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I disagree. For one thing, there are still plenty of active investors around. The fact that the less active investors around, the easier it is for them to make
by edanm 10y ago
I disagree.
For one thing, there are still plenty of active investors around. The fact that the less active investors around, the easier it is for them to make returns, will help the market stable and full of "enough" investors.
It is absurd to worry right now about not having enough finance professionals, considering just how many people are in the market.
In terms of what's best for a single person deciding where to invest money right now, indexing seems to provide the best opportunity. It's clear that most investors will not spend the requisite time tracking companies, nor should they considering the benefit of specialization.
- kolbe 10y agoI appreciate your opinion, but when I see that companies like JNJ are 67% owned by Mutual Funds and Institutional Investors[1], most of whom are low-cost and inactive, it tells me we've gone too far. An I am not advocating for more finance professionals. Paying active managers to invest for you can cause the same problems I'm talking about. I'm advocating for personal responsibility and attentiveness. [1] http://finance.yahoo.com/quote/JNJ/holders?p=JNJ http://finance.yahoo.com/quote/JNJ/holders?p=JNJ
- edanm 10y agoDo you really think the average stock owner has the ability or training to asses companies, in their spare time? Honest question. I'd answer no, considering that even trained professionals aren't so amazing at it.
- AznHisoka 10y agoI think we as hackers can use our abilities to analyze certain companies better than the professionals. Example 1: track the Google rankings of companies that rely a lot on search engine traffic. see if any have dropped a lot from a major algorithm change (i.e. Demand Media) Example 2: use the Facebook graph API to do the same for companies that rely a lot on Facebook for traffic. Example 3: at the end of every month create a profile on weightwatchers.com. Note the user id number. Use this to extrapolate the number of users that signed up every month. Example 4: track the number of websites that installed a JS script for vendors like Hubspot. Example 5: every month scrape Ecommerce sites and track the increase % of reviews for major brands.