taw comments on Abnormal Cryonics - Less Wrong

56 Post author: Will_Newsome 26 May 2010 07:43AM

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Comment author: taw 27 May 2010 06:36:56PM 1 point [-]

It seems low but it's correct. Risk-free interests rate are very very low.

Individual stocks carry very high risk, so this is nowhere near correct calculation.

And even if you want to invest in S&P index - notice the date - 2007. This is a typical survivorship bias article from that time. In many countries stock markets crashed hard, and failed to rise for decades. Not just tiny countries, huge economies like Japan too. And by 2010 the same is true about United States too (and it would be ever worse if it wasn't for de facto massive taxpayers subsidies)

Here's Wikipedia:

  • Empirically, over the past 40 years (1969–2009), there has been no significant equity premium in (US) stocks.

This wasn't true back in 2007.

Comment deleted 27 May 2010 07:27:40PM *  [-]
Comment author: taw 27 May 2010 07:45:57PM 4 points [-]

This is all survivorship bias and nothing more, many other stock exchanges crashed completely or had much lower returns like Japanese.

Comment author: SilasBarta 27 May 2010 07:53:18PM 1 point [-]

And I should add that markets are wickedly anti-inductive. With all the people being prodded into the stock market by tax policies and "finance gurus" ... yeah, the risk is being underpriced.

Also, there needs to be a big shift, probably involving a crisis, before risk-free rates actually make up for taxation, inflation, and sovereign risk. After that happens, I'll be confident the return on capital will be reasonable again.