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It's not a rumor. The first news articles discussing the event said that Paulson won big because he arrived late to the bet. It's just that the market stayed ir
by xapata 10y ago
It's not a rumor. The first news articles discussing the event said that Paulson won big because he arrived late to the bet. It's just that the market stayed irrational longer than the initial naysayers could stay solvent.
"The Big Short" shows Michael Burry arguing with his LPs as they try to bail too early.
- nemo44x 10y agoWall Street is lined with the corpses of people that were right but too early.
- throwaway40483 10y agoThere is a word for "right, but too early": wrong
- markeroon 10y agoSaying that the bonds were garbage was not incorrect. It just took a lot longer for most people to realize it
- gmarx 10y agoI disagree. There is a housing bubble and it will pop is a thing you could have been right about or wrong about and many people were. When is it going to pop? You could predict this within plus or minus five years and I'd say you were doing pretty well but I guess in terms of making money you'd better get a little lucky and have all your stuff line up at the right time
- tedsanders 10y agoLow-effort, snarky comments like these are not useful. In my opinion, they are damaging the culture of HackerNews and making it less valuable to read. Was Galileo wrong when he speculated that helicopters were possible? Absolutely not. Was Girolamo Fracastoro wrong when he speculated that germs caused illness? Absolutely not. If you're going to be snarky, at least be right.
- jstanley 10y agoHe's not wrong. He's just early.
- retsibsi 10y agoI think he had a reasonable point, though. If you predict that X will happen, and it eventually does, then sure, you were right about that. But if you take an action that will cause you to profit if X happens within 5 years and to lose money otherwise, you're effectively predicting that X will happen within 5 years. If X happens after 10 years, then to say that you were right, just too early, is misleading: in fact you were right that X would happen, but wrong about when it would happen, and you chose to bet on both of those things. Maybe this is a bit pedantic, but surely it's at least correct.
- nickjarboe 10y agoGalileo and helicopters? I think you mean Leonardo da Vinci.
- kolbe 10y agoThanks, but that's not really the point that is being communicated. We're just trying to empasize the fact that, while some track records can be used as an indication of future success, a guy who makes a bet with the same logic as others but years later than they did (then got rich merely being lucky enough to be late) should never have been thought of as someone who could generate alpha in the future off of that track record.