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Personally, I'm not smart enough to pick individual stocks. At some point (perhaps now) Amazon growth is predicated on cannibalizing other companies. After al

Personally, I'm not smart enough to pick individual stocks. At some point (perhaps now) Amazon growth is predicated on cannibalizing other companies. After all, the broad market can't exceed the GDP generally for the long term. My primary point here is not to argue about investment concepts, merely to state a concern about the artificiality of it all. Financialization is real and rather spooky.

skystarman 5y ago
The thing is there's a FRACTION of a percentage of people who are "good at picking stocks". Most PROFESSIONAL stock pickers don't beat the market. And those that do, a tiny fraction can do it consistently over a 5-10 year time frame. This is backed up by decades of data. But we still have millions of people who apparently think they are smarter than the thousands of professional stock-pickers who have MAs, PhDs and years of experience and do it full-time and still don't beat the market. And sure, many average joes were wildly successful with GME or whatever the latest meme stock is. Just as many people made a ton of money in the last tech bubble. Check back in 5-10 years...
- deleted 5y ago
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- confidantlake 5y ago
  Exactly. Just like if you get 1000 people in a room, odds are one of them will get a coin toss right 10 times in a row. Doesn't mean that guy is good at predicting coin tosses.
- kaydub 5y ago
  It has nothing to do with me thinking I'm smarter than all those guys. The market is irrational. I'm counting on being luckier than those guys more than anything.
  - skystarman 5y ago
    That's a certainly more rational position than believing your are smarter than the thousands of people with PhDs in finance or CS who pick stocks full time. Any yes, what people on WallStreetBets are doing is gambling. Which is perfectly fine, I just wish more would acknowledge it.
- imtringued 5y ago
  I agree with this, picking individual stocks is effectively a full time job. Most people looking for a moonshot only want to invest based on a "theme". E.g. you bet on the entire EV market.
nostrademons 5y ago
Amazon growth has been predicated on cannibalizing other companies since 1995. Bezos was very specific about that in the business plan he presented to investors: he wanted to own all of retail, and has largely succeeded in that. From a valuation perspective, what's so wrong about that? You want to be on the side taking over the world. Otherwise you're on the side that's getting taken over, and the value of your equity logically trends toward zero.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > he wanted to own all of retail, and has largely succeeded in that. They have a decent position in online retail, but they are very far from owning all of retail.

skystarman 5y ago

The thing is there's a FRACTION of a percentage of people who are "good at picking stocks". Most PROFESSIONAL stock pickers don't beat the market. And those that do, a tiny fraction can do it consistently over a 5-10 year time frame. This is backed up by decades of data. But we still have millions of people who apparently think they are smarter than the thousands of professional stock-pickers who have MAs, PhDs and years of experience and do it full-time and still don't beat the market. And sure, many average joes were wildly successful with GME or whatever the latest meme stock is. Just as many people made a ton of money in the last tech bubble. Check back in 5-10 years...

deleted 5y ago
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confidantlake 5y ago
Exactly. Just like if you get 1000 people in a room, odds are one of them will get a coin toss right 10 times in a row. Doesn't mean that guy is good at predicting coin tosses.
kaydub 5y ago
It has nothing to do with me thinking I'm smarter than all those guys. The market is irrational. I'm counting on being luckier than those guys more than anything.
- skystarman 5y ago
  That's a certainly more rational position than believing your are smarter than the thousands of people with PhDs in finance or CS who pick stocks full time. Any yes, what people on WallStreetBets are doing is gambling. Which is perfectly fine, I just wish more would acknowledge it.
imtringued 5y ago
I agree with this, picking individual stocks is effectively a full time job. Most people looking for a moonshot only want to invest based on a "theme". E.g. you bet on the entire EV market.

nostrademons 5y ago

Amazon growth has been predicated on cannibalizing other companies since 1995. Bezos was very specific about that in the business plan he presented to investors: he wanted to own all of retail, and has largely succeeded in that. From a valuation perspective, what's so wrong about that? You want to be on the side taking over the world. Otherwise you're on the side that's getting taken over, and the value of your equity logically trends toward zero.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
> he wanted to own all of retail, and has largely succeeded in that. They have a decent position in online retail, but they are very far from owning all of retail.