Yet I have made investments in so many things over the years, so I don’t know how to square it other than, “I personally read the evidence, investigated the tech, thought about it logically, ignored the experts (and HN might I add!)”.
According to the efficient market hypothesis such things should be impossible.
As another recent example I went hard into oil and gas via ETFs back in May. Why I did this is for various reasons but my conclusion was that demand would surge and supply was constrained. Almost a 2x and that’s in liquid positions. I have taken some profits but still gonna wait a bit.
According to EMH I shouldn’t be able to do this, yet here I am sitting on tons of gains.
For last 15 years it was about making gains at all, but now that inflation is 10% it’s how you prevent losing your money.
So much of the future depends on a tiny, unelected body that controls the global economy (the Federal Reserve) that you need to think about interest rates a lot. I come from the Austrian perspective but I understand mainstream economic reasoning so I can put myself into that mental framework when thinking about the future. However fundamentally I am a classical economic liberal, free market, Austrian.
I think inflation is here to stay for a while. I don’t think Biden and society in general can stomach a massive recession. Putting cash into short term treasuries can get you a guaranteed 5% which could be safe play given how crazy the markets are.
I am cold on AI. Everyone and their mother has been predicting self driving cars, massive job losses to automation, and so on for years. Never happens and not going to. I would avoid this industry as an investor. As labor it can be advantageous as talent is over-compensated.
I’m skeptical of electric cars. Renewables make sense in places but also a skeptic on the time frame. Would avoid electric car and ESG equities.
Residential real estate in places without strong rent control vibes is a good bet. If you can do it yourself even better - the government subsidizes your mortgage and small time landlords avoid a lot of the political intrigue. If you can get an investment property or a small multi family, I would consider swapping equities for that and let rent follow inflation each year.
Short Europe and China. Long Africa and India.
A bunch of opinions here but hopefully this fills in some pieces.
That may be the only thing I "like" about WSB: "positions or ban". Otherwise everybody would pretend that they are a genius investor doing 50% yearly easily, etc.
Anyway, it's not impossible to beat the market, but I don't know a lot of people that beat it consistently over long periods of time. Really, a few names come to mind. That's all out of millions and millions of investors. That's hard data.
My oil and gas ETF position I mentioned in another comment was about 500k I YOLOd in an IRA.
My experience shows that more risk = more reward, and if you are careful and a student of history, you can take risk properly without blowing up.
For anyone reading this thread, just follow the path of EMH to it conclusion - trying to make an investment in a single asset is for fools. Clearly this is wrong!!!
I think it's a bit fool to live in the WSB life style, but I know plenty of people who do. They make a lot of money and lose a lot of money. They're usually more worried about retirement than I am and we make the same amount of money... this folks usually like gambling too... To each their own.
you got it the wrong way around. More reward = more risk, but the inverse might not be true.
Imagine you took crazy risk - you jump off a building, and hope that a gust of wind keeps you from dying. What is the reward?
> trying to make an investment in a single asset is for fools. Clearly this is wrong!!!
you've misunderstood the instructions for index investing and EMH. It's not saying you shouldn't concentrate and be active in choosing - it's saying that if you do, you better be someone who is more informed, and capable of pricing an investment than the market. So do you really think the average person is in that position? If not, they're better off following the market index.
Can you share a source for that? As far as I remember, the odds are around 1 in 300 (this is from memory, but that information is from Bogle's books directly). I think that research was done since 1970, but I am not sure.
The actual stat they provide is:
> And over a full 20-year period ending last December, fewer than 10 percent of active U.S. stock funds managed to beat their benchmarks.
Still, if it was 1 in 300 I think they would say “fewer than 1% or fewer than 0.5%”. So I’m assume between 9 and 10 percent beat the S&P.
I suggest reading the linked article with the mindset that nearly all of the content comes from S&P directly. It’s basically a market piece. For instance, when they say the mutual funds don’t perform consistently, they use a crazy metric of picking the top 25% performers from one year and seeing how many are in the top 25% next year. Basically their point is that mutual funds won’t beat the S&P every single year, and therefore the S&P is better. But if course, unless you’re only investing for a single year, you should care more about the expected total return. Just my two cents.
Not a lot of funds even continuously exist for 50 years - most of them closed.
wallstreetbets figured it out: "positions or ban" :) It's a rule there.
The evidence is that even the Harvard-trained finance grads, best of their class, making 1 million a year, heading the very best funds, with 2nd degrees in mathematics etc., cannot do this.
I almost feel like the discussion at this point should proceed straight to "no anecdotes please, show your work" (evidence, data, the more the better).
The evidence is extremely strong that the index fund strategy vs. human fund managers contest is really just another form of the computer chess strategy vs. human chess player one (or Go, if you prefer that). Just think of it as 'computer game players vs. human game players,' as a category. It really isn't much of a contest in the long term.
The computers have been winning, and will continue to win, as history is ever more on their side.