Remember too, the WACC...or Cost of Capital for the last 10yrs has been virtually free. There's all kinds of liquidity sloshing around this Blue Ball as we go spinning in circles traveling through Spacetime. Back in the pre-GFC days, and more so in the 70's, 80's..etc., Capital was actually slightly hard to come by if one wasn't born into it. Now Jeebus, it's everywhere. All the more reason that someone with talent just closes up shop, burns their LLP docs, fires their Attorney, Accountants, and Employees...and maintains a Family Office.
"it was a lot easier back than, anyone could have made a killing - it was so easy". Yea right, as if there was no competition. The bar was a lot higher to get into commodity trading, trading costs were far higher, and the risks were greater. In the future, younger people will say the same to you, after all we have a big fed driven bull market with very little volatility and the fed eager to prop up every long overdue & much anticipated natural correction. We also had Bitcoin & easy asses to foreign markets. Making a lot of money is the easier part, keeping it is much harder. Point being even if you caught the meat of a bull market in the 70's,80's,or 90's chances are you lost it when the market conditions changed.
stuff was real back then it's a bit disappointing how all those supposed gurus in recent years havent managed to post returns that keep up with the hype eg yesterday's financial times article on family office conversions
Simons and Buffett have both said it was easier. This isn't young people saying it after the fact, it's the principals themselves.