Mallet, a notorious swindler, picks 10 stocks and generates all 1024 permutations of “stock will go up” vs. “stock will go down” predictions. He then gives his predictions to 1024 different investors. One of the investors receive a perfect, 10 out 10 prediction sheet and is (Mallet hopes) convinced Mallet is a stock picking genius.
Since it’s related to the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, I’m tempted to call this the Texas stock-picking scam, but I was wondering if anyone knew a “proper” name for it, and/or any analysis of the scam.
I’ve got one cite of it as the Perfect Prediction scam, but it doesn’t seem to be a standard name.
This scam shows up in an R. A. Lafferty story, with the suggestion that if you’re good at picking winners, you’ll get a better return by not doing a fifty-fifty split at each stage.
I’ve checked some pages about types of frauds, and that one doesn’t show up. I’m guessing that it’s just too much work compared to other sorts of fraud.
There’s a scam I’ve heard of;
Mallet, a notorious swindler, picks 10 stocks and generates all 1024 permutations of “stock will go up” vs. “stock will go down” predictions. He then gives his predictions to 1024 different investors. One of the investors receive a perfect, 10 out 10 prediction sheet and is (Mallet hopes) convinced Mallet is a stock picking genius.
Since it’s related to the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, I’m tempted to call this the Texas stock-picking scam, but I was wondering if anyone knew a “proper” name for it, and/or any analysis of the scam.
Derren Brown demonstrated this scam on TV and called it The System. That might help you track down a name.
I’ve got one cite of it as the Perfect Prediction scam, but it doesn’t seem to be a standard name.
This scam shows up in an R. A. Lafferty story, with the suggestion that if you’re good at picking winners, you’ll get a better return by not doing a fifty-fifty split at each stage.
I’ve checked some pages about types of frauds, and that one doesn’t show up. I’m guessing that it’s just too much work compared to other sorts of fraud.