9 ms·
The biggest bet on longbets.com: $1,000,000
- hugh3 16y agoPersonally, I'm willing to bet anyone a billion dollars that we won't have hyperinflation in the next ten years.
- eru 16y agoIndexed for inflation?
- zyb09 16y agoWell played!
- kaddar 16y agoAh, I'll bet you 10 dollars that we will!
- hugh3 16y agoshrug I'll take that bet too!
- VictorHo 16y agoIf you wish to execute that bet on Long Bets I believe you need to submit the cash now to be held in escrow. Have a billion dollars? =)
- khafra 16y agoThey have bets there over whether the LHC will destroy the earth, which is an even bigger asymmetrical devaluation of the winnings.
- Groxx 16y agoWell, as we all know, there are only two possibilities. Either it does, or it doesn't. That means it's a 50/50 chance for it destroying the earth. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-30-2009/large-hadron-collider http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-30-2009/large-ha... When you've got ominously rounded corridors like that, you're up to no good.
- cool-RR 16y agoLink: http://www.longbets.org/382 http://www.longbets.org/382
- jyothi 16y agobetting on a temporal paradox
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ivankirigin 16y agoFor those who don't know, longbets sends all the funds for any bets to charity.
- Eliezer 16y ago> Their opposites, passive investors, will by definition do about average. In aggregate their positions will more or less approximate those of an index fund. Therefore the balance of the universe the active investors must do about average as well. Am I missing something or is this obviously wrong as a mathematical argument? There could be a group of active investors who do well, a group of passive investors who do poorly, and the average would be in the middle.
- MichaelSalib 16y agoMost (all?) passive investors buy index funds which perform about as well as the market but are more robust because of their diversity. I suppose it is possible for a passive investor to put their money in very carefully chosen index funds that perform poorly, but the whole point of passive investing is that you believe that you're unlikely to be able to make those sorts of allocations correctly and consistently. There certainly are active investors who do very well, but I'm not sure if there are any that significantly beat the market over a long enough time frame.
- jbooth 16y agoBuffett's argument wasn't just that active investors don't beat the market over a long enough timeframe (I think some do, he prob agrees). His argument was that those active investors, minus the fees they charge, won't beat the market over a long timeframe. I agree with him there as well.
- MichaelSalib 16y agoYes, thanks for correction.
- pascalchristian 16y agoI agree with Protege that this is an apple to orange comparison. The exact hedge fund is not specified, it could probably invest in anything other than most US large caps represented in S&P500. Heck, it could probably consists of Chinese index funds, which would definitely outperform the S&P if the US spirals into an economic crisis within the 10 years or so.
- aquateen 16y agoIn the poker world, Tom Dwan bet $1M that Phil Ivey couldn't be a vegetarian for one year. Ivey settled after three weeks for $150k.
- whatwhatwhat 16y agoI'm from Omaha... and my money is on Buffet
- mbateman 16y agoI don't understand how this bet proves anything either way if we can't see the adjudication methodology.
- keytweetlouie 16y agoWhat if you die before then does the money come out of the loser's estate?
- mkramlich 16y agoRule of thumb: in the absence of having strong, trustable reasons to do otherwise, always bet the way Mr. Buffet bets.
- jrockway 16y agoA better bet is, "will the hedge fund have a profitable year in which the market overall is down". If you invest in the market as a whole, you need to be prepared to be in for 30+ years, especially with the levels of volatility we have seen in the last 10-20 years. A hedge fund can make trades that don't depend on the direction of the market, which means you can access your invested capital even in a down year. Buying an index fund doesn't afford you that opportunity -- if you bought the S&P500 index before the whole mortgage meltdown, you would be out a lot of money now. In 30 years, you probably will have made your 10% per year, though. (One thing to note, though, is that as an average investor, the trades that make hedge funds / investment banks a lot of money are really not available to you. To make any non-directional money these days, you need cheap capital, and nobody's going to give that to you. I know what sorts of trades pay my salary at an investment bank, and if I made them myself, I would lose money. That's the reality.)
- sireat 16y agoThis article: http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/04/news/newsmakers/buffett_bet.fortune/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/04/news/newsmakers/buffett_bet.... provides more information. Previously, I thought that it was a sure thing for Buffett to win, because I thought portfolio implied maybe 20+ hedge funds, but standing opposite S&P500 are only 5 hedge funds(preapproved by both Buffett and Protege). Protege has a chance (if i was a betting man, I'd give 1:5 odds they would win). However, Buffett's bet was smarter, because it also wins if something negative happens to the hedge fund industry as a whole politically and we can see that happening already. Nobody is going to nerf S&P 500. Also from the article, each side contributed 320k and put the money into zero coupon bonds with maturity in 10 years(ie 640k now -> 1mil in ten years), which will go to winner's charity.