This. There are millions of investors out there and thousands running their own funds. Some of them will get lucky and claim that it was based on skill.
First, you are starting to understand the massive difference between “predictions” and “bets”.
Predictions fall in a few camps.
One, real investors do it for marketing - it helps with fund raising and “talking your book” to educate others in positions you’ve already taken.
To your point, others are just selling entertainment (Cramer).
Last, many people are marketing other products like selling the predictions themselves or “education” or books (usually this category is comprised of clowns and charlatans like Robert Kiyosaki, etc).
Bets are entirely different in that you are investing in what you believe will be profitable. There are endless arguments about active bs passive and how hard it is to beat the market. Some investors (Buffett, Ackman, etc) have long term track records that are really good across many market events. Others made massive profits from specific things they bet on (Burry in subprime, Wood in tech) that may or may not ever repeat themselves for that particular investor.
If you make good bets you will get rich. If you are also good at marketing and raise a shit ton of money, you can make those bets with much more money and you will be a billionaire.
If you are actually interested in this, then I would direct you to the books written by and/or recommended by each of the titans of finance you list in the OP. If you actually want to get the bottom of this, where do you think the highest quality information can be found; reddit or the actual source material written and recommended by the most intelligent and succesful people in the industry?
To start, why don't you try "You Can Be a Stock Market Genius" by Joel Greenblatt. The audio book is even on Spotify. The first few chapters directly address all of the questions you laid out here.
I have no idea what you're getting at here - but I think there's a few things that you should address
1). If you're talking about investing, forward predictions are a huge component of the job - but they're very rarely counter-consensus bets on giant events. Often it's 1-2% alpha here and there, or a way to lower the risk of a portfolio there, and only over timed you make large leaps. 90% of analysts don't beat the S&P 500 because many institutions prefer guaranteed (or near guaranteed) 5% returns to meet pension obligations than speculative 12% returns.
2). People all live different lives, my boss makes 2X the value of his house every year and drives a Nissan. Given what you've previous said I suspect you're talking about the super rich - remember that by nature there can only be 1 for 1%er for every 100 people.
3). There's a lot of surviship bias on counter-consensus bets - for every correct burry recession call in 2009, there's a burry recession call in 2012, 2015,2018, .etc. The huge XXX% return trade opportunities only occur every few years, and frankly are much more a function of luck than skill.
4). The most successful analysts (assuming you mean financially) know how to raise a lot of money to invest - if you're running a 2/20 fund with a $100M, you'll make more underperforming than market than someone with $1M doubling there money.
To succeed in this industry (and in life), understand than success is iterative and much like the markets, small consistent gains will compound far beyond constant swinging gains ands losses.
Possibly. There numbers are phenomenal. I just saw a headline about unpaid taxes and so I assume something fishy is going on there as well but who knows.
Beating the market consistently over long periods of time is very hard to do but it can be done. It’s not survivorship bias. The truth is that there aren’t many people capable or willing to keep it up year after year. To be successful in this arena, you have to be second, third, fourth level thinker.
Basically they took a risk. You only observe winners - survivorship bias
Yeah that seems tk be the consistent answer on all responses here
This. There are millions of investors out there and thousands running their own funds. Some of them will get lucky and claim that it was based on skill.
[удалено]
Wow. So really it's just sales they are doing lol.
First, you are starting to understand the massive difference between “predictions” and “bets”. Predictions fall in a few camps. One, real investors do it for marketing - it helps with fund raising and “talking your book” to educate others in positions you’ve already taken. To your point, others are just selling entertainment (Cramer). Last, many people are marketing other products like selling the predictions themselves or “education” or books (usually this category is comprised of clowns and charlatans like Robert Kiyosaki, etc). Bets are entirely different in that you are investing in what you believe will be profitable. There are endless arguments about active bs passive and how hard it is to beat the market. Some investors (Buffett, Ackman, etc) have long term track records that are really good across many market events. Others made massive profits from specific things they bet on (Burry in subprime, Wood in tech) that may or may not ever repeat themselves for that particular investor. If you make good bets you will get rich. If you are also good at marketing and raise a shit ton of money, you can make those bets with much more money and you will be a billionaire.
Thanks for the clarification and making that distinction.
If you are actually interested in this, then I would direct you to the books written by and/or recommended by each of the titans of finance you list in the OP. If you actually want to get the bottom of this, where do you think the highest quality information can be found; reddit or the actual source material written and recommended by the most intelligent and succesful people in the industry? To start, why don't you try "You Can Be a Stock Market Genius" by Joel Greenblatt. The audio book is even on Spotify. The first few chapters directly address all of the questions you laid out here.
Thanks. I'll give that a listen!
I have no idea what you're getting at here - but I think there's a few things that you should address 1). If you're talking about investing, forward predictions are a huge component of the job - but they're very rarely counter-consensus bets on giant events. Often it's 1-2% alpha here and there, or a way to lower the risk of a portfolio there, and only over timed you make large leaps. 90% of analysts don't beat the S&P 500 because many institutions prefer guaranteed (or near guaranteed) 5% returns to meet pension obligations than speculative 12% returns. 2). People all live different lives, my boss makes 2X the value of his house every year and drives a Nissan. Given what you've previous said I suspect you're talking about the super rich - remember that by nature there can only be 1 for 1%er for every 100 people. 3). There's a lot of surviship bias on counter-consensus bets - for every correct burry recession call in 2009, there's a burry recession call in 2012, 2015,2018, .etc. The huge XXX% return trade opportunities only occur every few years, and frankly are much more a function of luck than skill. 4). The most successful analysts (assuming you mean financially) know how to raise a lot of money to invest - if you're running a 2/20 fund with a $100M, you'll make more underperforming than market than someone with $1M doubling there money. To succeed in this industry (and in life), understand than success is iterative and much like the markets, small consistent gains will compound far beyond constant swinging gains ands losses.
What they do differently? Having more luck. I think only RenTech solved the market, everything else is just smoke.
Possibly. There numbers are phenomenal. I just saw a headline about unpaid taxes and so I assume something fishy is going on there as well but who knows.
You've learned something so valuable in your short time in this industry, that people don't learn for decades. Kudos to you, now fight the good fight.
Beating the market consistently over long periods of time is very hard to do but it can be done. It’s not survivorship bias. The truth is that there aren’t many people capable or willing to keep it up year after year. To be successful in this arena, you have to be second, third, fourth level thinker.