by hocus » 03/15/08 at 15:15:34
I would be interested to see a "not a numbers guy" demonstrate significance. ?Please elaborate.
I start with common sense. NFS. Bernstein says that valuations affect long-term returns as a matter of "mathematical certitude." He's right. Therefore, it is a logical impossibility that there could ever be a time when long-term timing does not work. You will always obtain higher returns at lower risk by permitting consideration of the effect of valuations to influence your stock allocation decisions.
If you don't want to do it, you don't need to do it. You earned your money and that gives you the right to do whatever you please with it.
If you want to see what the historical data says, there are many people who have looked at it in a serious way and confirmed what common sense tells us must be so. If you want to go with your emotional choice and feel a need to have some sort of "study" to point to to make you feel better about it, there's lots of that stuff out there too. People have looked at things with all sorts of agendas motivating their work and have come to all sorts of "findings" as a result. That's been going on since the first stock market opened for business.
You have posted in support of the tactics used by Greaney defenders to block honest posting on SWRs and on valuations in general. That tells us where you are coming from. I don't mean that as a personal dig. It's a reality that affects every post you put forward. If you think for certain that you know now how stock investing works, then you are not open to learning. If you are not open to learning, there are no words or studies that I or anyone else can put forward to convince you.
The reality is that you do not stay out of the discussions. You do not feel confident enough about your views to permit others to express their views without you smearing them for doing so. That's not a mark of confidence, in my assessment. I feel strongly that it is a mark of a lack of confidence. I certainly do not mean to say that it is only you who does this There obviously are a good number of others.
Valuations affect long-term returns. If you fail to correct your stock allocation percentage following a big change in valuations, you have allowed your plan to go wildly off course. You don't need to look at a "study" to know that much, NFS. That much is pure common sense.
Do as you please, you know? If you have genuine questions that you want to ask with the aim of learning together, I'll all for it. If you come to it with atttitude, I have better things to do with my time. If you put forward a post that evidences both some attitude and perhaps some desire to learn, I'll do my best to separate out the two elements and respond to the constructive desire in as helpful a manner as possible. The attitude you evidence in just about every post you put forward makes the job a lot harder than it would otherwise be, I can tell you that much for sure.
Do you want to learn how valuations affect long-term returns? Or do you want your old views to be reconfirmed? If you start out wanting one over the other, that's a problem. That's being emotionally invested in one approach. I think it would be fair to say that you are emotionally invested in a major way, NFS. I am too to some extent, of course. We all have emotions. But you don't see me supporting the sorts of tactics that have been employed by those defending the Old School SWR studies and the EMT. Not ever. There is no one who has spoken out in opposition to those tactics more often than I have.
The "significance" of the price you pay for something is obvious to anyone who cares to see it, NFS. Do you need someone to show you the significance of paying fair price for a house or a car or a banana? You obviously have the intelligence needed to understand why price matters for every other asset under the sun. I'd like to know how it is you came to believe that all the rules of buying and selling are stood on their heads when it comes to stocks. That's the incredible claim. Is there any justification in common sense or in data or in anything else to support that one?
That's the incredible claim. So that's where the discussions should begin.
I certainly don't mean to say that we understand today every aspect of the valuations matter. We do not. It would be a huge help if people like you who have skeptical views participated in a constructive manner. That would bring on a big learning experience on all sides of the question. The attitude meter would need to be turned down about 17 notches for that to happen.
You've participated in enough of these discussions to know that there is tons of evidence that valuations affect long-term returns, coming from dozens of the best-informed people in the world. For you to pretend at this late date that you just don't know anything about all this is disengenious in the extreme. It's game-playing. It's not a serious attempt to engage in a serious discussion, as you promote it as being in the thread-starter.
If you come back by saying that you have learned important things during the course of these discussions, that you regret your role in contibuting to the poisoned atmosphere that has done damage to so many boards, and that you still have doubts that you would like to explore some more, I'm happy to do anything that I can to see if we can find common ground on some points.
You need to figure out what your motivation is for posting, NFS. If your motivation is to learn, you are not going about it in the right way. It is not possible to learn about any other subject under the sun by going into the discussions with the attitude you evidence on a regular basis, and it's not possible with investing either. Investing is like everything else. You get out of it what you put into it.
Rob