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Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would outperform hedgefunds

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231–240 of 323 posts

Re: Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would outperform hedgefunds

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every region says their drivers are the worst.

I’ve had motorcycle tires in 49 of our 50 states, and lived in a variety of regions of the country. I agree with your general sentiment, because boy howdy there are some bad ones everywhere you go, but I say with confidence that I have found where the worst drivers in the country live.

Where did you feel most comfortable with motorcycling? I've been looking to leave CA because driving here is getting worse every year.

Re: Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would outperform hedgefunds

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renaissance is an exception at levels that makes me wonder if it isn't a cover for other methods or operations. Howw many sigmas divergent is it?

It's a highly profitable market maker more than a long term investment fund.

I'd really like to see deets. I've looked, somewhat, and what I've found (including Jim Simon's very few talks) have been ... pretty uninformative.

Re: Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would outperform hedgefunds

#233
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two parts to this answer. First, the numbers thrown around are that once you own 15 diversified stocks you have reduced your portfolio risk by 70 percent. That's not bad. At this point your volatility may not be that different than a market index. Of course it's different for every set of stocks, but I think this is a safe-ish guideline. So in that sense you are not missing out a whole lot. Second, and more i…

>>This is because the vast majority of the returns of an index come from a very small number of outperforming stocks. This is the only thing the parent commenter needs to read to understand why indexing is not equivalent to owning 15 stocks that theoretically reduce portfolio risk (my guess is that the stocks are highly correlated and have too high of weight towards IT and not enough towards boring fields like indust…

Actually the opposite. Being in IT, I never buy IT stocks. They're mostly everyday brands and industries.

Re: Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would outperform hedgefunds

#234
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any info on the colo'd infrastructure?

Unfortunately not, I'm afraid. I would guess they have much of their execution infrastructure in the same data centre as the exchanges they execute on.

There's a considerable early period (1980s, 1990s) when Renaissance was turning up amazing profits when electronic trading largely didn't exist. That would suggest other methods.

Re: Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would outperform hedgefunds

#235
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just some people. It is actually the law in most states (albeit a seldom-enforced one). Don't cruise in the left lane.

Does that mean the left lane should be unoccupied if everyone in the other lanes are driving at the speed limit?

That certainly depends on how the law is written. Where I live, the wording is that you are recommended (and on certain roads, required) to stick to the rightmost available lane – which means that you're certainly not breaking the law by driving at the speed limit on the leftmost lane if all the other lanes are already at full capacity, which also makes perfect sense to me. (However, exceeding the speed limit would be against the law in any situation, unless perhaps where you could avoid an accident by doing so – although that may be hard to prove.)

Re: Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would outperform hedgefunds

#236
post #185
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing works forever but there are funds like Renaissance Technologies' Medallion which may just be getting heads for a long time but rather seem to have some secret sauce that works for a long time. Usually though they're not very large and don't seek out investments.

There are several options that have noting to do with competence that allow for such returns. The most obvious is feeding the fund using another fund. Luck is another as the best returns from the largest outlier taking high risks looks great especially if you ignore large initial losses.

Look at their past performance, luck is just too unlikely for their string of successes.

Re: Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would outperform hedgefunds

#238
post #180
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it used to be possible to pretty accurately forecast large tech retailers' product sales each quarter (like Apple) by reverse engineering FedEx and UPS tracking numbers. That's great. Were tracking numbers vendor-specific in some way? So you could, let's say, order an iPhone once a week and get an idea for how many iPhones (or total Apple products) were sold in that time period, just by using the tracking numbers?…

Yes, yes, no.

Reminds me of the British figuring out how many tanks the Germans made in WW2 by a sampling of the serial numbers.

Re: Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would outperform hedgefunds

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't apply at all in most of California. We need the left lane for capacity, not flow regulation. Also left lanes are frequently diamond lanes, so you're basically telling people not to carpool.

"left lane" is colloquial for the passing lane. It means the left-most lane in a group of equivalent lanes, not the HOV/reserved lane

In most places that have rules relating to lane use, it means every lane that isn't the rightmost lane, excluding lanes reserved for a special purposes (HOV, etc.).

Re: Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would outperform hedgefunds

#240
post #36

So clearly, for the individual, the optimal strategy is to simply invest in index funds and just wait. But a new question that is being raised is: "what happens if everyone only invests in index funds?"

This has been answered a thousand times. Everyone will never invest in index funds. What will happen is more and more people will invest in index funds until there are so little people actively investing in the stock market that the ones that do are able to beat it. However, them beating it will only net (after their fees) the same returns as index funds thus striking a balance where index funds match the performance…

I propose an ETF that invests in ETFs and active investors...
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