such high variance looks much more obviously like ‘gambling’ or ‘taking on an enormous amount of risk’ than ‘it’s fun and easy to seek out alpha and beat the market’
I know someone else who made the opposite mistake as me and sold their coronavirus puts too early. If you only saw their record, there would be no “high variance”. They just made less money than they could have. It seems to me that the correct lesson from both outcomes is that it’s possible to beat the market (without putting in so much effort as to make it not worthwhile to try), but we haven’t figured out how to time the exits at exactly or very close to the best times.
I know someone else who made the opposite mistake as me and sold their coronavirus puts too early. If you only saw their record, there would be no “high variance”. They just made less money than they could have. It seems to me that the correct lesson from both outcomes is that it’s possible to beat the market (without putting in so much effort as to make it not worthwhile to try), but we haven’t figured out how to time the exits at exactly or very close to the best times.