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I feel more strongly than ever that trading should be strictly regulated and not permitted to the general population. It's framed as an equalizer, but it ends u

• iSnow 5y ago
  Very true. People used to see working as a normal part of life, and used to invest part of their salary in solid funds to retire on those investments later. Those in well-paying jobs expected to retire on a bigger amount than those in less well paid jobs. Nowadays, people seem to view the idea of working as an insult and want to retire in their 30's on some insane gambling profits, both in the /r/wsb community, in the FI/RE community and the bitcoinists. I do wonder what caused this attitude change over the last 10y or so.
  • BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    People have lost the optimism that working hard will get you ahead. The FI/RE community still has a modicum of that ethos, but they view hard work as a necessary nuisance that should be finished ASAP.
  • mihaic 5y ago
    Agree, this shift in attitude might be a response to how poorly paid regular jobs are and how unfair the system is -- in practice and in perception. It's hard to keep focused when all you see on social media is superficiality being rewarded. For the system to be rigged in favor of the ultra-rich, you'll need a army of enforcers, the influencers, the lawyers, even the developers that are "just doing tech".
  • throwdecro 5y ago
    It's possible that gambling for profits or having a soul-crushing workaday job are both undesirable ways to live.
• samhw 5y ago
  This is one of the truest things I've read in this thread. Many people would feel differently if it were easy to visualise and see how much money is siphoned off from Main St to Wall St. Dumb money flows up to smart money. I've seen it from all angles while working in fintech. I can count the number of people I've met who genuinely beat the smart money, with no formal training, on the fingers of one foot. (The one guy who would maybe fit into that category was a physicist who was formerly a professor at Harvard, so still hardly the kind of person you were talking about.)
  • throwdecro 5y ago
    The only "smart money" is "other people's money". The problem is that ordinary people are replicating the strategies that professional traders use, without realizing professional traders bet other people's money, keep the profits, let their customers eat the losses, and reboot at-will with fresh "other people's money" when they go bust.
    • samhw 5y ago
      I don't quite follow. Are you claiming the norm for money managers like investment banks and hedge funds is to lose their customers' money? And those customers don't care?
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      • a_square_peg 5y ago
        I believe what it's referring to is that traders are paid regardless of how well the funds do. Actively managed funds have fees of say 3~7% of the portfolio that are paid regardless of how well it performs and this is the bet that Warren Buffet made and won (index funds performing better than hedge funds in the long run when fees are accounted for).
• bondarchuk 5y ago
  As long as a poor person can buy a 60k car on finance with 10k down, it would be hard to justify limiting that poor person from trading stocks with 5k and driving a 5k beater. And it would be even harder to justify this as something for their own good.
  • mihaic 5y ago
    Maybe they shouldn't be able to buy that 60k car with credit card debt? If you're also proposing that the entire financial system needs to be redesigned to minimize leveraging and stop the insane focus on growth, I agree.
    • bondarchuk 5y ago
      I think we would both be happy if people were taught financial literacy and responsibility. But to forbid people from trading, for me, reeks too much of the financial elite being scared they'll lose their underclass.
      • mihaic 5y ago
        It might seem like elitisms, but how is it that the greatest wealth inequality in a generation is happening at the time when the highest percentage of the population is playing the market? The more money we put into zero-sum games, the more gets captured by the financial elite and by middlemen, and I think that's really the goal that should be set by regulation here (and that's why it probably won't happen anytime soon).
• renewiltord 5y ago
  Always fascinating to me that people want to take away people’s liberties for their own good. Somehow, this authoritarian streak persists despite being the source of constant human suffering.
  • mihaic 5y ago
    Some liberties have always been taken away in any society: you cannot kill or steal as you please for instance. There is always a need to figure out a good balance between personal liberties and the greater common good. Gambling with your savings might seem like a personal choice, but in the end there will be bailouts that I will have to pay for. You might not agree with where I draw the line, but ignoring that there has to be line is putting your head in the sand and ignoring reality.
    • morrbo 5y ago
      How would you propose to regulate it out of interest? As someone who pretty much lives on investment these days (vanilla stocks, no crypto, no options) with no formal training in the area I'm quite keen to hear why I should have to return to the rat race. I wholeheartedly agree that maxing out credit cards to buy stock/crypto (as someone mentioned earlier) should be regulated however, as that just seems like an absolute ticking timebomb
      • mihaic 5y ago
        There are solutions such as regulation for smoking that are incremental -- introduce the concept of a minimal bankroll and minimal accreditation and keep progressively increasing it over the years. The main thing would be an interest in regulating for general population wellbeing, instead of arguing for the rich becoming richer under the pretext of the free market. I can't blame you for choosing your source of income, it makes sense if you choose what it right for yourself. You are probably a highly talented individual that is leaving the actual value creation to the rest of us though, and one by one people are giving up.
        • 5y ago
• bluecalm 5y ago
  You don't need an edge over the smartest people in the world to beat the market. Some opportunities are too small for big players. Some are too risky (if you manage a safe rich/old people fund your goals are different than someone who wants to maximize the EV). Yet there are opportunities which a lot of people miss because of the bubble they are in (some obvious ones from recent years are AMD and Cloudflare). One way or another why not let people invest in what they believe in. Banning people from purchasing or selling equity in a business sounds extreme.
• throw1234651234 5y ago
  Or, you know, ensure people get a proper education.
• inkblotuniverse 5y ago
  Restricting shareholding to the upper class? Based
  • mihaic 5y ago
    No, I meant banning speculating the stock market. Limiting the number of investments the average guy can make at 2 or 3 per year for instance, so they put into index funds or if they really care one special stock. If there were a will to stop the gambling I think ways could be found. The saddest thing is that the vocal majority is the middle class that is seeing good returns now, while never considering how the massive wealth transfer is affecting our society.
• lottin 5y ago
  People should definitely be required to pass an investor knowledge test before they're allowed to invest. This is simple common sense.