Ask HN: Markets in which you aren't reliant on others' opinons to make money? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Markets in which you aren't reliant on others' opinons to make money?

3 pointsGDC71 comment

As per the title I'd like to discuss which type of markets reward the analysis of an underlying asset/event.

Meaning that there is a date of resolution and you don't have to watch out because "the market can stay irrational more than you can stay solvent"

What I came up with is sports betting on events happening within one month, betting on weather events as verified by NOAA weather stations (etc. rain, snow, wind, temperature).

Especially for sports betting, it's peculiar because in this case having consensus move against you is desirable as long as you guess the correct outcome at resolution, that's because bookmakers look at the flux of incoming bets to adjust the handicaps, plus you don't risk any margin call.

Betting on election outcomes is somewhat similar to sports betting, but perhaps isn't as attractive to sink effort into as the events are lower frequency (e.g. 4 year election cycle) with more variability.

Another situation could be insurance - betting on rare events. Similar to your example of betting on weather events.

Yet another way to approach it could be to find situations where you make money or accrue value without selling the asset: for example, long term buy-and-hold value investing where you never sell a stake in the business, so it doesn't matter how others might value that stake. But the return on your invested capital will be lower than if you can manage to find a repeatable process for making short-term trades with sufficiently positive expected value and can recycle your capital fast enough.

Another variation of the long term buy-and-hold value investing approach is doing things like getting a plot of land and planting a bunch of fruit or nut trees, and looking after them for a few decades until they're established and thriving, and then enjoying the nuts and the fruit. Lower ROI but it really doesn't matter what other people think.

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