> people seem to think "50/50 chance of beating the market" = 50% chance of generating 40% return on any given year
Yeah, quants like to coyly say they're figuring out where pennies might drop, and then they bring in leverage. Without the leverage, they'd be beating the market by less than a percent in so many cases.
For whatever reason, people seem to think "50/50 chance of beating the market" = 50% chance of generating 40% return on any given year.
Try randomly picking stocks over the last 20 years, and run 1 billion simulations and see if you get anywhere near that (even letting you have survivorship bias for free)