While this idea is mathematically sound in that our returns so far exceed the interest we would pay on a loan, there are numerous examples against investing money you don't have (the subprime mortgage crisis comes to mind). As well, there are many precedents for investing in technologies or ideas that are not yet proven. You are reading a Y-Combinator site, after all.
I am not purporting to claim that FX Machine will always return 40%+ annual profit forever. Rather, I'm presenting a technology we've developed (as a startup on a startup site!) that trades automatically and, so far, has yielded returns that average (across all currency pairs) in excess of 40% annually. This number was higher on our forward tests, but we have two years of historical data for those and only two months' worth of live testing.
As I said in my reply to ep25, there’s a good chance that our 40% claim will need to be revised either up or down as we continue to dogfood our product. Investing is never a sure bet, even (or especially) when computers are involved. For that reason, I will continue to invest only money that I already have. I'm dogfooding our product with my own hard-earned cash--not somebody else's. What greater measure of confidence is there than this?
> there’s a good chance that our 40% claim will need to be revised either up or down as we continue to dogfood our product.
The question is not about 40% or 100%, if you are beating the market by a good margin consistently, why would you share that secret with everyone else. You trade/invest for your own account and get rich.
If your system cannot beat the market consistently why bother then, just close your shop and invest in an index fund.
You are correct: we could continue to trade while keeping the tech a secret, and eventually amass millions of dollars. Doing so would take 5-10 years.
If, however, we find an institution who understands the potential of FX Machine and is willing to invest in it, we can amass our millions much sooner than we would on our own. The opportunity cost for us associated with selling FX Machine versus using it personally is not measured in dollars; it's measured in years.
I am not purporting to claim that FX Machine will always return 40%+ annual profit forever. Rather, I'm presenting a technology we've developed (as a startup on a startup site!) that trades automatically and, so far, has yielded returns that average (across all currency pairs) in excess of 40% annually. This number was higher on our forward tests, but we have two years of historical data for those and only two months' worth of live testing.
As I said in my reply to ep25, there’s a good chance that our 40% claim will need to be revised either up or down as we continue to dogfood our product. Investing is never a sure bet, even (or especially) when computers are involved. For that reason, I will continue to invest only money that I already have. I'm dogfooding our product with my own hard-earned cash--not somebody else's. What greater measure of confidence is there than this?