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Charlie and Jamie had always sort of assumed that there was some grown-up in charge of the financial system whom they had never met; now, they saw there was not. -Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

I've often seen this in traders who get outrageously successful with a particular strategy at a particular point in time. Their brain overfits seeing that pattern at times when it really doesn't apply. The smart ones manage to get out before losing everything, the not so smart ones end up where they were before the success. It is like a lottery winner who 'reinvests' all his winnings back into lotteries.



The default assumption in capitalism is luck+opportunity.

Beyond the sociopathy required to horde wealth, most of the market is now turtles all the way down when it comes to strategy.

This also explains why the grift economy makes more sense: once you realize it's all luck, it's better to corrupt it's outcomes.




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