[yaj54]

agreed. most people can't create a custom tailored finance statement model. but many people can write the following sentence: "analyze this financial statement and suggest a market strategy." and if that sentence performs as well as an (albeit old) custom model, and is likely to have compound improvements in its performance over time with no changes to the instruction sentence...

[ecjhdnc2025]

But it can't come up with a particularly imaginative strategy; it can only come up with a mishmash of existing stuff it has seen, equivocate, or hallucinate a strategy that looks clever but might not be.

So it all needs checking. It's the classic LLM situation. If you're trained enough to spot the errors, the analysis wouldn't take you much time in the first place. And if you're not trained enough to spot the errors...

And let's say it does work. It's like automated exchange betting robots. As soon as everyone has access to a robot that can exploit some hidden pattern in the data for a tiny marginal gain, the price changes and the gain collapses.

So if everyone has the same access to the same banal, general analysis tools, you know what's going to happen: the advantage disappears.

All in all, why would there be any benefits from a generalised model?

[jimbokun]

"buy and hold the S&P 500 until you're ready to retire"

[chronic94057]

> "buy and hold the S&P 500 until you're ready to retire"

That is bad advice.

VGT Vanguard Technology ETF has outperformed S&P 500 over the past 20 years.

All the people who say “VTSAX and chill” disappeared in the past 3-4 years because their cherished total passive index fund is no longer the best over long horizons. And no, the markets are not efficient.

[Terr_]

> VGT Vanguard Technology ETF

Given the techie audience here, I want to caution that investing in the same industry as your job is a kind of anti-diversification.

A really severe example would be all the people who worked at Enron and invested everything in Enron stock.

Even if your employer/investments aren't quite so fraudulent, You don't want to be in a situation where you are long-term unemployed and are forced "sell low" in order to meet immediate needs. If only one or the other is hit, you can ride things out more effectively.

[telepathy]

Need to invest in VT not VGT. Markets are efficient.

[TechDebtDevin]

No