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birb_cromble  2d ago (text post)   945 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread

Since a lot of us here have expressed interest in not starving to death in a gutter, I figured I'd start a weekly thread to discuss financial matters.

Ground Rules

  • Remember that we're all just Internet randos. Don't bet your life savings on a hot tip from this thread.
  • Keep culture war in the culture war thread. Yes, global events may impact our personal finances, but that does not mean we have to incessantly harp on culture war aspects here. If you are going to discuss it, please stick to the practical impacts of it on an individual level.
  • Be kind. Remember that everyone here comes from different circumstances. We all have different resources available and different risk tolerances.
  • Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Better is better. Celebrate people when they take a step up and work to move their finances in the right direction. Don't flame out because they haven't followed what you consider the optimal path. Everybody has to start somewhere.
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Whatever that guy is selling is obviously false.

Should be easy to show why and score a black eye on Big Dollar Cost Averaging.

I think it’s because he’s also not selling the rip.

Timing both the peak and the trough is significantly harder than timing just the trough though.

Also noticed he doesn’t seem to pay interests to cash balances.

True, but he's looking at S&P valuation corrected for inflation so I think that's implicitly assuming that cash reserves keep their real value.

Jane St made 17b last quarter. This place is filled with those types.

I don't think even this august forum is "filled with" some of the smartest people in the country. Also note that Jane Street employees 3500 people working together to make that money rather than lone forum posters. The odds are... Not great, even if you are a genius.

To be clear I never proposed by the dip versus DCA. I kind of get his math. The key thing is he’s not always buying after a 14% 1 month rally. I proposed market timing which is not the same thing. MOST of the time DCA is better than buy the dip because equities usually go up, but it’s NOT always better. By claiming he had “perfect” information it implied he was doing a lot more trading. Then he threw together a backward optimized test with parameters that made his article look smarter. Obviously if you know every tick of the index you could absolutely crush basically every trading system. You turn $1k into a $1 billion in a year.

Jane St literally recruited off of this forum so I assume there are some lingerers.

The key thing is he’s not always buying after a 14% 1 month rally.

Sure. But he's buying at the trough between each ATH. "You can do better with perfect information if you trade more often" is not a rebuttal - in real life you don't have perfect information and having to make more perfect trades to beat DCA is harder than the outlined strategy.

Jane St literally recruited off of this forum so I assume there are some lingerers.

How? When?

They advertised on the origional blog before rationalism got popular. Not sure on exact dates and perhaps this is a dumber offshoot.

Unfortunately the cream of the crop of the people reading SSC in 2012 or whatever was probably sharper than the smartest people who followed our chud forum across three (?) exoduses.

Probably true. Rationalist got dumbed down a lot. It use to be just a very niche community at like a couple schools. Jane St though was not Jane St then.

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