value that you will ever experience. For Buy-and-Holders, it is 60 percent. For Valuation-Informed Indexers, it is 20 percent. You reduce risk by two-thirds by being willing to take price into consideration when setting your stock allocation. Exercising price discipline pays off big time in the long run! Please understand that you do not give up anything in the return department to obtain this huge reduction in risk. In fact, you can play it the other way. By taking on the same amount of risk as Buy-and-Holders, Valuation-Informed Indexers can obtain far higher long-term returns. Or you can mix and match return and risk and do a bit better in both departments.

The biggest problem that people have with this is in trying to understand why everyone in the field isn’t talking about it. To get that, you have to be familiar with the history.

Stock investing generally was not the subject of sustained and systematic study until the 1960s. In 1965, University of Chicago Economics Professor Eugene Fama produced the breakthrough finding that is the basis for 90 percent of the investing advice you hear cited by experts today. Fama showed that “timing never works.”

Actually, he did NOT show that. That’s what he had THOUGHT that he had shown. He was a bit off the mark in his understanding of what he had done.

There are two forms of market timing, short-term timing and long-term timing. Short-term timing is when you change your stock allocation because of a belief as to where prices are headed over the next year or two. Long-term timing is when you change your stock allocation because of a big shift in valuations with the understanding that you may not see benefits for doing so for as long as 10 years.

Long-term timing is price discipline. Price discipline is the magic that makes all markets work. So it is not possible that long-term timing would not work. But long-term timing was not a practically viable strategy in 1965. Long-term timing works only with broad index funds, which did not become widely available until John Bogle founded Vanguard in 1974. So Fama did not even bother examining long-term timing. He looked only at short-term timing, found that it didn’t work and then improperly stated his finding as a finding that timing in general does not work.

Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller was the first academic to examine long-term timing. He found in 1981 that long-term timing always works and is always 100 percent required for investors who hope to have any realistic chance of long-term investing success. There have been many re-examinations of this question in the 33 years since and all have confirmed Shiller’s finding that long-term timing always works. The other side of the story is that there has never been a single study showing that long-term timing might not work. Wade researched this question very carefully. He was so amazed by his finding that he went to the Bogleheads Forum to check whether anyone there was aware of a single study showing that long-term timing might not work. Some of the biggest-name Buy-and-Holders post there, including John Bogle himself. Neither Bogle nor any of the others had ever heard of a single study suggesting that long-term timing might not work.

Shiller’s 1981 finding was revolutionary. It changes everything that we once thought we knew about how stock investing works. As noted in the study linked above, it suggests that stocks need not be a risky asset class. For those who take valuations into consideration, risk pretty much disappears. Stock investing risk is VOLUNTARY.

It also suggests that risk is VARIABLE rather than constant. I am the person who discovered the errors in the retirement studies that millions of people have used to plan their retirements. These studies are called “safe withdrawal rate” studies. Every major publication has published an article on the errors in these studies in recent years, including the Wall Street Journal., The error was that they do not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. That’s not an error if Fama is right. It is a HUGE error if Shiller is right. The Old School studies reported that a 4 percent withdrawal is always safe (that means that a retiree with a $1 million portfolio can take $40,000 out to live on each year). The New School SWR studies (there’s only one, which was done by me and John Walter Russell) show that the SWR varies from 1.6 percent when stocks are priced as they were in 2000 to 9 percent when stocks are priced as they were in 1982. For a retiree with a $1 million portfolio, that’s the difference between living on $16,000 every year in retirement and living on $90,000 every year in retirement. If Shiller is right, we will be seeing millions of failed retirements because of our failure to demand corrections in the Old School SWR studies for so many years (I put up the post pointing out the errors to a Motley Fool discussion board in May 2002 and none of the studies have been corrected to this day, despite the Wall Street Journal article and articles published in many other big-name publications).

The biggest implication of Shiller’s work of all is that it is the promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies that caused the economic crisis. If Fama is right, the concepts of overvaluation and undervaluation are exercises in silliness. An efficient market is a properly priced market. There can be no overvaluation if Fama is right. But if Shiller is right, we know that market prices always move in the direction of fair value in the long term. By calculating the dollar amount of overvaluation, we can know how much consumer buying power will be leaving the market as prices make their slow way back to fair value. The market was overpriced by $12 trillion in 2000. Shiller predicted in March 2000 an economic crisis that would hit by the end of he decade in which we might experience the loss of monetary value equal to the monetary value of all houses in the country. The economic crisis hit in September 2008. No economy is so strong that it can take a loss of $12 trillion in spending power and not collapse.

There have been four economic crises since 1870. Each followed a time when the P/E10 value (Shiller’s valuation metric) exceeded 25. There has never been an economic crisis in which the P/E10 value did not exceed 25. The correlation is perfect (although imprecise — we CANNOT say when a price crash or an economic crisis will come, only that one will come once we exceed a P/E10 value of 25). When large numbers of investors become persuaded to follow Buy-and-Hold strategies, there is no other way for the market to perform its essential function of setting prices properly EXCEPT by crashing. In all markets other than the stock market, it is the tension between the seller’s interest in a high price and the buyer’s interest in a low price that permits the market to set the price at a roughly right level. In a market in which a large number of investors are following Buy-and-Hold strategies, everyone is rooting for the same thing — a high price. There is no price discipline when investors are not willing to lower their stock allocations when prices get too high and when the long-term value proposition for buying stocks drops too low.. Such markets inevitably crash and the loss of consumer buying power resulting from the crash causes hundreds of thousands of businesses to fail and millions of workers to lose their jobs.

These are revolutionary advances in our understanding of how stock investing works. They were too much for most of the experts to take in when Shiller published his 1981 findings. The result was a widespread case of cognitive dissonance. Everyone acknowledges that Shiller did amazing work. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics last year. But no one can point to a single change in the investing advice they give that was made as a result of Shiller’s findings. Shiller’s book was a bestseller and was reviewed in all the top publications. But he devotes only a few vague paragraphs to the question that everyone cares most about — how should investors change how they invest their money as a result of his revolutionary findings? This question is The Third Rail of Personal Finance — those who touch it experience career death. In fact, a number of Buy-and-Holders threatened to send defamatory e-mails to Wade’s employer in an effort to get him fired from his job when he showed up at the Bogleheads Forum and a number of community members there expressed great interest in our research. Wade agreed to stop telling people about our research findings.

I have spoken to many academics and practitioners about this stuff. Many have told me that they would LOVE to feel free to tell people about the implications of Shiller’s work but feel that the topic is too controversial today. I believe that interest in this research is going to explode following the next price crash. I saw a big change in public receptiveness to the new research following the 2008 crash. I would say that that crash pushed the door about one-third open. I believe that the next crash (which should come by the end of 2016 according to Shiller’s research) will push the door open the rest of the way.

The bottom line here is that we need to combine Fama’s finding that short-term timing never works with Shiller’s finding that long-term timing is always required to have an investing strategy that truly makes sense and that is truly research-backed. That strategy is Valuation-Informed Indexing, which is the same as Buy-and-Hold in all respects except that Valuation-Informed Indexers ALWAYS adjust their stock allocations in response to big price swings with the aim of keeping their risk profiles roughly constant over time. We need to quantify the long-term effects of valuation shifts and provide tools to investors showing them how much they hurt their hopes for achieving decent retirements by refusing to consider price when buying stocks.

Rob

“Rob Arnott Copied Bogle on His E-Mail to Me Referring to the Article That I Wrote on The Silencing of Academic Researcher Wade Pfau by the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. Bogle Obviously Would Have Felt a Responsibility to Learn All He Could About This Massive Act of Financial Fraud Given That It Was Conducted By People Who Follow and Promote His Investing Strategies.”

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

I am certain that Jack has devoted a good bit more than one minute’s thought to my demand that every board and blog on the internet be opened to honest posting on SWRs and many other critically important investment-related topics and to my request that he get the ball rolling by walking to the front of a large room and giving an “I Was Wrong” speech.

Certain based on what evidence? 

1) The question of whether honest posting should be permitted on the safe-withdrawal-rate matter dominated discussion at the Vanguard Diehards board for the 18 months during which I posted there. There were some days in which there were four or five different threads examining some aspect of this general question. Jack said that he visited that board weekly to check out what was being said. It is impossible to imagine that he was not exposed to NUMEROUS threads discussing this matter.

2) Jack obviously reads the Wall Street Journal. A few years after the ban was imposed at Vanguard Diehards (which became the Bogleheads forum), the Journal published an article saying that I was right all along re the SWR matter. Jack obviously saw that article and regretted the many acts of financial fraud that had taken place at a discussion board bearing his name.

3) Before honest posting was banned, there were community members arguing both for and against the ban who contacted Morningstar, Vanguard and Jack Bogle.

4) When Morningstar refused to ban honest posting at Mel Lindauer’s urging, Lindauer asked the entire board community to move to a private board where he and his Goons could control who was able to speak and what they were able to say. Bogle obviously noticed that the entire board community was moved to a different location.

5) After the board community was moved, a number of community members who liked the idea of honest posting being permitted remained at the Morningstar site and asked that honest posting be permitted there. Lindauer hotly opposed the idea. Again, both sides contacted Morningstar, Vanguard and Bogle.

6) Lindauer had been using threats of physical violence to intimidate community members who tried posting honestly for years before I came on the scene. It is all but impossible to imagine that some of these incidents did not come to Bogle’s attention.

7) I wrote Bogle three times asking him for help with the Lindauer matter.

8) Larry Swedroe was banned for a time for the “crime” of posting honestly. This would obviously be brought to Bogle’s attention.

9) When Wade Pfau posted honestly about the research that I did with him, Lindauer accused him of engaging in unethical research practices. This was obviously both a crime (financial fraud) and a tort (defamation). It is hard to imagine that Linduaer would engage in this behavior without first having assured that Bogle would be backing him up.

10) You Goons have yourselves interpreted Bogle’s failure to act re your numerous acts of financial fraud as an indication of his support. Why would Bogle permit his reputation to be damaged in this way if he was not aware of the threat to Buy-and-Hold represented by my call to permit honest posting on safe withdrawal rates?

11) Bogle knows about the Bennett/Pfau research showing the superiority of Valuation-Informed Indexing over Buy-and-Hold. He obviously would be doing all he could to make every investor alive on the planet aware of it if he were not involved in the cover-up himself.

12) At the first meeting of the Vanguard Diehards held after the Ban on Honest Posting was adopted, numerous questions about the effect of valuations were asked of Bogle. He obviously would be curious as to why this had suddenly become such a hot topic.

13) Bogle obviously saw the article by Bret Arends in the Wall Street Journal pointing out that the Buy-and-Holders have “left out half the story” re what the research says about how stock investing works. Again, he made no effort to publicize this hugely important article. If he were not involved in the cover-up, he obviously would have done so.

14) Bogle gave an interview to the Index Universe site in which he referred to my claim that the need to change one’s stock allocation in response to big valuation shifts is a strategic need rather than a tactical need. I am the only one who has said that. He picked up that language from listening in on the discussions held at the various forums.

15) In that same interview, Bogle said that allocation shifts are needed six times in an investor’s investing lifetime, three times when valuations are stupidly high and three times when valuations are stupidly low. Again, this is a claim that I had been making for years that he picked up from our discussions.

16) Bogle included language in his book that helped me understand that the Old School SWR studies got the numbers wildly wrong. He obviously read his own book.

17) Bogle gave an endorsement to Bill Bernstein’s book, in which Bill said that two percentage points needed to be subtracted to get the accurate safe withdrawal rate at the time he was writing the book because of the high valuation that applied at that time. Bogle would not have endorsed the book without reading it. So he knew all along (Berntein’s book was published in April 2002) that the Old School SWR numbers were wildly wrong.

18) Bill Bernstein said in an e-mail to Ataloss that it was his view that anyone who used the Old School studies to plan a retirement would have to be out of his or her mind. Bernstein and Bogle are friends and the cover-up of the errors in the Old School studies is the biggest act of financial fraud in U.S. history. It is impossible to imagine that Bill did not let Jack know of his views on the SWR matter, given that the errors in those studies are in the process of causing millions of failed retirements.

19) Shiller’s book is available in public libraries and was widely reviewed when it was published. Bogle either read the book himself or had someone who had read it describe its contents to him.

20) Shiller was awarded the Noble Prize in Economics for his “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) findings. Bogle obviously would have been curious to know how Shiller’s revolutionary findings discredited Bogle’s investing ideas.

21) Rob Arnott copied Bogle on his e-mail to me in which he told me that my investing work is “Solid.” Arnott is a personal friend of Bogle’s. So he obviously read the e-mail.

22) Arnott’s e-mail referred to the article that I wrote on The Silencing of Academic Researcher Wade Pfau by the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. Bogle obviously would have felt a responsibility to learn all he could about this massive act of financial fraud given that it was conducted by people who follow and promote his investing strategies.

23) One of my e-mails to Bogle described unethical practices being followed by the owners of the Bogleheads Forum. Again, Jack would obviously want to know about felonies being committed by people who owned a board carrying his name.

24) Michael Kitces told me following the 2008 crash that many practitioners where talking amongst themselves about the need to come clean about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold strategies. Word of this would obviously have gotten to Bogle given that he is viewed as the lead advocate of this strategy.

25) Arnott’s e-mail described acts of intimidation by Buy-and-Holders that have been experienced by Arnott. Again, the e-mail was forwarded to Bogle, who is a personal friend of Arnott’s.

26) You Goons have been trying for 12 years to “persuade” me to post dishonestly re the SWR issue. You are at obvious risk of going to prison for financial fraud. It is more than a little hard to believe that you would put yourselves at such great personal risk without some promises of protection from Bogle.

27) I wrote to 30,000 academic researchers to let them know about the intimidation tactics that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia used to silence Wade Pfau. It is all but impossible to imagine that none of these people alerted Bogle. I even received responses from people who have posted to the Bogleheads Forum. Are we to believe that those people contacted me and not Bogle?

28) Vanguard’s research arm recently published a study showing that valuations (as measured through use of the P/E10 metric) predict long-term returns. Bogle founded Vanguard. It is hard to imagine that he would not be informed of the publication of a study by his own firm that discredited the investing strategy that he has been promoting for decades now.

He knows, Anonymous.

I don’t say that he knows every detail. I don’t believe he does.

And I don’t say that he doesn’t rationalize his bad behavior in his own mind. I believe that he does.

But it is silly to pretend that my good friend Jack Bogle does not possess a basic understanding that there has been a huge cover-up of the errors in the Old School retirement studies and a basic understanding that he has a responsibility to take prompt and effective action re this matter.

We will all learn more when he is put under oath.

Rob

“Truth Prevails Over Ignorance in Time, But Not Instantly. It is a PROCESS. This Is Not 1981 or Even 1991. It Is Time to Move Forward. That Mean Explaining to People the DANGERS of Buy-and-Hold Strategies.”

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

Given the vast conspiracy of silence regarding valuations, isn’t it incredible such articles in the New York Times could occur Rob?

Do you think that the entire world went from believing that the sun revolves around the earth to believing that the earth revolves around the sun five minutes after the discovery was made, Anonymous?

Truth prevails over ignorance in time, but not instantly. It is a PROCESS.

We are living today mid-way through that process. Jack Bogle is the biggest advocate of Buy-and-Hold alive on Planet Earth. And even Jack includes research-based stuff in his books and speeches ALL THE TIME. I learned about the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies by reading Jack’s book. Jack gave a speech to the Vanguard Diehards back at the time when I was posting there that contained paragraph after paragraph of legitimate, helpful stuff. Then it concluded with gibberish, saying “so just be sure to Stay the Course” without pointing out that to Stay the Course in a meaningful way you must be CERTAIN to lower your stock allocation when prices reach insanely dangerous levels. Huh?

The NYT article you linked to would have been a good article to publish in 1985 or 1990. We should be a good ways past that today.

Where is the New York Times article reporting on the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School SWR studies and on the felonies that have been employed to keep millions of middle-class investors from learning about those errors?

Where is the New York Times article reporting on the Bennett/Pfau research showing millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent while letting them retire five to ten years sooner than they imagined possible in the Buy-and-Hold days?

Where is the New York Times article reporting on how Bogle hasn’t changed his investing advice one iota in the 33 years since Shiller’s research showed that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for even a single long-term investor?

Where is the New York Times article reporting on how Bogle continues to associate with the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney after hearing hundreds of community members at the Bogleheads Forum express a desire that honest posting be permitted?

Where is the New York Times article reporting that it was the continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies for 33 years after they were discredited by the peer-reviewed research in this field that was the primary cause of the economic crisis?

THOSE are the sorts of articles we need to be seeing today, Anonymous. This is not 1981 or even 1991. This is 2014. It is time to MOVE FORWARD.

Moving forward means telling people what Shiller’s findings means in practical, how-to investing terms. It means explaining to people the DANGERS of Buy-and-Hold strategies.

There is no magic in saying the words “Valuations Matter.” That’s a starting point. But the magic comes when we tell people in clear and firm and bold language WHAT THAT MEANS. What it mean is that valuations must be taken into consideration in EVERY STRATEGIC CHOICE MADE BY AN INVESTOR.

The Buy-and-Holders are still arguing the opposite to this day. The Buy-and-Holders are still arguing that long-term timing is not absolutely required for all investors, or heaven help us all, in some cases might not even be a good thing.

That’s not good, Anonymous. That needs to change. To make it change, we all need to make it a practice to call the Buy-and-Holders out on their b.s. when we see them engage in it.

The article does not go nearly far enough in making the case for Valuation-Informed Indexing over Buy-and-Hold. It is not a close call.

Rob

“I Am Not Going to Be the Only Person Getting Lots of Credit. This Is So Huge That There Is Plenty of Credit to Go Around. Here’s a Tip: The Early Adapters Are Going to Get the MOST Credit. Do You See What I Am Hinting At Here?”

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

Which then means that not a single expert has the full combination of being honest, avoiding conspiracies and is knowledgeable……..and that you alone, Rob, is the only one that has all three of those attributes.

I don’t think that what you say here is too terribly far off the mark, Anonymous.

We all have different strong points and different weak points.

There are areas where Bogle’s knowledge base is so far greater than mine that it would be silly to compare the two.

That’s true with Shiller too. And of course with lots of others.

But if you limit the discussion to valuations, I far surpass Bogle. He is not in my league. Not because he is dumb. He is very smart. But he has elected not to learn about valuations. He has deliberately stunted his own growth in this area. So I have been able to race ahead of him. It may be that someday he will start devoting his energies to coming to a better understanding of the effect of valuations and then he will surpass me in that area too. He has chosen until today not to do that.

Valuations happens to be the most important subject matter for the majority of middle-class investors. This is the are where we had a huge advance a number of years back that most experts in the field have elected (not with full intent, but still…) not to pursue. So I have been able to go to the head of the class on an overall basis without going to investing school or managing a huge fund.

It’s been easy for me to avoid conspiracies. I never advocated Buy-and-Hold. So I never had any vested interest in it. I never experienced any psychic pain reading Shiller’s work or exploring the implications of it.

And, yes, I try to be honest. I think these other people do too. I believe that one of the big problems we have is that they feel that I am calling them dishonest when I say that they got the SWR wrong and they become defensive about it because they view it as important to be honest. So I do believe that they try to be honest. I often say that they are “smart and good people.” But their cognitive dissonance does not permit them to be fully honest.

Please remember that I was not fully honest in the days prior to May 13, 2002. I rationalized not speaking up about the errors in the Old School SWR studies for a time. I do not say that I am better than other people. Part of the reason why I have had to play it so honest is that I have had you Goons on my back for 12 years and, if I engage in one tiny bit of dishonesty, I am sure to be burned at the stake for it. My personal circumstances are more than a bit unusual.

The bottom line is pretty much as you say. The work that I present here is the product of a combination of a reasonable amount of intelligence and a reasonable amount of integrity. That happen to be a rarely found combination in InvestoWorld in the year 2014. So, yes, I believe that the investing advice offered here is superior to what is available just about anywhere else.

I wish it weren’t so. Anonymous. I would like to see all my blogger friends offering top-notch investing advice. I would like to see Jack Bogle offering top-notch investing advice. I would like to see Index Universe and Bogleheads Forum and Motley Fool and Early Retirement Forum offering top-notch investing advice.

You know what it takes, right?

We need to hear Bogle give his “I Was Wrong” speech.

That will clear the air for everything. That will launch the national debate we all need to hear.

Then EVERYONE will be offering advice that shows millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent while increasing returns enough to permit them to retire five to ten years sooner than they ever imagined possible.

You know what, Anonymous? You should stop worrying about me getting the credit for all the wonderful material at this site. If you spent one-tenth of the energy learning from that material and spreading the word, you wouldn’t have to sweat it so much that I will be getting the credit for all this amazing stuff.

I am going to get plenty of credit. I deserve it. I sweated blood getting all this stuff right. I had to fight you Goons with two arms tied behind my back every step of the way. And I never flinched. I never quit. I never even slowed down. I am about as proud of my performance here as you would be proud of yours if the tables were turned.

But I am not going to be the only person getting lots of credit. This is so huge that there is plenty of credit to go around. LOTS of people will be getting lots of credit.

Here’s a tip: The early adapters are going to get the MOST credit.

Do you see what I am hinting at here?

My best wishes to you, old friend.

Rob

“The Vanguard Study Shows That the Valuations Factor Is Huge. It Is the ONLY Significant Factor to Which the Investor Can Respond in an Effective Manner. It Is Financial Malpractice for Any Advisor to Ignore the Valuations Factor (Responsible for 40% of the Market Price, According to Vanguard!) in the Year 2014.”

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

Here’s what a team of Vanguard PhDs and CFAs say:

Figure 2 reveals that the predictability of valuation
metrics has only been meaningful at the 10-year
horizon. Even then, P/E ratios have explained only
approximately 40% of the time variation in real
stock returns.

https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/s338.pdf

Uh oh.

I view the Vanguard paper as being highly supportive of Valuation-Informed Indexing principles. At one point it states that “returns are better stated in a probabilities forecast” and that in the short term returns are not predictable at all. That’s Valuation-Informed Indexing! That’s what I have been saying over and over again since the first day. That’s what the Return Predictor shows. So I have not until now been able to figure out why you keep bringing up this paper.

I re-read your comment above and it hit me. I say over and over again that valuations are 80 percent of the game and the paper says that P/E ratios explain only 40 percent of the time variation in real returns. You are viewing the difference between the 80 percent number and the 40 percent number as a discrepancy.

I am NOT saying that valuations are responsible for 80 percent of the return in any given year. I stand by my statement that understanding and acting on valuations is 80 percent of the strategic stock-investing game.

There are two broad types of factors that affect returns: (1) rational factors; and (2) irrational factors.

The rational factors are all the things that should and do affect stock prices, all of the things that affect the profitability of the underlying businesses. Fama showed that all of these factors are quickly incorporated into the price of stocks. The Valuation-Informed Indexer does not dispute this finding. We endorse it. The Vanguard study is saying that all of these factors added together comprise 60 percent of the price.

The irrational factors are the emotional factors that cause mispricing (overvaluation or undervaluation). These factors are non-business, non-economic factors. They are emotional factors. The significance of these factors at any given point in time is signaled by the P/E10 value.

As an investor there is nothing you can do about the 60 percent of rational factors. So no strategic considerations come into play. If rational factors determined 100 percent of the market price, the market would be efficient (because there would be no emotional factors throwing things off) and Buy-and-Hold would be the ideal strategy. If there were no emotional/non-rational factors to take into consideration, risk would be constant. The investor would always be justified in having an expectation of a long-term return of something near 6.5 percent real.

There IS something you can do about the 40 percent emotional factors.

This study (and every other study that has looked at the question in an even remotely reasonable manner) shows that the market is NOT efficient and that RISK is variable, not constant. Buy-and-Hold does NOT make sense. Investors MUST change their stock allocations in response to big valuation shifts to have any hope whatsoever of keeping their risk profiles roughly constant over time.

The 40 percent of the total return that depends on the P/E10 level is the only portion of the total return to which the investor can respond in a strategic way. The logical response is to increase one’s stock allocation when prices are low and risk is low and to lower one’s stock allocation when prices are high and risk is high. That’s Valuation-Informed Indexing. That’s the entire concept. That’s the approach that lowers stock investing risk by nearly 70 percent, according to the famous Bennett/Pfau research paper (the only research paper so compelling that it caused the Buy-and-Holders to threaten to destroy the careers of the two authors of the paper so desperate was their desire to keep millions of middle-class investors from learning about its findings).

Valuations are not 100 percent of what determines the market price. Rational, economic factors obviously play a huge role. But there is nothing that the investor can do about those factors. They are a given.

The investor MUST change his stock allocation in response to the 40 percent of emotional factors. So far as allocation changes go, valuations are 100 percent of the game. There is no other factor that permits a high degree of predictability, according to the research. So I believe that valuations are the ONLY factor that an investor should be looking at when making the necessary allocation changes.

I reason why I don’t say that valuations is 100 percent of the game is because there are considerations other than getting one’s stock allocation right that come into play. For example, it makes sense to limit one’s fees. If one company has lower fees than another, that will affect the investor’s long-term level of success. That is a non-valuation factor. Another example of a non-valuation factor that matters is that most investors should be going with index funds rather than picking individual stocks. Failing to go with indexes is not a fatal mistake. But I do believe it is a mistake for all investors except those who possess the skill and willingness to do research needed to win at the stock-picking game.

My claim is that getting your stock allocation right is the most important thing (80 percent of the game). And that the investor MUST take valuations into consideration to get his stock allocation even roughly right. If you ignored valuations, you might have gone with a 74 percent stock allocation in 2000 (the Greaney study identified this allocation as “optimal” at all times). If you considered valuations, you probably went with an allocation of about 20 percent. That’s a big difference and getting that one right is going to pay off big time in the long run if valuations are indeed responsible for 40 percent of the market price (that is, if stocks continue performing in the future anything at all as they always have in the past).

The Vanguard study shows that the valuations factor is huge. It is the ONLY significant factor to which the investor can respond in an effective manner. All he needs to do is to look at the P/E10 value and make the required allocation changes. If he fails to do that, he hurts himself big time.

There is no excuse for any investment advisor to fail to stress the importance of valuations in the year 2014. A factor that determines 40 percent of the market price is far too important a factor to be ignored. I would go so far as to say that it is financial malpractice for any advisor to ignore the valuations factor (responsible for 40 percent of the market price according to Vanguard!) in the year 2014. Shiller did not publish his revolutionary research last week or last month or last year. He published it in 1981. That’s 33 years ago!

There are legitimate differences of opinion as to HOW MUCH one should change one’s allocation in response to valuation shifts. That’s why we need a national debate on these questions. We need to get all viewpoints re these matters aired! But the issue of whether valuation-informed allocation changes are required for those seeking to have some realistic hope of long-term investing success has been settled beyond any reasonable dispute. Even Vanguard (the lead promoters of Buy-and-Hold investing strategies) is on board! Bogle hasn’t given his “I Was Wrong” speech yet but the company he founded has published research showing why he needs to make it to come clean about false and deceptive claims he has made in earlier days which have done great financial harm to millions of middle-class investors.

Come clean, Old Saint Jack!

Do it before the close of business tomorrow!

Don’t worry about Mel Lindauer! I will take over the Bogleheads Forum and I will protect you from him!

Rob

“Most People Don’t Care About Theory. But the Experts Root Their Advice in Theory. And Most People DO Care About What the Experts Say. So in a Practical Sense Most People Today Are Following the Buy-and-Hold Theory. They Are Relying on a Belief That the Experts Are Shooting Straight With Them. And the Experts Are Deceiving THEMSELVES Because They Have So Much Riding on the Buy-and-Hold Theory.”

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

We do agree on this, Anonymous.

Most people don’t care about theory. But the EXPERTS care about theory. The experts root their advice in theory. And most people DO care about what the experts say. So in a practical sense most people today are following the Buy-and-Hold theory. They are not dogmatic about it. And they do not know precisely why they are doing what they are doing. They are relying on a belief that the experts are shooting straight with them. They leave it to the experts to worry about theory.

I say that the experts are not shooting straight with them. It’s not that the experts are dishonest by nature. The experts are deceiving THEMSELVES because they have so much riding on the Buy-and-Hold theory; they feel that their entire careers are at stake if Buy-and-Hold is found to be deficient. The experts tell themselves that Buy-and-Hold is good enough and that it is okay not to trouble their clients and readers with discussions of the implications of Shiller’s findings. The ordinary investors don’t even know that there is an issue. They don’t look into things carefully enough to discover this. So, when I put forward views that are very much at odds with what the experts say, the ordinary investors see that what I am saying makes perfect sense but presume that there must be something wrong with what I am saying because if I were right the experts would be saying the same thing.

This is why I am always talking about the importance of Bogle giving an “I Was Wrong” speech. We need a major event that is widely publicized to turn things around. If Bogle gave such a speech and it were written up in all the major papers, all of the experts from that point forward would feel comfortable giving the Shiller take on things along with the Fama take on things. As more and more people came to understand the Shiller take, hundreds of blogs would pick up on these questions and we would see the launching of a national debate. We need to see a national debate re this stuff very, very badly!

I feel that you are suggesting a non-dogmatic approach to things. I can live with a non-dogmatic approach. But I am not clear re how what you are suggesting would play out when it comes time for me to compose posts.

Say that I am posting at the Bogleheads Forum. Someone comes on and says “I am about to retire and need to decide how much I am going to withdrawal each year.” Someone else posts a link to FIRECalc. What do it do?

Do I post a link to The Retirement Risk Evaluator?

How does Mel Lindauer respond when I do that?

Am I subjected to The Treatment?

Or does he let it pass out of deference to this new non-dogmatic approach?

I don’t feel any need to say “Buy-and-Hold is wrong” so long as there are no Buy-and-Holders saying “Valuation-Informed Indexing is wrong.”

If you are saying that we ALL should be non-dogmatic, I am cool with the idea. But Valuation-Informed Indexing cannot grow if, every time a VII idea is put forward, it is smashed down by people who claim that Buy-and-Hold is Scientific Truth. I need protection from that sort of thing. The protection that I have relied on in the past is the 33 years of peer-reviewed research supporting the VII strategy (and discrediting the earlier research that was thought by many to support the BH strategy). If we go the route you propose, do you intend to jump in when Buy-and-Holders say that their approach is Science and let them know that the majority of the board is non-dogmatic and that it is disrespectful to them to say that kind of thing? If not, how do you propose that I respond, given that I believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing and want to persuade people of its merits while also wanting to always be 100 percent respectful of the views of other community members?

Rob

 

“Bogle Says That the Most That Anyone Should Change His Stock Allocation at Valuation Extremes Is 15 Percent. Bogle’s Number Is Off by 400 Percent. The Most Charitable Thing That One Could Say About Bogle’s Number Is That He Pulled It Out of His Backside, That He Never Bothered to Look at the Data.”

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

What do you want Bogle to say exactly, that one might vary their allocation as certain valuation extremes? I’m sure he’d be fine with that.

Bogle says that the most that anyone should change his stock allocation at valuation extremes is 15 percent. He argues that even that much of a change is not a particularly good idea. But he says that a 15 percentage point allocation change is acceptable at the height of a massive bubble.

The most likely annualized 10-year return when stocks are priced as they were in 1982 is 15 percent real. The most likely 10-year annualized return when stocks are priced as they were in 2000 is a negative 1 percent real. An 80 percent stock allocation makes sense in the first scenario. A 20 percent stock allocation makes sense in the second scenario.

Going from an 80 percent stock allocation to a 20 percent stock allocation is a change of 60 percent, not a change of 15 percent. Bogle’s number is off the mark by 400 percent.

That’s not acceptable. It’s not a close call.

The most charitable thing that one could say about Bogle’s number is that he pulled it out of his backside, that he never even bothered to look at the data when giving that number. If that’s the case, he needs to say that. Millions of middle-class people look up to Bogle and expect him to give reasonable investing advice. He dropped the ball re this one in a major way.

And everyone in this field should have been pointing this out going back to the day he first dropped the ball, which was many years ago. Money magazine should have run a cover story pointing out how Bogle dropped the ball. There should be threads at the Bogleheads Forum on a daily basis reporting on how Bogle dropped the ball. There should be bloggers writing articles explaining how he dropped the ball and demanding that he correct the error.

Why are we not seeing that, Anonymous?

We are not seeing it because Bogle has misled millions of investors into believing that the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage can work. Those people are scared to death of what the research shows. So they become upset when anyone reports honestly and accurately what the research shows. So those whose primary goal is to turn a buck keep it zipped re what the last 33 years of research shows. And we all continue our journey down, down, down.

I ain’t going there, Anonymous.

I never went to Investing School. I never managed a big fund. I acknowledge right up front that I have been wrong about important things before in my life and that it is entirely possible that I am wrong again. I acknowledge that, if I were, I would probably be the last to know.

But I am not going to post dishonestly re the numbers that people use to make important investing decisions. It is not going to happen. Not in 12 years, not in 12 billion years.

Bogle pulled that number out of his backside and he has hurt millions of people by failing to say so. People hear that number and they presume that there is some sort of research or data or expertise or logic behind it. And there is none. It is just a number that one of the Wall Street Con Men pulled out of his backside. Nothing more and nothing less.

I love Jack Bogle. I have learned many important things from him. I learned about the errors in the Old School SWR studies by reading his book. Valuation-Informed Indexing is a bunch of Bogle’s ideas combined with a correction of the one huge mistake he made and has refused to correct for the 33 years since it was brought to light by the peer-reviewed research. It gives me a great feeling of pride to know that I have accomplished what Bogle set out to accomplish as a young man and failed to accomplish at the time because the research he needed to pull it off had not yet been published. I look forward to the day when I can stand next to Old Saint Jack on a stage and talk honestly about what we know about how stock investing works and have him helping out and feel free to give him the credit for all the wonderful insights for which he truly is responsible.

But I want nothing to do with a massive cover-up that in all likelihood is going to end with my good friend Jack being disgraced and humiliated and possibly being sent to live his final days in a prison cell.

Find someone else, you know?

I can’t go for that.

No can do.

It’s not my particular cup of tea.

It’s not a close call.

Rob

“It’s a Lot Easier to Make the Shift from Buy-and-Hold to Strategy B Than It Is to Make the Shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. And It Is a Lot Easier to Make the Shift from Strategy B to Valuation-Informed Indexing Than It Is to Make the Shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing.”

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

I think we need a label for what everyone on Bogleheads does — let’s call it Strategy B. Strategy B says: “Historical data shows valuations explain some of the variability in future stock returns. If I choose to, and it makes sense for my circumstances, I may vary my asset allocation based on them.”

What do you think of Strategy B? Since it sounds like what you employ personally, and what most other investors (including myself) use, isn’t this a general system we can all agree on? If now, how is it flawed?

I agree that Strategy B is what most people follow today, Anonymous.

I certainly have no objection if people follow it. People should follow what they believe in. Lots of people believe in what you call “Strategy B.” They are right to follow it.

I don’t follow Strategy B. And it’s not true that all Buy-and-Holders follow Strategy B. I agree with you that most do. But I don’t believe that John Greaney follows Strategy B. I don’t believe that Eugene Fama follows Strategy B. Greaney and Fama are Buy-and-Hold purists. I am a Valuation-Informed Indexing purist.

The only problem I would have with Strategy B being “a general system we can all agree on” is if making that the general system means that the Buy-and-Hold purists and the Valuation-Informed Indexing purists cannot speak their minds.

We do not today know all there is to know about how stock investing works. Perhaps the Valuation-Informed Indexing purists are right. Perhaps the Buy-and-Hold purists are right. Perhaps the Strategy B people are right. Members of all three groups should express their sincere views and members of the other groups should show them respect when they are speaking. In time, one of the three groups will win the day. But we are just not there yet.

You are saying something important when you say that Strategy B is the most popular belief system today. That really is so. The problem for me as a Valuation-Informed Indexer is that most people view Strategy B as an offshoot of Buy-and-Hold and view both Strategy B and Buy-and-Hold as “acceptable” strategies. Valuation-Informed Indexing, in contrast, is viewed as “out there” and hard to accept.

Valuation-Informed Indexing will not become more popular over time unless people hear about it and are able to ask questions about it. So I need to open up space for debate over Valuation-Informed Indexing at every board and blog. I have no intention of closing up space for Buy-and-Hold or for Strategy B when doing that. My intent is a positive one, not a negative one. I am trying to add something, not to put an end to something (except to the extent that that something tries to put an end to Valuation-Informed Indexing before it even has a chance to grow into something big).

I view this as an encouraging post. If you are checking with me as to whether I am okay with the idea of all “sides” taking a less dogmatic position re what they believe in, I support that effort 100 percent and want to do anything in my power to see that it is successful.

I don’t personally believe that Strategy B is the right answer in an ultimate sense. But it IS more popular than either of the two purist approaches and it is also less dogmatic than either of the two purist approaches, which is a plus from a process standard. If there is ever going to be a time when large numbers of people are going to become Valuation-Informed Indexers, there probably is first going to need to be a time when there is widespread support for Strategy B.

It is a lot easier to make the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Strategy B than it is to make the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. And it is a lot easier to make the shift from Strategy B to Valuation-Informed Indexing than it is to make the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing.

Helpful post. I hope we can work together to use it to take us all to good places.

Rob