10 ms·

You May Be Better Off Picking Stocks at Random, Study Finds

146 points by Vaslo 7y ago

oyebenny 7y ago
Just not in altcoins. Just don't.
- pavlov 7y ago
  In public stocks there are always underappreciated future growth rockets. You can try to find them by analysis, at random, or by buying the entire index. Altcoins don’t have growth fundamentals because nobody uses them, so at best you’re betting on holding a coin and selling it to a bigger sucker.
  - lawn 7y ago
    Considering that Bitcoin has very high and unreliable fees it's not good to buy things with. Instead Bitcoin Cash has gained a lot of adoption recently, for example all stores using BitPay also accept Bitcoin Cash. Also Monero is far superior in terms of privacy (and fungibility). These are two examples with much better growth potential than Bitcoin, while being underappreciated by the masses.
neilv 7y ago
Isn't the audience for this individuals unqualified to be investors? The UBC press release isn't as advertorial bad as the studyfinds.org piece, but they both seem to implicitly endorse lottery-playing by unqualified individual investors, IMHO. The UBC release could've segued from "diversify", to pushing unqualified to people to low-ER total-market index investing, or to balanced target funds based on same. Instead, they're just helping pump unqualified people to gamble and be fleeced.
- wolco 7y ago
  indexing is not random but a bet on the market as a whole. Random is random. In a way picking more varieties may offer protection in a downcycle. Most stocks go up but bigger stocks push indexes. Betting on bigger players is different than betting on any player to go up.
cryptoz 7y ago
I read the article and tried to read the linked study (paywall). But I see no mention of the 'random' part of this outside the introductory paragraph. In order for the headline to be true, wouldn't the study have had do asses some performance of 'random' picks? Rather it seems that people were encouraged to take more 'risky' stock picks, and that led to some improved success, not anything to do with random. I think the title and introduction are wrong, having extrapolated incorrectly from the study itself. I don't really know since I can't read the study. But I think I strongly disagree with the premise. I think picking stocks at random is likely to lead to uninterested investors who may lose interest in frequent contributions to their stock accounts as they have no personal connection or awareness or interest in the location or use of their funds. Yes, diversification is important, but so is awareness. Is it really better for the individual who may unknowingly invest in weapons manufacturing or a declining coal business despite their own morals and indicators of poor picks? I don't even think this was tested for in the first place.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- icebraining 7y ago
  If you're interested in the actual study, I found it here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2956122&download=yes https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2956122&... (If a signup form appears, just scroll down)
momentmaker 7y ago
Isn't this the whole premise of A Random Walk Down Wall Street.
sixhobbits 7y ago
If a random strategy is better than whatever the non-random strategy was then intuitively in most cases the inverse of the non-random strategy is better than the random strategy. I am currently reading and would recommend "Bull!" by Maggie Mahar for a longer term view on the stock market than many people today seem to consider it on.
- ianai 7y ago
  I’d like you to expand on your first point further as it’s not trivial.
- rfeather 7y ago
  I'm not sure there implementation of inverse in stock strategies, but assuming the basis is returns proportional to market rate x, that logic doesn't really follow for all cases I think. If the random strategy has gains of 1x and the non-random strategy has a loss of -0.5x, then wouldn't the inverse just be a gain of 0.5x?
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    If the non-random strategy was “buy stocks A, B, and C”, the inverse might be “the broad market minus the stocks A, B, and C” rather than “short stocks A, B, and C”.
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      This still doesn't make sense to me. If the return of inverse strategy S' were greater the loss of strategy S, couldn't you then guarantee a positive return by using both strategies simultaneously?
    - dorgo 7y ago
      Hmm, let's call "buy nothing" a neutral strategy. Then a combination of “buy stocks A, B, and C” and “short stocks A, B, and C” has the same effect as the neutral strategy. But the combination of “buy stocks A, B, and C” and “the broad market minus the stocks A, B, and C” is equal to "buy everything" and has not the same effect as the neutral strategy. You seem to assume "buy everything" to be the neutral strategy. Then everything plays out as you say.
sparker72678 7y ago
How is this not the same conclusion as other studies that find that index funds out perform others?
- westurner 7y ago
  In addition to diversification that reduces risk of overexposure to down sectors or typically over-performing assets, index funds have survivorship bias: underperforming assets are replaced by assets that meet the fund's criteria.
  - walshemj 7y ago
    Yes its sad that every one jumps on index funds which can be a good idea but its not the right choice 100% of the time.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  Isn't that mostly down to the low fees?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
klim_bim 7y ago
Another recommendation would be to take an approach outside of price-based time series models. Elastic has an article on this 'Generating and visualizing alpha...' https://www.elastic.co/blog/generating-and-visualizing-alpha-with-vectorspace-ai-datasets-and-canvas https://www.elastic.co/blog/generating-and-visualizing-alpha...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
alkonaut 7y ago
May be? We have known for years (decades?) that beating the market isn’t exactly easy even for professionals. So why would amateurs? The only way to beat the market is to know more than the market.
- ghettoimp 7y ago
  Knowing more than the market could work - that seems like winning through skill. Perhaps a second (perhaps even a more likely) mechanism would be winning through luck?
OrgNet 7y ago
2 years after the ~2008 crash, I bought stocks in 4 companies that didn't yet recover yet from the crash... 2 of them doubled in value in just a few months and 2 of them went to basically zero... so I just about broke even.
- grenoire 7y ago
  A portfolio of four stocks is as good as a single random stock. Diversify more, there's a reason why the S&P500 is 500.
  - shoo 7y ago
    i think the utility of further diversification becomes pretty low after you have around 30 stocks in a portfolio. assuming those 30 stocks are actually diversified and are not e.g. 30 tech companies, or 30 companies in the UK.
    - ghettoimp 7y ago
      I wonder if there's any advantage to picking 30 stocks versus just investing in some big index fund like VT or whatever.
      - shoo 7y ago
        There's a lot to be said in favour of investing into a low cost ETF that attempts to passively approximate the distribution of stocks as they appear in the market. I think there are potential advantages to selecting stocks or weighting stocks according to criteria other than market capitalisation (unlike passive investment approach) but most people who try to do that do worse than a passive approach. A passive investment approach like putting money into VT ETF depends upon some fraction of market participants doing the work to actively set market prices. If enough of the market goes nuts and bids up the price of some security far above its actual value (e.g. IPOs for businesses that run at a loss with no obvious path to making a profit) then the downside of a passive approach using market capitalisation as weights is that you will invest some tiny fraction in these companies with irrationally inflated market caps. Part of it is also a question of how much time and mental energy you want to put into learning about how to value companies and investigating options for investment. Investing in 30 individual stocks vs 1 ETF also creates about 30x as much work at tax time...
beeschlenker 7y ago
might want to hold off on that stock picking until after this news hits: Obama rapes & kills 2 boys 15Jan in Buffalo. DeBlasio 5, Buttgieg 5, Cuomo 4, Murray 3, Dorsey 3, Thiel 3. Trump $4 billion to cover. Pel!osi $3 billion, Harris $1 billion, Schumer $2 billion, to help bring the boys over the border. Trump: $138 million to bypass 5th amendment \}iListen! to previously unprocessed footage now available [Soros, obama child rapes 15Jan 4-6am], ,See pages 18-23, 8, 11, 12, 35, 45, 61, 62, and update list at end of doc;, Having trouble getting traction. Getting censored/banned. Billions in bribes paid to Trump, Pelosi, Schumer, Harris to enable a Soros funded child raping ring to operate in the USA. Please listen to the links below. Turn up the volume and put headphones on. You will hear these people, and many other high profile peo`ple, incriminate themselves in unbelievable fashion. Full 74 page document [update 10Aug] filled with red handed evidence like this at the bottom. \@Go to pages 18-=23 of this document and you will hear Dorsey and Thiel raping children. You will hear their screams. They both rape and kill three. Also at the "rape party" of note: Bill DeBlasio, Andrew Cuomo, Bill Murray, Peter Buttgieg, George Soros, Barack Obama. Please copy and paste this post and repost it. I keep getting censored by these people. Peter Thiel a1nd Jack Dorsey raping and killing three boys each. Turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/Overnight_14-17Jan/15JanCh3_100-200.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzZrjobxhNIEf38M3xk-IeA5SeF4aUtB/view?usp=sharing O1bama admits to raping and killing boys here, with commentary from Peter Thiel, George Soros, Matt Porter: https://s3.wasabisys.com/out2/Out2/15JanCh3_0545.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LCDoc1kT7cfSeKQ1vniP_sx32_bRsHau/view?usp=sharing Trump demands $4 billion to "take a blind eye" at 1015++ (link missing from report, unsure how). Here's pieces of dialogue: 1015 The President requests four billion and henry Porter agrees to it. Some dialogue below. 1017 Donald Trump: Why don't you think about it. 1017 Henry Porter: I don't need to think about it. I'm ready for you to find out what we're really about. 1017 Gigi Hadid: I don't think it's a good idea Henry. 1017 Henry Porter: ...no shit. Jelena just stop talking about it. 1018 Gigi Hadid: About what? 1018 Henry Porter: The child raping. 1018 Donald Trump: What the fuck are you talking about? 1018 Gigi Hadid: Mr. President we are child rapists. 1018 Donald Trump: You cannot be serious. 1018 Donald Trump: You're gonna need $4 billion for me to take a blind eye. 1019 ?: People are laughing because they think four billion is too much. I think it's not a problem when you have $35 billion. 1022 Donald Trump: You better have that $4 billion or you can kiss this shit goodbye. https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv2/3Jan/3JanCh3_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77YG0Vr/view?usp=sharing Trump wants $138 million to ensure smooth outcome for false judgment for a court case: https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/10JanCh3/10JanCh3_951-1033.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iSeGHDToFRoRdIht50Wii0i30mlw9INp/view?usp=sharing Obama explains the Illuminati with Jack Dorsey: https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/Overnight_14-17Jan/15JanCh3_200-347.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ok1-9IvANULzKBOwADFgaiYCFi6yszfj/view?usp=sharing At 230 a conversation is occurring on the embedded Porter camera system with Jack Dorsey, Peter Thiel, Barack Obama, Bill Murray, and the Porter's. Jack Dorsey provides a statement defining who their group is: "The Illuminati is an underground organization of child rapists and homosexuals." Matthew Porter: "We have to thin the herd, so Barack is going to explain a few things." At 232 Barack Obama says the following: "You people have to realize we are child rapists. The Illuminati are child rapists. As soon as you figure that out, you can decide what to do. Everybody is freaking out about what just happened [child raping event still going on]. This is who we are." Full 74 page document [updated 10Aug]: https://s3.wasabisys.com/aviewmefirst/FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dXNjPQdQ8c-hFFLt9LT0GiSY5Vud0TzL/view?usp=sharing Please post this anywhere you can! Each google drive link is a backup to the wasabi link just in case one is "down". A word about the "f@\&&ot" usage: it was a necessary tool. It showed three things: they were not in control, if they were the usage would have be stopped. Everyone out there needed to see t%his. Two, it made it unpleasant for them to be in the headspace, which has obvious advantages. Three, it pointed out impersonators of BS because they would not call each other f@%%ot, thus helping to mitigate the spread of false information. Apologies for those unintentionally offended. Of special interest to the LGBT community, I give you Barack Obama in a foursome with Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey, and Matthew Porter. It is on page 12 of the document where you can download the video containing audio footage of the "event". Link is just above under "Full 74 page document".
WalterBright 7y ago
This has been known for what, 40 years? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street
- RickJWagner 7y ago
  The book is about much more than stock picking, though. It is a good read. And still relevant.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
  Try 156 years! > The concept can be traced to French broker Jules Regnault who published a book in 1863 [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk_hypothesis
tsss 7y ago
This is a non result. Of course picking singular stocks yourself with little understanding of the financial market or the companies in question is a terrible idea. The real question is: Does this approach perform better than a maximally diversified index fund?
- lsc 7y ago
  I read the article as a "just buy a low cost whole market index" - which seems to be the most common advice out there. Assuming your randomness generator was fair and you bought enough stocks, your 'buy stocks at random' strategy, if you bought enough stocks, would eventually get you that maximally diversified index fund, I think? I mean, I think the difference at scale is all in the weighting; if you bought one share of a random ticker on every throw of your random generator, you'd be overweight stocks with high per-share values vs. just buying, say, a basket of VTX, VXUS and VWO, which are weighted in more reasonable ways.
  - turk73 7y ago
    Go here: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/people-simply-empty-out.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/people-simply-empty-out... and put in your strategy compared to just an S&P 500 fund over the last 30 years.
morelandjs 7y ago
Yes, variance is reduced by averaging over many uncorrelated variables. This sums up about 75% of investing articles.
EGreg 7y ago
Are they trying to confirm this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis
- icebraining 7y ago
  Not really, because they're only talking about amateur investors.
RickJWagner 7y ago
"Why look for the needle in a haystack, when you can just buy the haystack?" - Jack Bogle The secret to wealth building can be found at bogleheads.org
deepnotderp 7y ago
Firms like renaissance have and continue to dramatically beat the market. However, renaissance also has a collection of people that could probably produce a Nobel in physics if that's what they worked on.
czbond 7y ago
This is absolute malarky made to make people feel better about sub-optimal returns. There are definitely strategies which provide greater than 8-10% YoY returns, or random walk, or indexes. People that know them, rarely will share the full - but will occasionally share glimpses. It can be hard to do for very large portfolios, say $10B+, but not for smaller portfolios.
- lcuff 7y ago
  I'm not sure Warren Buffett would agree with you. In a 1975 letter to Katherine Graham, he wrote "If above-average performance is to be their yard stick, the vast majority of investment managers must fail. Will a few succeed — due to either to chance or skill? Of course. For some intermediate period of years a few are bound to look better than average due to chance — just as would be the case if 1,000 ‘coin managers’ engaged in a coin-flipping contest. There would be some ‘winners’ over a five or 10-flip measurement cycle. (After five flips, you would expect to have 31 with uniformly ‘successful’ records — who, with their oracular abilities confirmed in the crucible of the marketplace, would author pedantic essays on subjects such as pensions.)” The whole letter is here: https://d2wsh2n0xua73e.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/160301289-Warren-Buffett-Katharine-Graham-Letter.pdf" https://d2wsh2n0xua73e.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/201...
- tunesmith 7y ago
  Most recent one I heard was to day trade mean reversion for instruments within thirty minutes. No data or proof to back it up. Everyone's got an idea. What kind of glimpse are you referring to?
- ryandrake 7y ago
  Notice how whenever someone claims there are ways to consistently beat the market by some incredible amount, they never seem to be able to point to anything specific. It’s always “Ohhh, there are these hidden wizards who do it, and they (conveniently) don’t tell anyone the ways of their sorcery, but trust me, they exist in dark smoky rooms somewhere!! You’re just not invited.” It’s like “I assure you, extraterrestrials exist, there’s just no visible evidence of them and they never show themselves. But they’re out there I swear!”
makz 7y ago
Isn’t it the same as an index fund?
sjg007 7y ago
You’d need international exposure on your national exchange. Also by this logic multinationals should be solid investments but maybe they lack growth potential.

146 points by Vaslo 7y ago

oyebenny 7y ago

Just not in altcoins. Just don't.

pavlov 7y ago
In public stocks there are always underappreciated future growth rockets. You can try to find them by analysis, at random, or by buying the entire index. Altcoins don’t have growth fundamentals because nobody uses them, so at best you’re betting on holding a coin and selling it to a bigger sucker.
- lawn 7y ago
  Considering that Bitcoin has very high and unreliable fees it's not good to buy things with. Instead Bitcoin Cash has gained a lot of adoption recently, for example all stores using BitPay also accept Bitcoin Cash. Also Monero is far superior in terms of privacy (and fungibility). These are two examples with much better growth potential than Bitcoin, while being underappreciated by the masses.

neilv 7y ago

Isn't the audience for this individuals unqualified to be investors? The UBC press release isn't as advertorial bad as the studyfinds.org piece, but they both seem to implicitly endorse lottery-playing by unqualified individual investors, IMHO. The UBC release could've segued from "diversify", to pushing unqualified to people to low-ER total-market index investing, or to balanced target funds based on same. Instead, they're just helping pump unqualified people to gamble and be fleeced.

wolco 7y ago
indexing is not random but a bet on the market as a whole. Random is random. In a way picking more varieties may offer protection in a downcycle. Most stocks go up but bigger stocks push indexes. Betting on bigger players is different than betting on any player to go up.

cryptoz 7y ago

I read the article and tried to read the linked study (paywall). But I see no mention of the 'random' part of this outside the introductory paragraph. In order for the headline to be true, wouldn't the study have had do asses some performance of 'random' picks? Rather it seems that people were encouraged to take more 'risky' stock picks, and that led to some improved success, not anything to do with random. I think the title and introduction are wrong, having extrapolated incorrectly from the study itself. I don't really know since I can't read the study. But I think I strongly disagree with the premise. I think picking stocks at random is likely to lead to uninterested investors who may lose interest in frequent contributions to their stock accounts as they have no personal connection or awareness or interest in the location or use of their funds. Yes, diversification is important, but so is awareness. Is it really better for the individual who may unknowingly invest in weapons manufacturing or a declining coal business despite their own morals and indicators of poor picks? I don't even think this was tested for in the first place.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
icebraining 7y ago
If you're interested in the actual study, I found it here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2956122&download=yes https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2956122&... (If a signup form appears, just scroll down)

momentmaker 7y ago

Isn't this the whole premise of A Random Walk Down Wall Street.

sixhobbits 7y ago

If a random strategy is better than whatever the non-random strategy was then intuitively in most cases the inverse of the non-random strategy is better than the random strategy. I am currently reading and would recommend "Bull!" by Maggie Mahar for a longer term view on the stock market than many people today seem to consider it on.

ianai 7y ago
I’d like you to expand on your first point further as it’s not trivial.
rfeather 7y ago
I'm not sure there implementation of inverse in stock strategies, but assuming the basis is returns proportional to market rate x, that logic doesn't really follow for all cases I think. If the random strategy has gains of 1x and the non-random strategy has a loss of -0.5x, then wouldn't the inverse just be a gain of 0.5x?
- sokoloff 7y ago
  If the non-random strategy was “buy stocks A, B, and C”, the inverse might be “the broad market minus the stocks A, B, and C” rather than “short stocks A, B, and C”.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    This still doesn't make sense to me. If the return of inverse strategy S' were greater the loss of strategy S, couldn't you then guarantee a positive return by using both strategies simultaneously?
  - dorgo 7y ago
    Hmm, let's call "buy nothing" a neutral strategy. Then a combination of “buy stocks A, B, and C” and “short stocks A, B, and C” has the same effect as the neutral strategy. But the combination of “buy stocks A, B, and C” and “the broad market minus the stocks A, B, and C” is equal to "buy everything" and has not the same effect as the neutral strategy. You seem to assume "buy everything" to be the neutral strategy. Then everything plays out as you say.

sparker72678 7y ago

How is this not the same conclusion as other studies that find that index funds out perform others?

westurner 7y ago
In addition to diversification that reduces risk of overexposure to down sectors or typically over-performing assets, index funds have survivorship bias: underperforming assets are replaced by assets that meet the fund's criteria.
- walshemj 7y ago
  Yes its sad that every one jumps on index funds which can be a good idea but its not the right choice 100% of the time.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
Isn't that mostly down to the low fees?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

klim_bim 7y ago

Another recommendation would be to take an approach outside of price-based time series models. Elastic has an article on this 'Generating and visualizing alpha...' https://www.elastic.co/blog/generating-and-visualizing-alpha-with-vectorspace-ai-datasets-and-canvas https://www.elastic.co/blog/generating-and-visualizing-alpha...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

alkonaut 7y ago

May be? We have known for years (decades?) that beating the market isn’t exactly easy even for professionals. So why would amateurs? The only way to beat the market is to know more than the market.

ghettoimp 7y ago
Knowing more than the market could work - that seems like winning through skill. Perhaps a second (perhaps even a more likely) mechanism would be winning through luck?

OrgNet 7y ago

2 years after the ~2008 crash, I bought stocks in 4 companies that didn't yet recover yet from the crash... 2 of them doubled in value in just a few months and 2 of them went to basically zero... so I just about broke even.

grenoire 7y ago
A portfolio of four stocks is as good as a single random stock. Diversify more, there's a reason why the S&P500 is 500.
- shoo 7y ago
  i think the utility of further diversification becomes pretty low after you have around 30 stocks in a portfolio. assuming those 30 stocks are actually diversified and are not e.g. 30 tech companies, or 30 companies in the UK.
  - ghettoimp 7y ago
    I wonder if there's any advantage to picking 30 stocks versus just investing in some big index fund like VT or whatever.
    - shoo 7y ago
      There's a lot to be said in favour of investing into a low cost ETF that attempts to passively approximate the distribution of stocks as they appear in the market. I think there are potential advantages to selecting stocks or weighting stocks according to criteria other than market capitalisation (unlike passive investment approach) but most people who try to do that do worse than a passive approach. A passive investment approach like putting money into VT ETF depends upon some fraction of market participants doing the work to actively set market prices. If enough of the market goes nuts and bids up the price of some security far above its actual value (e.g. IPOs for businesses that run at a loss with no obvious path to making a profit) then the downside of a passive approach using market capitalisation as weights is that you will invest some tiny fraction in these companies with irrationally inflated market caps. Part of it is also a question of how much time and mental energy you want to put into learning about how to value companies and investigating options for investment. Investing in 30 individual stocks vs 1 ETF also creates about 30x as much work at tax time...

beeschlenker 7y ago

might want to hold off on that stock picking until after this news hits: Obama rapes & kills 2 boys 15Jan in Buffalo. DeBlasio 5, Buttgieg 5, Cuomo 4, Murray 3, Dorsey 3, Thiel 3. Trump $4 billion to cover. Pel!osi $3 billion, Harris $1 billion, Schumer $2 billion, to help bring the boys over the border. Trump: $138 million to bypass 5th amendment \}iListen! to previously unprocessed footage now available [Soros, obama child rapes 15Jan 4-6am], ,See pages 18-23, 8, 11, 12, 35, 45, 61, 62, and update list at end of doc;, Having trouble getting traction. Getting censored/banned. Billions in bribes paid to Trump, Pelosi, Schumer, Harris to enable a Soros funded child raping ring to operate in the USA. Please listen to the links below. Turn up the volume and put headphones on. You will hear these people, and many other high profile peo`ple, incriminate themselves in unbelievable fashion. Full 74 page document [update 10Aug] filled with red handed evidence like this at the bottom. \@Go to pages 18-=23 of this document and you will hear Dorsey and Thiel raping children. You will hear their screams. They both rape and kill three. Also at the "rape party" of note: Bill DeBlasio, Andrew Cuomo, Bill Murray, Peter Buttgieg, George Soros, Barack Obama. Please copy and paste this post and repost it. I keep getting censored by these people. Peter Thiel a1nd Jack Dorsey raping and killing three boys each. Turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/Overnight_14-17Jan/15JanCh3_100-200.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzZrjobxhNIEf38M3xk-IeA5SeF4aUtB/view?usp=sharing O1bama admits to raping and killing boys here, with commentary from Peter Thiel, George Soros, Matt Porter: https://s3.wasabisys.com/out2/Out2/15JanCh3_0545.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LCDoc1kT7cfSeKQ1vniP_sx32_bRsHau/view?usp=sharing Trump demands $4 billion to "take a blind eye" at 1015++ (link missing from report, unsure how). Here's pieces of dialogue: 1015 The President requests four billion and henry Porter agrees to it. Some dialogue below. 1017 Donald Trump: Why don't you think about it. 1017 Henry Porter: I don't need to think about it. I'm ready for you to find out what we're really about. 1017 Gigi Hadid: I don't think it's a good idea Henry. 1017 Henry Porter: ...no shit. Jelena just stop talking about it. 1018 Gigi Hadid: About what? 1018 Henry Porter: The child raping. 1018 Donald Trump: What the fuck are you talking about? 1018 Gigi Hadid: Mr. President we are child rapists. 1018 Donald Trump: You cannot be serious. 1018 Donald Trump: You're gonna need $4 billion for me to take a blind eye. 1019 ?: People are laughing because they think four billion is too much. I think it's not a problem when you have $35 billion. 1022 Donald Trump: You better have that $4 billion or you can kiss this shit goodbye. https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv2/3Jan/3JanCh3_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77YG0Vr/view?usp=sharing Trump wants $138 million to ensure smooth outcome for false judgment for a court case: https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/10JanCh3/10JanCh3_951-1033.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iSeGHDToFRoRdIht50Wii0i30mlw9INp/view?usp=sharing Obama explains the Illuminati with Jack Dorsey: https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/Overnight_14-17Jan/15JanCh3_200-347.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ok1-9IvANULzKBOwADFgaiYCFi6yszfj/view?usp=sharing At 230 a conversation is occurring on the embedded Porter camera system with Jack Dorsey, Peter Thiel, Barack Obama, Bill Murray, and the Porter's. Jack Dorsey provides a statement defining who their group is: "The Illuminati is an underground organization of child rapists and homosexuals." Matthew Porter: "We have to thin the herd, so Barack is going to explain a few things." At 232 Barack Obama says the following: "You people have to realize we are child rapists. The Illuminati are child rapists. As soon as you figure that out, you can decide what to do. Everybody is freaking out about what just happened [child raping event still going on]. This is who we are." Full 74 page document [updated 10Aug]: https://s3.wasabisys.com/aviewmefirst/FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dXNjPQdQ8c-hFFLt9LT0GiSY5Vud0TzL/view?usp=sharing Please post this anywhere you can! Each google drive link is a backup to the wasabi link just in case one is "down". A word about the "f@\&&ot" usage: it was a necessary tool. It showed three things: they were not in control, if they were the usage would have be stopped. Everyone out there needed to see t%his. Two, it made it unpleasant for them to be in the headspace, which has obvious advantages. Three, it pointed out impersonators of BS because they would not call each other f@%%ot, thus helping to mitigate the spread of false information. Apologies for those unintentionally offended. Of special interest to the LGBT community, I give you Barack Obama in a foursome with Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey, and Matthew Porter. It is on page 12 of the document where you can download the video containing audio footage of the "event". Link is just above under "Full 74 page document".

WalterBright 7y ago

This has been known for what, 40 years? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street

RickJWagner 7y ago
The book is about much more than stock picking, though. It is a good read. And still relevant.
flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
Try 156 years! > The concept can be traced to French broker Jules Regnault who published a book in 1863 [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk_hypothesis

tsss 7y ago

This is a non result. Of course picking singular stocks yourself with little understanding of the financial market or the companies in question is a terrible idea. The real question is: Does this approach perform better than a maximally diversified index fund?

lsc 7y ago
I read the article as a "just buy a low cost whole market index" - which seems to be the most common advice out there. Assuming your randomness generator was fair and you bought enough stocks, your 'buy stocks at random' strategy, if you bought enough stocks, would eventually get you that maximally diversified index fund, I think? I mean, I think the difference at scale is all in the weighting; if you bought one share of a random ticker on every throw of your random generator, you'd be overweight stocks with high per-share values vs. just buying, say, a basket of VTX, VXUS and VWO, which are weighted in more reasonable ways.
- turk73 7y ago
  Go here: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/people-simply-empty-out.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/people-simply-empty-out... and put in your strategy compared to just an S&P 500 fund over the last 30 years.

morelandjs 7y ago

Yes, variance is reduced by averaging over many uncorrelated variables. This sums up about 75% of investing articles.

EGreg 7y ago

Are they trying to confirm this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis

icebraining 7y ago
Not really, because they're only talking about amateur investors.

RickJWagner 7y ago

"Why look for the needle in a haystack, when you can just buy the haystack?" - Jack Bogle The secret to wealth building can be found at bogleheads.org

deepnotderp 7y ago

Firms like renaissance have and continue to dramatically beat the market. However, renaissance also has a collection of people that could probably produce a Nobel in physics if that's what they worked on.

czbond 7y ago

This is absolute malarky made to make people feel better about sub-optimal returns. There are definitely strategies which provide greater than 8-10% YoY returns, or random walk, or indexes. People that know them, rarely will share the full - but will occasionally share glimpses. It can be hard to do for very large portfolios, say $10B+, but not for smaller portfolios.

lcuff 7y ago
I'm not sure Warren Buffett would agree with you. In a 1975 letter to Katherine Graham, he wrote "If above-average performance is to be their yard stick, the vast majority of investment managers must fail. Will a few succeed — due to either to chance or skill? Of course. For some intermediate period of years a few are bound to look better than average due to chance — just as would be the case if 1,000 ‘coin managers’ engaged in a coin-flipping contest. There would be some ‘winners’ over a five or 10-flip measurement cycle. (After five flips, you would expect to have 31 with uniformly ‘successful’ records — who, with their oracular abilities confirmed in the crucible of the marketplace, would author pedantic essays on subjects such as pensions.)” The whole letter is here: https://d2wsh2n0xua73e.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/160301289-Warren-Buffett-Katharine-Graham-Letter.pdf" https://d2wsh2n0xua73e.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/201...
tunesmith 7y ago
Most recent one I heard was to day trade mean reversion for instruments within thirty minutes. No data or proof to back it up. Everyone's got an idea. What kind of glimpse are you referring to?
ryandrake 7y ago
Notice how whenever someone claims there are ways to consistently beat the market by some incredible amount, they never seem to be able to point to anything specific. It’s always “Ohhh, there are these hidden wizards who do it, and they (conveniently) don’t tell anyone the ways of their sorcery, but trust me, they exist in dark smoky rooms somewhere!! You’re just not invited.” It’s like “I assure you, extraterrestrials exist, there’s just no visible evidence of them and they never show themselves. But they’re out there I swear!”

makz 7y ago

Isn’t it the same as an index fund?

sjg007 7y ago

You’d need international exposure on your national exchange. Also by this logic multinationals should be solid investments but maybe they lack growth potential.