Posts Tagged ‘ buy-and-hold ’

Lets Stop Blaming the Economy for Our Failed Investing Strategies

Beyond Buy-and-Hold #76

By Rob Bennett

Buy-and-Hold doesn’t work. Look around. it’s obvious.

But wait! The Buy-and-Holders have an explanation.

It’s the Economy! Buy-and-Hold is aces. It’s that darnned economy that is messing everything up. Buy-and-Hold cannot be expected to produce good results in the face of such a bad economy.

Trying to have it both ways

Please think over what is being said here. When Buy-and-Hold produces good results, we credit the investing strategy. When the results are poor, we place the blame elsewhere. As Church Lady might observe, “How convenient for the advocates of Buy-and-Hold!” It’s a “heads I win, tails you lose” approach to investing analysis.

And you know what? This isn’t the first time the Buy-and-Hold advocates have played this little trick on us.
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The Question That Should Terrify Investors

Beyond Buy-and-Hold #74

By Rob Bennett

At what price are stocks no longer worth buying?

That’s the question that should terrify Buy-and-Holders, for two reasons. One, it is a question that demands an answer. And, two, Buy-and-Holders are not able to come up with one.

Before you buy a car, you check Edmunds.com or some such site to identify the fair selling price. If you are in desperate need of a car, you might be willing to pay a bit more. But there are limits. You won’t pay $60,000 for a car that properly should go for $20,000.

Why doesn’t it work that way with stocks? Stocks were selling for three times fair value in 2000. Investors were buying like crazy. Why? Why don’t we care about getting ripped off when it comes to how we invest our retirement money?

Should “sky’s the limit” be the rule with stocks?

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Get Rich Quick – What Is It?

Beyond Buy-and-Hold #72

By Rob Bennett

I often refer to Buy-and-Hold as “the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind.” People are often surprised to hear me say that.

Am I getting at something in particular? What precisely do I mean to signify when I characterize Buy-and-Hold as “a Get RIch Quick scheme”? Am I just throwing dirty words around?

I hope I am not just throwing dirty words around. The phrase “Get Rich Quick” has a particular meaning in my mind. I mean something specific when I characterize Buy-and-Hold as the most intense dosage of that something that I have seen in my days of walking Planet Earth.

The distraction of empty promises

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Buy-and-Holders Are Good and Smart People

Beyond Buy-and-Hold #71

By Rob Bennett

When it comes to Buy-and-Hold investing strategies, I’m tough. I describe Buy-and-Hold as the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick strategy ever concocted by the human mind. I say that it was the heavy promotion of Buy-and-Hold that was the primary cause of the economic crisis. I point out that the academic research has been showing for 30 years that there is precisely zero chance that Buy-and-Hold could ever work for any long-term investor.

Yowsa!

I must really hate Buy-and-Holders, huh?

No. That’s not even close to being true.

As negative as I am re Buy-and-Hold, I am just that enthusiastic re Valuation-Informed Indexing. I say that we could bring the economic crisis to a quick end by opening up the internet to honest posting re Valuation-Informed Indexing strategies. I often cite research showing that we could all retire five to ten years sooner if only we would make the switch to Valuation-Informed Indexing. I note that the historical stock-return data shows that switching to Valuation-Informed Indexing reduces the risk of stock investing by 80 percent.

Guess which group of investors it was that laid the foundation for the discovery of Valuation-Informed Indexing?

It was the Buy-and-Holders!

The way to financial liberation

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Why I Don’t Pull Punches in My Discussions With Buy-and-Holders

Beyond Buy-and-Hold #70

By Rob Bennett

I was talking with a friend of mine at the Financial Bloggers Conference in Chicago. He’s a Buy-and-Holder. He told me what I need to do to get reinstated at the various boards and blogs that have banned me for pointing out the dangers of this popular investing strategy.

I need to pull back a bit. It’s okay for me to say that valuations matter, people can deal with that. But I need to not post so often. It really gets on people’s nerves when they see me participating in every thread in which the valuation issue comes up. And my posts are so long! I need to write shorter posts less frequently and not take such strong stands. It wouldn’t hurt if I would stop describing Buy-and-Hold as a Get Rich Quick scheme, for example.

Okay.

He’s right, of course. The Buy-and-Holders would love it if I followed that advice.

The investment strategy of the future—maybe the near future

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In the Future There Will Be No Bulls or Bears

Beyond Buy-and-Hold #69

By Rob Bennett


As we learn more about how stock investing works (and as we permit ourselves to talk over what we have learned), we will need to change the language we use to discuss the subject.

Are you a bull?

Or are you a bear?

If you are a smart investor, you are neither.

The designations “bull” and “bear” were meaningful in the days before there was academic research showing that short-term timing (changing your stock allocation because of a guess as to where stock prices are headed) doesn’t work. In the days when large numbers of investors believed that guessing where prices were headed was the way to buy low and sell high, the most important thing to know about an investor was whether he was a bull or a bear.

”Bull” and “Bear” no longer matter

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How Our Stock Addiction Grew Gradually Worse Over Time

Beyond Buy-and-Hold #68

By Rob Bennett

One of my critics makes a great point in a recent Bogleheads Forum discussion of the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept. A poster going by the name “nisiprius” says: “I just don’t believe that a few simple rules based on numbers that are easily available to everyone will substantially improve your risk-adjusted returns.”

I say that the typical middle-class investor could retire five to ten years sooner if he were willing to switch from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. I say that the heavy promotion of Buy-and-Hold was the primary cause of the economic crisis. I say that we would eliminate 80 percent of the risk of stock investing by letting investors know about the 30 years of academic research supporting this approach.

Yet the only difference between Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing is that Buy-and-Holders choose a single stock-allocation percentage that makes sense for them at all times while Valuation-Informed Indexers change their stock allocations in response to big valuation shifts. Could this one strategic change really make such a big difference? That’s more than a little hard to believe, isn’t it?

It’s hard to believe.
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Recent Stock Market History Has Too Much Influence on Our Thinking

Beyond Buy-and-Hold #66

By Rob Bennett

I believe that the case against Buy-and-Hold is rock solid. Common sense tells us that it cannot possibly work. There is now 30 years of academic research confirming what common sense tells us. That research is based on 140 years of historical stock-return data. What more could you ask?

Lots of people are asking for more. Buy-and-Hold remains popular. My articles stating the case against it remain unpopular.

I have exchanged a number of e-mails with a fellow who is a big believer in Buy-and-Hold but also not entirely unsympathetic to my case for Valuation-Informed Indexing in an effort to better understand what is going on in people’s minds. This fellow has looked at the research and acknowledges that is appears generally solid. Still, he is not a convert. Buy-and-Hold seems right to him.

He was fair-minded enough to tell me that, following one of our recent e-mail conversations, he laid in bed for a time asking himself what it would take to persuade him that Buy-and-Hold does not work. That’s the question I most need answered. So I listened carefully to what he told me.

The “this time it’s different” philosophy

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Buy and Holders Must Sell Their Stocks Before the Economy Can Recover

Beyond Buy-and-Hold #63

By Rob Bennett

If stock prices continue their 12-year march downward, we are going to end up in the Second Great Depression. So we would all like to see a turnaround. The thing with which there is a difference of opinion is the question of what we need to see to bring on this happy event.

Buy-and-Holders believe that it is economic developments that cause stock price changes. If that is so, what we need is an economic recovery. That’s obviously a good thing. So, from a Buy-and-Hold perspective, we all just have to wait for and hope for an economic recovery.

Stock prices are the root of economic crises

Valuation-Informed Indexers have a very different understanding of how stock investing works. We don’t believe that it is economic developments that determine stock prices but that it is stock prices that determine economic developments. Once stocks become insanely overpriced, a crash becomes inevitable and, once a crash becomes inevitable, an economic crisis becomes inevitable because the price crash subtracts so much spending power from the economy.
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Nine Reasons Why Buy-and-Hold Can Never Work

Beyond Buy-and-Hold #62

By Rob Bennett

I often observe that Buy-and-Hold can never work. I get the feeling that a lot of people think I am exaggerating. No. I really mean that. This article sets forth nine reasons why it is so.

1) Buy-and-Holders don’t know when they are doing well or doing poorly.

The key to success in many types of life endeavor is learning from feedback. Because Buy-and-Holders don’t adjust their portfolio values to show the effect of valuations, the feedback they receive is often misleading.

I was warning people back in 2002 that going with a high stock allocation at the price levels that applied at the time was a terrible mistake. The usual response I received from Buy-and-Holders was “I’m doing just fine.” Huh? Buy-and-Hold was a disaster in the late 1990s. It took stock prices to the most insanely high levels ever seen in history. Yet Buy-and-Holders were not aware of the problem because they were viewing the numbers on their portfolio statements as legitimate.
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