Hacker News Reader

Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

Here it’s entirely about the source. Fred Wilson is an unusually smart and honest investor, and has experienced more market corrections than I have. So I weight his opinion higher than mine.

I also weight his opinion higher than my favorite financial columnists because he’s the man in the arena, and focused on the part of the economy I care about — startups — while columnists have to think about housing prices and other stuff.

View on HN

Fred's also the author of "Get Paid In Crypto." Yet crypto warrants no mention in his analysis of the current bubble? https://avc.com/2022/02/get-paid-in-crypto/

> I also weight his opinion higher than my favorite financial columnists

I don't think he's saying anything that you couldn't find in Barron's or FT.

Maybe, but Barron's also has plenty of day-trader hype. How do you separate the good long-term predictions in Barron's from the bad ones? Read someone else. (You can optimize the process by skipping Barron's entirely.)

By ignoring the day-trader hype? (shouldn't be that difficult to spot)

There are domains where I feel I can judge an argument solely on its content. Predicting the economy isn't one of them. While I can discard some bogus arguments, there are plenty of coherent and self-consistent arguments pointing in different directions. So I have to consider the source.

I'm still not sure why you'd weigh his opinion higher, he may be honest or have experienced more recessions than you have, but why not find an old columnist who doesn't lie? His lack of consideration for the other parts of the economy like real estate, etc. and his focus on startups to me seems like a handicap and not something that makes his economic predictions more accurate.

Smart, honest and ethical. The last one is the really rare one in that domain.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com