"To put this another way, to achieve success it is not sufficient (nor necessary either - but that's another story) to be brilliant. You have to be brilliant at the right time. So, for example, if you'd forecast the financial crash in 2005 or 2006 and traded accordingly, you'd probably have lost money and been a failure.
I suspect that, in many walks of life - the arts, business and finance - financial success requires a one standard deviation intelligence. Writers must be sufficiently smarter than their readers that readers feel their intelligence to be flattered, but not so much smarter that they appear weird. Investors must buy or sell ahead of the pack, but only slightly so, else they'll lose money waiting for others to catch up. Businessmen must anticipate what customers will want tomorrow, not 10 years hence.
The point I'm making here is simply the obverse of that made by Malcolm Gladwell, who's pointed out that most of the richest men in US history were born into two periods: the 1830s and 40s, and the mid-1950s. They were born at the right time. Others, however, brilliant, were born at the wrong time. Which is one more reason, among many, why markets don't reward merit."
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