Education of a Hocusologist
Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:50 am
Warning this is a hocusology post
At one time I thought that hocus could modify his statements and compete better against the alternative swr guru. Simple things like saying that the rehp study appeared to rest on outdated assumptions rather than saying it was "invalid." Anyway, hocus wasn't really interested and persisted in claiming that he knew that the exact swr in 2000 could be easily calculated and that lower future stock returns were a matter of mathematical certitude. The interesting part of this was jwr's role. I claimed that future returns were unknown but likely to be lower. JWR "explained" hocus by claiming that hocus meant something else.
On any specific date in the future, the S&P 500 will be at some very well defined level. We don't know now what it will be. We will know then. Regardless of what that number is, we will be able to calculate the stock market return between now and then when the time comes. We have a mathematical formula for calculating annualized returns. That calculation involves the ratio of that future price to today's price. The calculation always shows that the annualized return is bigger if today's price is lower. (We are holding the future price at a fixed level).
http://nofeeboards.com/boards/viewtopic ... 6769#p6769
AFAIK, this is the first example of jwr twisting the facts to try to make hocus look less foolish
At one time I thought that hocus could modify his statements and compete better against the alternative swr guru. Simple things like saying that the rehp study appeared to rest on outdated assumptions rather than saying it was "invalid." Anyway, hocus wasn't really interested and persisted in claiming that he knew that the exact swr in 2000 could be easily calculated and that lower future stock returns were a matter of mathematical certitude. The interesting part of this was jwr's role. I claimed that future returns were unknown but likely to be lower. JWR "explained" hocus by claiming that hocus meant something else.
On any specific date in the future, the S&P 500 will be at some very well defined level. We don't know now what it will be. We will know then. Regardless of what that number is, we will be able to calculate the stock market return between now and then when the time comes. We have a mathematical formula for calculating annualized returns. That calculation involves the ratio of that future price to today's price. The calculation always shows that the annualized return is bigger if today's price is lower. (We are holding the future price at a fixed level).
http://nofeeboards.com/boards/viewtopic ... 6769#p6769
AFAIK, this is the first example of jwr twisting the facts to try to make hocus look less foolish