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A comment on I’m Still Going Long and Hoping the Markets Go Down. Parent comment

Re:I’m Still Going Long and Hoping the Markets Go Down by davidw on Friday October 10, 2008 @05:07PM (#329256)
> The effect of the sun seems to have been quite big. For shares traded in New York, for instance, annualised returns on perfectly sunny days averaged 24.8%, compared with 8.7% on perfectly cloudy days. Moreover, unlike some stockmarket “anomalies” discovered by economists, investing by the sun would have been more profitable than simply investing in the market index, even after subtracting trading costs. Alas, this does not guarantee profitable trading in the future. Even assuming the effect really exists, investors, now they have been alerted to it, will probably arbitrage away any excess returns to be had by exploiting it.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E...

So... it seems as if people really do think of everything - why wouldn't they, with millions or billions on the line. What hope does an individual have?

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Re:I’m Still Going Long and Hoping the Markets Go Down by mixmax on Friday October 10, 2008 @05:36PM (#329285)
What hope does an individual have?

More than you think. Especially if you change your attitude towards the problem a bit ;-)

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Re:I’m Still Going Long and Hoping the Markets Go Down by davidw on Friday October 10, 2008 @06:02PM (#329303)
My attitude is that it's pretty clear how I can take on (or rather, simply run around) even big players as a small startup. It's less clear how I can come out ahead stock picking as an individual. So it's better to not dick around with stock picking, put my money in cash (like it has been for a while), or an index fund, and just concentrate on the startup stuff.
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Re:I’m Still Going Long and Hoping the Markets Go Down by mixmax on Friday October 10, 2008 @06:08PM (#329310)
Couldn't agree more - sorry if I sounded a bit harsh or judging in the OP. I didn't mean it that way. And good luck with the startup :-)
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Re:I’m Still Going Long and Hoping the Markets Go Down by davidw on Saturday October 11, 2008 @04:10PM (#329892)
Well, I wouldn't mind being proved wrong if someone has good advice that's not "make it a full time job".
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Re:I’m Still Going Long and Hoping the Markets Go Down by newaccountname on Friday October 10, 2008 @07:31PM (#329359)
Knowing even the slightest basics about Einstein's random walk, I would be somewhat surprised if the percentage difference between any arbitrarily categorized sets of days weren't that large.
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Re:I’m Still Going Long and Hoping the Markets Go Down by kingkongrevenge on Friday October 10, 2008 @06:04PM (#329307)
> What hope does an individual have?

A whole lot of people support themselves by trading successfully. The thing is, making decent money by trading is a full time job, not an after-hours hobby.

You CAN make money designing trading strategies. People do it. The question is simply whether the EV returns on your time will be higher than working on an actual job or businesses. Someone smart enough to make a winning trading system is also smart enough to get paid a lot in other endeavors. So more often than not it's a wash. Except traders get to work in their underwear...

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Re:I’m Still Going Long and Hoping the Markets Go Down by nandemo on Friday October 10, 2008 @10:34PM (#329461)
People who support themselves by trading successfully are likely working for a company (bank or hedge fund, etc). Often they are dealers, who make money on the bid-ask spread, so they don't bear as much risk as (say) traders working on prop desks. These depend more on the success of their trades for their income, but even so they get a non-negative income. Now, independent day traders working in their underwear is a different story. Not only they bear all the risk of their trades, they're likely "losers" (in the game theory sense) in average.
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