I read this post this morning too. Curious why people trade instead of invest. Investing has produced so much more wealth for individuals then trading has. Can anyone name any billionaire that became a billionaire from trading? It makes me wonder why so many people aspire to be "traders". To me it's the equivalent of people striving to be in the minor leagues instead of the MLB
because investing requires huge amounts of capital and long periods of time. trading requires very little capital and people believe that they can make a return in a very short period of time.
sorry i thought it went without saying when i said trader. under that definition even an investor would be a trader since he places trades once in a while
also, i wouldnt consider a billionaire hedge funder making his money from trading, lets face it he's an asset manager and made his money from managing other people's assets. I mean specifically made billions *just* from trading.
Horejsi bought shares in a poorly performing closed end fund, got enough shares to mount a proxy fight and take it over, then milked the fund dry with high fees and a complicated tax scheme that was later shut down by the IRS, but did boost assets for a number of years. So this isn't really a rags to riches, buy and hold story.
1) You're wearing "rose-colored" glasses and overly swayed by small sample bias. :eek: 2) If you looked at the results of other extremely long-term investors who bought stock in other companies in 1980 and held on until today, the dispersion of results would be enormous. You're too obsessed with a handful of people out of thousands and millions of others. 3) Per the article, many of the "BRKA Billionaires" are more than 80 years old. They have enjoyed a "perfect bullish storm" of factors to let their investment grow/compound to what it has today. 4) Are people who accumulate 7-figure, 8-figure or 9-figure fortunes "less worthy" than someone with a 10-figure net worth?