Investing and the NFL

Why investing in the stock market as an individual is akin to a being a lanky guy suddenly found playing football against an NFL team:

Watch a pro football game, and it’s obvious the guys on the field are far faster, stronger and more willing to bear and inflict pain than you are. Surely you would say, ‘I don’t want to play against those guys!’

Well, 90% of stock market volume is done by institutions [mutual funds, hedge funds, and program traders], and half of that is done by the world’s 50 largest investment firms, deeply committed, vastly well prepared — the smartest sons of bitches in the world working their tails off all day long. You know what? I don’t want to play against those guys either.

-Charles Ellis, Yale University Endowment

You’ve been warned.

Trading With the Big Boys – The Big Picture