4 ms·

So in other words, gambling. Some will win, many will lose.

by robjan 4y ago

bdangubic 4y ago
and investing in “index funds” is not gambling?! :) if you buy index funds do you even know what you bought? or is it just “hey everyone else is doing imma do it too?”
- robjan 4y ago
  Most index funds are quite transparent about their constituent assets. The purpose of index investing is to capture the market as a whole which includes assets held by the few people who make their millions / billions and the many others who blow up their accounts going all in in single stocks.
  - bdangubic 4y ago
    no pressure, no diamonds! jokes aside surely there are plenty of people who gambled and lost their entire accounts on 1 or 2 stocks. but there is a difference in buying biotech startup out of Springfield MO and buying Apple my basic argument isn’t that you should blow your savings on some single stock of some rando company but that doing something like 45% Apple, 20% Amazon, and spred another 20% among 2-3 companies in energy etc… is much better option than buying index fund. and over last decade would have 100x your money over VTSAX… and is just as “safe”
    - RussianCow 4y ago
      But there is zero reason to believe that any of those companies will continue giving the same returns. It's entirely feasible that they will plateau, or even begin to fall, whereas the rest of the market will continue to climb. There are plenty of historical examples of "solid" investments that evaporated over time, so it's not like this is unprecedented.
    - lottin 4y ago
      No, it isn't "just as safe", by any stretch of the imagination. "Safety", in the context of investing, refers to the distribution of possible outcomes around the expected return of an investment. In most instances, diversification will reduce the standard deviation of the expected return of a portfolio, without sacrificing the expected return. In other words, a diversified portfolio is safer, all else equal. This has been known for at least 70 years. You're not providing any counterpoints to established investment theory. You're simply making false claims that contradict both the theory and the empirical evidence.
- xupybd 4y ago
  Index funds are much lower risk. I would not call them gambling.

So in other words, gambling. Some will win, many will lose.

by robjan 4y ago

So in other words, gambling. Some will win, many will lose.

and investing in “index funds” is not gambling?! :) if you buy index funds do you even know what you bought? or is it just “hey everyone else is doing imma do it too?”

robjan 4y ago
Most index funds are quite transparent about their constituent assets. The purpose of index investing is to capture the market as a whole which includes assets held by the few people who make their millions / billions and the many others who blow up their accounts going all in in single stocks.
- bdangubic 4y ago
  no pressure, no diamonds! jokes aside surely there are plenty of people who gambled and lost their entire accounts on 1 or 2 stocks. but there is a difference in buying biotech startup out of Springfield MO and buying Apple my basic argument isn’t that you should blow your savings on some single stock of some rando company but that doing something like 45% Apple, 20% Amazon, and spred another 20% among 2-3 companies in energy etc… is much better option than buying index fund. and over last decade would have 100x your money over VTSAX… and is just as “safe”
  - RussianCow 4y ago
    But there is zero reason to believe that any of those companies will continue giving the same returns. It's entirely feasible that they will plateau, or even begin to fall, whereas the rest of the market will continue to climb. There are plenty of historical examples of "solid" investments that evaporated over time, so it's not like this is unprecedented.
  - lottin 4y ago
    No, it isn't "just as safe", by any stretch of the imagination. "Safety", in the context of investing, refers to the distribution of possible outcomes around the expected return of an investment. In most instances, diversification will reduce the standard deviation of the expected return of a portfolio, without sacrificing the expected return. In other words, a diversified portfolio is safer, all else equal. This has been known for at least 70 years. You're not providing any counterpoints to established investment theory. You're simply making false claims that contradict both the theory and the empirical evidence.
xupybd 4y ago
Index funds are much lower risk. I would not call them gambling.