Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Success ratios between 50% and 60% prove skill is statistically persistent

Sir Paul Marshall · Paul Marshall – 10 ½ Lessons from 23 years at Marshall Wace (Capital Allocators, EP.157) · Sep 21, 2020 · at 25:30

Sir Paul Marshall, co-founder of Marshall Wace, discusses the empirical evidence countering efficient market theory and demonstrating the persistence of alpha.

0:00 / 0:32exact quote · 32.2s
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“If you begin to see that the individual not only Consistently delivers alpha, but their success ratio is consistently between 50 and 60%, so they're consistently getting it more right than wrong. There's a skew in there, and then you can look at how that works in different sectors, in countries, and so on, and their longs and their shorts. You get so much texture in the information that you really have high statistical conviction that there is something here which is a variable which you can call alpha, which is this factor which is persisting there in the results.”

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