[chumali]

This isn't quite true and you've pretty much identified the reason why. Academics are not investors and their objective isn't to profit but to publish their research.

Academics identify a pattern that generates superior risk-adjusted returns and then publish their findings - this then leads to the anomaly disappearing as investors trade away the alpha. [0] The track record of an academic can therefore only be meaningfully discussed in terms of how well their model performs in back-testing. Saying they don't have a good track record misses this point.

Perhaps there are successful academic investors who achieve alpha and don't publish their research, however they wouldn't show up in any meta analysis.

[0] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3054718

[lotsofpulp]

Why would someone publish money making information rather than make the money for themselves?

[sah2ed]

> Why would someone publish money making information rather than make the money for themselves?

Perhaps because they enjoy academia far more than money making?

Some people like Grigori Perelman [0] are just not interested in money or fame, or both.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman

[lotsofpulp]

I’m not aware of Perelman publishing a “a pattern that generates superior risk-adjusted returns".

That type of information is worth millions, and there are many investment firms offering very lucrative positions to those that can identify a pattern that generates superior risk-adjusted returns.

Outside of very rare outliers, it doesn’t seem reasonable to assume that information that will generate outsized returns will be publicly available.

[dsfyu404ed]

Because if your chosen career is an academic that's what you do. You research, write and publish. You could probably make more money by selling your ideas in private industry but that's an entire career pivot, it's like a junkyard becoming a cheap used car lot. It's a lot of work and comes with risk. If you're tenured or close to it you should probably just publish. Sure you could try and sell your ideas on the side but that's not going to endear you to other people in academia.