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Comment by byrneseyeview | Hacker News Reader

Better title:

"Anonymous Internet commentator: Here's a bunch of common knowledge you can glean from any basic investment book. I'll omit the half that makes my argument look bad. Also, I can pretend to be someone who wouldn't naturally agree with you."

I don't know why the Internet eats this stuff up. It might be fun to go to conservative-monoculture forums and start posting: "I am an OWS organizer. I'm only here to appear more virtuous than my friends, and also to sleep with girls who have weird piercings and tattoos."

Politics articles in general are an utter black hole for intelligent discussion, but this one is also a portal into a completely new dimension of pointlessness.

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The only thing correct in that article is that the guy is a "first-year analyst".

It's as if he's only read a book or gone through some terribad training and has no idea the size, time horizons and liquidity preferences over which different market participants operate.

He equates short term trading with investments for pensions and makes ad-hoc incorrect claims about market efficiency.

He has no idea about the current market. "2/20" for anything but the very best hedge funds is long gone. It is not even close to being the industry standard.

He completely fails to grasp that hedge funds, unlike most other market participants, have no recourse to systemic help or support. If they make mistakes, if they underperform or if investors just feel like it (flight to quality) and remove liquidity, then can fail. Since 2007, thousands of hedge funds have failed and closed. They represent one of very few places in the financial industry where classical capitalism (ability to fail) is allowed and still works!

The post is basically FUD trying to overwhelm the uninformed or naive with jargon.

And all the things that come from reddit are just as over-dramatic:

"The finance industry is a complete scam"

"you have absolutely no chance"

"you're paying ridiculous spreads"

"you are paying exorbitant fees."

"you are utterly screwed"

"You have no idea"

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