There’s a legend about a stock market prediction scam:
Pick 2^N potential targets. Send half of them a prediction that a stock will go up and the other half a prediction will go down. Eliminate the people who got a wrong prediction, and then do this again and again. Eventually you’ll end up with one guy who’s convinced you’re never wrong, so charge him an arm and a leg for investment advice.
You can see this effect for election predictions, such that there are plenty of smallish predictors which predicted the result of the current election closely (but such that it’s easy to speculate that they’re just a selection effect)
Thankfully, this scam is far less viable now that people can google the writers of these predictions.
And there was always the simple defense of not trusting stock picks from people who aren’t very wealthy themselves, and already managing people’s money successfully in public view.
There’s a legend about a stock market prediction scam:
Pick 2^N potential targets. Send half of them a prediction that a stock will go up and the other half a prediction will go down. Eliminate the people who got a wrong prediction, and then do this again and again. Eventually you’ll end up with one guy who’s convinced you’re never wrong, so charge him an arm and a leg for investment advice.
You can see this effect for election predictions, such that there are plenty of smallish predictors which predicted the result of the current election closely (but such that it’s easy to speculate that they’re just a selection effect)
Thankfully, this scam is far less viable now that people can google the writers of these predictions.
And there was always the simple defense of not trusting stock picks from people who aren’t very wealthy themselves, and already managing people’s money successfully in public view.