What is Reddit's opinion of Kelly Capital Growth Investment Criterion, The: Theory And Practice (World Scientific Handbook In Financial Economics Series 3)?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

How do I know the payoff? Depends on the stock/option/instrument in question. Its not about getting the exact payoff/probability correct as before, all you need to do is make sure that it is highly convex. And once again you put the word "know", as if it means anything. Do Markowtiz/EMH people know their returns and/or variance? Do they know their joint probability distribution exactly? No they don't, doesn't stop them from running their models. I can estimate it using my experience and previous history,same as them.

Your example is complete cherry picking as well. People dynamically adjust their edge in Kelly systems all the time, literally no one has the same probabilities from a year ago or worse, and people dynamically adjust based on success/losses.

Completely misrepresented what I said about the side note. Kelly isn't about me knowing which way the coin is weighted, there isn't a market model out there that will tell you that. Its about me saying that "if the coin is weighted this way, and I can expect this range of payoffs, then betting more than n% is overbetting. Capital preservation is key, and I have a range of values, so I will bet half of that amount".

I feel like by reading your comment that you have an incorrect idea of what KC actually is. Sounds to me(correct me if I'm wrong) that you think using KC implies that "I accurately compute probabilities and then do the perfect bets", when what it actually implies is "Given these assumed probabilities, and these assumed payoffs, what is the most I can bet without overbetting". The main use of KC isn't to make big enough bets, its to never overbet given your prior. Basically, all it does is give you the mathematical limit of what you should be betting given your prior information.

The article you linked literally lists Buffett as a Kelly-type bettor. Not much more you can do to recommend KC.

For other people, if you remain unconvinced by this discussion, and if you have a good knowledge of mathematics/probability, I recommend either buying(somewhat pricy) or finding a free PDF of this great(in my opinion) book which completely details modern KC implementations and clarifies a lot of stuff.