A Rich Life

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

Search Results for: boglehead

“We Should Be Asking Bogle Where He Got That Number If He Did Not in Fact Pull It Out of His Backside. Since He’s Available at the Bogleheads Forum and Appears at the Annual Meeting, That’s the Perfect Place to Put Him on the Hot Seat.”

by

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

Why the Bogleheads forum and not other forums?

One reason is that it is so big. The Bogleheads Forum is the largest investing forum on the internet that I know about.

Another reason is that the board community there has on many occasions expressed a strong desire that honest posting be permitted. So we already have the community on board.

A third reasons is that the Bogleheads Forum has a long history of trying to deal with these issues. I put my first post to that forum on the SWR issue back in July 2005. We have had THOUSANDS of threads at that forum on The Great Debate stuff in the years since. So there is an intense and longstanding interest there in getting this stuff resolved.

Fourth, there are a good number of top-name experts who post there. Bogle. Bernstein. Swedroe. Ferri. Wade Pfau has posted there. In fact, Wade and I linked up because of what he learned about safe withdrawal rates from reading my posts there. These experts can help us spread the word about our findings. So it makes all the sense in the world to conduct our discussions there.

We also have the ability to question those experts. So, for example, I have said that Bogle’s claim that it is never necessary to lower your stock allocation by more than 15 percent is based on a number (the 15 percent number) that “he pulled out of his backside.” We should be asking Bogle where he got that number if he claims that he did not in fact pull it out of his backside. Since he is available at the forum and appears at the annual meeting, that’s the perfect place to put him on the hot seat.

Finally, Valuation-Informed Indexing is the next step in the development of Bogle’s ideas re investing. So it makes all the sense in the world to discuss VII there, where lots of people who are informed re his ideas congregate. VII is the new Buy-and-Hold, it is Buy-and-Hold 2.0. People interested in the further development of Bogle’s ideas congregate there already. Why not take advantage of that in choosing a place to do work to further develop the ideas?

Rob

 

“After the Crash, the Floodgates Open. People Will Give Up Their Feelings of Embarrassment and Shame and Become Determined to Get Things Back on the Right Track. At That Point the Owners of the Bogleheads Forum Are Not Going to Be Resisting My Efforts to Take Over. They Are Gong to Be Asking Me to Take Over. We Are Going to Be Friends.”

by

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

“I intend to take over control of the Bogleheads Forum and set it up here as a sub-domain.”

The owners of the Bogleheads forum will not sell or give you the forum.

They are not going to give it to me today, Evidence. I think that much is more than fair to say.

I am talking about after the next crash. The next crash changes things.

You have to come to an understanding of some basic realities to figure out where things are headed.

I do not believe that the current owners of the Bogleheads Forum are bad people. And I certainly do not think that they are dumb people. I think that they are smart and good people. Okay? That’s my core premise. Everything else I say follows from that belief.

I believe that the owners of the Bogleheads Forum are wrong about the need for price discipline (long-term timing) when buying stocks. Smart and good people sometimes get things wrong, no? That’s what I believe has happened here.

Those smart and good people suspect that they may be wrong re price discipline (long-term timing). They are not sure that they are wrong. In fact, they still follow Buy-and-Hold strategies themselves. So I think it would be fair to say that they think it more likely than not that following Buy-and-Hold strategies will produce good long-term results. They are sincere in their advocacy of Buy-and-Hold. But they are not without inner doubts. That’s why we have seen so much friction. Their doubts trouble them. They very, very much want to silence those doubts. And this Rob Bennett fellow won’t shut the heck up about them. That’s why they are not so crazy in love with this Rob Bennett fellow at this particular moment in time.

What happens after the crash?

After the crash, the floodgates open. People will give up their feelings of embarrassment and shame and become determined to get things back on the right track. It won’t just be the Valuation-Informed Indexers who will do that. It will be the Buy-and-Holders doing that too. We are all on the same side. We are all in this together. We all need to know the realities of stock investing. After we experience the next crash, we are going to see that. Everything is going to change. The Buy-and-Holders did not intend to cause the Second Great Depression and, when they see that that is where we are headed, they are going to change their behavior in whatever ways are required to pull us back to a good place.

At that point the owners of the Bogleheads Forum are not going to be resisting my efforts to take over the forum. They are going to be encouraging them. They are going to be asking me to take over the forum. We are going to be friends. We are all in this together. We all want the same things. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be friends. It makes no sense to play it any other way.

I say that I am going to take over the forum because I am trying to help.

Say that we open every investing board and blog on the internet to honest posting following the crash. That’s going to be a huge step. But we are not instantly going to know the answer to every possible question. There are questions that I have not been able to answer in these 13 years. There are almost without a doubt things that I have gotten wrong. There are questions that have not even occurred to me. We are going to need to be exploring all those questions.

The Valuation-Informed Indexers cannot do the job alone. We need the Buy-and-Holders helping us out. The Buy-and-Holders have different beliefs and different life experiences. We need to add those to the mix to make sense of things. I am uniquely qualified to run a board that permits and encourages honest posting from both sides. I have been arguing for 13 years that the Valuation-Informed Indexers must be permitted to post honestly. But I have for that entire time-period also made a point that the Buy-and-Holders must be permitted and encouraged to post their honest views. I am the only one who can say that, Evidence. It’s not my intent to brag. I am just explaining where things stand re this matter.

When we are speaking as friends, we will be able to talk about all sorts of questions in a very different spirit. It could be that we will all participate in a discussion in which it would become evident that I am not the best person to run the board. Perhaps I will be too busy with other things or something. If that happens, we will make a different decision. Good for us! We will do what we think is right. What else can we do?

The point that I am making when I say that it is my intent to take over the Bogleheads Forum is that I think that the board community there must be permitted to work its will. The board community has made clear on numerous occasions that it wants honest posting to be permitted. It is an act of financial fraud for the current owners to reject that 100 percent proper demand. When honest posting is banned, the board becomes a corrupt enterprise. That must change. That will change. That’s the point.

Once the owners of that board committed financial fraud, they set a trap for themselves that they cannot escape. I have been trying to help them out to the extent that they can be helped. I will continue to do that. I cannot force them to help themselves. If they are bound and determined to completely destroy themselves, I guess we are going to see them completely destroy themselves.

But you are never going to see me endorse their acts of self-destruction. I want to help in any way that I can. I want to help the owners of the board. And I want to help the board community to which they have done so much harm. That’s where I am coming from and that’s why I have formed an intent to take over that board following the next price crash. When I take over operation of the Bogleheads Forum, I help every single person involved. I naturally want to do that. So I intend to pursue that goal with a good bit of determination.

I hope that helps you to understand things a little bit better.

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

Rob

Site Visitor: “The Moderators of Bogleheads Are Slightly Demented in Their Views. They Allow Personal to Vile Attacks Against Those Who Question Orthodoxy. There Is An Almost Religious Fervor. It Really Is Disturbing.”

by

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

All I can say is the moderators of Bogleheads are slightly demented in their views. As noted by the author they allow personal to vile attacks against those who question orthodoxy and will not allow even the slightest retaliation. I was victimized by one of the many pets of the moderators and banned because I privately chided the moderator for selectively editing my posts and while allowing her pet’s direct personal attacks to remain. That got me permanently banned.

There is a lot of useful information in that forum. However understand that there is an almost religious fervor that courses through that forum. It really is disturbing.

You stated things well, Izod.

I like it that you said: “There is a lot of useful information in that forum.” That is true. And it is important to point that out. Complaints about the Bogleheads Forum often leave the impression that it is the entire community that is lacking. No! The majority of community members at the site are wonderful; they are smart and good and generous people. The entire community should not be blamed for the actions of a few. There were a number of surveys taken during the time I posted there and a number of posters famous for posting honestly on the peer-reviewed research in this field were shown to be among the most popular posters at the site. I was Public Enemy #1 to the “leaders” of the site from the first day I posted there but there were many community members who directed very kind words to me in gratitude for my efforts to turn things around.

Yes, the moderators are demented. To suggest that they are only “slightly demented” is to be exceedingly charitable. You are to be applauded for your kindness but people listening in need to know the full realities. The moderators at the Bogleheads Forum are not slightly demented, they are 100 percent demented. There was a poster there who summed things up well with the statement that: “There are a bunch of trolls running around calling everyone else trolls!”

People who care about stock investing should want to figure out what is causing this problem. It is an exceedingly odd phenomenon. The strategy promoted at the board is Buy-and-Hold. Buy-and-Hold is marketed as a research-based strategy. The benefit of following a research-based strategy is that doing so helps investors avoid making emotional decisions. For those following research-based strategies, investing is pretty much a mathematical puzzle. Math is not known as an emotional subject. So what the heck is going on here?

I never went to investing school and I never managed a big fund. But I am the world’s leading expert on this one! I am the person who discovered the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies. I reported what I knew on the morning of May 13, 2002. The reaction of a guy (John Greaney) who had prepared one of the Old School studies was to threaten to kill my wife and children if I continued to “cross” him by posting honestly on SWRs. 200 of my fellow community members (most of these people had become friends with me over the course of my three years of posting at the board) endorsed this guy’s death threats. They didn’t say that I was wrong and publications like The Wall Street Journal have confirmed in the days since that I was right. They just couldn’t bear to hear me report accurately and honestly what the historical data tells us about SWRs.

Huh?

People are following a research-based strategy and they don’t want to know what the last 33 years (it was only 21 years at that time) of research says? That doesn’t make sense.

It doesn’t make LOGICAL sense. It DOES make EMOTIONAL sense.

The mistake that the Buy-and-Holders made was to ignore valuations. Both overvaluation and undervaluation are caused by investor emotion (the rational thing would be for investors to set stock prices properly). The research of the past 33 years shows that investor emotion is about 80 percent of the story. Get that one right and you cannot lose in the long term. Get that one wrong and you cannot win in the long term.

The Buy-and-Holders got that one wrong. So they cannot win in the long term (according to the last 33 years of research). How do you think that makes them feel?

IT MAKES THEM FEEL AWFUL.

That’s why you see what you see at that board, Izod. The Buy-and-Holders are HURTING.

The best thing for them to do would be to acknowledge their mistake. But the bigger a mistake it is that is made, the harder it is to acknowledge. The Buy-and-Hold Mistake is the biggest mistake ever made in the history of personal finance. There are now millions of middle-class people who are in the process of experiencing failed retirements because of this mistake. The Buy-and-Hold Mistake was the primary cause of the economic crisis, which caused millions to lose their jobs. The Buy-and-Holders have hurt their friends and neighbors and co-workers and fellow community members in very serious ways. They are feeling a burning shame over their mistake. How would you feel in those circumstances?

What makes things worse is that most of us who are aware of the mistake are afraid to speak out about it. Robert Shiller knows. He tells some of what he knows but he keeps a lot of what he knows buttoned up because he knows how much it upsets the Buy-and-Holders for anyone to tell the plain, honest truth about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing works in the real world. It’s the same with Bill Berntein. It’s the same with Larry Swedroe. It’s the same with Scott Burns. It’s the same with Todd Tresidder. It’s the same with Wade Pfau. Its the same with Jack Bogle. It’s the same with Mike Piper. And on and on and on and on and on.

The mistake is so big that hardly anyone dares to point it out and demand that it be corrected. You have heard of companies that are too big to fail? The mistake made by the Buy-and-Holders is The Mistake Too Big to Correct.

So the suffering continues.

The millions of middle-class investors being tricked by the Buy-and-Holders suffer. And the Buy-and-Holders themselves suffer. And of course all the people who work in this field and who would like to be doing productive and meaningful and honest and important work suffer. Bloggers suffer. Academic researchers suffer. Journalists suffer. Economists suffer. Investment advisors suffer. It’s too, too sad.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts re our friends at the Bogleheads Forum. I have hopes that all of this is going to swing in a better direction following the next price crash. I intend to take over ownership of the Bogleheads Forum as part of the litigation settlement. You will receive a warm welcome when you return to the forum that improperly banned you in its dark days, Izod. Hang in there, my new friend!

Rob

“You Are Right That the Bogleheads Take a Number of Factors Into Consideration When Setting Their Allocations and You Are Right That I Do the Same. But There Is Obviously SOMETHING That Distinguishes Us. That Something Is the Last 33 Years of Peer-Reviewed Research. Everything That I Say Is Rooted in Shiller’s ‘Revolutionary’ Findings of 1981. And Bogle Hasn’t Changed His Investing Advice One Iota in Those 33 Years. He Is Saying the Same Thing Today As He Was Saying in 1980!”

by

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

Ok, so like everyone over at Bogleheads, you make allocation decisions based on a number of factors. And yet, you’re “VII” and they’re “get rich quick”. What exactly is the difference between you and them, in practice?

The difference is that I don’t advance death threats or demands for unjustified board bannings or tens of thousands of acts of defamation or threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. The difference is that I want to LEARN from the peer-reviewed academic research and the Buy-and-Holders want to BLOCK Learning of what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research says.

That’s the only difference, Anonymous. You are right that the Bogleheads take a number of factors into consideration when setting their allocations and you are right that I do the same. But there is obviously SOMETHING that distinguishes us. That something is the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research. Everything that I say is rooted in Shiller’s “revolutionary” findings of 1981. And Bogle hasn’t changed his investing advice one iota in those 33 years. He is saying the same thing today as he was saying in 1980!

I am saying that we should move out of the Dark Ages of investing analysis and get the word out to every investor alive about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says. There is not one person alive on Planet Earth who doesn’t want to see that happen, including Bogle.

The trouble is that Bogle (and lots and lots of others, to be sure) has committed financial fraud by covering up the findings of the peer-reviewed research for 33 years. So he worries that permitting honest posting at the Bogleheads Forum will land him in a prison cell.

What do you want me to do about that?

I BEGGED the man to come clean before the economic crisis hit. Had he come clean back them, I don’t think he would be going to prison AT ALL. So I did right by him, no?

And I came up with this thing where we attribute his behavior to cognitive dissonance rather than evil intent. I think it would be fair to say that no one else has come up with a better way to get him off the hook for his obstinate behavior. So I CONTINUE to do right by him, no?

What else can I do?

You tell me the difference between us. I considered myself a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. It never entered my head that there would be anyone other than Greaney who would consider it a bad thing that I discovered a major error in the Old School retirement studies and corrected it. Would you say that Bogle and the other Buy-and-Holders have been appreciative of my efforts? It sure doesn’t seem that way to me.

There is only one type of poster banned at the Bogleheads Forum — those of us who tell the truth about the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research. Why do you think that is? It cannot possibly just be coincidence that the same type of poster is banned over and over and over and over again.

It is that the Bogleheads CLAIM to believe that investors should be following the peer-reviewed research but have not updated their investing strategy to reflect the research from 1981 forward. That’s the entire problem.

Update your strategy and we are all on the same side. Update your strategy and we can bring the economic criss to an end and enter the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history. Update your strategy and you will no longer see any need to advance death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. Update your strategy and there will no longer be any need for you to tell The Big Buy-and-Hold Lie (that there is some mystical, magical research somewhere showing that it might not be 100 percent necessary for ALL investors to ALWAYS practice price discipline when buying stocks).

This lie is in the process of destroying our country.

Do you care?

I do.

So I am telling.

But that’s it. There are no other differences. The Buy-and-Holders started out doing something wonderful and then they made a perfectly understandable mistake and then they elected to cover it up rather than acknowledge it and now we are seeing the cover-up of a cover-up of a cover-up of a cover-up.

Everything works if you fix Buy-and-Hold to reflect the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research.

If you don’t, you end up in a prison cell. And the rest of us end up in a Second Great Depression.

Is that clear enough? Am I stating things plainly enough for you to get the general idea at long last?

Following the peer-reviewed research is a good idea. But you must be willing to be honest about what the research shows or you turn a good idea into a very, very, very, very BAD idea.

Buy-and-Hold AS IT IS PROMOTED TODAY BY PEOPLE LIKE JACK BOGLE is a very, very, very, very bad idea.

I love Jack and all my other Buy-and-Hold friends. So I naturally want to do everything I can to persuade them to leave this dark, dark path they entered on the morning of May 13, 2002, and get back to where they once belonged.

The difference is lies versus truth. The difference is darkness versus light. The difference is Get Rich Quick versus research-based. The difference is short-term versus long-term. The difference is hate versus love.

Do you see?

Rob

“The Owners of the Bogleheads Forum Are As Corrupt As the Day Is Long. But, After They Have Spent Some Time in Prison, Their Hearts Will Melt. When Their Prison Sentences Are Over, I Will Welcome Them Back to the Site. We Will Get Along Fine and They Will Make Important Contributions. People Will Wonder What All the Commotion Was About.”

by

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

Do you expect the bogleheads to merely forget your past behavior and trust that you have changed?

Any Boglehead who thinks that I have changed is a damned fool, Uralapin.

The owners of the Bogleheads Forum are as corrupt as the day is long. But I wouldn’t call any of then fools. You don’t have to read too many of my posts here to know where things stand. They know where things stand.

Following the next price crash, there will be court proceedings. Things will be set straight. That’s how our system works.

After the owners of the Bogleheads Forum have spent some time in prison, their hearts will melt. That’s how human beings work.

I intend to take over operation of the Bogleheads Forum after the prison sentences are announced. There are lots of great people who post there and they deserve to have a place where they can feel clean about the discussions in which they participate.

Our economy will recover. I believe that we will see the greatest period of growth in U.S. history.

When their prison sentences are over, I will welcome the owners of the Bogleheads Forum to the site. We will get along just fine and they will make important contributions. They will feel better about themselves.

We all will make it to the other side of The Big Black Mountain together.

And people will look back in future days and wonder what all the commotion was about.

My best wishes to you.

Rob

Goon Poster: “I Think You’ve Got It, Rob. Now See If You Can Put This New Attitude Into Practice — Create an Account at Bogleheads and Contribute to a Few Threads on This Topic. Remember, No Dogmatism, No Off-Topic Rants, No Thread Hijacking, No Bullying.”

by

Set forth below are the texts of two comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site:

I just wanted to confirm with you that asset allocation, and whether one prefers to vary it with valuations, is a personal matter with no right or wrong answer. We make take differing views, but there’s no need to be dogmatic about them.

Dogmatism hurts us.

There are two schools of thought. One is rooted in the research of Eugene Fama. One is rooted in the research of Robert Shiller. Both Fama and Shiller have been award Nobel Prizes in Economics for their work.

Members of both schools should respect members of the other school.

But there ARE right and wrong answers. We should avoid dogmatism because none of us know with certainty which school of thought is the right one. But it is not possible that both schools of though are equally correct. The two schools of thought are rooted in opposite premises.

We don’t know everything. That’s why we should avoid dogmatism.

But we DO know some things. So it would be a terrible mistake to pretend that this is all just a matter of personal choice, that every allocation choice is equally supported by the peer-reviewed research in this field.

You are suggesting that only two extreme positions exist: Either everything is known and there is no room for judgment calls or nothing is known and every choice made is equally supported by the research. I reject both extremes and favor a middle-ground position. We have learned many important things about how stock investing works over the past 50 years and we should hope and expect to continue learning in days to come. We should be happy about what we have learned and we should share what we have learned with as many people as possible. But we should never become so full of ourselves as to imagine that we have learned it all and that there is no room for future learning experiences.

Each investor should make the calls as to how he or she invests. But any advisor who says “every allocation call is equally valid according to the research” is failing to do his job. We should be telling people what the research says in a non-dogmatic fashion. We should tell people what the research reveals and what the research does not reveal and then leave it to them as to what allocation choice to make.

If someone were to say “I am going to go with zero stocks at all times,” I would say that that position is not supported by the research. But I certainly would remain friends with that person. I certainly would see no call to be abusive in any way to that person. Perhaps I have misunderstood the research or perhaps there will be new research supporting that person’s view in coming days. I cannot in good conscience endorse a permanent stock allocation of zero given what I know about what the research says. But I respect the right and responsibility of all investors to make their own calls and I would never think of dogmatically insisting that any investor follow my recommendations.

I am dogmatic about my right (and the right of every one of my fellow community members) to post honestly. But that’s as far as the dogmatism goes. It would be a lie for me to say that the numbers in the Old School SWR studies are accurate and I would never dream of doing such a thing. But I certainly have been friends with many people who use those studies for guidance and I certainly respect and like those people.

Does that answer your question, Anonymous?

Rob

I think you’ve got it, Rob. Now see if you can put this new attitude into practice – create an account at Bogleheads and contribute to a few threads on this topic.

Remember, no dogmatism, no off topic rants, no thread hijacking, no bullying, just, to quote you:

We should be telling people what the research says in a non-dogmatic fashion. We should tell people what the research reveals and what the research does not reveal and then leave it to them as to what allocation choice to make.

Dozens of people are able to do that on Bogleheads, so I don’t think it’s beyond your ability if you try.

I’ll give it a shot, Anonymous.

Rob

Note: Within 10 minutes of advancing this post, I registered at the Bogleheads Forum as “RobBennett” and put a post to the tread titled “Retirement Calculator”:

http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=140227

My post read:

A link to The Retirement Risk Evaluator is set forth below. The unique thing about this retirement calculator is that it contains an adjustment to reflect the valuation level that applies at the time the retirement begins:

http://www.passionsaving.com/retirement-calculator.html

Rob

A note appeared on my screen saying that the comment was in moderation. This was at about 5:00 PM Eastern Time on May 31, 2014. As of the time that I am scheduling this blog entry for future posting (5:00 PM Eastern Time on June 2, 2014), I have not heard any word re the status of the comment.

I wonder why not.

“Personal Integrity Matters. I Never Went to Investing School. I Never Managed a Big Fund. But I Was the First Person to Work Up the Courage to “Cross” John Greaney By Posting Honestly on Safe Withdrawal Rates. And I Was the First Person to Call Out Mel Linduaer on His B.S. Abusive Posting Tactics at the Bogleheads Forum. That Makes Me Ten Times the Investing Expert That Jack Bogle or Bill Bernstein or Larry Swedroe or Scott Burns Can Ever Again Claim to Be Now That They Have Failed to Take Prompt Action re These Matters.”

by

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

When people like this, they see two things. First, they know you are not credible because what you call “buy and hold” has been very successful and is not how your portray it. Secondly, they see you as a crackpot when you throw around threats of prison. It makes you come off like a little child having silly revenge fantasies.

People do not respond well to those sorts of statements, Anonymous. You don’t have to convince me of this. I have seen the reality play out before my eyes on thousands of occasions.

Did you see the demonstrations that were held by hundreds of students at Penn State when the truth about Joe Paterno came out? Those students LOVE Joe Paterno. And not without reason. He is one of the greatest coaches who ever lived. The bad things he did do not cancel out his many genuine accomplishments.

Do you think that people helped Paterno by covering up what was going on around him for so many years? There was a woman who worked at Penn State who asked that action be taken and she was fired for her trouble. That solved the problem TEMPORARILY. But of course in the long term it made it worse.

That woman was the true Joe Paterno fan, in my assessment. She tried to bring a quick end to something that was in the process of destroying his reputation. I am to Jack Bogle what that woman was to Joe Paterno. I love the guy. That’s why I speak up when I see financial fraud being practiced at a board with his name on it.

It takes more guts to speak up than it takes to be a yes man. Another way of saying it is to say that it takes more love to speak up than it does to be a yes man. I love Jack Bogle more than you do. You talk the talk. I walk the walk.

That woman was fired. People didn’t like what she said. But she has a clear conscience today. She is able to look at the woman in the mirror and feel good about what she sees.

I get it that telling the truth about how stock investing works is not the popular thing to do today, when we are priced for a 65 percent price crash sometime over the next year or two or three. The reality is that we are going to need someone to put the pieces together after that crash and to get the job done that person is going to need a reputation for integrity. I think it would be feel to say that the “experts” who failed to speak out about you Goons when they learned what you are up to will not be viewed as possessing the personal integrity needed to help us dig out of the hole that the Buy-and-Holders put us in. I will.

Personal integrity matters, Anonymous. It matters a lot. I never went to Investing School. I never managed a big mutual fund. But I was the first person to work up the courage to “cross” John Greaney by posting honestly on safe withdrawal rates. And I was the first person to call out Mel Lindauer on his b.s. abusive posting tactics at the Bogleheads Forum. And that makes me ten times the investing expert that Jack Bogle or Bill Bernstein or Larry Swedroe or Scott Burns can ever again claim to be now that they have failed to take prompt action re these matters.

We all are presented opportunities to act or not act. I acted. They did not. That one is now written in the books and it obviously can never be unwritten.

A new page of the book is being written today. Jack or Bill or Larry or Scott can elect to act today. If one of them does, I will be writing it up at my blog tomorrow. I will be praising that person to the skies. It will make me happy to do so once it becomes possible to do so HONESTLY.

I cannot do that today, can I? Whose fault is that? I have figured out how to get my words posted to the internet. Does Jack lack that ability? Jack Bogle hasn’t called Mel Linduaer out on his b.s. abusive posting tactics because he fears what Linduaer will do to him if he does so. That’s the most charitable explanation of Jack’s behavior that any of his friends can possibly put forward on his behalf. That reality will change when my good friend Jack works up the courage to take the steps needed to make it change. I can try to steer him in the right direction. I cannot force him to take the steps recommended.

An investing expert who is afraid to post honestly re the numbers that millions of people have used to plan their retirements is a piss-poor investing expert. People need to know that Jack Bogle is today a piss-poor investing expert. It’s a reality that affects every one of us suffering the effects of today’s economic crisis and worrying over the worsening of that economic crisis that we will experience when the next price crash sends us all down deeper into the Buy-and-Hold darkness.

My best and warmest wishes to you (and to my good friend Jack).

Rob

“Bogle Was Honest Enough in His Book for Me to Learn that the Old School SWR Studies Get the Numbers Wildly Wrong. Swedroe Was Honest Enough to Get Banned from the Bogleheads Forum. Burns Was Honest Enough to Say That I Was Right About SWRs Years Before Anyone Else Was Saying That. But All of These People Want to Continue Making a Buck.”

by

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

Why do you focus so much on the “Buy and Hold Mafia” here at your own blog? It seems you choose to post about the “goons” pretty much every day rather than using your own blog to post about your own theories.

I focus on the Buy-and-Hold Mafia and our failure as a society to shut it down because that story is the biggest political and economic story of any of our lifetimes, Sensible.

We are the luckiest generation of investors that ever lived. We are the first generation of investors that has available to it the opportunity to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent while increasing returns enough to be able to retire five to ten years earlier than we ever imagined possible in the Buy-and-Hold years.

Have you ever heard more wonderful news?

That news is wonderful for Democrats as well as Republicans. It is wonderful for women as well as men. It is wonderful for Christians as well as atheists. It is wonderful for blacks as well as whites. It is wonderful for lovers or jazz as well as for lover of rock. It is wonderful for the young as well as for the old. It is wonderful for Buy-and-Holders as well as for Valuation-Informed Indexers. It is wonderful for Goons as well as for humans. It is wonderful for haters as well as for lovers.

So the job is to get this wonderful news out before people.

One thing stands in our way.

The Buy-and-Hold Mafia. There are a number of people who made names for themselves promoting the pure Get Rich Quick approach and now that they have ruined millions of middle-class lives by doing so they want us all to agree to go along with their 11-year cover-up. It’s a terrible mistake to do so. Those who commit acts of financial fraud in support of the cover-up will be going to prison following the next price crash. Huh? When you find yourself promoting a strategy with so little support in the academic research that the only way it’s defenders can think of to “defend” it is to engage in criminal acts, I think it is fair to say that it is time to question the merit of that particular strategy.

And so thousands and thousands of people have done. We had hundreds expressing a desire for honest posting at Motley Fool. We had hundreds more expressing a desire for honest posting at Early Retirement Forum. We had hundreds more expressing a desire for honest posting at Morningstar. We have had academic researchers express a desire to be permitted to publish honest research. Even big-name Buy-and-Holders have mixed in honest words along with the smelly Get Rich Quick garbage that has made them so rich at the expense of the millions of middle-class investors who have assumed that these “experts” might be sharing their honest beliefs about how stock investing works with us all.

Bogle was honest enough in his book for me to learn that the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies got the numbers wildly wrong. Bernstein was honest when he said that anyone using one of the Old School studies to plan a real-world retirement would have to be out of his or her mind. Swedroe was honest when he put forward words that caused Lindauer to expel him from the Bogleheads Forum. Burns was honest when he said that I was right about safe withdrawal rates. Pfau was honest when he wrote to the authors of the Trinity study saying that they should correct the errors in their study before it caused even more failed retirements.

But all of these people want to continue making a buck by pretending to be investing “experts.” And all of these people know what the Buy-and-Hold Mafia will do to them if they dare to offer honest investing advice, advice consistent with the 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold “strategy” could ever work for a single long-term investor.

What to do, what to do?

I could focus on the intellectual case, which every person even slightly knowledgeable in this field already understands on at least one level of consciousness.

Or I could focus on the Buy-and-Hold Mafia, which is the force that stops Wade Pfau and Larry Swedroe and Bill Bernstein and Jack Bogle and Scott Burns and all the others from sharing with us what they truly believe and thereby helping us all to become more effective investors rather than encouraging our most sick and twisted Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold fantasies.

I think I’ll continue to focus on the role played by the Buy-and-Hold Mafia, Sensible.

I think that might be where the leverage is.

I think we might be able to bring this economic crisis to an end within six months of the day that Jack Bogle gives his “I Was Wrong” speech, thereby opening the way for thousands of “experts” to start posting their honest views rather than the smelly Get Rich Quick garbage that has come to pass for “expert investing advice” during the Buy-and-Hold Era.

Just another one of those crazy hunches that I have been known to experience from time to time.

Please take good care.

Rob

“Bogle Has Committed Financial Fraud in an Objective Sense. He Knows About How Mel Linduaer Uses Threats of Physical Violence and Smear Campaigns To Keep People From Talking About the 11-Year Cover-Up at the Bogleheads Forum.”

by

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

Could you please provide us a list, by name, of everyone you believe should go to prison as well as for those that you believe should be paying you your requested $500 million.

I will be suing those who have done harm to my business, Deleted. If someone says that Buy-and-Hold is the greatest strategy ever known to humankind, that is of course 100 percent positive and constructive and life-affirming. If someone threatens to kill my wife and children if I continue posting honestly on safe withdrawal rates, that person pays me damages. If someone demands that I be banned from an investing site solely because I pointed out an error in a retirement study, that person pays me damages. If someone advances tens of thousands of acts of defamation as a means of intimidating me or people who have expressed support for my work, that person pays me damages. If someone threatens to send defamatory e-mails to an academic researcher who has co-published Nobel-prize-quality research with me, that person pays me damages.

The names will be listed in the legal papers. I will meet with a legal team following the next price crash and will share the Post Archives with that team. The lawyers will make decisions as to who should be sued and for how much. That’s their job.

I don’t feel comfortable expressing a personal opinion re who should go to prison and who should not. The matter of civil liabilities is personal to me. So I feel that I can express a view re that one. The matter of prison time is something we need to debate as a society. My personal view is that we want to keep the prison sentences as limited as possible. If we start getting involved in revenge stuff, we will tear our society apart with negativity. There obviously have to be prison sentences. The 11-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School SWR studies is the biggest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States and people went to prison over much smaller things. So we are going to need as a society to make a statement that includes prison sentences. But I think it would be a mistake to get carried away with that aspect of things.

I’ll give one example to illustrate the point.

Jack Bogle is a hero to me. I learned what I needed to know to report on the errors in the Old School SWR studies by reading Bogle’s book. There has never been anyone in this field who cared as much about the ordinary middle-class investor. My dad loved Bogle and taught me to love him. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing but for Bogle’s many huge contributions.

All that said, the reality is that Bogle has committed financial fraud in an objective sense. He knows about how Mel Lindauer uses threats of physical violence and smear campaigns to keep people from talking about the 11-year cover-up at the Bogleheads Forum. He has an obvious responsibility to take action. He has not done so. For many years. The fact pattern here is not good for Old Saint Jack.

There’s yet another factor that needs to be considered. There is a wealth of evidence indicating that Bogle is suffering from cognitive dissonance. He did not wake up one morning and say to himself: “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could bring the U.S. economy to its knees by promoting the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme in U.S. history?” If Bogle took a lie detector test and was asked “Do you think Buy-and-Hold caused the economic crisis?”, I think he could answer “No” and not cause the buzzers to go off.

To have financial fraud, you have to have bad intent. Does Bogle have bad intent? He does and he doesn’t. It’s a sign of bad intent that he says positive stuff about Lindauer. He empowers the Goons when he does that. But Bogle’s views about stock investing are just misinformed (in my view!), not evil. So there are different ways to look at this question.

There’s no one other than me talking today about Bogle going to prison. So he is safe for the time-being. But what happens following the next price crash? I can see things getting very, very ugly at that point. For prices to crash, people need to give up on Buy-and-Hold. When millions of people give up and lose most of their retirement money, they are gong to be angry and they are going to be looking for people to hang from a tree. I think it would be fair to say that Old Saint Jack is an obvious candidate.

My guess is that I will be the one trying hardest to save Jack’s neck at that time. Partly that’s because I love the guy. Partly it’s because I just don’t like to see ANYONE go to prison. And partly it’s because I think our nation is going to be in dire need of healing at that time. But I cannot dismiss the idea of prison time for Jack out of hand. If I do that, I lose credibility with the millions of middle-class people whose lives are in the process of being destroyed because of Jack’s continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold and because of Jack’s continued support for the Goons who are responsible for the 11-year cover-up.

I need to evidence balance in all I say re these matters. My hope is that Jack will do things that put him in a better light and that the millions of people who have lost money because of his mistakes (that’s truly what I think they are at the core) will be appeased by positive actions on his part. If that doesn’t happen, that doesn’t happen. But I sure don’t want to say anything here that serves to diminish the chances that it will happen.

The motto that I follow is to be as honest as it is possible to be without crossing the line and being uncharitable while also being as charitable as possible without crossing the line and being dishonest. I believe that if we all (including my good friend Jack!) followed that motto that we would end up in a good place at the end of the day. We have seen some ugly stuff over the first 11 years of our discussions. We have seen ten times more magical, wonderful, amazing, exciting stuff. So I want to encourage all who are reading these words to focus on the positive side of the story. We jeopardize getting to the good place where deep in our hearts we all truly want to be when we let our negative emotions gain the upper hand.

I hope that helps a bit, Deleted.

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.

Rob, the Fellow Working His Butt Off to Get Jack Bogle’s Prison Sentence Reduced or Possibly Even Eliminated Altogether (And Getting Precious Little Support From Old Saint Jack for His Efforts to Do So!)

“I Have Publicly Declared My Intent To Have the Bogleheads Forum Added to My Site As a Sub-Domain. It’s the Top Investing Board on the Internet Today.”

by

Set forth below are the texts of two related comments that I recently put to the Goon Central board:

How much he values the board from which he is banned and how envious he is of the people that can post there.

I value the board immensely, GW. There is no dispute re that one.

I have publicly declared my intent to have the board added to my site as a sub-domain. I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t see great value in the board. It’s the top investing board on the internet today.

With me or someone I appoint making board administration decisions, we will be able to attract more people of integrity to the board and those who are there now and who possess integrity will feel free to post their honestzzz views.

Buy-and-Holders will of course be welcome to participate in all discussions.

Whether I am “envious” or not depends on how you use the word. I see the board as a very valuable resource. So I am certainly “envious” of those who are able to make use of that resource. That is obviously so.

But am I willing to sacrifice my personal integrity to obtain access to that learning experience? No way, no how. It’s not even a close call.

And I am not “envious” of those who have made the other call. I think they have made a huge mistake.

Will you be envious of me when I am handed the $500 million settlement check? I wouldn’t be gaining that check if I had agreed to post dishonestly, you know.

Rob

That the Bogleheads freely discuss exactly those topics which Bennet claims are banned.   

The fact that my friend Brian’s post was taken down because it contained a link to the Risk Evaluator shows us precisely how “free” the discussions are there, GW.

Community members are permitted to say anything about safe withdrawal rates except what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research shows to be the case.

That’s not what Buy-and-Hold was about in its early days.

That’s not what it will be about once we open every board and blog on the internet to honestzzz posting on SWRs and many other critically important investment-related topics.

You can help. May I put you down for 20 e-mails per day?

Rob