[adammarples]

When making a comparison like that, the endpoints really matter. How many of the last 20 years has he been beating the market? And the next 10? Today is at an extreme in valuations and of course everyone who is betting on a fall will look bad until suddenly they don't. It's currently not possible to say whether sitting on cash is stupid or wise, the next few years will bear that out one way or another.

[refurb]

The next 10? I don't know, I can't predict the future. And finding out 10 years from now he didn't beat the market for 30 years, is half a lifetime of investing (most of your adult life). Not like you can go back and fix that.

It's 20 years of failing to beat a simple "invest in indexes and forget it". So basically an adult who followed index investing for the last 20 years can say "I have higher returns than Buffet".

[adammarples]

Is it really 20 years of failing to beat the market, or is it that, this year, his average over 20 years has failed to beat the market? He may well have been up on the market most of the time until the last 2-3 years of blowout toppiness in which the market doubled. Those are different things, which is why calculating an average which includes extreme is not always helpful.

[RishitJain]

Exactly my point in the article.