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Atrocious timing? It seems to me that he got supremely lucky. Within the first 14 months of the bet he had the largest bear market in nearly a century. Isn't th
by tanderson92 9y ago
Atrocious timing? It seems to me that he got supremely lucky. Within the first 14 months of the bet he had the largest bear market in nearly a century. Isn't this where the "risk management" advantage of hedge funds comes in? And he still lost.
Oh, and his piece is littered with false comparisons (picking benchmarks post facto despite knowing he'd be compared to the S&P500 index total return) and falsehoods (international stocks, see VTIAX, have provided a positive return over the period he describes); hard to take him seriously at all.
- kbutler 9y agoExactly this. Seides and Buffet are saying Buffet will win "unless they get a market crash" (the second in the 10-year period). Yes, hedge funds seek to hedge their bets against bear markets, but if you require two major crashes in 10 years to break even with passive investing, the smart money should go elsewhere.
- spott 9y agoThe average time between stock market crashes is roughly 8 years... so 2 in 10 isn't outrageous.
- sweezyjeezy 9y agoYeah but not a sensible bet to take even odds on. It would be about a 20% chance assuming a Poisson distribution (probably entirely false, but you get the point).