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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 16yearcycle who wrote (25425)	10/17/1998 12:00:00 PM
From: MrGreenJeans	Respond to of 70976

EK I don't personally know them, but perhaps you do. Trust me I don't...we live in different neighborhoods. The point here is that the trio of Meriwether and the Nobel winners have been held out to be smart dudes. From some of the comments here, some of you may want to get more exposure to "geniuses." These are very intelligent people who have vast amounts of wealth few can match. It is easy to criticize their failures and hold them up to ridicule. Their mistakes are publicized. To some extent that is par for the course since they are in some sense public figures. As for their successes not much is known. They go about their work out of the limelight and very quietly. They make and lose vast amounts of money. That is the nature of Speculation. That is what speculators do. The folks who willingly gave Meriwether their hard earned money are morons. Morons? Seems to me they were among the wealthiest people on the street who have met with huge successes in their lifetimes. This guy used 10-33x leverage and returned, what, 40% a year the past 2 1/2 years? Can you seriously imagine using this much leverage, and getting that return in the past 2-3 year environment. Many people who have invested in the semis in this period can't even say they have earned that much in that period.<VBG> I can pick out 20 names of people who post on these boards who would kick his ass, without leverage. No problem. Let's not get carried away. Hedge funds like these have access to the best people, the newest technology, vast amounts of money...more than the average person does. The nature of speculation is that one gets vastly rich and when making incorrect calls vastly poor...Speculators serve many purposes in the finanical markets without speculators markets could not function. I know some poor economists. Not very good economists I would say. I now know 2 more economists who have irresponsibly lost hundreds of millions for their investors. Yes, there are jerks in every profession.