A Rich Life

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

“My Take Is That the Buy-and-Holders Came Within One Step of Developing That Optimal Strategy. They Made One Mistake. Big Deal. Once We Fix It, We’re Off to the Races. I See Myself As the Person Who Vindicated the Buy-and-Holders By Taking Their Ideas to Exciting Places That They Never Imagined Taking Them.”

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I’ve been contacting numerous people to let them know about my article on The Silencing of Academic Researcher Wade Pfau by The Buy-and-Hold Mafia.

Yesterday’s blog entry  reported on my correspondence with Robert Savickus, Associate Finance Professor at George Washington University Business School. Set forth below is the text of my response to the e-mails by Robert described in the earlier blog entry:

Robert:

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It’s wonderful to hear your voice again.
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I am more optimistic than you re our (humanity’s) chances of identifying the optimal strategy. Bad things happen in this world. I acknowledge that. But sometimes really good things happen too. I think this is one of those times.
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One of the many paradoxes of my position re all this is that the Buy-and-Holders see me as their “enemy.” My take is that the Buy-and-Holders came within one step of developing that optimal strategy. They made one mistake. Big deal. Once we fix it, we’re off to the races. I see myself as the person who vindicated the Buy-and-Holders by taking their ideas to exciting places they never imagined taking them.
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I could be wrong, though. It’s happened before. It could be that it is happening again.
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You are certainly right that “everything in this world is very transitory.” It would be a mistake to become TOO passionate re this matter. But, yes, we need to at least TRY to make people’s lives better or life is no longer worth living. I believe that I was put on earth to do this. So I work it as hard as I can and try to do the best job I can. But I do make an effort to keep it in perspective and to maintain a sense of humor about it.
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You have a nicely balanced perspective, in my assessment.
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I hope we will stay in touch from time to time.
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Rob
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Robert:

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Go with that thought! Revisit that system!
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My big-pciture take on all this is that we are in the primitive days of our understanding of how stock investing works.
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That’s scary because it means we don’t know it all today and we are kidding ourselves if we act like we do.
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But it’s also  exciting because the biggest leaps forward are achieved in the primitive days of any analytical effort.
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Thanks much for touching base again.
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Rob