Hielko

I'm not sure that is correct, but i don't have the data right now so I can't contradict you. But what you say is true then less than 13 companies were responsible for all the out performance. Since the index is market weighted I don't see how the conclusion you draw is that you should go low market cap since the out performance was driven by high market cap companies. Micro-caps are not part of the index, so the fact that in the index the outperformance was driven by a few high market cap companies doesn't say anything about the potential performance of very small market cap companies.

Haha, I wish it was that easy! The only player pool in the world where that would be enough to become a winning player is playing it against the aforementioned 85 IQ players who just got the 10 minute explanation.

False. Even highly survivor-biased polls on CoBF, which is stacked by the best-of-the-best, does not show that it isn't hard to beat the index. Well, the question is how do you exactly define what being hard is. Lets say you could explain a simple strategy to slightly outperform an index to a random person in one hour. Simply sticking to this simple strategy would be enough to outperform. That's not hard. On the other hand, having the mental capacity to just stick to that strategy and not do anything else might be super hard for a lot of people. Or maybe the hard part is not following one certain simple strategy, but figuring out that this strategy is better than the thousands of other alternative strategies that exist for investing. It can be easy on one level, but hard on another level.

My hypothesis: it isn't hard to beat the index.

Most companies that I see that do for example a reverse split to go dark cite annual costs around half a million/year for being public. Some a bit less, some a bit more.

It will not be positive for the US, but the unfortunate truth is that Mexico is way more dependent on US trade than the other way around. Mexico's trade is for a big percentage with the US (80%+), while Mexico is "just" #3 for the US. It's not a balanced relationship.

I think the main problem of bitcoin is that it's inherently inefficient. It's only secure when the computing power of the network is so big that at all times it's too expensive to launch an attack compared to what the potential reward is. Because of that I don't think the bitcoin network will ever be able to facilitate cheap transactions. That's the real problem IMO.

My return for the year: 43.6% and 5yr CAGR now 32%. Pretty happy with this year. Had only two big losers AIX (Chinese merger arb, blocked by Obama) and Conduril (not really sure why it's down so big this year).

For most micro and small cap stocks you don't get margin space.

Bit off-topic: but lol, healthcare costs in the USA... that's just ridiculous.

Yes I can't do it as I never have access to perfect information, even after my investment end or many years after. There is a serious risk of acting on results here. You can make an investment and lose money (or not make the maximum) while having acted completely optimal and vice versa you can make money (even lots of it) with a stupid investment (and blind luck on your side). Of course try to do a retrospective but I wouldn't count it this exact. The only exact thing to measure is rate of return (over a decade at least). That doesn't answer my question. You can hedge against X, and X doesn't happen. Does that make it a bad hedge? Perhaps X occurring was a 50% probability event, and the coin just landen heads instead of tails.

How can you determine the number of correct decision you took? Serious question. Many decisions can be totally correct, yet have an unfavorable outcome because of bad variance.

Thanks, nice to hear :) And yes, that's also how I "make money" from the blog. Getting new idea's from readers, receiving feedback, and growing as an investor is all quite valuable. Worth a lot more than the few $ you can make with referrals or ad-sense or stuff like that.

To add a little bit to the discussion: I think that writing down your investment ideas with the idea that other people will read and criticize it is a very good way to check your investment thesis. If you can't write a good thesis down, it's probably not a good idea. And if you try to anticipate the questions other people might have you are sort of forced to make sure that you are not forgetting anything. Starting a blog is also a great way to build a bit of a network, so you have more opportunities to learn about attractive ideas that you wouldn't have found on your own. But guess I'm one of the exceptions, blogging for almost five years now. You indeed see most blogs pop-up and disappear quickly.

Most brokers that charge $5+ in commissions also sell your order data... I think IB is one of the few brokers that doesn't sell your order data, and there you can actually do most trades for less than $1.

Why would it be good for society or markets to allow someone to pay a manager to give him inside information? Allowing insider trading is a great way to help markets move closer to strong form efficiency, by helping stocks price-in undisclosed, pertinent information that impacts the value of the securities. Because of this, as prices are bid up by those with access to this information, existing shareholders of the company have an opportunity to cash out at prices that reflect the undisclosed event that is either in the process of happening or that has already happened. Those who are buying in are not harmed by this; the event (buyout, for example) will still happen and their investment will be money good. They will just no longer capture the arbitrage between the perceived value of the company without the event and the true value of the company with the event; it will instead be captured by those who owned shares when the event actually happened. In the case that the event is negative, those buying in are protected on the downside just as they're capped on the upside. Furthermore, insider trading is a victimless crime. The people the "criminal" bought the shares from were going to sell that day anyway regardless of whether the "criminal" had access to material information or not. So who is being damaged by insider trading? No one, so far as I can tell. No, if trading on insider information is legal most market participants without access to inside information would withdraw from the market or request a higher risk premium (to compensate for the risk of trading against more informed market participants). The effect would be lower liquidity and a probably significantly higher cost of capital for all public firms, and as a result the whole economy would suffer.

Sure, but seems like a pretty clear case to me. Pretty stupid.

You must be a broker. If he's not, he's gonna be soon. ::) hehe

Bought as much as was feasible in the beginning of june ($139.11 average), sold a little bit around $150 a few weeks later, got cashed out yesterday at $159.82. 15% return in 8 weeks for a low-risk merger. I hope a few others managed to pick up a few shares as well. I'd say the lack of replies means a no to the last part of your post :P

70/30 seems like a good split to me, I get 50/50 at IB. And to minimize the tax impact your broker should recall your shares before the ex-div date. Counter-party risk is by the way very minimal since you get collateral.

It also works for companies that file their disclosures with OTC Markets, even if they do not file with the SEC. Nice, didn't know that :) What about a stock like "KAHL"? Couldn't add it on the site... Works for me, although you can only find it using the ticker and not the name

It also works for companies that file their disclosures with OTC Markets, even if they do not file with the SEC. Nice, didn't know that :)

They don't support companies that are trading OTC. I have several alerts there for OTC companies and they work. Those are probably companies that file with the SEC, but many OTC companies don't do that.

You need to learn how to calculate returns...

I think this is a very interesting subject, wrote something once about it once: http://alphavulture.com/2015/09/02/how-hard-or-easy-is-it-to-outperform/ But I do think you are mostly wrong. You don't have to be a genius, but if you just have average intelligence you're just not going to be smart enough to recognize the bullshit from things that are a good idea.