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2. You don’t need to be brilliant to beat the market (even after fees). I agree that you need to put a ton of work and research into it, but to say only geniuses can beat the market is absurd.
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this is my problem with the manager selection/stock market beating issue. by how much can you be expected to beat the market? and how much additional work is required for that gain? what is the risk adjusted return you expect to generate over time and for how long will you need to do that work to generate those returns?
i don't think (with my current level of knowledge and research on the subject) that the trade off is worth it.
your time can be better spent, and more highly rewarded elsewhere.
alpha is zero sum and hard to find.
anyways, as to your initial point, i certainly agree. stating that only geniuses can beat the market is indeed absurd.
i can prove this by assigning the market to mean either the S&P500 or some other composite market cap weighted index of stocks. if you can work your ass off and identify 1 likely underperformer, you can beat the market. that strategy doesn't take a genius, just a lot of work for mininal excess return.
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The biggest reason why the average investor (assuming he has average intelligence) fails to beat the market is a lack of patience.
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...and work.
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There was a post a week or two ago regarding how important the behavioral impacts of investing are and truer words were never spoken.
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can you link that post? i have a vague memory of it and would like to re-read for this discussion.
thanks,
Barron
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Here's a way to beat the market.
SSO - Ultra S&P 500
The Ultra S&P500 seeks daily investment results, before fees and expenses, that correspond to twice (200%) the daily performance of the S&P 500® Index
If the market's "guaranteed" (equity risk premium) to be up over a 20 year holding period, then obviously this will do better. It's an ETF that's highly liquid for most on this forum I suspect.
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as long as you understand that in addition to your ERP, you're also getting 2x the risk. you've taken a .25 sharpe ratio asset class and simply levered it 2:1. having an investment with an expected return of 16% with an expected standard deviation of upwards of 50% can wreak havok on your returns and may be less efficient from a portfolio standpoint despite the higher returns. the problem is that downswings hurt more and you've increased your portfolio's risk allocation to equities by a ton.
i'd rather use leverage via ETFs to double the US2yr bond return or the lehman global agg bond fund, or (the best) get serious leverage on US TIPS or a global TIPS fund. that would be some really useful leverage.
that way, if you really want to hit a 16% return target, you can construct a .5 sharpe ratio portfolio and lever it to a 32% risk target (this will take a large amount of leverage btw...it's doable though).
just some thoughts on the subject...
Barron
EDIT: you say "here is a way to beat the market", well that doesn't make sense to me because you are not beating the market. you are doubling your exposure to the market. what is the difference between investing in that 2x S&P500 ETF with $1k or taking $1k, buying S&P500 shares, repo'ing them and buying another set of (~$980 worth of ) S&P500 shares??
aside from costs and the type of leverage used, these strategies are basically the same, all you've done is increased exposure. you havent "beat" the market in the sense of "outperforming" imo since performance indicates that you've made choices to alter your portfolio to a degree that it is different than the "market" via research. here you haven't done that at all.