4 ms·

> Nobody knows the odds a company will profit or lose money or by how much, or if they will go bankrupt, merge with or acquire another company Do you think com

> Nobody knows the odds a company will profit or lose money or by how much, or if they will go bankrupt, merge with or acquire another company Do you think companies randomly decide merge? Do you think antitrust investigations are random? The SEC flips a coin every morning? The markets are proven to be NOT efficient. Now, for retail traders like FAANG SWEs, the markets are practically efficient.

ben_w 3y ago
Indeed. I was thinking the other day about how a perfectly efficient market would have no profit, and thereby demonstrate the exact same absence of incentives that is often used to argue that state-owned businesses and service providers are bad for the economy and "we" shouldn't have them. I was going to lead with "if you have some insider information and can use it without being charged with violating insider trading rules, you can do better than most", but that seemed more pertinent. Buuuuut you also have people who hear the magic words "won the 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences", turn their brains off, bet everything on a misunderstanding, and after a few good years suddenly find that all the money evaporates everywhere at the same time. This is relevant to the quoted passage: > Nobody knows the odds a company will profit or lose money or by how much, or if they will go bankrupt, merge with or acquire another company (Also, is it my imagination/pure coincidence, or are you the same person creating a lot of new accounts that each has only one or two comments?)
mckn1ght 3y ago
> Do you think companies randomly decide merge? Do you think antitrust investigations are random? The SEC flips a coin every morning? Of course not. But the people that can actually gain from such knowledge presumably aren’t able to use it to make decisions on whether to buy or sell stock. That’s the opposite of the position casinos are in. > the markets are practically efficient I’ll just echo the original comment you replied to in this chain: > > Tell that to the Enron employees who had all of their retirement 401k in Enron stock. Not to mention dot com bagholders.

ben_w 3y ago

Indeed. I was thinking the other day about how a perfectly efficient market would have no profit, and thereby demonstrate the exact same absence of incentives that is often used to argue that state-owned businesses and service providers are bad for the economy and "we" shouldn't have them. I was going to lead with "if you have some insider information and can use it without being charged with violating insider trading rules, you can do better than most", but that seemed more pertinent. Buuuuut you also have people who hear the magic words "won the 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences", turn their brains off, bet everything on a misunderstanding, and after a few good years suddenly find that all the money evaporates everywhere at the same time. This is relevant to the quoted passage: > Nobody knows the odds a company will profit or lose money or by how much, or if they will go bankrupt, merge with or acquire another company (Also, is it my imagination/pure coincidence, or are you the same person creating a lot of new accounts that each has only one or two comments?)

mckn1ght 3y ago

> Do you think companies randomly decide merge? Do you think antitrust investigations are random? The SEC flips a coin every morning? Of course not. But the people that can actually gain from such knowledge presumably aren’t able to use it to make decisions on whether to buy or sell stock. That’s the opposite of the position casinos are in. > the markets are practically efficient I’ll just echo the original comment you replied to in this chain: > > Tell that to the Enron employees who had all of their retirement 401k in Enron stock. Not to mention dot com bagholders.