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Most people feel the inevitable urge to gamble in the stock market. Some advisers advocate a 10% allocation to "stock picks" for this reason. Personally, I fee

Most people feel the inevitable urge to gamble in the stock market. Some advisers advocate a 10% allocation to "stock picks" for this reason. Personally, I feel that a smart and tasteful person can outguess Wall Street in areas he's an expert in. I don't think anyone could have predicted the meteoric rise of Apple, but I think plenty of nerds could have looked at Mac OS 10.1 back in the day and thought, "this is a good bet". The ideas is that Wall Street can efficiently price financials (except in speculative bubbles, but if can't judge if a stock is in a bubble then don't buy it!) but doesn't have the computer nerd expertise to judge the long-term viability of a product line or engineering culture. Along similar lines, I made a tidy profit in 2008 on banks because I knew a few people at these banks and knew which ones worked and which ones were dysfunctional at a high level--a sort of perfectly legal "insider" information. Of course when you do this stuff you're assuming risk.

colmvp 14y ago
As a computer nerd, I really felt like AMD was on it's way to great places in the early 2000s and believed in their product over Intel, as most of my friends who built their rigs were leaning towards the former. Alas, I couldn't have predicted them fizzling out so badly after the mid-2000s. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/372859/amd-what-went-wrong http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/372859/amd-what-went-wrong
- debacle 14y ago
  I've found that my weakest bets on fundamentals are with tech stocks. With anything else, I'm right as much as I expect to be - about 50% of the time. With tech, I find I'm much closer to being wrong 80% of the time. I think our knowledge of the industry makes us believe we have more information than everyone else, and thus that we're in a better position to make bets. In reality, the things we know that your average investor doesn't aren't as crucial to the bottom line.
  - aangjie 14y ago
    Obligatory confirmation bias link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
losvedir 14y ago
> I don't think anyone could have predicted the meteoric rise of Apple, but I think plenty of nerds could have looked at Mac OS 10.1 back in the day and thought, "this is a good bet". Honestly, this is why I'm skeptical I can beat the market. This was exactly me: I sat down at OS X Jaguar 10.2 and thought, "boy howdy this is great!" and bought Apple stock at less than $40/share. But you know what? I was wrong. I made money, of course, but for the wrong reasons: the meteoric rise of Apple as a company was due almost entirely to the iPod and then-unannounced iPhone. Nowadays, of course, after the increase in stature of the company, they're making money from their computers and laptops, but I'm not sure where Apple would be if they didn't make it big with those other products.
- pyoung 14y ago
  Everyone should be skeptical that they can beat the market because it is true, there is overwhelming amount of evidence that few people can do it on a consistent basis, even some of the best fund managers. Also, I think you picked up Apple for the right reason, even if it wasn't the immediate source of their success. For most of us (non-financial types), it is best to gamble on companies that we are familiar with. I play around with stocks on the side, and it should be no surprise that most of my winners were stocks for companies that I was familiar with (i.e used their product), and most of my losers were from stocks that I picked up after reading a crappy financial advice column.
- cynicalkane 14y ago
  Investing in Apple back then would have been like investing in a startup--investing in the engineering culture that made Mac OS X, not the product line itself. They were a company that secured a future from oblivion by making best-in-class stuff in a class with a huge upside for profit. I think a hacker could have seen potential that Wall Street did not. And, like a startup, they took a number of swings before hitting the iOS home run, except they were also turning a modest profit during the swings.
- Evbn 14y ago
  OS X was the clean break that showed Apple (and Unix) were the future and Microsoft was the past. The rest followed loosely from there.
rogerbinns 14y ago
> I feel that a smart and tasteful person can outguess Wall Street in areas he's an expert in The problem is telling the difference between luck and skill. It is very rare to have a sustained period of getting things right. And survivorship bias muddies things even further http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias Here is an (illegal) way of appearing to have skill. Send a newsletter to a large number of people telling half things will go up and telling half things will go down. Then send the next newsletter to the half you were right about. Rinse and repeat. To the group you are still sending several newsletters later you'll look like a genius with an incredible string of correct insights/predictions.

colmvp 14y ago

As a computer nerd, I really felt like AMD was on it's way to great places in the early 2000s and believed in their product over Intel, as most of my friends who built their rigs were leaning towards the former. Alas, I couldn't have predicted them fizzling out so badly after the mid-2000s. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/372859/amd-what-went-wrong http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/372859/amd-what-went-wrong

debacle 14y ago
I've found that my weakest bets on fundamentals are with tech stocks. With anything else, I'm right as much as I expect to be - about 50% of the time. With tech, I find I'm much closer to being wrong 80% of the time. I think our knowledge of the industry makes us believe we have more information than everyone else, and thus that we're in a better position to make bets. In reality, the things we know that your average investor doesn't aren't as crucial to the bottom line.
- aangjie 14y ago
  Obligatory confirmation bias link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

losvedir 14y ago

> I don't think anyone could have predicted the meteoric rise of Apple, but I think plenty of nerds could have looked at Mac OS 10.1 back in the day and thought, "this is a good bet". Honestly, this is why I'm skeptical I can beat the market. This was exactly me: I sat down at OS X Jaguar 10.2 and thought, "boy howdy this is great!" and bought Apple stock at less than $40/share. But you know what? I was wrong. I made money, of course, but for the wrong reasons: the meteoric rise of Apple as a company was due almost entirely to the iPod and then-unannounced iPhone. Nowadays, of course, after the increase in stature of the company, they're making money from their computers and laptops, but I'm not sure where Apple would be if they didn't make it big with those other products.

pyoung 14y ago
Everyone should be skeptical that they can beat the market because it is true, there is overwhelming amount of evidence that few people can do it on a consistent basis, even some of the best fund managers. Also, I think you picked up Apple for the right reason, even if it wasn't the immediate source of their success. For most of us (non-financial types), it is best to gamble on companies that we are familiar with. I play around with stocks on the side, and it should be no surprise that most of my winners were stocks for companies that I was familiar with (i.e used their product), and most of my losers were from stocks that I picked up after reading a crappy financial advice column.
cynicalkane 14y ago
Investing in Apple back then would have been like investing in a startup--investing in the engineering culture that made Mac OS X, not the product line itself. They were a company that secured a future from oblivion by making best-in-class stuff in a class with a huge upside for profit. I think a hacker could have seen potential that Wall Street did not. And, like a startup, they took a number of swings before hitting the iOS home run, except they were also turning a modest profit during the swings.
Evbn 14y ago
OS X was the clean break that showed Apple (and Unix) were the future and Microsoft was the past. The rest followed loosely from there.

rogerbinns 14y ago

> I feel that a smart and tasteful person can outguess Wall Street in areas he's an expert in The problem is telling the difference between luck and skill. It is very rare to have a sustained period of getting things right. And survivorship bias muddies things even further http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias Here is an (illegal) way of appearing to have skill. Send a newsletter to a large number of people telling half things will go up and telling half things will go down. Then send the next newsletter to the half you were right about. Rinse and repeat. To the group you are still sending several newsletters later you'll look like a genius with an incredible string of correct insights/predictions.