Don't bet on the most likely winner(avoidboringpeople.substack.com)
avoidboringpeople.substack.com
Don't bet on the most likely winner
https://avoidboringpeople.substack.com/p/relatively-speaking-the-billionaire
8 comments
Exactly. Because if not, why isn't bing on par with google by now?
Personally I avoid everything Microsoft because of the many unfixed bugs in Windows. Bing is a fine search engine specially compared to desktop search but it reminds me to much of all the weird experiences.
Bing does seem to be on a slow upward trend: https://www.statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-...
It’s still only 6% of global search vs 86% for google.
It’s still only 6% of global search vs 86% for google.
I wonder how much of that is from dark patterns in Edge.
Do DDG searches count in Bing's percentage?
I thought that DDG used Yahoo! Search under the hood exclusively (because... why use more than one?). It turns out that it is a complex mix of resources from multiple partners[0]:
> In July 2016, DuckDuckGo officially announced the extension of its partnership with Yahoo! that brought new features to all users of the search engine, including date filtering of results and additional site links. It also partners with Bing, Yandex, and Wikipedia to produce results or make use of features offered. The company also confirmed that it does not share user information with partner companies, as has always been its policy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
> In July 2016, DuckDuckGo officially announced the extension of its partnership with Yahoo! that brought new features to all users of the search engine, including date filtering of results and additional site links. It also partners with Bing, Yandex, and Wikipedia to produce results or make use of features offered. The company also confirmed that it does not share user information with partner companies, as has always been its policy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
One way to quickly find out what underlying provider a metasearch engine uses is to search for "my user agent". You will then normally see the user agent of the crawler in the result snippet.
Doing this on DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=my+user+agent&t=hk&ia=answer , reviles http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm in the snippet for whatsmyuseragent.org .
Doing this on DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=my+user+agent&t=hk&ia=answer , reviles http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm in the snippet for whatsmyuseragent.org .
That's Bing anyway.
No inside knowledge, but it wouldn't make sense for Bing not to count searches from all of the below as part of their total number.
- DuckDuckGo
- Ecosia
- Qwant
- OneSearch
- Search Encrypt
- Swisscows
- etc.
- DuckDuckGo
- Ecosia
- Qwant
- OneSearch
- Search Encrypt
- Swisscows
- etc.
Part of betting is about the payout. Had Bing bested Google, that would have had a significant impact on Microsoft stock price.
Horse racing is a better place to make the point. Risking your bets on likely winners has a low payout overall — underdogs have a reward that batter aligns with risk.
Horse racing is a better place to make the point. Risking your bets on likely winners has a low payout overall — underdogs have a reward that batter aligns with risk.
Horse racing has some really interesting mechanics not present here. The top three bets are win, place, and show. Win means the horse game in first. Place means it came in second OR first. And show means third OR second OR first. So one popular bet is to put money on the favorite to place or show. Even if an underdog wins the race, you still make some money. I don’t know of where else you have such mechanics.
Even more interesting is the Exacta and Trifecta bets, where you bet on order.
I worked with a pretty hardcore handicapper. He would plan for certain races for weeks and look at training and other factors. Basically, he'd cover the Saratoga meet and pair favorites a longshots and come out ahead enough to stay ahead. You could tell how well he did by the toys purchased in the Fall. Good year, a truck, bad year a laptop.
I worked with a pretty hardcore handicapper. He would plan for certain races for weeks and look at training and other factors. Basically, he'd cover the Saratoga meet and pair favorites a longshots and come out ahead enough to stay ahead. You could tell how well he did by the toys purchased in the Fall. Good year, a truck, bad year a laptop.
> zero marginal costs creates winner(s) take all
Tech is still young, and we shall see. Google made around $16 billion dollars in 2014. That means an economic rationalist is willing to pay everyone on earth something in the order of $2 dollars to use their service rather than Google's.
It isn't too late to discover that the equilibrium position is we get paid to use certain search engines or social networks. That'd drive the marginal cost up.
Tech is still young, and we shall see. Google made around $16 billion dollars in 2014. That means an economic rationalist is willing to pay everyone on earth something in the order of $2 dollars to use their service rather than Google's.
It isn't too late to discover that the equilibrium position is we get paid to use certain search engines or social networks. That'd drive the marginal cost up.
Didn’t Microsoft essentially pay people to use Bing at the start with their “2 Microsoft reward points per search” policy? I feel like I remember doing that for about a week.
This is still available.
I think the point was not that you should invest in Yahoo (for example), it was that you should only invest in Google if it is underpriced.
In many cases in tech knowing something is underpriced is only possible after underpricing is gone.
Warren Buffet also made good money betting an underpriced top dogs.
Most famously perhaps his investment in Coca Cola in 1988. It was his single largest holding back then, and still is one of his largest today.
In some sense, for Warren Buffet a mispriced top dog is much more valuable, because he can put more capital to work.
Most famously perhaps his investment in Coca Cola in 1988. It was his single largest holding back then, and still is one of his largest today.
In some sense, for Warren Buffet a mispriced top dog is much more valuable, because he can put more capital to work.
The winner was Microsoft though. Apple was (is?) the mispriced underdog with 5% market share.
Only if you are excluding their strong position in the smartphone and tablet market. (Not to mention increasing services and headphones (AirPods and Beats)).
For sure. Apple's laptops, while incredibly expensive and profitable, can effectively be considered loss-leaders. Apple is all about brand buy-in, services, warranty sales, etc. Over 50% of their profit is from the iPhone alone. Mac only accounts for about 10% of profit. Even with high retail price, margins are low.
>Apple's laptops, while incredibly expensive and profitable, can effectively be considered loss-leaders.
Things that are incredibly profitable are by definition not loss leaders.
>Even with high retail price, margins are low.
Is this true? Being as how one can purchase a similarly spec'd laptop for a fraction of the cost of a MBP makes me skeptical. I'd assume they're killing it on their laptops.
Things that are incredibly profitable are by definition not loss leaders.
>Even with high retail price, margins are low.
Is this true? Being as how one can purchase a similarly spec'd laptop for a fraction of the cost of a MBP makes me skeptical. I'd assume they're killing it on their laptops.
> one can purchase a similarly spec'd laptop for a fraction of the cost of a MBP
Is this true? Do you have a spec sheet? My own research suggests for about the last 5 years Apple hardware has been pretty competitive.
Is this true? Do you have a spec sheet? My own research suggests for about the last 5 years Apple hardware has been pretty competitive.
I'm on you with this. These comparisons are usually made only looking at CPU, RAM and disk, without taking into account that there's quite a lot more to a laptop. Once you take into account the rest of specs, similar high-end laptops are on the same ballpark of cost.
Yes my work dell matches or beats my personal MacBook pro specs in terms of ram and cpu. I’m sure it costed way less too! Oh but it’s the worse computer ever.
The dell is an abhorrent disgrace in every other matter. It weights two tons, is unable to dissipate heat because surprise surprise bulky plastic is bad for that, is filled with weird bugs, has a bizarrely large spacing between keys on the keyboard, a bad screen, bad track pad, terrible battery life, etc
The dell is an abhorrent disgrace in every other matter. It weights two tons, is unable to dissipate heat because surprise surprise bulky plastic is bad for that, is filled with weird bugs, has a bizarrely large spacing between keys on the keyboard, a bad screen, bad track pad, terrible battery life, etc
MBP:s don't dissipate heat either. They can't hit their CPU performance ceiling for more than a few seconds.
Apple earns more profits from the Smartphone market than all the other hardware venders combined.
Apple earns more profits from the Tablet market than all the other hardware venders combined.
Apple earns more profits from the PC market than all the other hardware venders combined.
Apple earns more profits from the Tablet market than all the other hardware venders combined.
Apple earns more profits from the PC market than all the other hardware venders combined.
I disagree somewhat with #1.
Long Amazon, short JCPenney is an example of an obvious trade the past 5 years. Or even the past 2 years. Same with long Apple in 2012 when iPhones were ubiquitous. And you would have obliterated the index with those trades.
Sometimes you don’t need an edge. sometimes the most obvious idea is the most profitable.
And my theory why is because if it’s obvious, it’s because everyone else is in love with the idea as well and putting money into it. And in the financial world, people don’t just put money into it once. They add on to it month after month after month.
So you don’t necessarily need to be early to profit well. Let the big trend appear, then invest big into it once it becomes clear as day. Because huge trends last longer than you think.
Long Amazon, short JCPenney is an example of an obvious trade the past 5 years. Or even the past 2 years. Same with long Apple in 2012 when iPhones were ubiquitous. And you would have obliterated the index with those trades.
Sometimes you don’t need an edge. sometimes the most obvious idea is the most profitable.
And my theory why is because if it’s obvious, it’s because everyone else is in love with the idea as well and putting money into it. And in the financial world, people don’t just put money into it once. They add on to it month after month after month.
So you don’t necessarily need to be early to profit well. Let the big trend appear, then invest big into it once it becomes clear as day. Because huge trends last longer than you think.
as someone who was in a hedge fund shorting JCPenney in 2015, let me assure you that it wasn't "obvious". jcp was one of the most shorted companies in the entire world, its valuation was already low, and if it saw any real turnaround (as was hoped when they hired their ceo from Apple) all the shorts would have been obliterated. careful when you armchair quarterback with literal 2020 hindsight.
Yep, I was in a similar position and feel exactly the opposite.
I was short a ton of these retail positions. I remember a guy who used to be CFO of a clothing retailer telling me earnestly that I was an utter idiot, and didn't understand another clothing retailer (we were short, he was long in massive size).
And he was right...I didn't understand the business, I didn't understand as much as him about selling clothes. But I understood the things that mattered: they had bad locations, footfall was tracking down 3% YoY, and wasn't going to recover (they declared bankruptcy three years later, the CFO owned it all the way down and lost his shirt...he was an "expert" after all).
Hindsight tells us what information is important. But people rarely try to work this out ahead of time. They gather whatever information is most available (usually from the company), but not what is most important.
In addition, I think people who end up in investing rarely think through why other people make decisions. They come up with lots of clever reasons to own dogshit stocks but never consider that no-one is going to use that same reasoning (with retailers, the issue was rarely that people were expecting a recovery...they were buying the company of today expecting things to not get worse...but no-one buys into that situation without doing a lot of research to confuse themselves).
So...imo, it was obvious although not easy or common. Most of the time, you can't get the important information. And most of the time, you can't get someone to take the other side. But it does happen. And most professionals vastly over-complicate investing.
(Also, the OP is not bad...but it is just confused. Credit card data hasn't moved us to some new level of efficiency, his source for this isn't apples to apples as hedge funds today are nothing like hedge funds two decades ago. Markets aren't more efficient, they are just composed of actors who behave differently. In particular, the rise of factor models has opened huge inefficiencies because they are trying to trade fundamentally with no knowledge of fundamentals...this is something that is obviously bad and flawed).
I was short a ton of these retail positions. I remember a guy who used to be CFO of a clothing retailer telling me earnestly that I was an utter idiot, and didn't understand another clothing retailer (we were short, he was long in massive size).
And he was right...I didn't understand the business, I didn't understand as much as him about selling clothes. But I understood the things that mattered: they had bad locations, footfall was tracking down 3% YoY, and wasn't going to recover (they declared bankruptcy three years later, the CFO owned it all the way down and lost his shirt...he was an "expert" after all).
Hindsight tells us what information is important. But people rarely try to work this out ahead of time. They gather whatever information is most available (usually from the company), but not what is most important.
In addition, I think people who end up in investing rarely think through why other people make decisions. They come up with lots of clever reasons to own dogshit stocks but never consider that no-one is going to use that same reasoning (with retailers, the issue was rarely that people were expecting a recovery...they were buying the company of today expecting things to not get worse...but no-one buys into that situation without doing a lot of research to confuse themselves).
So...imo, it was obvious although not easy or common. Most of the time, you can't get the important information. And most of the time, you can't get someone to take the other side. But it does happen. And most professionals vastly over-complicate investing.
(Also, the OP is not bad...but it is just confused. Credit card data hasn't moved us to some new level of efficiency, his source for this isn't apples to apples as hedge funds today are nothing like hedge funds two decades ago. Markets aren't more efficient, they are just composed of actors who behave differently. In particular, the rise of factor models has opened huge inefficiencies because they are trying to trade fundamentally with no knowledge of fundamentals...this is something that is obviously bad and flawed).
It's perhaps clear now, but pre-AWS, Amazon was a money losing company with no path to profitability. I went all in on amazon stock 5-6 years ago when the large tech company I worked for decided they were moving their large and very expensive cloud to amazon, and everyone else I knew at every tech company big and small was doing the same.
At the time, amazon stock was $400 a share - it wasn't reliably returning profits. AWS wasn't a significant proportion of their business. A lot of people still thought of amazon as a money losing retail company and a vestige of the original dot-com era. I told everyone I knew to invest in amazon because of AWS and it was very difficult to explain to people why it was going to beat the market. The fact that I found it difficult to convince people outside of tech that it was a good buy made me invest _more_ because I realized that 'the market' didn't fully understand the value of the company.
At the time, amazon stock was $400 a share - it wasn't reliably returning profits. AWS wasn't a significant proportion of their business. A lot of people still thought of amazon as a money losing retail company and a vestige of the original dot-com era. I told everyone I knew to invest in amazon because of AWS and it was very difficult to explain to people why it was going to beat the market. The fact that I found it difficult to convince people outside of tech that it was a good buy made me invest _more_ because I realized that 'the market' didn't fully understand the value of the company.
That makes it sound like the retail operation of Amazon was subsidized by AWS, which it isn't. Both are profitable.
Amazon was losing money because they put every single dollar they earned (and more) into new projects and markets that expanded their reach.
Definitely agree with your second paragaph though! There are so many companies that for some time fly under the radar of the general public, where experts in the field can already see their success coming a mile away.
Nvidia would be another example. Anyone in Computer Science around 2014 could have predicted their meteoric rise due to machine learning and CUDA. But people outside of the field would have no idea.
Amazon was losing money because they put every single dollar they earned (and more) into new projects and markets that expanded their reach.
Definitely agree with your second paragaph though! There are so many companies that for some time fly under the radar of the general public, where experts in the field can already see their success coming a mile away.
Nvidia would be another example. Anyone in Computer Science around 2014 could have predicted their meteoric rise due to machine learning and CUDA. But people outside of the field would have no idea.
Was it that obvious that NVidia would specifically and inevitably be the beneficiary (rather than AMD, Matrox, Evans&Sutherland, or a new entrant)? I mean, it did turn out that way, but I'm not sure that it was obvious in 2014. (Transparently, you can read that I didn't invest in nVidia back then. :) )
AMD blew up, too.
funny you should mention nvidia-- I bought them at $30, because of vr, cryptocurrency and machine learning -- again, it was difficult to explain to people why suddenly video cards were going to be an important thing.
There are no obvious trades. And 2012 is around when smart people were yelling at me that Apple was doomed, they could never compete on price and had missed the large screen market.
Specifically, there is a style of investing called “trend following” or “momentum” where you literally just buy things that are going up, and sell things that are going down.
This works wonders and has been a constant source of factor alpha.
This works wonders and has been a constant source of factor alpha.
They have been a reasonable source of alpha some of the time. But not a constant source all the time: trend following can badly go wrong.
And, of course, because so many people do trend following these days, trend following itself will work less well in future.
And, of course, because so many people do trend following these days, trend following itself will work less well in future.
Identifying these "things" (assuming you're talking about options/futures) and getting the timing right is the hard part.
Looking at everything as relative to each other is a slippery slope to zero sum mindset. Are things relative? Yes, absolutely (no pun intended haha), great to be aware of that. But focusing too much on your relative rank eats away from the edge that got you to wherever you are and pushes you towards groupthink. Once you start the measuring contest, you’ve already lost.
I think one of the Intel founders said something along the lines of “every new business sows the seeds for its own upheaval”. Yeah that’s true, but only once you start caring about the scoreboard.
I think one of the Intel founders said something along the lines of “every new business sows the seeds for its own upheaval”. Yeah that’s true, but only once you start caring about the scoreboard.
Had to look for it :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking
Zero-sum game [1] is the root term. An example is playing poker or similar (without any outside sponsorship or the like) - no matter how well we all play, there's no way for our combined wealth to be greater (or lower) at the end than it was at the beginning. Zero-sum thinking or mind set or whatever is the assumption that a situation is a zero-sum game, which may or may not be true.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game
Though Karl Marx said it first.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-l...
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-l...
Well yeah, you want to bet on undervalued horses, not just fast ones.
Likewise with stocks, it's hard to argue that Tesla isn't doing well, but you'd be bonkers to buy their stock right now.
Likewise with stocks, it's hard to argue that Tesla isn't doing well, but you'd be bonkers to buy their stock right now.
you'd have been bonkers to buy it at any point in the past 5 years and yet look at it now.
There were actually a few times where it was a sensible buy. Right after they got the Model 3 production line going, for starters. Right now it's being forced up by the stupendously large amount of money being injected into the stock market, which can't go on forever no matter what Tesla does.
Not saying I'd bet against them, mind you. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, as they say. And even so it's probably not too bad a bet if you could hold it for 20+ years, but it's going to dive before it rises again.
Not saying I'd bet against them, mind you. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, as they say. And even so it's probably not too bad a bet if you could hold it for 20+ years, but it's going to dive before it rises again.
Why? VW earned 13 billion EUR after taxes in 2019, Tesla is still negative for 2019 in total. And yet the market cap of Tesla is 187b USD while for VW it's 80b USD.
Stock prices have apparently nothing to do with company earnings and performance so how do you know Tesla isn't worth 2000/3000/4000$ per stock?
Investors buy Tesla because they hope a lot of others will too in the future. As long as this hope is there and more people put their money into Tesla, the stock price will continue to rise.
Stock prices have apparently nothing to do with company earnings and performance so how do you know Tesla isn't worth 2000/3000/4000$ per stock?
Investors buy Tesla because they hope a lot of others will too in the future. As long as this hope is there and more people put their money into Tesla, the stock price will continue to rise.
... while telling the greater fools that it’s because of Tesla’s superior self-driving capabilities and battery tech.
Stock prices are about future, not past profitability.
> but you'd be bonkers to buy their stock right now.
You're probably correct; but didn't people say that when they went above $200 as well?
You're probably correct; but didn't people say that when they went above $200 as well?
Yes. In general, you should only invest in individual stocks, if you know something that the market doesn't know.
Otherwise, just buy the most boring and low cost index fund you can find.
Otherwise, just buy the most boring and low cost index fund you can find.
OTOH, it's a generally a bad idea to invest in a company when the primary owner & CEO looks at the stock price and tweets "LOL". I feel it'd be a rational decision to short TSLA now except that "markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent". And also I like Tesla, don't want to short it :)
Yeah I've been hearing that basically since the IPO.
Has yet to payoff.
Has yet to payoff.
Too much FOMO and not enough 'I'd be bonkers to' - for as long as that's the case it pays to follow the FOMO!
(Not investment advice I'm willing to follow myself! But a comment elsewhere in this submission, and a recent Levine column, have discussed that.. yeah, basically following the trend works... I suppose it shouldn't be that surprising, add more signals and act more quickly and you've reinvented a successful industry/form of professional trading.)
(Not investment advice I'm willing to follow myself! But a comment elsewhere in this submission, and a recent Levine column, have discussed that.. yeah, basically following the trend works... I suppose it shouldn't be that surprising, add more signals and act more quickly and you've reinvented a successful industry/form of professional trading.)
Probably not at that point, but if some PC media downgrades Tesla because Elon smoked marijuana on a podcast, or one of the millions of Teslas burn down after a crash (while the passengers survive), that's a great time to buy.
I don't know, this
> It's how the stock performs relative to expectations that determines whether you make above average returns or not.
is like, investment 101 knowledge. Anyone who ever came near managing a portfolio understands that.
> It's how the stock performs relative to expectations that determines whether you make above average returns or not.
is like, investment 101 knowledge. Anyone who ever came near managing a portfolio understands that.
"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that is the way to bet" —Hugh Keough
I think that misses the point of this article. More appropriate might be:
"The race is often to the swift, and the battle to the strong, but the way to bet is on those with miscalibrated odds."
If the odds are well calibrated, the expected return is zero; we might as well not bet. The same goes for speculating on well-priced assets.
If we have reason to believe that the odds/prices are miscalibrated, we can expect a positive return by going long/short (depending on which direction they're off).
"The race is often to the swift, and the battle to the strong, but the way to bet is on those with miscalibrated odds."
If the odds are well calibrated, the expected return is zero; we might as well not bet. The same goes for speculating on well-priced assets.
If we have reason to believe that the odds/prices are miscalibrated, we can expect a positive return by going long/short (depending on which direction they're off).
Well, the original quote is more about making plans. Georgia is at war with Russia: who will win? You can -- and people very much do -- try to set up a situation with a massive payoff for you in the unlikely event that Georgia wins. But the maxim is there to remind you that Georgia isn't going to win.
Interacting with a bookie is a whole different context than interacting with reality.
Interacting with a bookie is a whole different context than interacting with reality.
> Interacting with a bookie is a whole different context than interacting with reality.
I think the point of the article was that interacting with the stock market (and potentially other areas of many businesses) is more like interacting with a bookie than interacting with reality.
I think the point of the article was that interacting with the stock market (and potentially other areas of many businesses) is more like interacting with a bookie than interacting with reality.
Yes; I'm just saying I don't think the article's point detracts from the maxim.
I'd still say it's not the likelihood or the payoff which matters, it's the expected return. If the payoff is massive enough to overpower how unlikely it is for Georgia to win, then it's worth setting up. It's also worth setting up situations which pay off if Russia wins, and the higher likelihood of that outcome should make us accept situations with lower payoffs in that case.
I can think of a few reasons not to follow this strategy:
- If our uncertainty is too high, we might want to avoid the risk; e.g. even if Georgia wins, we might not get anything out of it.
- If the commitment is too high, e.g. a Martingale.
- If setting up one outcome puts another at risk; e.g. if we fund Georgia's war effort, such that Russia would retaliate if they win; or the other way around; or both!
I can think of a few reasons not to follow this strategy:
- If our uncertainty is too high, we might want to avoid the risk; e.g. even if Georgia wins, we might not get anything out of it.
- If the commitment is too high, e.g. a Martingale.
- If setting up one outcome puts another at risk; e.g. if we fund Georgia's war effort, such that Russia would retaliate if they win; or the other way around; or both!
That's a nice riff on the original:
"Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all." —Ecclesiastes 9:11
To understand where Ecclesiastes is coming from:
In the wisdom literature, books like Proverbs will typically state the common case and it's Ecclesiastes that will state the exception. This keeps the wisdom literature balanced as a set of principles, not rules.
The Hugh Keough quote is a great summary then of the main point, which I won't restate.
"Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all." —Ecclesiastes 9:11
To understand where Ecclesiastes is coming from:
In the wisdom literature, books like Proverbs will typically state the common case and it's Ecclesiastes that will state the exception. This keeps the wisdom literature balanced as a set of principles, not rules.
The Hugh Keough quote is a great summary then of the main point, which I won't restate.
Different context. If you're being offered the same odds on every bet, bet on the likely winner.
But it's not. From the article:
> you want to bet on the mispriced horse, not the horse most likely to win
> you want to bet on the mispriced horse, not the horse most likely to win
If one horse is given 1:50 odds but should have been given 1:100, how many races would you have to bet on to make money on those odds?
Let's assume the odds are fair such that the odds of all horses sum up to 1. Betting on all other horses would give you 1:1.02 odds whereas they should have been 1:1.01. While there is no way to answer for sure how many races you would have to bet on to make money, we can look at the probabilities. There's a 95% likelihood that the horse will lose 5 races in a row. If you start with $100 and reinvest your winnings every time you'd earn a profit of $10 with 95% likelihood, meaning there's a positive expectation value. On the other hand, if the 1:50 odds were right, the probability of it losing 5 times in a row would be around 90%, leading to a neutral expectation value.
Except investing isn't like a horse race. Each horse has a different finish line, and those finish lines are in flux during the race. Crucially, you can change your bet in the middle of the race.
This may be true in public markets, but I’m not sure it extends to venture capital where not everyone can get access to the same opportunity. A good VC firm will not only see the best opportunities but may also pay far less in a competitive bidding environment. That’s where edge comes from.
A nice post! The initial part of the article with the efficient markets hypothesis (satellite data and app download data are table stakes for investing) rings a bit hollow for me in a world where bankrupt Hertz is seeing its share price go up though...
I liked the first part for the very reason that it didn’t apply the strict form of EMH. It explicitly says: information that is widely known. Not all information is priced in equally and your edge might be that you assign a different probability to an outcome than the rest of the market. Hertz is mostly trading and speculation right now. But two other examples I found intriguing:
1. Look up the timeline of events with Corona.
Late January: millions of Chinese are put in quarantine.
Mid February: Apple gives a warning about not meeting guidances.
Few days later: Markets reach all-time highs despite the fact that the most-valuable company in the world just told everybody that the supply chain disruption in China is real.
That was a good opportunity to go short or buy put options. And I actually did and made a small fortune.
2. Wirecard. The information about the fraud were all known, but the general opinion didn’t price that in (of course, the short sellers did). You could’ve made a killing with that -98% decline in their stock within a week. I missed this opportunity.
But both of these events showed me that there are crazy inefficiencies once in a while that can be exploited (obviously with some chance of being wrong, but that’s part of the game and a question of risk management).
1. Look up the timeline of events with Corona.
Late January: millions of Chinese are put in quarantine.
Mid February: Apple gives a warning about not meeting guidances.
Few days later: Markets reach all-time highs despite the fact that the most-valuable company in the world just told everybody that the supply chain disruption in China is real.
That was a good opportunity to go short or buy put options. And I actually did and made a small fortune.
2. Wirecard. The information about the fraud were all known, but the general opinion didn’t price that in (of course, the short sellers did). You could’ve made a killing with that -98% decline in their stock within a week. I missed this opportunity.
But both of these events showed me that there are crazy inefficiencies once in a while that can be exploited (obviously with some chance of being wrong, but that’s part of the game and a question of risk management).
Another good example was the BP oil spill in 2010. It was in the news for a couple weeks before the stock moved sharply down.
If you sincerely think that Hertz is overvalued, why don't you short it? It seems like an easy money-making opportunity, if so.
Aside from the other issues (staying solvent long enough to profit), there is another issue - government intervention. You never know if the government will sweep in and save a company [unfairly?] or change terms -- either with a guarantee, bailout, or unlimited loans.
Case: Bear Sterns, AIG, GS
Case: Bear Sterns, AIG, GS
One of the first things many European countries did to combat (?) the pandemic was to ban short selling.
See eg https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-hedgef...
See eg https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-hedgef...
Not if they don't believe that the markets are efficient. It doesn't matter if you are, in some sense, "right" if the market disagrees. Wirecard is a prime example of this: a lot of short-sellers that, in the end, were right about the fact that it seems to have been a house of cards lost a lot of money.
Because the market can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent
Unfortunately, it's not that easy.
The regulatory environment is not kind to short sellers.
Matt Levine's Money Stuff often has examples of how shorting can go wrong. Recently there was a company that was accused of fraud. An obvious target for shorting. But: once the fraud properly came to light, the authorities promptly halted trading in the company's stock. After trading was halted, the shortsellers could not cover their shorts.
And of course, in order to shortsell, you always need someone willing to lend you the stock in the first place.
In the case of Hertz, https://fintel.io/ss/us/htz does suggest that plenty of shortselling is going on. But https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-bankrupt-hertz-short-sque... suggests that finding Hertz stock to borrow became harder over time.
The regulatory environment is not kind to short sellers.
Matt Levine's Money Stuff often has examples of how shorting can go wrong. Recently there was a company that was accused of fraud. An obvious target for shorting. But: once the fraud properly came to light, the authorities promptly halted trading in the company's stock. After trading was halted, the shortsellers could not cover their shorts.
And of course, in order to shortsell, you always need someone willing to lend you the stock in the first place.
In the case of Hertz, https://fintel.io/ss/us/htz does suggest that plenty of shortselling is going on. But https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-bankrupt-hertz-short-sque... suggests that finding Hertz stock to borrow became harder over time.
1. In many tech area: networks effects and zero marginal costs creates winner(s) take all. In that sense it make sense to follow the winners as previously investors underestimated how big winner could be (e.g. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple).
2. Everywhere else: betting on underdogs that are mispriced is much better strategy in long-run. See Warren Buffet got huge returns by looking at fundamentals, but his strategy would not work well in tech.