if I gained 50%, 44%, followed by a 53% loss with a 2% fee, I'd be under water for the last 3 years, but the sp500 would have yielded me a 37% gain - virtually no fees. I'd rather the sp500 over these guys
The metaphor was a coin flipping tournament. You have a bracket of players who flip a coin against an opponent. In each matchup, the player that flips a heads advances to the next round to face another opponent who won a parallel matchup in the previous round. Suppose this is a 100 round tournament, that would mean the eventual winner would have had to flip a heads 100 times to win. You might look at this coin flipper and think they are an extraordinary coin flipper. That they have some innate ability to flip a coin and make sure it lands with the head sides up. In reality, it was just random chance that they flipped the coin correctly, they do not posses any more coin flipping talent than anyone else. They just got really lucky. You can potentially look at a successful hedge fund or trader through this same lens. They have survived the proverbial coin flipping tournament and random chance was on their side.
Is it the first person to first get heads or does it have to be consecutive
It's a similar problem with the email list.
50+ years ago Scrooge McDuck also had this happen to him. He had a treasure map for gold (In Antarctica I think) which he got conditional on profit sharing and he found gold.
The map sellers ran this scam, sold heaps of different maps because someone would find gold.
I personally don't think Scrooge McDuck was just lucky though.
Your example would have made sense, if you talking about the 100 times consecutive winner in a coin flip match, with each match, the winner can be heads or tails.
Starting from 100, if you swing 50% up 50% down you get: 150, 75, 112.5, 56.25, 84.375, 42.18, 63.28, 31.64....
You need a 100% gain to make up for a 50% loss.
And of course, the risk profile may be different. Equal returns can be more or less appealing depending on the risk profile.
Yes, the gains are real, but not for the reasons that you think.
The true driver behind that 37% gain is the Fed. They’ve been juicing the market for the past 12 years!
The fundamentals, ie Warren Buffet style investing, has not improved. And the moment that the Fed stops with its market manipulation, is when the S&P will fall.
The play is that, when the government gives you free money, then go long. And ride it until the wheels fall off.