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Comment by abeaulne | Hacker News Reader

How The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0

I don't agree entirely but good signal-to-noise ratio on this content

That's not bad intro, but it's very rudimentary. It has necessary errors of omission. It really don't teach teach how economy works

Btw. his site https://www.economicprinciples.org/ has good reading if you scroll down below the video.

"Ray Dalio says 'cash is trash' and advises investors hold a global, diversified portfolio" - Jan 21 2020

Had you have listened to him, you would have just been taken out back, shot, and put in one of wuhans finest crematoriums… better off reading "Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails"[0]

[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.10488

His advise is still sound if you are an investor and not speculator.

The part of your investment that is in stock should be determined your investment horizon. If you don't need to sell your stock in next 15 years, don't hold cash.

Yeah, would have played out very well for those top ticking n225 in 1989, esp with every global CB's trying to follow in the footsteps of the BOJ, while everyone is crowding into "diversification" and searching for yield…

I consider investors to be the same as speculators, just speculators who think their beliefs will remain valid over long time frames… cause that's the gamble.

investor who does

- dollar cost averaging,

- diversification, small cost investing,

- has sufficiently long time-horizon

has never lost money on 15 year timescale, at least past WWII.

Even assuming that's true, one can't say the sort of risk and investor took on 15 year look-backs since WWII has been evenly distributed to get some sort of acceptable return, nor can one say that this will continue hold true for the next 15 years. You may believe it hold true though, and many do… but very few will do their homework on the risks to their "diversification" and their own changing liquidity constraints that will occur over the "sufficiently long time-horizon"

> assuming that's true,

Don't assume. You can calculate it in spreadsheet.

> You may believe it hold true though,

In the long run we are all dead. We don't need to believe they hold true. Certainty is not part of this world. Because you never know is just rhetorical argument. Quantifying risk and going on that is good enough.

>Quantifying risk and going on that is good enough.

Because most people who are blindly buying indexes around the world thinking they are diversified and DCA are certainly doing that…

So if you don't believe in investing then what are your plans for retirement? Just to save enough money into a bank account?

I didn't say I didn't believe in investing, just that I don't consider it any different from speculating, just the time frame typically involved.

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