So what he's describing, beating the S&P 500 by a bit over that period, isn't implausible. Comparing his portfolio's performance to the S&P 500 is an obvious mistake and, more importantly, attributing his portfolio's performance to anything other than luck (good or bad) is very silly.
I didn't pull apart his post as much as I might (it's indicative of a whole range of bad ideas people have with regard to investing, like his ideas regarding sector-specific investing) but the notion that really needs to be attacked is that beating the S&P 500 or total market index can be regarded as indicative of some special ability without taking into account the portfolio's risk.
A lot of the investing orthodoxy is predicated on the average investor being non-observant and ignorant of almost everything important going on in the economy. I think this is both incorrect and a bit snobbish at least some of the time; many average people have sophisticated views of their line of business even if they are not sophisticated investors per se, and their domain knowledge is improperly discounted due to their lack of sophistication as investors.
I am not suggesting high-risk, short-term strategies but long-term, buy-and-hold strategies that leverage the native knowledge and intelligence of Silicon Valley engineers. I also do high-risk, short-term strategies (options and similar) based on the same domain expertise, and have done alright with those too, but I never recommend that to people.
It would be seriously odd if some random guy on Wall Street understood Silicon Valley and tech better than I do. The technology industry is not driven over the long-term by financial numbers on a spreadsheet. I've been through many tech boom-bust cycles in Silicon Valley and understand the dynamics pretty well. No special magic to this portfolio, and it has been one of the most consistent producers for me. As long as you are not betting the farm on a single company, it is difficult for this to go wrong. At least in tech, I can see the bad things telegraphed long before they materialize in the market because I understand the fundamentals. Even if Wall Street isn't paying attention.
For the poster below, my returns are consistently worse than every hedge fund that has ever wanted to hire me. I'd be a terrible hedge fund manager; I am personally more interested in return on effort than maximum possible returns. (They wanted to hire me for my theoretical skills, not my investing skills.)
So what he's describing, beating the S&P 500 by a bit over that period, isn't implausible. Comparing his portfolio's performance to the S&P 500 is an obvious mistake and, more importantly, attributing his portfolio's performance to anything other than luck (good or bad) is very silly.
I didn't pull apart his post as much as I might (it's indicative of a whole range of bad ideas people have with regard to investing, like his ideas regarding sector-specific investing) but the notion that really needs to be attacked is that beating the S&P 500 or total market index can be regarded as indicative of some special ability without taking into account the portfolio's risk.