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While you’re right about the majority, there are pockets of young people partaking in sophisticated strategies, and doing quite well. The people in the discord

by thrav 5y ago

While you’re right about the majority, there are pockets of young people partaking in sophisticated strategies, and doing quite well. The people in the discord server that I belong to are all using stops to max their downside and get out quick if their instinct proves wrong. After several months on paternity leave, it became clear that greatest barriers to active trading are money and time, like most things. If you’re treating the market like it’s your job, day in and day out, you get a really good feel for the flows, and can move into positions that are turning north pretty easily. The fact that the Nasdaq was about to go on a tear was telegraphed for weeks. There are hundreds of opportunities to do this every day, so you just jump on the most painfully obvious ones, and avoid anything uncertain. If you have a real job, and can’t watch the market all day, every day, you don’t stand a chance. Without fail, the biggest losses in our group would come when someone tried to hop into a position while half watching the market, and then get sucked into their real work. Once you’ve got entry down, the hardest part is training yourself to exit at the right time.

CarelessExpert 5y ago
> there are pockets of young people partaking in sophisticated strategies, and doing quite well. If we could I'd make a 20 year wager that every one of those people will fail to beat the market in the long run. It's very easy to make money on "sophisticated strategies" during an historic 10 year bull run.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/030916/buffetts-bet-hedge-funds-year-eight-brka-brkb.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/030916/buffe...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- thrav 5y ago
  They’re making money up and down. For example, SPY is likely done climbing for a while. Maybe it will squeeze up to ~4160, but it’s either going to be flat or aggressively down in the coming days. Thursday/Friday was a very clear exit day. If it squeezes north and over extends further, it’s a very clear short. If it sits flat for a week until OPEX, it’ll be a clear buy for another leg up, then you reevaluate again. This is what I mean when I say treating it like it’s your job. Go back and look at the big downturn last year. To anyone who was paying attention, it looked like a car crash in slow motion. Only to those of us with other work to do, did it look like a flash crash out of nowhere. The writing is very clearly on the wall for all of this stuff, because the big players needs days to reposition, and will be moving billions of shares, and you can literally watch them do it. The reason active funds don’t do as well as the market is because they have to hedge. You’re always paying a premium to minimize losses when you’re hedging, and you can’t exit fast when your position is worth billions. It’s like turning a freighter, versus turning a speed boat.
  - Trasmatta 5y ago
    > Only to those of us with other work to do, did it look like a flash crash out of nowhere. The market crashed last year because of COVID. Nobody saw that coming. Everyone has been predicting a major correction or recession every year for at least the past 6 years. Claiming that they predicted what was going to happen last year is pretty blatant confirmation bias. People predict a recession every year, and then when one finally hits, they say "see, I was right! Ignore all the years where it didn't happen!" There will be another correction in the future, we don't know when it will hit, and the same pattern will play out again.
    - thrav 5y ago
      No one saw it coming in January. Everyone saw it coming the week that it was starting, which is my point. It’s really easy to tell when the big players start taking risk off. These people are also tracking senators and congress people’s positional moves, as additional macro indicators.
      - 5y ago
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I wouldn't go that far, there is always outliers. But I would also bet that on average they will do worse than the market.
- thrav 5y ago
  Here comes that squeeze up around 4160. I would expect things to turn south today or tomorrow, but I'm only half watching the markets now that I'm working again.
ncallaway 5y ago
> While you’re right about the majority, there are pockets of young people partaking in sophisticated strategies, and doing quite well Active trading will is more likely to have larger swings than passive trading. In the short-run the good times will be better and the bad-times will be worse. In the long-run, statistically the majority (not all!) that play the game will lose over the long run to passive investors. None of this is to argue for one of doing things over the other so long as people understand the risks that they're opting into.
OutTeam 5y ago
Is this discord group open for everyone? If yes, would you mind sharing an invite link?
croutonwagon 5y ago
I see two issues there 1) confirmation bias. Many people have blind faith in the market and while trends are semi-reliable. There are plenty of instances that buck all trends and can take out even the most seasoned day traders accounts if the overrely. 2) a lot of times these are pump and dumb schemes, even by large hedge funds on small companies that are generally overvalued by the time the “opportunity” hits those reading the standard info sources. So as someone simply managing my own account. A solid strategy is to avoid day trade and only place buys on something you are good to be long on and have faith in. These are big ones like Microsoft or apple or Costco. I still invest in companies I’m very knowledgeable on but I don’t take risks on nonsense. And worst case I’m long in some stock for a while But I don’t have to monitor it to the minute nor do I have to really coughing up fees for managed funds at a massive scale. Sure I miss plenty of plays, especially intra-day or intra-week but I also don’t lose anything on those.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by thrav 5y ago

CarelessExpert 5y ago

> there are pockets of young people partaking in sophisticated strategies, and doing quite well. If we could I'd make a 20 year wager that every one of those people will fail to beat the market in the long run. It's very easy to make money on "sophisticated strategies" during an historic 10 year bull run.

MattGaiser 5y ago
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/030916/buffetts-bet-hedge-funds-year-eight-brka-brkb.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/030916/buffe...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
thrav 5y ago
They’re making money up and down. For example, SPY is likely done climbing for a while. Maybe it will squeeze up to ~4160, but it’s either going to be flat or aggressively down in the coming days. Thursday/Friday was a very clear exit day. If it squeezes north and over extends further, it’s a very clear short. If it sits flat for a week until OPEX, it’ll be a clear buy for another leg up, then you reevaluate again. This is what I mean when I say treating it like it’s your job. Go back and look at the big downturn last year. To anyone who was paying attention, it looked like a car crash in slow motion. Only to those of us with other work to do, did it look like a flash crash out of nowhere. The writing is very clearly on the wall for all of this stuff, because the big players needs days to reposition, and will be moving billions of shares, and you can literally watch them do it. The reason active funds don’t do as well as the market is because they have to hedge. You’re always paying a premium to minimize losses when you’re hedging, and you can’t exit fast when your position is worth billions. It’s like turning a freighter, versus turning a speed boat.
- Trasmatta 5y ago
  > Only to those of us with other work to do, did it look like a flash crash out of nowhere. The market crashed last year because of COVID. Nobody saw that coming. Everyone has been predicting a major correction or recession every year for at least the past 6 years. Claiming that they predicted what was going to happen last year is pretty blatant confirmation bias. People predict a recession every year, and then when one finally hits, they say "see, I was right! Ignore all the years where it didn't happen!" There will be another correction in the future, we don't know when it will hit, and the same pattern will play out again.
  - thrav 5y ago
    No one saw it coming in January. Everyone saw it coming the week that it was starting, which is my point. It’s really easy to tell when the big players start taking risk off. These people are also tracking senators and congress people’s positional moves, as additional macro indicators.
    - 5y ago
Ekaros 5y ago
I wouldn't go that far, there is always outliers. But I would also bet that on average they will do worse than the market.
thrav 5y ago
Here comes that squeeze up around 4160. I would expect things to turn south today or tomorrow, but I'm only half watching the markets now that I'm working again.

ncallaway 5y ago

> While you’re right about the majority, there are pockets of young people partaking in sophisticated strategies, and doing quite well Active trading will is more likely to have larger swings than passive trading. In the short-run the good times will be better and the bad-times will be worse. In the long-run, statistically the majority (not all!) that play the game will lose over the long run to passive investors. None of this is to argue for one of doing things over the other so long as people understand the risks that they're opting into.

OutTeam 5y ago

Is this discord group open for everyone? If yes, would you mind sharing an invite link?

croutonwagon 5y ago

I see two issues there 1) confirmation bias. Many people have blind faith in the market and while trends are semi-reliable. There are plenty of instances that buck all trends and can take out even the most seasoned day traders accounts if the overrely. 2) a lot of times these are pump and dumb schemes, even by large hedge funds on small companies that are generally overvalued by the time the “opportunity” hits those reading the standard info sources. So as someone simply managing my own account. A solid strategy is to avoid day trade and only place buys on something you are good to be long on and have faith in. These are big ones like Microsoft or apple or Costco. I still invest in companies I’m very knowledgeable on but I don’t take risks on nonsense. And worst case I’m long in some stock for a while But I don’t have to monitor it to the minute nor do I have to really coughing up fees for managed funds at a massive scale. Sure I miss plenty of plays, especially intra-day or intra-week but I also don’t lose anything on those.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]