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>If markets were truly random, you might expect 50% of day traders to lose money, not 90%.

Only if the humans were making decision to buy and sell randomly.



Intuitively, I don't think this is necessarily true. It probably depends on the type of random distribution for price movements.


More the magnitude of randomness in the total vs "ordered" growth. A truly random stock market would imply an utterly insane economy (avoiding the obvious jokes for now). A company with good current and future prospects that everyone knows going down over time continually while a doomed one rises? One at a time maybe from "glitches" or extreme circumstances. Like say a massive need for short term funds and more ending shorting than available shares to cover it and a margin call chain for the latter. Both at once? Likely impossible even with extremely weird economic circumstances which make the COVID-19 economy look perfectly normal.




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