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You’re missing the word ”expect” in the original claim.

You can beat the house at blackjack, but you can’t reliably expect to do it.




Investment is hardly a zero sum game. If it were nobody would make anything buy investing passively either. So how is that a reasonable analogy?

> you can’t reliably expect to do it.

Sure, I can't. But assuming that it's not entirely random chance some proportion of people certainly can.


> Investment is hardly a zero sum game. If it were nobody would make anything buy investing passively either. So how is that a reasonable analogy?

I think you’re reading too much into the analogy, which is maybe my fault for using an analogy. The point was just that it’s not that you can’t win, just that you very likely don’t have an edge - not because it’s mathematically impossible like in blackjack with a shoe that’s continuously shuffled, but because it’s so difficult.

> Sure, I can't. But assuming that it's not entirely random chance some proportion of people certainly can.

Yes, but the bar is very high.




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