Easy for animals or darts to beat the market because such contests aren't cap or price weighted. Each pick is equal-weighted.
From Forbes, 2012: "Any Monkey Can Beat The Market"
"What is all this monkey business? It started in 1973 when Princeton University professor Burton Malkiel claimed in his bestselling book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, that “A blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper's financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by experts.”
"Malkiel was wrong,” stated Rob Arnott, CEO of Research Affiliates, while speaking at the IMN Global Indexing and ETFs conference earlier this month. “The monkeys have done a much better job than both the experts and the stock market.”
Amazingly, on average, 98 of the 100 monkey portfolios beat the 1,000 stock capitalization weighted stock universe each year. Equal weighting almost always wins, at least in rising markets.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.