Decius comments on The Rational Investor, Part I - Less Wrong

-2 Post author: wubbles 30 May 2013 12:32AM

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Comment author: Decius 30 May 2013 04:46:05AM 4 points [-]

Until you know what you will do with money tomorrow, investing advice is premature.

I want money tomorrow because I have specific dreams and goals that require money to implement; I should allocate money today in the manner which has the best chance of providing sufficient money tomorrow to support those dreams and goals. That might involve being heavily involved in high-risk investments, because the small chance of being wildly profitable is the only chance of having enough money to fund my dream. It might mean putting everything into FDIC-insured savings accounts, because that has the lowest chance of losing too much money to fund my dream.

It would be pure happenstance if the highest expected return also had the highest probability of returning a total of X or higher.