The comment was “lean on data analysis”, as in “lean on data analysis to do finance”. Yes, the analysis itself is not “finance” per se, but most of the data analysis done in finance is simple math that gets used in complex ways. It’s easy enough to calculate P/E, but figuring out whether that implies you wanting to buy or sell is a much harder question. About the only way to use first principles to actually make buy/sell decisions is, as I said, to use the CAPM and just embrace your ignorance.
That seems a little extreme; presumably there’s a difference between using statistical tests as a heuristic you don’t understand, and using statistical tests in a well-understood way, even if you’re not deriving finance from first principles.
Also, CAPM isn’t actually true (i.e. assumptions never hold in the real world), whereas statistics is.
Finance != data analysis.
The comment was “lean on data analysis”, as in “lean on data analysis to do finance”. Yes, the analysis itself is not “finance” per se, but most of the data analysis done in finance is simple math that gets used in complex ways. It’s easy enough to calculate P/E, but figuring out whether that implies you wanting to buy or sell is a much harder question. About the only way to use first principles to actually make buy/sell decisions is, as I said, to use the CAPM and just embrace your ignorance.
That seems a little extreme; presumably there’s a difference between using statistical tests as a heuristic you don’t understand, and using statistical tests in a well-understood way, even if you’re not deriving finance from first principles.
Also, CAPM isn’t actually true (i.e. assumptions never hold in the real world), whereas statistics is.