I have done research in financial modeling and indeed have a family-member that manages his own successful hedge fund, so the comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I do consider myself an outsider, though, as I’ve been out of the field for sometime.

Still, if you’ve worked in hedge funds you’ll know two things: connections and luck account for almost everything. What remains are mostly linear models that almost never outperform your basic mutual index funds.

Those very smart people moving billions do get things very wrong, though often at an imbalanced risk to themselves (an imbalance in their favor, mind you), so I don’t put much stock in such sweeping appraisals.