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Comment by dwc | Hacker News Reader

Agreed, with one exception: when you as an individual have fairly deep knowledge about something and spot a market opportunity based on that knowledge, you might be able to correctly judge whether you can take advantage of it.

I've done this several times and made good money. Two times I approximately doubled my money over the course of several months. Yeah, not day trading but buying and waiting for the market to figure out what I already knew. The thing about that is, it only happens when it happens. Most of the time my money is sitting in index funds quietly getting solid but undramatic returns, and I don't have to pay much attention at all.

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I admit that's a possibility, but be very careful and very limited in your domain. Stupid shit is wildly successful all of the time, and brilliant offerings fail all of the time.

The market still hasn't figured out that SharePoint sucks and enterprise lock-in from vendors like Oracle is predatory and bad for business. Amazing achievements like NeXT and the Amiga never made money. Gimmicks like the Amazon Echo and the Apple Watch ship millions of units. It's really hard to tell what the market will do.

Or as Keynes put it, "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

I'm as bad at those kind of picks as the next person. I wasted time and money figuring that out, though.

The only time I buy in is when the market overreacts to some bit of bad news or something and I see the undervaluation. Of a strong, established company.

> Gimmicks like the Amazon Echo

Ah, the first mass-market ambient computer is a gimmick. And somehow I still want one.

I agree with this, once you are aware (or think of) what you're doing as closer to gambling than "investing" ie. use money you're prepared to lose as opposed to the kids college fund

I own shares given to me in a company I used to work for that has now floated. I am keeping the shares, which is effectively a pick but I know it is well run and very good at executing value acquisitions

If those shares are a small percentage of the net worth, then it can be Okay to keep them as is. But if its the case of them being the majority of your net worth, then its very dangerous.

I look at it from a downside vs upside perspective. I want a lower probability of a downside, which will cause pain to me. For that I am okay, to trade it with moderate upside e.g. index based funds.

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