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Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it.


If you're looking for The Single Greatest Predictor of Future Stock Market Returns[1], here it is: http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2013/12/the-single-gre...

This is a long read, but it's worth it. The metric can be calculated in FRED[2], and as a predictor of future returns, it outperforms all of the most common stock market valuation metrics, including cyclically-adjusted price-earnings (CAPE) ratio[3]. (Basically, the average investor portfolio allocation to equities versus bonds and cash is inversely correlated with future returns over the long-term. This works better than pure valuation models because it accounts for supply and demand dynamics.)

[1]: http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2013/12/the-single-gre...

[2]: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=qis

[3]: http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/


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