Sample Too Small
In a Yahoo news piece the other day I noticed this bit of writing which has tossed around for seemingly decades:
“Larry Williams is noted for winning the World Cup Trading Championship by the largest percentage gain of all time. He turned $10,000 of real money into $1.1 million in less than a year during the contest.”
In the article, Larry Williams is asked about the contest:
“Sure, I won the Robbins World Cup trading championship, I took $10,000 of real time money, not paper trading, in 12 months up to $1.1 million. That is an accomplishment, I guess…What I did was maybe lucky, who knows…”
I am glad Williams decided to use the word “luck” for his effort. While perhaps impressive, his effort has not been repeated. And that’s the rub for me. Why do all these people keep touting this contest win, this one year only performance, still to this day over 15 years later?
David Harding, a man with a track record exceeding 15 years not just one year, has noted the problems with short-term results and short-term thinking:
“It is very dangerous to read too much into short-term results,” said Winton Capital Management’s founder and managing director David Harding, who was a co-developer of AHL, along with Aspect Capital founders Michael Adam and Martin Lueck.
An even better story of perhaps too small of a sample (and sheer luck) can be found here.
