[geofft]

This might be a more intelligent discussion if you focus on the substance of the answer instead of the behavior of the participants. I admit that I was, technically, "making up" the answer, in that I did not have direct confirmation. It is rather like, if you asked me what the color of the sky is on a cloudless day in Barcelona, I'll "make up" the answer, having never been to Barcelona. But I know how skies work, and I know there's only one possible answer. And, as it turned out from the link you provided, I gave the correct answer.

If you dig into the answer in the link you provided, Simons says gained his initial funding (as well as his data) by what we could accurately call gambling. He had no strategy, no reason to believe he was successful, and no expectation of being successful. He was - through luck - successful. With that success, and having gained money he could then afford to lose, he noticed some structure in the data, and hired some mathematicians to evaluate his hypotheses. It was in fact more likely that he would have lost all his gambled money before even thinking about approaching the problem technically.

He was lucky, in the most straightforward sense. Anyone else, too, could be lucky. But the nature of probability is that the common case is not the lucky case. That's not a digression, that's the exact discussion at hand. If you want to insist that occasionally people are lucky -- sure, and occasionally a newcomer will invent a secure block cipher.

If you have enough money to test hypotheses, and you're okay with losing that money if your hypotheses are wrong, fantastic, go test them. That's exactly what Simons did. If you want to get rich by investing in the stock market without a strategy and hoping to get lucky, well, yes, some people get lucky. Simons happened to be one of them. But that's hardly evidence you should emulate that part of his behavior.

[melling]

I've already watched the video. How do you think I knew where to quickly find the answer. You aren't lucky if you make those returns for 20 years. He charged 5 and 20 and people still invested.

Also, no one said the goal here wanted to get rich. Learning more about the math, etc would be interesting. Please don't tell us what's in the video again.

[geofft]

> You aren't lucky if you make those returns for 20 years.

That's not what I claimed. I claimed there were two steps. Step 1 is to acquire enough capital that you're okay losing it. Step 2 is to use that capital. Step 1 is what I claimed he was lucky. Step 2 is the one that lasted 20 years. Without step 1 (and there are many ways to do step 1 that don't involve luck, as well as many ways that don't involve investing), you can't proceed to step 2.

> Learning more about the math, etc would be interesting.

That is definitely interesting, and I agreed with that point upthread. You don't have to use actual money to learn about the math, though. If you want to learn stuff on simulations, everything I've been saying about capital you can afford to lose doesn't matter. However, the one and only thing simulations can't do is get you rich.