Lukas Macijauskas - What do you think? How many investors there are in the  world? And before you try to reach your Googling device, it might be simpler  answer. 

Before looking for how many there are opened investment accounts, how many  registered market participants there are, the answer might be really simple. For  example, you, without any serious money involved, you came here, you  invested your time in exchange for looking for potential gain of knowledge and  potential experience. So you made your investment decision. 

And the same goes with all other people around. Whenever you make a  decision, usually it's an investment decision. So how many types there are of  investors? 

And I can deduce from the various possibilities and categories to only two types  of investors. First type is Gordon Gekko type. You know this character from the  famous movie Wall Street with the very famous quote, greed is good. 

And there is another type. This random guy with the famous saying, who took  my cheese? Where's my money? What's going on? So first type is a wolf and  the second is a monkey. Well, I have a question for you. 

How many of you consider themselves as a wolf with greed is good? And how  many of you are monkeys? Raise your hand. 

Okay, majority. So what's the difference? What's the difference between those  two types of investors? 

Well, first of all, wolf tries to beat the market by looking for better than average  companies, by better than average investments. While monkey is only looking  for, well, if I beat inflation, that's a good start. So wolf also aims for big shots. He's looking for next Amazon, next Google, next Apple, such type of companies, while monkey tries to avoid big losses, stay out of trouble. So wolf is always up  to date. This type of investors is always searching, browsing, and he's  subscribed to any news feed and financial market news feeds that's possible,  while the monkey, to be frank, has no idea what's going on. 

And wolf is always trying to prove his investments with some strategy, while  monkey, well, invests periodically every month, every quarter, simple as that. So, is it an advantage or not to be a wolf? And what are the real advantages and the solutions?

So seeking to beat the market, the solution in this situation is you have to  correctly predict future macro events. The next economic shift, the next sector  that can emerge from nowhere, like biotechnology or something, and aiming for  big shots, it means that you have to correctly predict future micro events, like  from this potential sector, like biotechnology, IT, or robotics, or space  exploration, I don't know. You have to be specific and pick particular company. 

So you have to correctly predict micro event. Always being up to date, you have  to control all the possible information that must be useful or can be useful in  your investment decisions. And here I can a little bit elaborate on this topic. 

Well, knowledge and experience usually are mixed in one category. And if you're an investor, it looks like with time you are getting better and better. It's logical. 

If you're, for example, a heart surgeon and your job is make surgeries, when you start after doctoral studies, well, you're a rookie, you're a newbie. You have  some theoretical news, but the knife in your hand still is shaking wildly. But after  20 or 30 years, you're an expert. 

And just by looking at the patient, you have the survival rate. So the same  should be with investment, right? Every decision, every investment decision is  like a surgery. 

So you're making surgeries as a surgeon, and like investor, you're making  investment decisions. So from bad decisions, you can make some conclusions  and be better in the future. It looks like it, right? 

So having proven strategy means that there's some back test involved, some  algorithm. Maybe you read about it in a book about the most successful investor in the world, in the galaxy. I don't know. 

And you think that if it worked in the past, it predicts better, on average, future  results. So there is a common denominator in this situation, predicting the future and how easy it is to predict the future. It's a simple question. How easy? Well,  the answer is not easy. And in my opinion, it's almost impossible. 

And I can back my opinion with research. What we found that by looking in  various and like vast numbers of research, that there's a paradox. Not the  forecast tend to predict the future, but actual data predicts how the forecaster  will be making their forecasts. 

You get the idea? If you're like a weather forecaster, your forecast will be like 

this. Oh, it started raining. Prepare an umbrella. In investment world, it looks like a nonsense, I guess, because you already made your decisions. Why is it so  hard? 

Why is it so hard making those predictions? Because world is full of  randomness. From the childhood, we are prepared and training to beat the  randomness, but it's still here. 

It's right here at the moment. Some of you are here because of the pure random chance, I guess. And some examples from the stock market, from the recent  events, you probably know the Volkswagen. It's Germany, right? So that's  auto. And after diesel exhaust problem, the stock price of this company fell  about 40% just in two weeks. So the stock market was incorrect about its value  of 40%. Can you imagine that? You can pick any country, but not Germany. 

And it got analysts unprepared, completely out of the dark. And another  example is Leicester City, football club winning the championship, the Premier  League. Before the championship, the odds were that it will win the  championship, some in the area of 1 to 5,000. 

To put it in perspective, that Justin Bieber or Kim Kardashian will be elected the  next President of the United States if it is around 1 to 2,000, the probability. So  two and a half more likely than this event, but it happened. And here we are  talking about the closed end system. 

We already know that all possible outcomes who can win, the number of teams  are finite. And Titanic, before it sank, it was unbeatable. Engineers were ready  to sacrifice their hands, legs, because, well, there's an even interesting  quotation that not even God himself could sink the ship. 

But it took one iceberg to make the job, completely out of the dark. And there  are many other things. There are processes that we cannot control or even we  cannot understand yet. 

Some 66 million years ago, there was a different story in the planet Earth.  Dinosaurs were the dominant species, right? Right now, after one asteroid, the  game has changed, and we are the dominant species. 

But what really strikes me the most, I guess, is from David Orrell's, another  TEDx speech, when he said that, well, there is no known equation or law that  could correctly describe the formation of the cloud. So we want to predict the  next best company in the five or 10 years, but we cannot predict the cloud of 

tomorrow. It's madness, right? 

And another thing is a human factor. And the human factor is a really interesting  one. There's a common thinking in the classical economic theory that there's a  homo economicus concept. 

Market participants should be rational and always be willing and searching for  maximum profit while trying to minimize the risk. But is it true, actually? It's not. And Kahneman and Tversky found out that the way you present the situation for  the same situation can lead to different answers from various participants, just  by how you ask. We are irrational. And another thing that depicts that how are  we irrational is this social networks explosion. 

Sometimes we invest so many time, so much time in reading or writing one  simple comment on Facebook that from the economical sense point of view, it's  really irrational. So the concept of beating the market goes against the odds.  Because randomness plays very huge role and it's everywhere, all day long. 

Efficient future forecasting or modeling is impossible. The stock picking does not give you any additional value, but that's how it works in the majority of  investment funds in the world. They are predicting the future. 

And what we see from the research is that only about 40% of the time,  investment managers over the calendar year can beat the simple, broadly  diversified index, like S&P 500, whereas all countries, all indexes, all stocks like  Apple, Samsung, Facebook, Microsoft, Johnson and Johnson, Coca-Cola, all of  them, the good average and not so good. And in reality, it's impossible, almost  impossible to reach this goal. And in the long run, in the long run, odds are even getting lower. 

When you look at it, those numbers really are striking. The probability, the  probability that you will outperform your index or the mutual fund can outperform the simple, broadly diversified index over the long run is getting lower  exponentially. It drops exponentially. 

For example, probability that mutual fund manager or mutual fund will  outperform its index over the 10 years period is somewhere around 9%. And the probability or the chance that investment manager will outperform the index over the 25 years period drops to like something around 5%. So only 5 out of 100 will outperform their market. 

Isn't it strange? I think it's natural. So how monkey can beat the wolf of Wall 

Street? It's really simple. Be a monkey, mimic the market. Don't try to explore  illusional inefficiencies. 

Don't try to chase the one lucky shot. Diversify as hell. Buy as much as you can. As many countries, as many sectors, as many stocks as you can. And invest in  the success of the whole world, not one lucky shot. Don't try to chase the  illusion. 

Enjoy your life, maybe. There's more interesting stuff to do than to just look at  your screen and, well, Apple released new eye helmet. That's good. I wonder  how it will look in eye helmet number three. So this is really, really simple. Just  diversify, buy, hold, and forget. 

And if you manage to do just that, if you manage to do just that, there's very high statistical chance and probability that in the long run, by simply buying and  holding broadly diversified stock market index, you will outperform the majority  of professional stock managers, professional investment managers, and  analysts. So be explorer, not a hunter. That is how you can beat the wolf of Wall  Street. 

Thank you, and good luck. 

Speaker 2 - Thank you. I checked your biography again just to make sure, but it  does say you are an investment manager, right? 

Lukas Macijauskas - Unfortunately. 

Speaker 2 - Unfortunately. For those who are investing, for you, if it's so difficult  and impossible to predict the future, why so many people try to do it? 

Lukas Macijauskas - I believe Gordon Gekko has the answer, because greed is  good. And people are always trying to look for the best, for better. It's in our  nature, I guess, to be homo optimistus, homo maximus. 

So that's in our nature, I guess. 

Speaker 2 - Okay. I guess my second question was how to beat the wolf of Wall  Street if you're a monkey, because nobody wants to be a monkey, but I guess  you said, yeah, buy, hold, and diversify. Thank you very much, and good luck  with the investment.



آخر تعديل: الاثنين، 27 يوليو 2026، 9:42 AM