The ‘some guy’ phenomenon is my observation that the best people in the world at a given task or skill are unknown or random people. Instead of only famous people or credentialed experts, breakthroughs are being made by nobodies.
The best trader and investor in the world is some blogger or random guys on Twitter. The best trader is probably some guy with a Robinhood account. [0]
The best mathematician or physicist is some guy reading and posting preprints to arXiv. Although not the ‘the best’, a few months ago I found new proof to a difficult conjecture, among other new results.
The best software developer is some guy fixing corrupted code to restore the 2000 edition of the popular video game Frogger 2.
The best engineer is some guy hacking his cruise ship WIFI.
Random artists on Soundcloud are producing studio-quality music, that sounds like it was professionally produced. Inexpensive technology has made recording studios and session musicians unnecessary.
The best writer is some guy on Substack. Top Substack writers have bigger audiences than even writers for mainstream publications, such as the NYTs, and earn more too, plus total creative freedom. Mainstream writers are now quitting their jobs to write on Substack, notably former NYTs columnist Paul Krugman.
I have observed this so many times, in myself when it comes to investing and trading, but also others in other domains. Given a global population of 9 billion, it’s statistically likely that the most skilled person in the world at any given thing is someone obscure or unknown.
Outsiders can approach problems with an open mind instead of being intellectually encumbered by preconceived notions. Instead of following beaten but wrong path, create new ones.
Having a large brand or large social media following is a poor predictor of accuracy or useful advice. It may even be negatively correlated due to audience capture—where the need to please followers takes precedence over being accurate. Unknown or obscure people, by having no audience to please, are not affected by this.
For this reason, it’s not uncommon for people who have among the most followers to give the worst advice or have the worst track records. An notable example is Cathie Wood, who despite having a million Twitter followers and touted as an ‘industry expert’, whose flagship ‘ARK Invest’ ETF has massively lagged the QQQ and S&P 500.
Thanks to social media, it’s possible for these anonymous contributions to be shared with a global audience. Instead of a top-down process off idea generation, anyone can participate. This has the effect of unlocking human capital. As I noted last week, it often seems that the loudest voices—those who give the worst advice, make the least accurate predictions, or perform poorly at their jobs—are the ones who get the most visibility. As the saying goes, it’s “ass backwards.” This dynamic ultimately hinders economic growth and prosperity.
[0] For example, I came up with the idea to short Bitcoin to go long tech stocks, with the former acting as a hedge. This is much better than short-selling or buying put options. Bitcoin captures all the downside of the market during bad news (e.g. Iran strike, tariffs, inflation, recession, etc.) or will crash for no reason at all–but does not participate on the upside.