Alex Frakt

Set forth below is the text of an -mail (with the subject heading “More Defamation/Intimidation/Deception at Bogleheads Forum) that I sent to Vanguard Founder John Bogle a few moments ago:

John:

This is Rob Bennett, the fellow who has been pushing that crazy, newfangled approach to indexing (Valuation-Informed Indexing) that has caused our mutual friend Mel Lindauer and a few others to go off their rockers in recent years. I wrote you on July 9, 2009, asking for your help with the problem of abusive posting employed at the Bogleheads Forum to discourage community members there from making an effective case pointing out the dangers of Buy-and-Hold Investing (and to get those who don’t pay heed to the warnings removed!). I believe that the time has come for a follow-up report.

The problem has gotten both a bit better and bit worse in the time since. It has gotten better because the stock crash and the economic crisis have helped many middle-class investors appreciate the dangers of Buy-and-Hold (if you do not today possess a good understanding of why Buy-and-Hold is the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick approach ever, I invite you to read the material at the links set forth in the blog entry referred to below or to send me a return e-mail asking any questions you are struggling with re this matter). I haven’t been banned at any new boards or blogs for six months now! We are gradually seeing the changes we need to see to take your many powerful insights to a far better place that we have been able to take them in earlier days.

However, things have also gotten worse as those who have participated in defamation and deception and intimidation and word games in “defense’ of Buy-and-Hold have become even more defensive as it has begun to hit them how much financial damage they have done with their advocacy of this now-discredited but once very promising idea (fated to achieve its promise as we all move together to the Valuation-Informed Indexing Era, to be sure).

The optimistic and pessimistic signals recently met in one strange Bogleheads thread reporting on exciting research by Wade Pfau, Associate Professor of Economics at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Japan, showing that Valuation-Informed Indexing beat Buy-and-Hold in 102 of 110 30-year periods. That of course is breakthrough stuff that we should all be working together to spread to every middle-class investor alive. The crazy, insane, sad, pathetic part of the thread (about half of the posts put forward rationalizations for not doing all we can to get this wonderful news out to middle-class investors as quickly as possible), is summed up in the words of a post put forward by Site Administrator Alex Frakt.

Here are Fract’s words: “We’ve had to remove a couple of comments and posts from this thread regarding Rob Bennett. I have been in contact with the OP offline and he is now fully aware of hocus’ modus operandi, so there is no further need for these posts. Let’s continue to keep this forum a hocus-free zone. P.S. For anyone confused by this message, I suggest googling “hocomania.'”

Huh?

And — Yucko!

We need your help, man! Really!

We need it now. By the close of business today if at all possible!

I wish you luck in all your future endeavors and look forward to working with you to bring your many wonderful and powerful insights from earlier days to fruition as we move from the discredited Buy-and-Hold strategy to the investing model that we all know you would have put forward in the first place if only Shiller’s research showing that valuations affect long-term returns had been available to you back in the 1970s.

Take a sad song and make it better, John. Please?

Here’s a link to my blog entry reporting on Frakt’s words (there are 12 links to background materials contained therein):

http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2011/01/25/site-administrator-alex-frakt-doubles-down-on-defamationintimidationdeception-strategy-at-bogleheads-forum/

Rob

Site Administrator Alex Frakt is doubling down on the Defamation/Intimidation/Deception strategy he has employed to block honest posting on the dangers of Buy-and-Hold Investing at the Bogleheads Forum in the wake of the posting of research by Wade Pfau, Associate Professor of Economics at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Japan, showing that Valuation-Informed Indexing beats Buy-and-Hold in 102 of the rolling 30-year periods while Buy-and-Hold did better in 8 of the periods. Frakt revealed the decision to double down in a recent post put to a discussion-board thread started by Pfau.

Here are Frakt’s words: “We’ve had to remove a couple of comments and posts from this thread regarding Rob Bennett. I have been in contact with the OP offline and he is now fully aware of hocus’ modus operandi, so there is no further need for these posts. Let’s continue to keep this forum a hocus-free zone. P.S. For anyone confused by this message, I’ll suggest googling “hocomania”.”

Oh, my!

I sent an e-mail to Vanguard Founder John Bogle on July 30, 2009, asking for his help with this matter. I will send John another e-mail today letting him know about this new development and again imploring his help to get the Bogleheads Forum back on a good and productive and honest and life-affirming track.

In the event that there are newcomers reading these words who can make no sense of the insanity, here are some links that provide some background (without quite being able to make it all seem anything less than 100 percent insanity all the same):

1) Here is my bio:

http://knol.google.com/k/rob-bennett/rob-bennett/1y5zzbysw7pgd/4#

2) Here is an article at which I quote the comments of 101 of my fellow community members expressing a desire that honest posting on the flaws of the Buy-and-Hold strategy be permitted at the Bogleheads Forum and indeed at all investing boards and blogs on the internet:

http://www.passionsaving.com/investing-discussion-boards.html

3) Here is a blog entry reporting on an interview in which Bogle (Mr. Buy-and-Hold himself!) says that he believes that Valuation-Informed Indexing can work:

http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2009/07/28/bogle-says-valuation-informed-indexing-can-work/

4) Here is the blog entry at Pfau’s site describing his preliminary research:

http://wpfau.blogspot.com/2011/01/valuation-informed-indexing-preliminary.html

5) Here is my Google Knol explaining the mistake (the Efficient Market Theory) that led people to believe for a time that Buy-and-Hold could work and how the research of Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller has led us to a better way (if only we could find a way to get the word out to middle-class investors!):

http://knol.google.com/k/why-buy-and-hold-investing-can-never-work#

6) Here is my Google Knol explaining how the bull market caused the economic crisis:

http://knol.google.com/k/rob-bennett/the-bull-market-caused-the-economic/1y5zzbysw7pgd/3

7) Here is a Q&A treatment (more concise!) of how Buy-and-Hold caused the economic crisis:

http://www.passionsaving.com/cause-current-financial-crisis.html

8 ) Here is an article setting forth links to comments by 20 experts illustrating why Buy-and-Hold cannot work and how it caused the crisis:

http://www.passionsaving.com/buy-and-hold-investing.html

9) Here is an article setting forth links to 20 studies showing the Buy-and-Hold is dead:

http://www.passionsaving.com/buy-and-hold-is-dead-part-one.html

10) Here is the blog entry in which I reported on Wade’s research. There are 71 comments to the blog entry, a good number by several of the internet sewer rats and a good number by Wade in which he indicates uncertainty as to whether he faces greater personal risk by aligning himself with the internet sewer rats (obviously not a good idea in the event that word eventually gets out to middle-class investors about their nine-year-long Campaign of Terror against our board communities) or by aligning himself with those who have expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted (obviously not something that is going to make the internet sewer rats and their supporters in The Stock-Selling Industry happy):

http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2011/01/21/wade-pfau-associate-professor-of-economics-at-the-national-graduate-institute-for-policy-studies-valuation-informed-indexing-works/

11) Here is a blog entry reporting on an earlier statement by Frakt describing me as “a threat to the [Bogleheads] community” because of my firm opposition to Buy-and-Hold Investing:

http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2011/01/19/bogleheads-org-site-administrator-says-i-represent-a-threat-to-the-community/

12) Here is a blog entry from last week titled “The Mother of Those Two Boys Did Not View Those Death Threats as ‘Alleged.'” One of those cases in which the name says it all, eh?:

http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2011/01/18/the-mother-of-those-two-boys-did-not-view-those-death-threats-as-alleged/

We can do better than this, people. A lot better!

Rob