I'm confused. Are you saying placing small bets that aren't worth it for big management firms is a "legit strategy" to perform better on the scale of a retail investor, or not? I'm getting mixed messages.
* Pigs and how to make a buck because of all the ones dying in China. I'm not seeing any good suggestions about how to profit from that for small investors.
* bluGill's suggestion that they can compete with big actors by not competing with them, by looking at deals that are too small for the big fish to be interested in.
The latter seemed an 'in general' strategy and not related to the specific situation with the pork and broader meat industries.
davidw covered it well. To add to his point: I knew about the ASF problem 18 months ago - I work in agriculture and so I follow the news there more closely than the average person. If I had done some thinking about it I would have been able to make some small bets over a year ago - they would have turned out to have great payoff. Of course I would have also made some small bets that didn't pay off - but they would have still been okay because the small bets with the great return would have still paid off about the S&P500 average and as a smart investor I would always diversify my risk.
