8 ms·

A Man Who Abandoned Value

51 points by rchaudhary 6y ago

elefanten 6y ago
Seems like a case of survivorship bias. Unclear what this guy is doing that's particularly unique. He invested a lot in Amazon and Tesla, relatively early. Out of everyone investing in the time period, someone was bound to be holding the most of some of the stocks that do crazy things. Having Asperger's, starting as a CPA, not using value investing, reading Christensen... I doubt any of these are gonna shake up institutional investing.
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  The best investment decisions will nearly always look obvious in hindsight.
  - MegaButts 6y ago
    You're saying GME wasn't obvious?
    - TimTheTinker 6y ago
      Yeah, but like many unexpected events, it should have been :-)
- smabie 6y ago
  Using some simple math (and somewhat inaccurate math), let's calculate the chance of the null hypothesis being true: he has no skill and it is just luck, assuming 10% annualized volatility for the market and 8% annualized return. By my calculation, over the six year period, there's a 4.82e-18 chance that his returns are due to luck and the null hypothesis is true. Of course I'm simplifying a lot, but I think you get the idea. Also, you don't need to do anything "particularly unique" to generate very impressive returns. No firm (besides maybe RenTec) is doing anything that is truly out there and on another level: employees join and leave, ideas get passed around, etc. And yet, there are many top tier firms that end up hitting out of the park, year after year. People on HN always make these cheap throwaway comments about "expert coin-flippers" and "survivorship bias" when talking about finance. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it comes from disdain for finance. I also think that the idea that some people are just better at generating wealth through the markets can be uncomfortable. Anyways, the chance of his returns being luck is extremely small, any which way you cut it.
  - weird-eye-issue 6y ago
    Your comparison of his investing style to the broad market is incredibly far off. If you want to make calculations at least do it off a more accurate benchmark and not the S&P 500. Something like ARKK or at least QQQ.
    - smabie 6y ago
      ARKK? You want to use an actively managed fund as a benchmark? No one does this. You could use QQQ, with pretty much the same results.
      - weird-eye-issue 6y ago
        Depends what he is investing in. "Innovative" growth companies? Then ARKK isn't a bad benchmark. QQQ is a lot more conservative compared to what he was investing in.
  - n_io 6y ago
    Although I agree that survivorship bias is a cheaply constructed argument, it’s hard to know how good this fund really is when it’s only been in operation during the greatest bull run of our lifetime.
    - smabie 6y ago
      That is also true, though the portfolio manager did well during bear markets as well. Doesn't say tell us how his current portfolio would hold up, but he's probably as well equipped as anyone to navigate the environment (which maybe isn't saying much).
    - autokad 6y ago
      you mean like warren buffet?
  - slibhb 6y ago
    Unlikely things happen all the time. If he lost money, this article wouldn't exist. Also, my disdain for this guy is not due to finance. It's due to his investment strategy being a Seinfeld episode: > I just totally gave up and said, "I'm going to do the exact opposite."
- m0llusk 6y ago
  The article does not claim uniqueness, but focuses on the difference between basing investments on exceptionalism rather than value. Stand out hedge fund performances typically don't translate even to the same or similar hedge funds at different times let alone scaling to the point of 'gonna shake up institutional investing'.
abraxas 6y ago
Yeah the best dice thrower, coin flipper on the block. Until he isn't.
jakupovic 6y ago
I was with the article until they started talking about using two hands to shave and saving 14hrs a year, that's BS.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  I thought the answer would be laser hair removal for rich people like this guy.
brianmtully 6y ago
I've had a 210% year toying around with stocks. I just assumed everyone had been doing well since the drop last March.
- fspeech 6y ago
  Since on average everyone gets the market return someone must be underperforming the market in order for you to be overperforming.
  - justaguy88 6y ago
    Or maybe everyone did go up, but just haven't gone down yet in the bubble pop
    - jbverschoor 6y ago
      The USD bubble?
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    Technically true, but the market as a whole is up so much that I think everyone can be doing well even if a few people are pulling 200% returns.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - smabie 6y ago
    Most people (at least retail investors) don't measure doing "well" against a benchmark. i.e everyone can be doing well in a bull market.
- vinger 6y ago
  If you include bitcoin.
- u678u 6y ago
  By definition the median investor makes what the total market return is. Something like VTI is up 25% since Jan 1 2020. If tech investors outperformed a lot, there are lots of boomers who haven't kept up.
somjeed 6y ago
top signals for 600, Alex
robinjhuang 6y ago
Post rationalization and hindsight bias imo
jdmoreira 6y ago
Ok, so he did well for a few years in a bull market. anyone can make money in a bull market. You just buy on hype and sell on higher hype. It’s called momentum trading. Call me when he beat the market for 40 years and I'll be impressed.
- vasco 6y ago
  And in the game where "anyone could make money", they did the most of all the funds that were assessed. If that doesn't count for something, what does?
  - jdmoreira 6y ago
    A lot of people made a lot of money just before the dot-com boom... And then they lost it all. It’s trivial to make a lot of money short-term and he was just the best at it. Now if he is still having 200% returns after a full-cycle, now that’s impressive.
DanielMcLaury 6y ago
"He took big, and early, stakes in both Amazon and Tesla — in 2012 and 2016, respectively." Amazon was founded in 1994 and had its IPO in 1997 during the first dot com boom. Did they do any research for this article at all?
- Clewza313 6y ago
  > Today the online juggernaut is the most conventional — and most popular — hedge fund stock in the world, but when Alsin first invested in it the smart money was skeptical. After all, the company wasn’t profitable. If you look at AMZN's stock price, he timed it pretty well: he presumably bought in around $200 before it really started taking off. If he had bought in 5 years earlier, that would have netted "only" an extra 100%.
- yellowstuff 6y ago
  Institutional Investor is targeted at people who work in finance, and I think "early" is meant in the sense of being early to trade a particular stock or theme that later becomes popular. So being "early" to GME would mean a month ago, not early relative to the IPO.
WA 6y ago
Yes yes, survivorship bias, but the problem is actually interesting in several aspects: 1. On an individual level, it's impossible to distinguish between survivorship bias and doing things right. If you are the surviving one, did you do things differently or did you just get lucky? In a coin-toss competition, the answer is obvious. When it comes to stocks, it's not. Because: 2. The general (academic) consensus to differentiate between luck and skill when it comes to investing is: Can you be profitable for a long period of time? But do you really need to prove yourself over and over that you have the skill? What if you had the skill only once, to predict one certain event and have tremendous gains with it? Apparently, this is considered "luck" and not "skill" when it comes to investing. Which I find odd. Add the nonlinear utility of money: Your first million makes the biggest impact on your life, especially if you earn it early in life. Buying an ETF sets you up for a good retirement (probably, maybe), but the GME stock picking YOLO might put you on a different trajectory. 3. When it comes to finance and investing, we all know the academic view: passive investing / buy & hold is king, you can't predict the winners. All true of course, but the problem is: there is no resolution to this. You can say that, in hindsight, buy & hold returned X% on average over the last 50 years, but have to warn that "past performance is no indication for future performance". And ultimately, you can calculate your true performance only if you realize profits to do something with it in life or if you are about to die. So, on an individual level, you have two choices: - Buy and hold a passive index fund and hope that the performance of the last X years is indicative for the future performance, because that's how the stock market works (or whatever). - Expose yourself to luck/chance/positive black swans by doing some skilled or unskilled stock picking that has potential to put you on another trajectory in life.
- Cicero22 6y ago
  - Expose yourself to luck/chance/positive black swans by doing some skilled or unskilled stock picking that has potential to put you on another trajectory in life. If the goals to expose yourself to luck, why not just purchase lottery tickets then?
  - WA 6y ago
    You could, just a different kind of risk/chance. I guess most people want better odds than the lottery gives.
m0llusk 6y ago
"I have lived too long with cautious thinking. Now I will make myself mad." --Rumi

51 points by rchaudhary 6y ago

Seems like a case of survivorship bias. Unclear what this guy is doing that's particularly unique. He invested a lot in Amazon and Tesla, relatively early. Out of everyone investing in the time period, someone was bound to be holding the most of some of the stocks that do crazy things. Having Asperger's, starting as a CPA, not using value investing, reading Christensen... I doubt any of these are gonna shake up institutional investing.

TimTheTinker 6y ago
The best investment decisions will nearly always look obvious in hindsight.
- MegaButts 6y ago
  You're saying GME wasn't obvious?
  - TimTheTinker 6y ago
    Yeah, but like many unexpected events, it should have been :-)
smabie 6y ago
Using some simple math (and somewhat inaccurate math), let's calculate the chance of the null hypothesis being true: he has no skill and it is just luck, assuming 10% annualized volatility for the market and 8% annualized return. By my calculation, over the six year period, there's a 4.82e-18 chance that his returns are due to luck and the null hypothesis is true. Of course I'm simplifying a lot, but I think you get the idea. Also, you don't need to do anything "particularly unique" to generate very impressive returns. No firm (besides maybe RenTec) is doing anything that is truly out there and on another level: employees join and leave, ideas get passed around, etc. And yet, there are many top tier firms that end up hitting out of the park, year after year. People on HN always make these cheap throwaway comments about "expert coin-flippers" and "survivorship bias" when talking about finance. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it comes from disdain for finance. I also think that the idea that some people are just better at generating wealth through the markets can be uncomfortable. Anyways, the chance of his returns being luck is extremely small, any which way you cut it.
- weird-eye-issue 6y ago
  Your comparison of his investing style to the broad market is incredibly far off. If you want to make calculations at least do it off a more accurate benchmark and not the S&P 500. Something like ARKK or at least QQQ.
  - smabie 6y ago
    ARKK? You want to use an actively managed fund as a benchmark? No one does this. You could use QQQ, with pretty much the same results.
    - weird-eye-issue 6y ago
      Depends what he is investing in. "Innovative" growth companies? Then ARKK isn't a bad benchmark. QQQ is a lot more conservative compared to what he was investing in.
- n_io 6y ago
  Although I agree that survivorship bias is a cheaply constructed argument, it’s hard to know how good this fund really is when it’s only been in operation during the greatest bull run of our lifetime.
  - smabie 6y ago
    That is also true, though the portfolio manager did well during bear markets as well. Doesn't say tell us how his current portfolio would hold up, but he's probably as well equipped as anyone to navigate the environment (which maybe isn't saying much).
  - autokad 6y ago
    you mean like warren buffet?
- slibhb 6y ago
  Unlikely things happen all the time. If he lost money, this article wouldn't exist. Also, my disdain for this guy is not due to finance. It's due to his investment strategy being a Seinfeld episode: > I just totally gave up and said, "I'm going to do the exact opposite."
m0llusk 6y ago
The article does not claim uniqueness, but focuses on the difference between basing investments on exceptionalism rather than value. Stand out hedge fund performances typically don't translate even to the same or similar hedge funds at different times let alone scaling to the point of 'gonna shake up institutional investing'.

abraxas 6y ago

Yeah the best dice thrower, coin flipper on the block. Until he isn't.

jakupovic 6y ago

I was with the article until they started talking about using two hands to shave and saving 14hrs a year, that's BS.

ketamine__ 6y ago
I thought the answer would be laser hair removal for rich people like this guy.

brianmtully 6y ago

I've had a 210% year toying around with stocks. I just assumed everyone had been doing well since the drop last March.

fspeech 6y ago
Since on average everyone gets the market return someone must be underperforming the market in order for you to be overperforming.
- justaguy88 6y ago
  Or maybe everyone did go up, but just haven't gone down yet in the bubble pop
  - jbverschoor 6y ago
    The USD bubble?
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  Technically true, but the market as a whole is up so much that I think everyone can be doing well even if a few people are pulling 200% returns.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- smabie 6y ago
  Most people (at least retail investors) don't measure doing "well" against a benchmark. i.e everyone can be doing well in a bull market.
vinger 6y ago
If you include bitcoin.
u678u 6y ago
By definition the median investor makes what the total market return is. Something like VTI is up 25% since Jan 1 2020. If tech investors outperformed a lot, there are lots of boomers who haven't kept up.

somjeed 6y ago

top signals for 600, Alex

robinjhuang 6y ago

Post rationalization and hindsight bias imo

jdmoreira 6y ago

Ok, so he did well for a few years in a bull market. anyone can make money in a bull market. You just buy on hype and sell on higher hype. It’s called momentum trading. Call me when he beat the market for 40 years and I'll be impressed.

vasco 6y ago
And in the game where "anyone could make money", they did the most of all the funds that were assessed. If that doesn't count for something, what does?
- jdmoreira 6y ago
  A lot of people made a lot of money just before the dot-com boom... And then they lost it all. It’s trivial to make a lot of money short-term and he was just the best at it. Now if he is still having 200% returns after a full-cycle, now that’s impressive.

DanielMcLaury 6y ago

"He took big, and early, stakes in both Amazon and Tesla — in 2012 and 2016, respectively." Amazon was founded in 1994 and had its IPO in 1997 during the first dot com boom. Did they do any research for this article at all?

Clewza313 6y ago
> Today the online juggernaut is the most conventional — and most popular — hedge fund stock in the world, but when Alsin first invested in it the smart money was skeptical. After all, the company wasn’t profitable. If you look at AMZN's stock price, he timed it pretty well: he presumably bought in around $200 before it really started taking off. If he had bought in 5 years earlier, that would have netted "only" an extra 100%.
yellowstuff 6y ago
Institutional Investor is targeted at people who work in finance, and I think "early" is meant in the sense of being early to trade a particular stock or theme that later becomes popular. So being "early" to GME would mean a month ago, not early relative to the IPO.

WA 6y ago

Yes yes, survivorship bias, but the problem is actually interesting in several aspects: 1. On an individual level, it's impossible to distinguish between survivorship bias and doing things right. If you are the surviving one, did you do things differently or did you just get lucky? In a coin-toss competition, the answer is obvious. When it comes to stocks, it's not. Because: 2. The general (academic) consensus to differentiate between luck and skill when it comes to investing is: Can you be profitable for a long period of time? But do you really need to prove yourself over and over that you have the skill? What if you had the skill only once, to predict one certain event and have tremendous gains with it? Apparently, this is considered "luck" and not "skill" when it comes to investing. Which I find odd. Add the nonlinear utility of money: Your first million makes the biggest impact on your life, especially if you earn it early in life. Buying an ETF sets you up for a good retirement (probably, maybe), but the GME stock picking YOLO might put you on a different trajectory. 3. When it comes to finance and investing, we all know the academic view: passive investing / buy & hold is king, you can't predict the winners. All true of course, but the problem is: there is no resolution to this. You can say that, in hindsight, buy & hold returned X% on average over the last 50 years, but have to warn that "past performance is no indication for future performance". And ultimately, you can calculate your true performance only if you realize profits to do something with it in life or if you are about to die. So, on an individual level, you have two choices: - Buy and hold a passive index fund and hope that the performance of the last X years is indicative for the future performance, because that's how the stock market works (or whatever). - Expose yourself to luck/chance/positive black swans by doing some skilled or unskilled stock picking that has potential to put you on another trajectory in life.

Cicero22 6y ago
- Expose yourself to luck/chance/positive black swans by doing some skilled or unskilled stock picking that has potential to put you on another trajectory in life. If the goals to expose yourself to luck, why not just purchase lottery tickets then?
- WA 6y ago
  You could, just a different kind of risk/chance. I guess most people want better odds than the lottery gives.

m0llusk 6y ago

"I have lived too long with cautious thinking. Now I will make myself mad." --Rumi