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The Streisandining continues.
I don't like that. I'll give you a downvote, that will set things right!
What value does something like fivethirtyeight add to our democracy, if any? Is this motivation the same as that of diving deep into baseball stats or Star Wars starship engineering, just like “nerding out” for its own sake?
Contrast the voter who never looks at any of these polls with one who keeps up with them daily. Is the latter voter better off in some way? Is this just about trying to read the tea leaves so you can strut and preen later about having been correct, should the dice roll be in your favor?
My concern is that these things are distracting and may actually dissuade some people from voting because they think they “don’t have to.”
Here’s an idea: everyone go vote for whoever you think the best candidate is regardless of what a stack of polls say.
Someone set me straight here, what is the point of all this stuff.
Also, you can make money betting on the outcome itself. If the odds you get are underpriced relative to an accurate forecast, that's a great bet to take.
Furthermore, these forecasts influence where politicians put their focus. Let's say you're Hillary in '16 and you think Wisconsin is yours despite the forecast showing a narrow lead, maybe you should reconsider.
1. You cannot beat the market (i.e. ETFs) for two reasons: A) The market consists mostly of institutional investors. Institutional investors spend an enormous amount of time and money on making sure that they come out on top. B) The fact that institutional investors spend so much time and money on evaluating stocks means that all possible information about a company, i.e. all future expectations about the company and all risks have already been priced in and the market is efficient (in the economic sense). In particular, the future stock price development is by definition unpredictable and mostly random because it will be based on future information that does not exist yet.
2. As a corollary of 1), you get profits not for knowing a company well and assessing their valuation accurately (all this has already been priced in at the time you buy the shares!), you reap profits for enduring risk. The higher the risk, the higher the potential profits (or the loss).
3. Sure, arbitrage exists. But again, who is going to be more likely to discover opportunities for arbitrage? An institutional investor or a stay-at-home mom?
It is unlikely that you will beat the market in the long run and if you do, it may well be down to chance, but it is possible, because the market is not perfect.
Furthermore, you can not "buy the market" in the first place. You can buy ETFs replicating stock indices, but that is not the same. If you bought the S&P you will have performed differently than if you had bought MSCI world. Ultimately, stock picking is just a less diversified version of buying an index.