The U.S. dollar was overpriced (i.e., the foreign currencies were undervalued) in the early 1980s. Traders who used their economic intuitions and bought foreign currencies were wiped out. But later those who did so got rich (members of the first crop were bust). It is random! Likewise, those who shorted Japanese stocks in the late 1980s suffered the same fate–few survived to recoup their losses during the collapse of the 1990s. Toward the end of the last century there was a group of operators called “macro” traders who dropped like flies, with, for instance, “legendary” (rather, lucky)
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