I have been spending some time looking at 13f filings recently by hedge funds, and can't seem to understand how they can be doing anything more than raw technical/macro/fundamental speculation of equities rather than having any sort of deep comprehension of the intangibles (not that there is anything inherently wrong with that as a strategy, but it is not clearly stated to BE the strategy in either the prospectus or promotional materials for the funds) . Obviously they could rely on third party analyst reviews, but how can one really rate the review of any particular analyst without having equivalent knowledge in that area?
I'm not going to name anyone but I feel as if it's not uncommon to see holdings within tech sector, industrial, pharmaceutical, real estate, and defense - with an expense ratio to fund that implies they can't really have teams focusing on each sector individually full time.
I have spent nearly 2 years diving deep into Softbank, Apple, Alphabet, Baidu, and also more broadly, US treasuries. I've really wanted to get into semiconductors, but I find the more I focus on that the less I am able follow my core 4 equities, and the treasury market. I'm not working 100 hour weeks trying to follow it for sure, but I like to think I do my research.
For me to feel like my trading is investment rather than gambling, I don't know how I could really expand the variety of my holdings to such great lengths. In a vacuum, the benefits of that kind of diversification really sound great, but i'm not confident in my ability to beat (or even compete with) some supercomputers that are capturing "smart beta" through technical/fundamental factor analysis.
Submitted April 09, 2019 at 12:45PM by Muffinblade http://bit.ly/2P0cd6M
