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> Everyone getting rich with crypto, with Game Stop, Tesla (and other option trades), with SPACS, in the tech industry, and so on. Not everyone, you only hear

by LandR 6y ago

> Everyone getting rich with crypto, with Game Stop, Tesla (and other option trades), with SPACS, in the tech industry, and so on. Not everyone, you only hear about the successful people really. I'm sure a load of people have lost money on Game Stop by timing it wrong etc. I view these people as basically having won the lottery, great for them, but I'm not about to start playing the lottery.

paulpauper 6y ago
Sorta, but I do not think the lottery comparison is completely accurate. The lottery is random and has a negative expected value intrinsic to playing. GameStop had already gone up a lot and was in the news even before it doubled on Monday. Same for Tesla. Both had ample opportunism for people to invest/speculate. It is more like, imagine a sequence of lotto tickets being drawn, and you observe that the numbers happen to follow a predictable pattern despite it otherwise assumed to be random. Surely, it would not be unreasonable to assume the pattern would continue, and if did continue, you would probably regret not buying anyway despite otherwise being conditioned to believe that it is random. Do you trust your eyes or your preconceived beliefs? If you see a dollar on the sidewalk (or in the case of GameStop, a Zero Halliburton suitcase full of $100s from call options) and you tell yourself that this is economically impossible, and as you are pondering this, someone snaps up the dollar, you would probably feel miffed.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Sorta, but I do not think the lottery comparison is completely accurate. The lottery is random and has a negative expected value intrinsic to playing. GameStop had already gone up a lot and was in the news even before it doubled on Monday. Same for Tesla. Both had ample opportunism for people to invest/speculate. And in 100 days they might halve or go much less. That's the speculation part. But you don't take into account all the other cases where they didn't double, but instead gotten much worse...
  - LandR 6y ago
    Exactly, wall street bets is awash with people who have lost a small fortune gambling on their meme stocks. You're just focusing on the very lucky few.

by LandR 6y ago

paulpauper 6y ago

Sorta, but I do not think the lottery comparison is completely accurate. The lottery is random and has a negative expected value intrinsic to playing. GameStop had already gone up a lot and was in the news even before it doubled on Monday. Same for Tesla. Both had ample opportunism for people to invest/speculate. It is more like, imagine a sequence of lotto tickets being drawn, and you observe that the numbers happen to follow a predictable pattern despite it otherwise assumed to be random. Surely, it would not be unreasonable to assume the pattern would continue, and if did continue, you would probably regret not buying anyway despite otherwise being conditioned to believe that it is random. Do you trust your eyes or your preconceived beliefs? If you see a dollar on the sidewalk (or in the case of GameStop, a Zero Halliburton suitcase full of $100s from call options) and you tell yourself that this is economically impossible, and as you are pondering this, someone snaps up the dollar, you would probably feel miffed.

coldtea 6y ago
>Sorta, but I do not think the lottery comparison is completely accurate. The lottery is random and has a negative expected value intrinsic to playing. GameStop had already gone up a lot and was in the news even before it doubled on Monday. Same for Tesla. Both had ample opportunism for people to invest/speculate. And in 100 days they might halve or go much less. That's the speculation part. But you don't take into account all the other cases where they didn't double, but instead gotten much worse...
- LandR 6y ago
  Exactly, wall street bets is awash with people who have lost a small fortune gambling on their meme stocks. You're just focusing on the very lucky few.