[smileysteve]

> I spent years learning industries, learning how to read quarterly report, to identify signs of fraud, and pay attention to the news every single day.

How'd that work out for you? Do you beat the S&P 500 YOY with less volatility? If you account for your hours and trading fees? How many years in a row?

If your answer is yes, you should start a fund! Because statistically, whether a mutual fund or exclusive hedge fund, you're a miracle.

> Like anything you do you have to be committed and determined to be successful.

His argument, seemingly based off the Random Walk Down Wall Street data; which basically shows that no matter how committed and determined you are, the broad based index is going to beat you, if not 1 year, year over year.

[dsmithatx]

Today I have 5 stocks i've bought over the past 60 days. I wont take the time to post my past 24 years of investing. I'm doing ok and so is my team of close friends I bounce ideas off of.

https://imgur.com/EQ0iWWT

[minimax]

The S&P 500 is up 15% from 60 days ago which is considerably more than all of the positions in your screenshot.

[dsmithatx]

I'm long in these holdings. The S&P500 over 60 days involves no research.

[deegles]

I believe that's the point. You could have been on vacation instead of doing all that work to pick stocks and still made more money.

[pertymcpert]

Looks like it's up around 5% from Nov 20th, not 15%.

[dsmithatx]

I bought XOM about 2-3 weeks ago at 71.75 You're also not calculating dividends. Xom is pay 4.4 and some of my other holding have already paid a few thousand in dividends.

[minimax]

Today is Feb 21, 60 days ago is late December not November.

[smileysteve]

> over the past 60 days

is not year over year

> doing ok

You can be doing okay, you can even be beating the S&P 500 in the short term; but if you're beating the S&P 500 over the long term you are beating almost every professional team of fund managers.

https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/13240...

[orojackson]

I mean, look at what Fidelity is doing with FZROX and FZILX. Both Vanguard and Fidelity are locked in a crazy fee war [1] to be the GOAT of asset management companies [2]. How the hell do you compete with Fidelity as an individual stock picker when there are no fees to speak of to participate in this fund?

I've seen people mentioning that HFT can totally and consistently beat indexes [3], but then a) can I even get in on the action with less than $1000 and b) is the automated system in place any good?

[1] https://riabiz.com/a/2018/12/13/vanguards-asset-machine-wobb...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18701283

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19228699

[dsmithatx]

RHT should make me about $6000. I bought it the day after IBM announced they would pay $190 a share. Disclaimer I'm Redhat Certified.

[dsmithatx]

I was actually up 13% on ENB a Canadian pipeline company. My gain is cut in half because I doubled up on shares. I'm long on everything but RHT which is a cash payout.

[kgwgk]

You’ll probably make 10% on this trade. But the is risk of losing more than that if the transaction doesn’t close for some reason is real. That’s not free money.

[dsmithatx]

It's been approved by RH and the DOJ. Google tried to make a larger offer. Where is the risk in not getting $190 a share?

[kgwgk]

The risk is obviously lower now than it was the day after the acquisition was announced. And the upside is also lower now. Less than 4%, for a closing which is not expected until the second semester of 2019 as far as I understand.