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Comment by satysin | Hacker News Reader

I was going to post asking what experience Mark has in government but then I remembered the American population just voted to elect a reality TV 'star' and rich-from-daddies-money mediocre businessman as President. So yeah I guess Mark is highly qualified in that he has several times Trump's net worth.

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Another way to describe Trump is that he ran a business that created more value than the S&P 500 (the top 500 businesses on US stock exchanges) over a 30 year period, created a world famous brand associated with quality and luxury, created a tv show that dominated ratings for a decade, and crushed two political dynasties that have held power for almost 40 years.

"a business that created more value than the S&P 500 (the top 500 businesses on US stock exchanges) over a 30 year period"

What's this based on?

https://dqydj.com/donald-trump-beat-sp-500-index-funds/

Admittedly questionable source, but I've seen it elsewhere and the approximation seems fair.

There's probably a clearer way to phrase that point. I initially thought you were saying that Donald Trump made more money than the entire S&P 500!

haha. I reread my post and it was a bit gibberishy. Ooops.

I guess approximately half of all shareholders did. It's not really a feat.

You could, except that none of those descriptions are true.

How are you calculating value created? Based on market capitalization it looks like the S&P 500 went from a market cap of $925 Billion in the 1980's to over $19 Trillion today [1].

[1] http://siblisresearch.com/data/total-market-cap-sp-500/

Wasn't that just the opposite?

I thought the complaint was if Trump had merely taken the 'small loan of one million dollars' and invested it in the S&P500, he would have made more money. That is, he is worse at growing wealth than the stock market average.

I think the analysis that says that is somewhat misguided. Matt Levine (my go-to for financial stuff, his writing is insightful and accessible) wrote a good piece on it here https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-09-03/should-do...

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