Yesterday’s blog reported on an e-mail that I sent to academic research Wade Pfau on January 16, 2011. Wade responded later the same day. He endorsed John Walter Russell’s characterization of a paper purporting to show that long-term timing does not work as testing “idiot switching.” He said: ” ‘Idiot switching.’  That is great, and describes exactly what the Fisher and Statman paper does.  You and John have a great knack for coining new terms.  I think VII is a much better term than any alternatives I’ve come across.” He added that he did not think it would be appropriate to use the term “idiot switching” in an academic paper.

Wade also reported that “as always, I will be reading all your links.” He said: “I definitely need to cite some of your work as the founder of VII, as I have not found anyone else who can lay claim to that.  Shiller pointed out the predictive power of PE10 but never discussed how to incorporate it into asset allocation, as far as I know.”