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Comment by ringaroundthetx | Hacker News Reader

One thing I like about this wave is that there are other people to talk about these returns with

In prior years I would usually downplay my trading acumen and past performance, like "yeah you can 300% (3x) returns in a nice swing trade", talking with people that MAYBE have touched a penny stock the wrong way, yet realizing that extrapolating even that to an annual return would have them posting a scarlet letter on me as a liar and scammer

the reality is that I was making 40x returns, back in 2013. A couple here, a couple there, a diversified portfolio. should have kept with some names, should have not trading some others.

Now everyone knows: it is not hard to generate a 10x return. A 10x return is underperforming the benchmark of bitcoin which made 20x this year.

And that is great.

As someone that knows how to trade bullish markets, bearish markets, and sideways markets, I can't wait for this to shake newbies out.

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Seriously, I’d love more info. It’s become accepted wisdom that trading loses money, 10% returns year after year are unrealistic, experts underperform the market, don’t time the market, etc. It’s such accepted wisdom that I’m skeptical of it. In particular, I wonder whether it actually is realistic for someone who is thoughtful, has a strategy, and has an appropriate risk tolerance to drastically outperform the market at small scale. For example, it seems like with so much index and large fund capital sloshing around and moving the market overall one way or another, it’d be moving a lot of companies with it on a given day / week / month that really shouldn’t be moving. Just an example.

Would love any reputable links, books, etc about this!

Simplest way is to have information others don't. Much more difficult would be information they have but aren't using correctly.

One example I've heard before is this (maybe garbage...). Publicly traded ecommerce company is going into the peak holiday weeks, and analysts are bullish. You found informational leaks of KPIs by digging through html source code (incrementing order ids, cancellation ids, etc). These KPIs show a downward trend in the final few weeks. You posit these are real, and short the stock since they're likely to miss earnings.

As Warren Buffett wrote in his 1985 letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway: "What could be more advantageous in an intellectual contest—whether it be bridge, chess, or stock selection—than to have opponents who have been taught that thinking is a waste of energy?"

Yes you can drastically outperform the market

Im glad you put your own independent thought into it

Small scale is a much bigger scale than you might think

People have been taught to use asset managers and accept their underperformance.

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