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Comment by galaxyLogic | Hacker News Reader

> it's impossible to beat the market consistently (it's not)

Is there any proof of that? Some traders of course will get very rich, just like some lottery-players.

Read this piece from 1984 addressing this topic. The core point being if you find a group of people with some proximity and they're all lotto winners, as you put it, maybe there's something else to explain it: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/columbia-business/sup...

Try actually modelling it. People like to hand-wave the outperformers as luck, but the chance of just one of the top firms existing by chance alone is basically impossible.

> Is there any proof of that? Some traders of course will get very rich, just like some lottery-players.

If we're talking about short-term traders, yes. There's firms and traders that make money almost every day of the year.

If we're talking about investors with 4 week+ holding periods, then I agree the evidence is much more flimsy and the luck explanation (or risk premium explanation) can apply very often (or all the time).

Look up renaissance technologies. More quant than typical investing, but it proves that beating the market is possible

I recently read an interesting German article on them (use Google Translate if necessary) and they paint a more nuanced picture of Renaissance.

https://www.gerd-kommer-invest.de/der-beste-fonds-aller-zeit...

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