cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4352701

Beating the market

  • davel [he/him]
    ·
    2 months ago

    The only ones that consistently beat the market are the ones who control it, and that ain’t never gonna be you.

  • rio [none/use name]
    ·
    2 months ago

    Huh it’s almost as though the market isn’t serving any useful function

    • Cowbee@lemmy.ml
      ·
      2 months ago

      Unironically, being a Leftist and studying Marxism has helped me become a corpo-ghoul that is savvy in personal finance. At least I'm not in the finance sector.

  • collapse_already@lemmy.ml
    ·
    2 months ago

    The term for investors that regularly beat the market is congressmen (congresswomen too). If you or I do it, the SEC jails us.

  • chickentendrils [any, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 months ago

    I saw a provably fair "dice role" lose 61 times in a row. The bet was high vs. low (>50.5,<49.5, "house edge" being 49.5-50.5).

    The gambler had been using the Martingale "strategy" (double the bet on loss) before the first ~10 losses, then reset to the smallest bet accepted (crazily at the time they were allowing 0.00000001 per bet, of a digital token worth 1200$ at the time). I just remember if they'd somehow been able to continue the Martingale thing, the final roll alone would've had a higher bet than the entire US national debt at the time.

      • barrbaric [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        3 dice with a reroll, no way they could all be Attacker Down!

        💀💀💀 💀💀💀

    • keepcarrot [she/her]
      ·
      2 months ago

      I remember trying the martingale thing at a casino and it turns out there's an upper limit on bets at the place we were at. I lost my $5 that I committed to this experiment though

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Because the market processes all information at a speed that makes regularly beating the market impossible; and literally every investor on earth is looking for an “edge” at the same time. The stock market is “efficient” from the standpoint of, any profit you can make by trading on new information vaporizes in a nanosecond.

      I use quotes around the word “efficient” because I’m NOT implying the stock market is efficient from a Marxist or resource allocation perspective. Just that today’s stock prices reflect the sum of all information that we have about a given stock up to the moment.

      The outperformance of index funds is largely due to their lower expenses and the fact that money managers, just by trying to beat the market, often do the wrong thing.

      • keepcarrot [she/her]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Efficiency should be a thing to another thing, Efficiency by itself just kinda floats as a concept (does this land? I just woke up)

        • Runcible [none/use name]
          ·
          2 months ago

          Efficiency should be a thing to another thing,

          I think what you are getting at is "efficiency must be in context" or without some specific performance criteria it is an empty idea

          • keepcarrot [she/her]
            ·
            2 months ago

            Something like that, I hear the market is efficient without any qualifiers a lot