Honestly, you seem like youre trying to reason this out with zero experience in the field. You cant just "run statistics to identify strategies". I'm not going to go into it further because you know nothing
If it's relatively easy to make money investing on a small scale, that means there are many potential strategies that don't require someone's full attention. If there are many potential strategies that don't require full attention, then someone skilled can go after many of those potential strategies and transform the small-scale into a large-scale opportunity. Since we've already established that these large-scale opportunities are hard ...
And yes, there is easy money laying around if you know what youre doing. There are dollar bills laying on the ground for smaller scale strats.
> economics has nothing to do with investing, and is worthless
Is it worthless because it has nothing to do with investing, or has nothing to do with investing because it's worthless? Further, why do you think the Federal Reserve hires so many economists if economics is worthless?
> And yes, there is easy money laying around if you know what youre doing. There are dollar bills laying on the ground for smaller scale strats. People just arent taking about them
Isn't that like saying, "Winning chess tournaments is easy if you know what you're doing."? If something requires expertise, then it isn't easy. If finding these smaller scale strategies requires expertise, then the expert probably has better things to do with their time. I suppose that holds to arguing with idiots on Hacker News.
Also, the FED is in the process of destroying the US dollar and hyper inflating all the assets. Everyone but the capitalists are getting poorer.
The "Chief Economists" of many major US banks dont even hold economics degrees. People arent rational actors that you can plug into a math equation.
"If finding these smaller scale strategies requires expertise, then the expert probably has better things to do with their time. I suppose that holds to arguing with idiots on Hacker News."
Theres alot of friction of getting data to analyze, developing a strategy, executing the strategy, paying fees, managing risk, hedging. If you know how to do all that, you are probably already employed in that capacity or you run your own fund. But yes, if youre smart you can find an edge. Theres a ton of small man shops in NYC with 5 million in capital where everyone makes 600-1M a year.
> easy money laying around
There's a bit of dissonance between the way you've characterized this process in different comments. That's my point.
"Hey, there's a dollar lying on the ground!"
"Can't be. Someone would have picked it up."
> destroying the US dollar and hyper inflating all the assets
Sounds like a good strategy to bring manufacturing back to the US. They've said the new policy is high employment.
Found the efficient market hypothesis believer, classic failing of economic theory.
Theres no alpha in the stock market!!!11!! If there was the completely efficient allocation of human capital, access of information, opportunity cost would strip it out so fast!!!