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Re:One-quarter of the world’s pigs died in a year due to swi... by mikestew on Thursday January 02, 2020 @05:31PM (#21940662)
Why do you think you're better than most other investors at making those investment choices?

Not OP, but the simple answer is: “because my returns over the years prove that I can.” I’ve heard this question enough times over the years that I usually just ignore such silly questions and go back to buying deep-in-the-money AAPL calls. Conversely, if it makes one feel better, continue to tell yourself individuals can’t beat the market (which is mostly true).

Re:One-quarter of the world’s pigs died in a year due to swi... by RussianCow on Thursday January 02, 2020 @06:50PM (#21941329)
> Not OP, but the simple answer is: “because my returns over the years prove that I can.”

But I could make the same argument as to why my "strategy" playing slots or roulette is good, but in reality it just means I've gotten really lucky, and I might wipe out all my earnings in the span of an hour if that luck suddenly turns. That's not to say there aren't legitimately profitable trading strategies—"you can't beat the market" is, strictly speaking, demonstrably false—but "buy stocks of companies I like" is not one of those, and is entirely equivalent to gambling.

Re:One-quarter of the world’s pigs died in a year due to swi... by mikestew on Thursday January 02, 2020 @07:53PM (#21941812)
Lucky is making a few trades that went well. When one can do it consistently for twenty years, is it still luck? Yeah, maybe it’s luck that deep-in-the-money AAPL calls (as one example) consistently make money. Maybe my occasional “disaster” strategy (buys calls for UAL, Equifax, et. al., after bad press that’ll blow over) is luck. But, man, both examples consistently work. /shrug

Anyway, I have little desire to repeat the same old arguments, nor convince anyone else. However, one might consider the differences between a slot machine (which tells you up front that you will lose money in the long term, and has no stop orders) and trading equities. Or don’t, matters little to me because I have no argument to win.

Re:One-quarter of the world’s pigs died in a year due to swi... by jldugger on Friday January 03, 2020 @02:50AM (#21944077)
> When one can do it consistently for twenty years, is it still luck?

If you take a few million people and have them invest in put or call options every year, you're still going to have some streaky winners after 20 years. Very few individual investors I have talked to have convinced me they are even tracking results well enough to back their claims of outperformance.

Re:One-quarter of the world’s pigs died in a year due to swi... by doliveira on Thursday January 02, 2020 @06:38PM (#21941221)
It's like you copied the definition of a fallacy in your comment.