unconnected failed strategies shouldn't matter in the least
depends on how you are devising your strategies. The Copernicus and Einstein analogies only hold if your strategies emerge from real theories--that is, abstract, internally coherent, deductive systems of propositions which imply the existence of certain patterns in "real-world" data.
The gorilla game is such a theory: New technologies are assumed to be adopted in a particular manner, leading to hypergrowth in particular areas at particular times. Certain companies are assumed to have commanding positions in those areas, leading them to capture outsize shares of the hypergrowth's returns. The market is presumed to be inefficient in the short term (the companies' current stock prices do not reflect the likely growth) but efficient in the medium term (regular upside quarterly surprises are met with regular upward movements of the stock price). The strategy based on this theory is simple: locate and invest in gorillas and you will be rewarded with market-beating returns over time as the market gradually and incrementally recognizes what you did early on. You are correct that the records of other potential strategies for tech investing, based on other theories, have little to say about whether this one will work or not.
But--and this is what I think Hulbert was getting at--many so called investing "strategies" derived from back-testing are not grounded in theories at all. "Buy the 26th-cheapest Dow stock in alternate years ending in 6" is not a strategy emerging from a theory, but rather a strategy based on hope that a particular historical pattern will persist. (OK, that's a cheap shot, but I'm trying to illustrate a real tendency.) The only reason to think the pattern might recur is wonder that it can be found in the first place: what are the odds against it? surely it can't be random! Well, if you crunch enough numbers, Hulbert is saying, eventually something that looks like a pattern will emerge, and it will only be chance. He is adding that this will be more obvious to you if I am honest at the outset and say, "I tried five thousand variations and only one worked."
One other thing: any strategy that is essentially mechanical and relatively easy to follow will almost certainly regress to the mean over time as more money flows into it, trying to pick up the "sure thing." The gorilla game has suffered this to some degree, but will almost certainly not be made entirely obsolete because it requires a good amount of subjective input to operationalize on a real-time basis and because it requires a high, and unusual, degree of LTB&H discipline.
tekboy/Ares@bracingforMerlin'sattack.com |
