[theycallhimtom]

Both the article and https://www.titanvest.com/performance/ cite performance relative to S&P 500. If you expand out disclosures it says "Figures cited for 2017 and since 2004 represent backtested performance of a hypothetical account using Titan’s investment process, not an actual amount." It's trivial to overfit a backtest to get whatever results you want. For a startup whose objective is to "enable you to become a better investor" they might want to start by explaining why you shouldn't take their performance page seriously.

[AznHisoka]

yep and it makes this statement rather suspicious:“Of the ~3500+ hedge funds out there, we track ~5% of them. We believe these are the good guys: long-term oriented and rigorous in their research.”

Its the 5% that performed well in their backtest, but that doesnt mean they will perform the best going forward.

What Titan did in 2016 was chose the top 5% of funds that did well up until that point. Then when they saw it performed bad in 2017, they most likely went back and chose a different 5% that did better. And recalculated all the returns.

The problem is you cant keep doing this once you actually start investing with real money.

[norswap]

Do you have any evidence for any of this, or did you just pick the most uncharitable possible scenario and present it as factual?

[sseveran]

They should disclose how many backtests were run along with the methodology for evaluation. Backtests should be very rarely run.

[AznHisoka]

This is just all theory, of course but this is something most backtesters do, so I wouldnt rule it out.

It helps to be overly skeptical when anyone claims to beat the index. Because it is such a powerful claim.

[neonate]

You said "What Titan did". That's a far cry from "I wouldn't rule it out".