That statement looks very iffy to me. I see it as a strong claim resting on a bunch of unstated assumptions and with no evidence to support it (don’t forget about the difference between “a personal investor” and “an average personal investor”).
I originally had ‘layman’ in there too but decided the statement was too wordy and the context sufficiently clear. In any case the strength of your disagreement and in particular “no evidence to support it” suggests to me that your disagreement may extend to a question of fact about how efficient the market is.
Yes, I suspect so :-) However the core of my objection is the transformation of something like “An average retail investor playing in the US equity market will not beat S&P500 returns” into “It is never going to be worthwhile for a personal investor to attempt to beat the market”. There are a great many markets in the world, not all of them are large and/or efficient, and, on top of that, the diversity of personal investors is much greater than the diversity of markets.
Not to mention that if you just leverage your investment a bit and the market in which you invest has a positive drift, then you will “beat the market” pretty trivially.
There are a great many markets in the world, not all of them are large and/or efficient, and, on top of that, the diversity of personal investors is much greater than the diversity of markets.
‘The’, not ‘a’ or ‘any’. Again, I chose to leave out any disambiguation and disclaimers beyond the pronoun choice, to avoid wordiness and because I thought no reasonable reader would misinterpret the statement. My instinct for pedantry that I so cruelly suppressed as ‘unduly socially awkward’ while writing my comment is now jeering “I told you so” at me. While such precautions come with a cost they at least serve to prevent this kind of exchange from time to time.
Just rename your instinct for pedantry “preference for clear and precise expression” and hoist your freak flag :-) Socially awkward on LW is a weird beast anyway :-D
To return to the original point, how about “Timing markets successfully requires either a rare (and VERY well-compensated) skill or access to some relevant non-public information. There is a strong prior that you don’t have any of those so convincing evidence is required to overcome it.”..?
Just rename your instinct for pedantry “preference for clear and precise expression”
Including excessive amounts of tangential qualifications and attempting to make statements immune to misinterpretation tends to make statements less clear.
To return to the original point, how about “Timing markets successfully requires either a rare (and VERY well-compensated) skill or access to some relevant non-public information. There is a strong prior that you don’t have any of those so convincing evidence is required to overcome it.”..?
That is another claim I might also make. It just isn’t particularly relevant to the immediate (and quoted) context in the reply in question. (You have been talking about an essentially different issue to the one I was engaging with, which is fine, but obviously I’m not going to accept paraphrasings that aren’t about my point at all.)
I originally had ‘layman’ in there too but decided the statement was too wordy and the context sufficiently clear. In any case the strength of your disagreement and in particular “no evidence to support it” suggests to me that your disagreement may extend to a question of fact about how efficient the market is.
Yes, I suspect so :-) However the core of my objection is the transformation of something like “An average retail investor playing in the US equity market will not beat S&P500 returns” into “It is never going to be worthwhile for a personal investor to attempt to beat the market”. There are a great many markets in the world, not all of them are large and/or efficient, and, on top of that, the diversity of personal investors is much greater than the diversity of markets.
Not to mention that if you just leverage your investment a bit and the market in which you invest has a positive drift, then you will “beat the market” pretty trivially.
‘The’, not ‘a’ or ‘any’. Again, I chose to leave out any disambiguation and disclaimers beyond the pronoun choice, to avoid wordiness and because I thought no reasonable reader would misinterpret the statement. My instinct for pedantry that I so cruelly suppressed as ‘unduly socially awkward’ while writing my comment is now jeering “I told you so” at me. While such precautions come with a cost they at least serve to prevent this kind of exchange from time to time.
Just rename your instinct for pedantry “preference for clear and precise expression” and hoist your freak flag :-) Socially awkward on LW is a weird beast anyway :-D
To return to the original point, how about “Timing markets successfully requires either a rare (and VERY well-compensated) skill or access to some relevant non-public information. There is a strong prior that you don’t have any of those so convincing evidence is required to overcome it.”..?
Including excessive amounts of tangential qualifications and attempting to make statements immune to misinterpretation tends to make statements less clear.
That is another claim I might also make. It just isn’t particularly relevant to the immediate (and quoted) context in the reply in question. (You have been talking about an essentially different issue to the one I was engaging with, which is fine, but obviously I’m not going to accept paraphrasings that aren’t about my point at all.)
Well, I guess then I don’t understand what did you mean. Would you mind rephrasing your reply in a more clear and robust way?