What Carlyle is making reference to here is that I am the person who discovered the analytical errors in the studies that financial planners use to help us plan our retirements. I posted about what I discovered at the places referred to and there were many community members at each of these places who evidenced a desire to learn more about the realities of stock investing as revealed by the academic research of the past 30 years (that valuations affect long-term returns and that the chances of Buy-and-Hold ever working in the real world are thus precisely zero). There were also a good number of Buy-and-Hold dogmatics who insisted that honest posting on the flaws of the Buy-and-Hold model be banned and bans indeed ultimately were adopted at all of these places.

Not good. Not in Rob Bennett’s view. We are now suffering the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And this was 100 percent predictable and 100 percent avoidable. The heavy promotion of Buy-and-Hold always causes an economic crisis; there is not one exception in the historical record. I believe that there will come a time when the Ban on Honest Posting will be lifted at all of these places and when investing “experts” will come to see it as their job to report accurately what the historical data says about the effect of valuations on long-term returns rather than just to sell product through extremely misleading appeals to the most base of human emotions.

I have been consistent in urging that honest posting be permitted and in arguing that it is a black mark on the Buy-and-Hold “strategy” that so many of its advocates have been willing to tolerate bans on honest posting at so many places. We need to work together to take things to the place where deep in our hearts we all very much want to see things go.

That’s my sincere take, in any event.

Rob

Oh my!

If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t have posted that comment, FactCheck.

It is my belief that you care a lot. You don’t like hearing what I am saying. But you care intensely.

I think that’s a good thread and I encourage those with an interest in learning about the substantive issues under discussion to check it out. It is of course not even a tiny bit so that I was having that discussion with myself. All of my comments came in response to solid and thought-provoking questions being put forward by Evidence-Based Investor. Evidence is not a believer but he helped us all out by exploring some interesting angles in that thread.

Rob

I disagree with the first point Samurai makes, and as proof, offer a link that happens to also prove the second point Samurai makes – who but Rob Bennett could turn a single input on his blog into a 25 comment-long dialog with himself?

I sincerely doubt that anyone read even one of his lengthy expositions, much less all of them. If anyone wanted to dialog with Rob, he already has a blog, so I’m not sure what ‘guest posting’ provides the reader, except a bothersome interruption to those who probably don’t care for ridiculous long-winded conspiracy theories when they are trying to talk finance and investing.

Rob’s recent decent into the absurd:
http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2009/11/20/podcast-180-volatility-is-evil/#comments

Thanks, Samurai. I’ll get something to you in about two weeks. I am leaving Monday for a week at the beach with some friends. But I look forward to sending you something the following week and then seeing whether we can generate some good conversation together.

The thing is….. readers have SHORT attention spans. If the topic is not clear, spicy, and enjoyable to read, you’ll lose readers by the 2nd paragraph.

I can do clear and spicy easy enough. The short-attention-span thing causes some difficulty for me; there’s no question but that I post long (there’s one article at my site that clocks in at 17,000 words — that’s a felony in several Southern states). Perhaps I should make it a challenge to myself to limit the word count for my submission to your blog and see how that turns out. I am going to give some consideration to doing that. Thanks for your kindness.

Rob

I have no advertisers to play puppet to and I would NEVER ban you for commenting on whatever you like. You’re welcome to guest post your topic at my site if you wish!

The thing is….. readers have SHORT attention spans. If the topic is not clear, spicy, and enjoyable to read, you’ll lose readers by the 2nd paragraph.

I think there are different ways of looking at this aspect of the question, Samurai.

There are a good number of people who hate the topic with a burning passion. This has been demonstrated at numerous places and at numerous times and in numerous ways. And this is a problem for a blog owner debating whether to run a Guest Blog Entry. The blog owner alienates a good percentage of his readers by providing a forum for arguments criticizing the Buy-and-Hold model. I have had a number of blog owners who I respect voice this concern to me in e-mails (and in several cases these blog owners banned me from commenting at their blogs in response to reader demands that they do so).

The other side of the story is that I have spoken to several financial planners who have told me that both financial planners and their clients are gradually losing confidence in the Buy-and-Hold model. There is much evidence of a growing anxiety re the conventional advice. There was even a cover article in Money magazine on this theme in the January issue (I wrote to the editors of Money to suggest that they write about the Rational Investing model but received no response to the e-mail).

I have heard numerous experts acknowledge that the old model no longer hangs together (there is an entire book that has generally been well-received — The Myth of Rational Markets — that makes this case). But the usual conclusion that people reach (and this is so of Jason Fox, the author of the book) is that “Well, the old model doesn’t really work but we might as well stick with it because there is nothing better available.” I have found this to be not even a little but true. There’s better stuff available but you have to be willing to look for it to find it!

There have been people working to develop a better model for 30 years now. There are lots of wonderful ideas available to those willing to do a few internet searches. The insights of the new model are available to us today. The trouble is — we are not yet sure we really want to make the change. We have doubts about the old model but things have not yet reached a point where we feel comfortable giving serious consideration to the idea that the old model is entirely discredited.

I am trying to push things to that point. I of course accept that lots of good and smart people are not going to agree with what I think. That’s to be expected and that’s entirely healthy. What I believe is that we need to get the discussions going. If the old model (Buy-and-Hold) is going to survive, those who advocate it are going to need to come up with answers to the challenges that have been raised to it. If the old model is not going to survive, it is better that we find that out sooner rather than later. Waiting for another crash to consider alternatives is a terrible idea, in my view.

Opening up debate on the fundamental questions that would be discussed is a delicate matter. We need to be sensitive to people’s feelings and concerns. But I think that we do need to get about the business of debating these questions. My view is that we need to combine charity toward those who hold different views with an insistence on our right to state our own views frankly. We need to combine love with honesty.

I believe that blog owners worry that they do harm to the popularity of their blogs by permitting such debates to proceed at their blogs. In a short-term sense, there probably is something to that. In a long-term sense, I believe that things will cut very much the other way. I personally believe that the old model is doomed. So my view is that those who begin learning about how the new model works are positioning themselves to play a big role in helping people make the transition to the new model. So I feel that blog owners who get involved are helping both themselves and their communities in the long run.

It’s a complicated matter. I don’t think there is any reasonable person who does not agree with that much at this point. I find myself smack dab in the middle of a hurricane through no “fault” of my own. I either just happened to be precisely in the wrong place at the wrong time or in the right place at the right time, depending on your point of view. I am not 100 percent sure myself which one it will turn out to be! (But I am an optimist by nature.)

Rob

Now, how to spend $1 million if you found it on the street, however, would excite most