Comment by jyu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jyu | Hacker News Reader

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The information advantage is when you know something that's true that most people haven't yet realized to be true, often accredited to Peter Thiel. Examples from the past:

- Smartphones > dumb phones (invest in AAPL)

- more dollars spent with online ads than TV and Print (invest in GOOG)

- cloud computing is better than managing your own servers (invest in AMZN)

- eating Chipotle is a better option than McDonalds (invest in CMG)

These information advantages are not necessarily gained by spending many hours of research, but a side effect from every day living and working. Will a research analyst realize the impact of a scalable computing API more than engineers that relies on it for their careers?

A future example: If you're a programmer using Github for every job in the past 10 years, maybe buying Github stock if it IPO's wouldn't be so bad.

>often accredited to Peter Thiel

Only in Silicon Valley would people give Peter Thiel credit for an concept that's been around for 150 years of investing.

>maybe buying Github stock if it IPO's wouldn't be so bad.

Maybe? That doesn't sound very certain, and demonstrates how difficult it is to pick these things in advance. Do you know, or not?

I mean, it's all well and good to look back at some ideas that were good investments, in hindsight. Do you not think armies of people are trying to find "good" ideas that no one knows about? How many good ideas went nowhere?

"Maybe? That doesn't sound very certain, and demonstrates how difficult it is to pick these things in advance. Do you know, or not?"

Without a hypothetical IPO price, that question is unanswerable.

I honestly still agree with your general point, but that's not specifically a valid argument.

This is exactly the thinking of the average Joe who goes to invest on the bourse and gets slaughtered. The github example is especially apt. Go to Vegas. Better odds.

We're all average Joe. "Information advantage" is a very rare thing. Even those who think they have it, probably don't. Maybe they'll learn they don't this month, maybe it will be this year. This is entirely the point of Vanguard.

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