mentioning selection bias, and saying we’d be right to discount his evidence
I would discount it more if I hadn’t if a random person had made those investments then Wei Dai. Wei Dai made previous very good investments in crypto and domain names with similar returns.
When thinking myself about investing in the middle of February I was thinking about advice on Wei Dai that’s years old on LessWrong before actually talking with him about investing in this situation.
I think any of the high return investments of Wei Dai of crypto, domain names and Corona puts are investments ideas that are in a different class then Uncle Georges and it’s reasonable that there will be further similar opportunities for rationalists in the future where it’s worth trading on them.
Eliezer wrote after the crypto aftermath something that suggested that he endorsed his past strategy that resulted in him not profiting of crypto based on EMH evidence. It’s that strategy endorsement that seems to be changed.
I don’t think in any of the three cases in which Wei Dai made very high returns he would have had a problem with telling other people about his investment and it would make sense to behave as you suggest a Realistic winners would (I will of course never tell anyone about it, or it will become useless).
Crypto and domain names might be in a different class, for sure—I don’t know how those markets work, although I’d be interested to hear more. But options contracts that involve e.g. the fortunes of the S&P 500 are not.
(I want to encourage rationalists to look for future opportunities to trade on, too. I just think those opportunities are vanishingly unlikely to come from highly liquid securities markets, and a lot of the recent talk is going to lead to misplaced effort.)
I don’t think in any of the three cases in which Wai Dai made very high returns he would have had a problem with telling other people about his investment and it would make sense to behave as you suggest a Realistic winners would (I will of course never tell anyone about it, or it will become useless).
Yeah, I’m still not exactly sure about whether anomalies can persist in public (see one of my confusions below). But if the trade is based on a one-off event, like this one, it’s obviously fine to tell people about it. If it’s a formula for an ongoing edge that persists in [stock-picking/domain name-picking/crypto] then not so much.
I think that when it comes to events that have such high societal impact as COVID-19 and that don’t really fall in anyone’s expertise that happen in the future it’s likely that rationalists can lucratively trade on them and pre-run the market. These kinds of event might be once per decade, but when they come along it’s worth trading on them.
As far as domain name picking goes, Wei Dai brought WeiDai.com at a time where US domains did cost money but there Chinese domain names weren’t worth much and sold it years later. The edge isn’t in trading either of that in the current market.
I’m still not exactly sure about whether anomalies can persist in public
In hindsight mispricing of Chinese domain and Crypto exist for years while being public. I think there was maybe 1-2 weeks of mispriced pandemic information in the case of COVID-19 when I take my personal information at the time into account.
In neither of those cases it would have changed much to be public about one’s investment about how long the anomalies persisted.
I would discount it more if I hadn’t if a random person had made those investments then Wei Dai. Wei Dai made previous very good investments in crypto and domain names with similar returns.
When thinking myself about investing in the middle of February I was thinking about advice on Wei Dai that’s years old on LessWrong before actually talking with him about investing in this situation.
I think any of the high return investments of Wei Dai of crypto, domain names and Corona puts are investments ideas that are in a different class then Uncle Georges and it’s reasonable that there will be further similar opportunities for rationalists in the future where it’s worth trading on them.
Eliezer wrote after the crypto aftermath something that suggested that he endorsed his past strategy that resulted in him not profiting of crypto based on EMH evidence. It’s that strategy endorsement that seems to be changed.
I don’t think in any of the three cases in which Wei Dai made very high returns he would have had a problem with telling other people about his investment and it would make sense to behave as you suggest a Realistic winners would (I will of course never tell anyone about it, or it will become useless).
See also the bottom of this comment for a more complete record of my significant (non-EMH) investments.
Crypto and domain names might be in a different class, for sure—I don’t know how those markets work, although I’d be interested to hear more. But options contracts that involve e.g. the fortunes of the S&P 500 are not.
(I want to encourage rationalists to look for future opportunities to trade on, too. I just think those opportunities are vanishingly unlikely to come from highly liquid securities markets, and a lot of the recent talk is going to lead to misplaced effort.)
Yeah, I’m still not exactly sure about whether anomalies can persist in public (see one of my confusions below). But if the trade is based on a one-off event, like this one, it’s obviously fine to tell people about it. If it’s a formula for an ongoing edge that persists in [stock-picking/domain name-picking/crypto] then not so much.
I think that when it comes to events that have such high societal impact as COVID-19 and that don’t really fall in anyone’s expertise that happen in the future it’s likely that rationalists can lucratively trade on them and pre-run the market. These kinds of event might be once per decade, but when they come along it’s worth trading on them.
As far as domain name picking goes, Wei Dai brought WeiDai.com at a time where US domains did cost money but there Chinese domain names weren’t worth much and sold it years later. The edge isn’t in trading either of that in the current market.
In hindsight mispricing of Chinese domain and Crypto exist for years while being public. I think there was maybe 1-2 weeks of mispriced pandemic information in the case of COVID-19 when I take my personal information at the time into account.
In neither of those cases it would have changed much to be public about one’s investment about how long the anomalies persisted.