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You played a game, you played it well, and you won. Well done. But don't pretend that that means everyone can do it, because patently they can't: you won your

You played a game, you played it well, and you won. Well done. But don't pretend that that means everyone can do it, because patently they can't: you won your bets, a bunch of other people lost theirs. No value that wouldn't otherwise have been created got made, you just shifted the balance of how the rewards are distributed in your favor, and away from someone else. As a system for distributing the benefits of economic production, allocating it to the winners of a complex iterated social game seems suboptimal. Like if we used 'Among Us' tournaments to distribute food. But hey, glad it's working out for you.

glohbalrob 6y ago
same can be said about just about anything, no? running marathons, startups, cooking a great dish... No one on WSB is saying its for everyone, thats why they talk trash about themselves.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ausbah 6y ago
  you can learn to run a marathon, cook, etc. with a much higher chance of success then something like trading stocks or to a less degree starting a business. the latter pursuits have a much more volatile environment that rewards luck > skill
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    Investing is not luck. It's luck if you make just one or two trades. In the long run, statistical iterations (that you have modeled/researched correctly) will give you positive returns with a very high confidence. Situations like in this post are obviously not that. I have a trading strategy that I execute over hundreds of trades per year based upon financial modeling and financial statement analysis. There's a little luck involved, but over many trades, the luck aspect cancels itself out. It's like rolling the dice. If you bet on getting a certain number, and roll once, it's luck. If you bet on averaging a certain number and roll 1000 times, there's virtually no luck at all.
mpoteat 6y ago
Isn't modern human intelligence widely considered to be the result of evolutionarily optimizing complex iterated social games?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Yes, but one of the most important aspects of human intelligence is being able to realize and transcend this.
aeternum 6y ago
If you believe that op played the game well, then he successfully took capital from less efficient companies and allocated it to new more efficient companies. This creates value.
- episode0x01 6y ago
  is efficient the right word?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Does anybody truly believe that this is a good thing? The stock market is detached from reality. It creates its own universe. The efficiency we're talking about here is self-referential - it's not efficiency in producing object-level value, it's efficiency in enriching participants of the stock market. Which depends as much on the company itself as it depends on the hype the funds and the shareholders can make around it. That WSB can tank or revive companies just for teh lulz only shows to demonstrate how the stock market is an universe of its own.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    I find people who stand in disbelief of the markets often don't understand how they are working, and/or why they have and societal value. Skepticism is healthy, but in this case, it's closer to ignorance. The ability for corporations to go to the open market to secure capital is contingent upon a high liquidity of buyers and sellers present and actively participating. The market doesn't exist without "primary" buyers and seller acting on behalf of their company to issue new stock (raising capital) or buying back stocks (returning capital (or via dividends)). Between these two types of transactions, there are participants that are constantly estimating the value of these share. If the price of the share deviates too far from what the company thinks it's worth, it will actually trigger one of those two events. Options are just another more efficient mechanism to make these estimations on a specific timeframe. They allow traders to have a very specific thesis on what is mispriced and place a trade on it. Without these trades, the market would lack liquidity, and companies would see an increase in their cost of new capital - which is bad for everyone because it means companies wouldn't invest in growth, equipment purchases, new jobs, etc...

glohbalrob 6y ago

same can be said about just about anything, no? running marathons, startups, cooking a great dish... No one on WSB is saying its for everyone, thats why they talk trash about themselves.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ausbah 6y ago
you can learn to run a marathon, cook, etc. with a much higher chance of success then something like trading stocks or to a less degree starting a business. the latter pursuits have a much more volatile environment that rewards luck > skill
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Investing is not luck. It's luck if you make just one or two trades. In the long run, statistical iterations (that you have modeled/researched correctly) will give you positive returns with a very high confidence. Situations like in this post are obviously not that. I have a trading strategy that I execute over hundreds of trades per year based upon financial modeling and financial statement analysis. There's a little luck involved, but over many trades, the luck aspect cancels itself out. It's like rolling the dice. If you bet on getting a certain number, and roll once, it's luck. If you bet on averaging a certain number and roll 1000 times, there's virtually no luck at all.

mpoteat 6y ago

Isn't modern human intelligence widely considered to be the result of evolutionarily optimizing complex iterated social games?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Yes, but one of the most important aspects of human intelligence is being able to realize and transcend this.

aeternum 6y ago

If you believe that op played the game well, then he successfully took capital from less efficient companies and allocated it to new more efficient companies. This creates value.

episode0x01 6y ago
is efficient the right word?
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Does anybody truly believe that this is a good thing? The stock market is detached from reality. It creates its own universe. The efficiency we're talking about here is self-referential - it's not efficiency in producing object-level value, it's efficiency in enriching participants of the stock market. Which depends as much on the company itself as it depends on the hype the funds and the shareholders can make around it. That WSB can tank or revive companies just for teh lulz only shows to demonstrate how the stock market is an universe of its own.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I find people who stand in disbelief of the markets often don't understand how they are working, and/or why they have and societal value. Skepticism is healthy, but in this case, it's closer to ignorance. The ability for corporations to go to the open market to secure capital is contingent upon a high liquidity of buyers and sellers present and actively participating. The market doesn't exist without "primary" buyers and seller acting on behalf of their company to issue new stock (raising capital) or buying back stocks (returning capital (or via dividends)). Between these two types of transactions, there are participants that are constantly estimating the value of these share. If the price of the share deviates too far from what the company thinks it's worth, it will actually trigger one of those two events. Options are just another more efficient mechanism to make these estimations on a specific timeframe. They allow traders to have a very specific thesis on what is mispriced and place a trade on it. Without these trades, the market would lack liquidity, and companies would see an increase in their cost of new capital - which is bad for everyone because it means companies wouldn't invest in growth, equipment purchases, new jobs, etc...