5 ms·

Same for the lottery, if you just know which numbers are good then you only have to buy one or two tickets ever and you're set for life.

ProAm 5y ago
You cannot study about lottery numbers however. Whereas studying business isn't impossible.
- stouset 5y ago
  All of the available evidence demonstrates that even experienced fund managers with access to extensive, expensive, and focused research on the companies they invest in perform no better on average than VTSAX. Further, there’s no strategy to find the winning fund managers. The distribution of winners and losers over time seems to be exactly what you’d expect from random chance, and even fund managers who’ve been successful for years have the exact same odds of having their next year be awful as anyone else.
johnwheeler 5y ago
This is a bad analogy. The stock market is not a lottery. It’s a place to buy and sell shares of a company. Most people treat it like a lottery and that can serve you rather than hurt you if you know what you’re doing.
- blaser-waffle 5y ago
  For all the DD you do, there is no predicting the future. Plus there is a very real incentive for companies to do shady things, e.g. Volkswagon or Enron. Are you sure those companies you're holding aren't lying out of their ass? Can you prove that? Like, unless you're in the accounting dept. at those firms -- or someone who can otherwise get those numbers -- you can't. At that point it's gambling. It may be akin to counting cards, where you can make probabilistic guesses, but best case is still uncertain. Otherwise you're rocking a very special secret, or are manipulating the market. But for the rest of the us stock plebs, is effectively gambling.
  - johnwheeler 5y ago
    Yes.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      https://longbets.org/362/ https://longbets.org/362/

5 ms·

Same for the lottery, if you just know which numbers are good then you only have to buy one or two tickets ever and you're set for life.

by kevincrane 5y ago

ProAm 5y ago
You cannot study about lottery numbers however. Whereas studying business isn't impossible.
- stouset 5y ago
  All of the available evidence demonstrates that even experienced fund managers with access to extensive, expensive, and focused research on the companies they invest in perform no better on average than VTSAX. Further, there’s no strategy to find the winning fund managers. The distribution of winners and losers over time seems to be exactly what you’d expect from random chance, and even fund managers who’ve been successful for years have the exact same odds of having their next year be awful as anyone else.
johnwheeler 5y ago
This is a bad analogy. The stock market is not a lottery. It’s a place to buy and sell shares of a company. Most people treat it like a lottery and that can serve you rather than hurt you if you know what you’re doing.
- blaser-waffle 5y ago
  For all the DD you do, there is no predicting the future. Plus there is a very real incentive for companies to do shady things, e.g. Volkswagon or Enron. Are you sure those companies you're holding aren't lying out of their ass? Can you prove that? Like, unless you're in the accounting dept. at those firms -- or someone who can otherwise get those numbers -- you can't. At that point it's gambling. It may be akin to counting cards, where you can make probabilistic guesses, but best case is still uncertain. Otherwise you're rocking a very special secret, or are manipulating the market. But for the rest of the us stock plebs, is effectively gambling.
  - johnwheeler 5y ago
    Yes.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      https://longbets.org/362/ https://longbets.org/362/