Pythagorean said:
It is really annoying/in bad taste to have bad faith in people in a discussion and make accusations, too.
Bad faith? Did you not respond to my post by asking a question that didn't follow from my post? Did you not do that on purpose? And at the very least, your first response was too short. You should have explained yourself so that I wouldn't have to guess what your point was. Then when you made your point, it was different from what I said and now you're trying to pin that on me!:
It's also annoying when people move the goal post: you were talking about people who "got rich".
I know what I said and that wasn't it.
You asked a question that didn't follow from what I posted:
you changed the subject/moved the goalposts, not me.
What I said was very simple and I can't imagine how you could have misread it, but I'll say it again another way (the other side of the coin): the vast majority of people who "invest" in Beanie Babies or try their hand in gold rushes lose money.
The vast majority of people who "invest" in Beanie Babies and participate in gold rushes do not get rich. The point of saying that very few get rich was the point out that most do not get rich. Indeed, further, most actually lose money.
Reordered to group similar arguments:
Anyway, saving for retirement isn't the same as getting rich.
Agreed, but we're not talking about my post/claim here, we're talking about yours:
Pythagorean in post #64 said:
The point is that for any investment strategy to be successful, the "vast majority" can't be.
Your claim was not just about people getting rich or about fads, just "successful" investing in "any investment strategy" - which for most people isn't getting rich.
You opened this up to be about essentially all investing, not me.
Diversificaiton is a defensive strategy and comes at the cost of potential reward: it dilutes your portfolio.
Indeed. It swaps potential return for safety. Relevance?
And anyway, you don't just diversify randomly... you have to pick a diversification strategy, still.
I gave one of the most popular diversification strategies: the S&P500 index fund. But there are a number of heavily diversified funds out there and they all offer a similar promise. They are essentially foolproof. But this is not really directly related to your claim. Again: Relevance?
And many investors will not release their diversification strategies because they lose investment power if more people are doing the same thing.
So what? This has nothing to do with anything here.
The whole concept of the advantages of a unique investment strategy is part of the birth of Value investing (see The Intelligent Investor, by Benjamin Graham). Which is another "correct" way to invest.
Ok...I disagree that that's good for the majority because the majority don't have the time to actively manage a large fund themselves (but a mutual fund you invest in could have that strategy), but in either case, could you explain why you think that's relevant?
It seems like you are now trying to evade discussion of your own claim. Please be explicit: do you still believe your claim in post #64 was accurate? Were you claiming that all investing including stock market investing is zero sum? Or worse, negative sum? Do you recognize that insofar as almost no one who follows a broadly diversified stock investment strategy such as a mutual fund/index fund loses money (almost all gain a lot of money percentagewise), almost everyone who invests this way is "successful"?