[Brodiaga]

(09-15-2015 12:30 AM)jj90 Wrote:  

I don't know of said RVF member Cardguy, and that may work for closed systems but that also reeks of excuses and cognitive dissonance. If said individual was so good, he should apply his talents to the capital markets. Where is Cardguy's billions?

Ego is the enemy, it's hubris to think one can contemplate every possible result. And then being able to act on such thoughts concurrently in real time.

Anyone who thinks that smart people should all be rich should read Nassim Taleb's books: The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness and Antifragile.

He explains the role of random events and luck better that I ever will, but the TL;DR version of the answer is basically that for every billionaire investor like Warren Buffet there are many who failed. Many of these losers may be just as smart as the winners, but they made the wrong calls and never recovered (or never had the balls to make big bets in the first place).

If investing, and getting above-average returns, was as simple as applying high IQ to solve a pre-defined problem in a classroom then finance professors would be billionaires as well.