Top all-time · #693
Of Dollars And Data
Personal blog · ofdollarsanddata.comeconomicsproductivity
Of Dollars And Data is a personal blog at ofdollarsanddata.com about economics and productivity. Since 2017, 92 different Hacker News readers have linked it 305 times, most often “Even God Couldn't Beat Dollar-Cost Averaging”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Of Dollars And Data for personal-finance arguments backed by data, often on dollar-cost averaging and against market timing. Commenters cite its short, shared-code analyses as evidence.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Commenters recommend it for personal finance, citing short, roughly weekly articles with shared analysis code, and list it among favourite blogs.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Act Smarter. Live Richer.
Most-linked posts?
- Even God Couldn't Beat Dollar-Cost Averaging12 people · 37 mentions · first linked 2019-02-06
- Climbing the Wealth Ladder7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-12-17
- Ignore the Metagame5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-01-04
- Reject the Algorithm5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-08-04
- /why-you-shouldnt-pick-individual-stocks/4 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2021-09-22
- Just Keep Buying4 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-10-20
- There Is Nothing Wrong with a Traditional Career3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-07-21
- How to Get More Time3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-09-07
- /ray-dalio-all-weather-portfolio/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-10-05
- /sp500-calculator/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-07-15
What Hacker News says?
IMHO nothing you said contradicts with anything I said. People are free to buy or not-buy any stock, and to sell or not-sell any stock that they already hold. Everyone trading is an adult and is free to do it (notwithstanding things like insider trading, etc). There is nothing illegal in the activities that I've seen: just people/institutions trading and holding stocks in an open market. Some of those people are/wil…
Comment linking /let-them-vote/
on “GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine”Submitted Choose your status game wisely as a story · 330 points
HN discussionFor personal finance: "Of dollars and data". Mainly short articles, approximately weekly, and, rare enough to be noted, the code for all analysis is shared. https://ofdollarsanddata.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Climbing the Wealth Ladder as a story · 259 points
HN discussionActually, even God couldn't beat dollar-cost averaging[1]. [1]: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-co...
Comment linking /even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/
on “How Discount Brokerages Make Money”Submitted On Cumulative Advantage and How to Think About Luck as a story · 248 points
HN discussion> […] etc at the Internet bubble top then you would have missed out on huge gains since then. Only if you never repurchased. Or you could DCA out: have a standard policy that no single stock can be more that x % of your portfolio, and as any one gets above that limit you crystallize profits. It's no different than having a 60/40 portfolio and rebalancing your equities if they get >60%. I lean more towards passive an…
Comment linking /even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/
on “What Sun got wrong”Submitted The Rise of the Forever Renter Class as a story · 154 points
HN discussion> Many people live paycheck to paycheck Roughly half of US salary earners, per BLS: * https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-biggest-lie-in-personal-fin... (Though that includes students with summer jobs; still a lot though.)
Comment linking /the-biggest-lie-in-personal-finance/
on “Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life”Submitted It's the Housing, Stupid as a story · 67 points
HN discussion> 1900 had invested passively in the stockmarket, spent 2% of their wealth How is that possible, though? e.g. according to https://ofdollarsanddata.com/sp500-calculator/ adjusted by inflation the stock market only grew by 34.10% between 1900 and 1982 when adjusted and even if dividends were reinvested. And that's total growth, annualized was barely 0.36% Their wealth wouldn't have increase at all during that period,…
Comment linking /sp500-calculator/
on “Inheriting is becoming nearly as important as working”Submitted The Low Stability of High Income as a story · 39 points
HN discussion> how much or how little influence things like Robinhood and WSB Every attempt at seriously measuring this, and there haven’t been many I’ve found that can be publicly shared [1], found close to negligible levels of broader-market effects. $4bn in options buying, on the other hand, will do it. [1] https://ofdollarsanddata.com/robinhood-trader/
Comment linking /robinhood-trader/
on “SoftBank unmasked as ‘Nasdaq whale’ that stoked tech rally”Submitted Why the Upper Middle Class Isn't Special Anymore as a story · 37 points
HN discussionEven God Couldn’t Beat Dollar-Cost Averaging - https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-co... Made the rounds here a couple days ago. “Don’t time the market” is most certainly not stupid advice.
Comment linking /even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/
on “Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place”Submitted Who holds the student loan debt? as a story · 34 points
HN discussion> Honestly people need to step back and ask if they're out-performing the market, and if so what risks they're taking to do so. There is a further problem about this even if you are out-performing (for now): the feedback loop delay on if you are (or not) can be a long-time, especially if this is for long-term projects (e.g., retirement). Nick Maggiulli: > But, what about stock picking? How long would it take to dete…
Comment linking /why-you-shouldnt-pick-individual-stocks/
on “TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do”Submitted Why Is Gold Valuable? as a story · 23 points
HN discussion> The poor have all the wealth they do have in cash. I would think that the poor have no cash… that's why they're called "poor" after all. The bottom 50% of income earners can barely cover the 'necessities' (housing, food, transportation, healthcare): * https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-biggest-lie-in-personal-fin...
Comment linking /the-biggest-lie-in-personal-finance/
on “Skimpflation: A reason inflation is worse than the government says it is”Submitted Why You Shouldn't Max Your 401(k) as a story · 22 points
HN discussionYep, that's also because: "Earlier this year researchers at the London School of Economics released a paper titled, “Why Do People Stay Poor?” that illustrated how the lack of initial wealth (and not motivation or talent) is what keeps people in poverty. The researchers tested this by randomly allocating wealth (i.e. livestock) to female villagers in Bangladesh and then waited to see how that wealth transfer would a…
Comment linking /why-do-poor-people-stay-poor/
on “Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years”Submitted Congress shouldn't be able to buy individual stocks as a story · 13 points
HN discussion> There’s been some research lately about whether Private Equity outperformance is partly driven by the illiquidity making it harder for investors to dump their positions in a moment of panic. There are apocryphal stories of studies purporting to find that the best performing investment accounts are those that belong to people who are either dead or had forgotten about their account: * https://www.marketwatch.com/st…
Comment linking /even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/
on “How housing became the world’s biggest asset class”Submitted The Best Way to Consume Information as a story · 9 points
HN discussion> […] and that people regularly buying into indices at any price is skewing the market. And at what price should people be investing in the market? Sitting on the side in cash, waiting for the dips and crashes to occur, will give you mediocre results: * https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-co... Further, trying to miss the worst days on market down turns often means missing the days with the bes…
Comment linking /even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/
on “Ask HN: I have $450K cash, what should I do to maximize my return?”Submitted You've Been Thinking About Inflation All Wrong (2022) as a story · 7 points
HN discussion> I'm not comfortable investing the entirety into an index fund, given the current socio-political climate. Over the the long term there is not really anything better to do with it than equities: the Great Depression, World War 2, gold standard retirement, 1980s inflation, etc. Even if you only invested in the peaks, you'd still do quite well over the decades: * https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-…
Comment linking /even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/
on “Ask HN: I have $450K cash, what should I do to maximize my return?”Submitted High Cost of an Easy Job as a story · 7 points
HN discussionYup: follow Ben Carlson (the author of that weblog). As well as his colleague Michael Batnick ( https://theirrelevantinvestor.com ) and Nick Maggiulli ( https://ofdollarsanddata.com ). All the publicly facing folks at Ritholtz Wealth Management seem to be top tier.
Comment linking /
on “Reddit's Stock Threads Become a Must-Read on Wall Street”Submitted Why the Medallion Fund Is the Greatest Money-Making Machine of All Time as a story · 7 points
HN discussion
