I have no doubt that active trading is seeing a resurgence in interest driven by apps like Robinhood that make it easy to do. But I’d be willing to bet that the

I have no doubt that active trading is seeing a resurgence in interest driven by apps like Robinhood that make it easy to do. But I’d be willing to bet that the returns active traders as a whole are just getting are worse. Public is an interesting place where you can see behind the curtain of who the folks using these services actually are and what their logic is. (Trades on Public are visible to everyone by default, and it’s basically a giant message board.) Five minutes in and you’ll see that 98% of the activity looks a lot more like gambling than anything that might be driven by a plan or strategy. That’s fine and I don’t say that to disparage Public’s users, but it’s important to be realistic about what’s going on here. I believe Public also encourages/seeds the community with celebrities and “experts” / quasi-influencers who are clearly trying to make a name for themselves on the platform. Some of them share basic advice, while others drive short spurts of mania based on their investment decisions. Watching it all play out has solidified in my mind that active investing is a losing game all around.