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Rentech has proof of their performance. I would like to see evidence of Armstrong's performance, not his claims of said performance. Otherwise, I too can claim the same.
@Kiwibird, there is NO verifiable proof AT ALL for Armstrong's claim. And 1-year or even 3 or 5 years of outstanding performance is easily within reach of random luck. There are easily more than 10000 fund managers on Earth. If you ask all of them to gather in a room, and start flipping coins, there will be about 10 of them who happen to get 10 heads in a row, or about 1/1024.
THINK ABOUT THAT, 10 people out of 10240 people getting all heads in a row. Are you going to call them smart money managers? NO. They got 10 heads just because of random luck.
So if EVER Armstrong had such performance for just 1 year, he just had good luck. That's all.
Given Armstrong's verifiable record of flamboyant talking/lying, such as his office building, super-computer, etc, the weight of evidence is that he probably made this up, just like he made up the scooter man story. That scooter guy left his scooter to Armstrong for him to test, for God's sake, and Armstrong couldn't figure out a damn thing about it?
Neil Woodford in the UK comes to mind. Had decades of success and was highly revered. His £1bn+ funds were constantly ranked as some of the best in the market for returns, where even gov pension funds had invested.
Then it started unravelling owing to high investment in illiquid assets as he tried chasing high returns from subdued safer assets. When those risky investments started unravelling, he was trapped and had to block anyone from exiting, save the entire fund collapsing.
This
is was someone who had a gleaming investment record. So even the "best" can trip up eventually or may even just get lucky flipping heads year after year until their luck runs out...
MA may have just got lucky with a few forecasts, but if you look at
RenTech or
Two Sigma, they appear to have the very technology and processes that MA claims. Yet never has MA ever presented either his tech or his team - where even his WEC events girl isn't based in FL, so she must be a contractor - in any such way. He appears to have run a longstanding publishing firm, and when he was trading, he messed it all up much like Woodford.