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I don’t understand why these people are continuing to try to play tennis professionally when the odds of them making something resembling a living wage seems so

I don’t understand why these people are continuing to try to play tennis professionally when the odds of them making something resembling a living wage seems so grim. Like, after a few years of trying it’s got to be obvious. The author here mentions his parents pushing him and his sister to do this. Is the low key story that these are mostly just old money children in a limbo of their parents’ whims and lifelines?

p1esk 2y ago
It’s similar to wanting to start your own company: the odds to succeed are grim.
- generic92034 2y ago
  Or surviving as a book author, or making it as an actor/actress in Hollywood, or ... - they simply have a dream and it is quite hard to find the right timing for giving up such dreams.
  - Miraste 2y ago
    Succeeding as an author, actor, or tennis player is a much greater challenge than starting a company. There are millions and millions of companies succeeding well enough to keep their owners afloat. The chances for creative careers and professional sports, meanwhile, are abysmal.
- pineaux 2y ago
  This is not true. The odds of becoming a unicorn are grim. The odds of getting a decent wage is actually quite high if you ask me.
  - awelxtr 2y ago
    In Spain 60% of companies don't survive the 5 year mark [1]. That's what I think when people say that making a company is hard. [1] https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12101579/01/23/El-60-de-las-empresas-espanolas-no-llega-hasta-los-cinco-anos-de-existencia.html https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12101579/01/23...
    - dangus 2y ago
      That’s way better odds than being a top tier professional athlete. If 60% of companies fail that means if you start 6 businesses then you have a 95% probability of having a successful business. Only 1.6% of college football players transition to the NFL.
      - mason55 2y ago
        I don’t think they’re independent events. Bayesian priors would say that if you have five failed businesses then your chances of being successful on number 6 are probably less than 60%
        dangus 2y ago
        I disagree. A bunch of founders out there have a string of failures surrounded by their successes. Here is a list of a few of them: https://press.farm/startups-fail-founders-bounced-back-and-build-successful-company/ https://press.farm/startups-fail-founders-bounced-back-and-b... Some of these founders had two or more failed businesses before reaching success.
      - vuln 2y ago
        The supply outstrips the demand. The number of NFL teams is tightly controlled to extract the most amount of money from its consumers. More teams, less money for each owner and players but a higher % of college football players having a shot at a career.
      - playingalong 2y ago
        Assuming the success is independent.
        dangus 2y ago
        Well, it’s much more independent than being a pro athlete. By design you only have one to two chances to go pro at a sport. You can’t go back in time to your prime playing age, you can’t go back in time to train at a different sport during your youth. For business owners, starting a business is a matter of filing a few pieces of paperwork. Starting a business is quite literally an independent event from starting the business prior.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Maybe like running a restaurant... Other businesses if they are sensible to start with are lot less risky.
  - WJW 2y ago
    You can be "less risky" than a restaurant while still having dismal chances of success though. Nobody who starts a business expects that it'll be bankrupt within a few years, yet statistically some 90% are. The worst cases are when the company manages along for years and then still goes under. I was contracting for a 10 year old company of ~30 people last year and they just had to fire 20 of those and will still almost certainly go bankrupt. They weren't in a business you'd call "risky" either.
tech_ken 2y ago
I think that once you've become, ex., the number 1 tennis player in a country it's tough to retrain, both literally and psychologically. Your whole life, and likely your self-worth, are highly enmeshed with the sport. Accepting that it's not going to work out is going to be straight up painful, psychologically, not to mention that you probably are pretty short on other qualifications.
- TeaBrain 2y ago
  It is exactly this. Tennis has been the focal point of the entire life of these players. I saw this even in the juniors, no matter the success of the players. For those that were really involved in the sport, their entire life revolved around it, to the point where it became part of their identity. Young competitive players will spend most of their available time outside of school to play, that being multiple hours a day, seven days a week, year-round. To stop playing, is not just to make an easy pivot like the guy you responded to thinks it is, but is more like giving up on a religion that you've devoted your entire life and being to.
- krisoft 2y ago
  But if you are the number 1 tennis player in your country in some objective sense, can’t you build a coaching career out of that? Unless it is some pocket sized country (like the Vatican, or Andora) you should be able to find enough students to support yourself and being the number 1 player should help with marketing your coaching business.
  - daseiner1 2y ago
    Of course you could. The “problem” is that the psychology of these players is not remotely in the same realm as yours or mine. “Reasonableness” is not the criterion that people this driven measure themselves by.
  - pas 2y ago
    Players don't necessarily good at coaching. Sure, they could probably coast on their reputation, but still, it's not a trivially easy transformation.
paulcole 2y ago
Why does anybody do anything when the odds are grim? Either they want to do it anyway or they think they have to do it.
- photon_lines 2y ago
  Because when you aim for the moon -- even if you miss, you will still be a success (in my mind). I would rather live life as a failed scientist trying to reach a revolutionary breakthrough in understanding or following what I feel is my passion -- even if my odds of reaching what I want to reach may be 0.001 percent, at least striving to reach that point is a great adventure and the pain that comes with it is something worth it and there's no shame in that. More people I think should try it.
  - paulcole 2y ago
    Right… that’s exactly what I said but thanks for repeating it. Either you want to do it or you think you have to do it.
neaden 2y ago
At a guess, is it to become a tennis coach/pro later on? Like you do this in your 20s then coach at a private high school so they can say they have the former #129th ranked tennis player in the world.
- t0mas88 2y ago
  My previous coach was somewhere in the top 200 at some point. He wasn't very good at teaching tennis... My current one is a long term career tennis teacher with a much lower ranking, but he's very good at teaching. Being good yourself doesn't add much to your teaching skills. But it does help marketing a bit if you're targeting an audience that wants to become pro themselves.
- impossiblefork 2y ago
  Yes. This is very common. Many trainers at clubs here in Sweden are ex-pros who never made the top-200. Even some retired top players work as tennis trainers. So this escape route exists. Another escape route where you don't have to abandon tennis and still have a chance of going pro is to play at a college in the US.
antisthenes 2y ago
> Is the low key story that these are mostly just old money children in a limbo of their parents’ whims and lifelines? I think that's incredibly reductive, although does have a bit of a point. The gist of the story is that there's a special kind of loneliness when you're always on the cusp of "making it big" in an industry that is very very top-heavy in terms of rewards. (sports, acting, content creation, startup company, restaurant etc.) You can spend your entire youth chasing this dream, and it's a lot harder for some people to "give up the dream" than others. You can call this being delusional or you can call it the tyranny of high expectations (from others or from themselves). Yes, it's a lot easier to feed your delusion if you come from money. That's where a big "ick" for rich people come from - some of them are just incredibly mediocre in terms of skills, with their egos boosted by daddy's wallet.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  I more so meant just where are they getting the money to do this? Because the article sure seemed to suggest he was making far less than minimum wage considering his training time and tourney earnings.
  - antisthenes 2y ago
    When you're young and fit, your expenses are quite low. You can live out of a van, and as long as you have enough for food and have a practice partner, you can keep trying to make it as a player. I don't think you necessarily have to come from money, although having middle-class parents and a stable household helps a lot. Once you hit 30+ though, that kind of lifestyle begins to lose its appeal pretty quick (for the people supporting you as well).
TeaBrain 2y ago
People playing tennis professionally aren't simply trying it out. The development of a tennis professional is probably most similar to someone who has been bred to become a classical musician. Those that play tennis or classical music professionally are never just trying something out, but have been fully immersed since childhood, to the point where their entire life revolves around playing. To give it up, would be to give up the one thing that their entire life has revolved around since childhood.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Giving up the thing your life has revolved around since childhood because it’s just not happening is totally reasonable though.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    Problem with these players is that it is kinda happening. Not properly, but they are not entirely failing... This is the most dangerous spot to be, you are not there yet, but you can reasonable think you can get there. These players get to play at least the early rounds. You are ever so slightly alternatively above and below the water...
  - ordu 2y ago
    Reasonably, maybe, but it means that the person needs to rejects themself. At this level of immersion sport/music becomes the part of the person, their definition (implicit or explicit) contains words "music" or "sport". It is still possible to throw it away and start again, but it is really difficult psychologically, and probably in other aspects too: they don't know how to be someone who is not a musician or an athlete.
  - TeaBrain 2y ago
    What I'm trying to explain is that for the top level juniors who become pros, it is not a hobby or "thing", it is their entire universe. Top junior players that expect to become pros are already touring the world when they are in their mid-teens. Their entire world is their parents, their coach, their peers at their tennis academy, and the players they see at tournaments. They are living and breathing it, and little else. The top junior players often do not participate in regular high schooling and the promising ones that go pro young, don't go to university at all. Almost none of the top pros even today have ever gone to university. The players that do make it to successful careers in the top 100, don't make it with the attitude of being half in with a backup plan. They make it with the idea that tennis is their entire life and purpose.
asdff 2y ago
Any of those players can go on to make excellent hourly offering lessons to adults and wealthy children. Its a poor slog now but that doesn't mean the experience has no value they could get from it.
photon_lines 2y ago
I'd say from my limited vantage point that it looks like it's only partially social pressure. The media glamourizing sports stars I'd say is the root-cause. This doesn't just apply to tennis - it applies to every sport. Look at what Jordan did to the NBA and how many kids wanted to be in his shoes growing up -- they don't realize what comes with the 'gift' though may not be glamorous or worth the price you pay. You mostly see the very rich life-style and fan-worship -- behind the scenes most people don't realize the hard work and pain and the pressure some of these athletes have to experience in order to get there. On another note - if anyone wants a great example of this here's a great read (called Federer as a Religious Experience and it's still my favorite piece of sport-writing after 15+ years): https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed...
JohnBooty 2y ago
I don’t understand why these people are continuing to try to play tennis professionally when the odds of them making something resembling a living wage seems so grim This is a great question and I'll try to answer it. Like, after a few years of trying it’s got to be obvious. It took Roger Federer a few years on the pro tour to break into the top 100. The difference between the top 100 players and the players ranked 400-500 is not that large and crucially, it's perhaps not the sort of difference you might think. It's not like, say, power lifting where one guy can lift 500lbs every time and another guy can only lift 300lbs and if he's not able to get near 500lbs then yeah, he can probably see this isn't for him. In tennis, the 100th ranked guy is doing the same stuff as the 1st ranked guy. Just not as consistently. Even a weekend player occasionally smokes an unreturnable winner right down the line. A few more reasons. 1. As you climb the rankings and earn more, you can afford better coaching etc. 2. A lot of the low ranked guys have some skills equal to the top 10 guys. But one part of their game may be lacking. They think: if I can just improve that one thing I can go on a run. This isn't delusional, it happens a lot, and even the Federers and Nadals of the world improved their games over time. (Nadal had a subpar serve for years; for example) 3. These guys are young. Athletes peak around ~25 years. A 19 year old ranked #500 is still growing. It'd be different if he was 38 years old and still ranked #500. 4. These guys aren't dumb. They know the odds.
quartesixte 2y ago
Here’s the thing. To become a top athlete/Classical Musician requires a literal lifetime of training. Unless you are an extreme outlier of latent prodigal talent, you must start as soon as humanly possible. And then throughout this training journey you will be subjected to multiple wash-out/filter tests. The mass of children get filtered out very quickly — genetic predisposition (aka Talent) is either there or it isn’t. Surviving this purge awards you with the words that will curse and haunt you forever: “You’re so talented!” By the time you hit pro, you have survived multiple of these events. It is now your identity, your ego. And now in the open waters of competition, it just boils down to “train harder” and “do better”. Maybe next year is the year you finally breakout. What’s to stop you and why stop now? You don’t understand what it means to give up. Giving up is how all the others got washed out years ago. You didn’t wash out. You got the scholarships, the state championships, the mentions in local media. You deserve to be there and Glory is just within reach… Besides. “You’re so talented!” By the time you finally hit The Wall and the results show that there is a much bigger fish out in this pond, it’s too late. What are you supposed to do now? You skipped all regular education to get here. You sacrificed your whole life! Your parents paid a fortune. Besides. It will be a massive waste of “talent.” And so it goes. Maybe you can swallow enough ego to become a high school tennis coach. Maybe you will be able to be the one who picks the next Federer or Williams. Then you will vicariously finally get your glory and honor and fame. Because you were talented. It’s what you deserved. And you will spend your whole life chasing it.
richrichie 2y ago
Precisely why professional sports (and entertainment) is not for the odds calculating average person. It is for a different breed of humans. In a literal sense, their genetic stock is different.

p1esk 2y ago

It’s similar to wanting to start your own company: the odds to succeed are grim.

generic92034 2y ago
Or surviving as a book author, or making it as an actor/actress in Hollywood, or ... - they simply have a dream and it is quite hard to find the right timing for giving up such dreams.
- Miraste 2y ago
  Succeeding as an author, actor, or tennis player is a much greater challenge than starting a company. There are millions and millions of companies succeeding well enough to keep their owners afloat. The chances for creative careers and professional sports, meanwhile, are abysmal.
pineaux 2y ago
This is not true. The odds of becoming a unicorn are grim. The odds of getting a decent wage is actually quite high if you ask me.
- awelxtr 2y ago
  In Spain 60% of companies don't survive the 5 year mark [1]. That's what I think when people say that making a company is hard. [1] https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12101579/01/23/El-60-de-las-empresas-espanolas-no-llega-hasta-los-cinco-anos-de-existencia.html https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12101579/01/23...
  - dangus 2y ago
    That’s way better odds than being a top tier professional athlete. If 60% of companies fail that means if you start 6 businesses then you have a 95% probability of having a successful business. Only 1.6% of college football players transition to the NFL.
    - mason55 2y ago
      I don’t think they’re independent events. Bayesian priors would say that if you have five failed businesses then your chances of being successful on number 6 are probably less than 60%
      - dangus 2y ago
        I disagree. A bunch of founders out there have a string of failures surrounded by their successes. Here is a list of a few of them: https://press.farm/startups-fail-founders-bounced-back-and-build-successful-company/ https://press.farm/startups-fail-founders-bounced-back-and-b... Some of these founders had two or more failed businesses before reaching success.
    - vuln 2y ago
      The supply outstrips the demand. The number of NFL teams is tightly controlled to extract the most amount of money from its consumers. More teams, less money for each owner and players but a higher % of college football players having a shot at a career.
    - playingalong 2y ago
      Assuming the success is independent.
      - dangus 2y ago
        Well, it’s much more independent than being a pro athlete. By design you only have one to two chances to go pro at a sport. You can’t go back in time to your prime playing age, you can’t go back in time to train at a different sport during your youth. For business owners, starting a business is a matter of filing a few pieces of paperwork. Starting a business is quite literally an independent event from starting the business prior.
Ekaros 2y ago
Maybe like running a restaurant... Other businesses if they are sensible to start with are lot less risky.
- WJW 2y ago
  You can be "less risky" than a restaurant while still having dismal chances of success though. Nobody who starts a business expects that it'll be bankrupt within a few years, yet statistically some 90% are. The worst cases are when the company manages along for years and then still goes under. I was contracting for a 10 year old company of ~30 people last year and they just had to fire 20 of those and will still almost certainly go bankrupt. They weren't in a business you'd call "risky" either.

tech_ken 2y ago

I think that once you've become, ex., the number 1 tennis player in a country it's tough to retrain, both literally and psychologically. Your whole life, and likely your self-worth, are highly enmeshed with the sport. Accepting that it's not going to work out is going to be straight up painful, psychologically, not to mention that you probably are pretty short on other qualifications.

TeaBrain 2y ago
It is exactly this. Tennis has been the focal point of the entire life of these players. I saw this even in the juniors, no matter the success of the players. For those that were really involved in the sport, their entire life revolved around it, to the point where it became part of their identity. Young competitive players will spend most of their available time outside of school to play, that being multiple hours a day, seven days a week, year-round. To stop playing, is not just to make an easy pivot like the guy you responded to thinks it is, but is more like giving up on a religion that you've devoted your entire life and being to.
krisoft 2y ago
But if you are the number 1 tennis player in your country in some objective sense, can’t you build a coaching career out of that? Unless it is some pocket sized country (like the Vatican, or Andora) you should be able to find enough students to support yourself and being the number 1 player should help with marketing your coaching business.
- daseiner1 2y ago
  Of course you could. The “problem” is that the psychology of these players is not remotely in the same realm as yours or mine. “Reasonableness” is not the criterion that people this driven measure themselves by.
- pas 2y ago
  Players don't necessarily good at coaching. Sure, they could probably coast on their reputation, but still, it's not a trivially easy transformation.

paulcole 2y ago

Why does anybody do anything when the odds are grim? Either they want to do it anyway or they think they have to do it.

photon_lines 2y ago
Because when you aim for the moon -- even if you miss, you will still be a success (in my mind). I would rather live life as a failed scientist trying to reach a revolutionary breakthrough in understanding or following what I feel is my passion -- even if my odds of reaching what I want to reach may be 0.001 percent, at least striving to reach that point is a great adventure and the pain that comes with it is something worth it and there's no shame in that. More people I think should try it.
- paulcole 2y ago
  Right… that’s exactly what I said but thanks for repeating it. Either you want to do it or you think you have to do it.

neaden 2y ago

At a guess, is it to become a tennis coach/pro later on? Like you do this in your 20s then coach at a private high school so they can say they have the former #129th ranked tennis player in the world.

t0mas88 2y ago
My previous coach was somewhere in the top 200 at some point. He wasn't very good at teaching tennis... My current one is a long term career tennis teacher with a much lower ranking, but he's very good at teaching. Being good yourself doesn't add much to your teaching skills. But it does help marketing a bit if you're targeting an audience that wants to become pro themselves.
impossiblefork 2y ago
Yes. This is very common. Many trainers at clubs here in Sweden are ex-pros who never made the top-200. Even some retired top players work as tennis trainers. So this escape route exists. Another escape route where you don't have to abandon tennis and still have a chance of going pro is to play at a college in the US.

antisthenes 2y ago

> Is the low key story that these are mostly just old money children in a limbo of their parents’ whims and lifelines? I think that's incredibly reductive, although does have a bit of a point. The gist of the story is that there's a special kind of loneliness when you're always on the cusp of "making it big" in an industry that is very very top-heavy in terms of rewards. (sports, acting, content creation, startup company, restaurant etc.) You can spend your entire youth chasing this dream, and it's a lot harder for some people to "give up the dream" than others. You can call this being delusional or you can call it the tyranny of high expectations (from others or from themselves). Yes, it's a lot easier to feed your delusion if you come from money. That's where a big "ick" for rich people come from - some of them are just incredibly mediocre in terms of skills, with their egos boosted by daddy's wallet.

jncfhnb 2y ago
I more so meant just where are they getting the money to do this? Because the article sure seemed to suggest he was making far less than minimum wage considering his training time and tourney earnings.
- antisthenes 2y ago
  When you're young and fit, your expenses are quite low. You can live out of a van, and as long as you have enough for food and have a practice partner, you can keep trying to make it as a player. I don't think you necessarily have to come from money, although having middle-class parents and a stable household helps a lot. Once you hit 30+ though, that kind of lifestyle begins to lose its appeal pretty quick (for the people supporting you as well).

TeaBrain 2y ago

People playing tennis professionally aren't simply trying it out. The development of a tennis professional is probably most similar to someone who has been bred to become a classical musician. Those that play tennis or classical music professionally are never just trying something out, but have been fully immersed since childhood, to the point where their entire life revolves around playing. To give it up, would be to give up the one thing that their entire life has revolved around since childhood.

jncfhnb 2y ago
Giving up the thing your life has revolved around since childhood because it’s just not happening is totally reasonable though.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Problem with these players is that it is kinda happening. Not properly, but they are not entirely failing... This is the most dangerous spot to be, you are not there yet, but you can reasonable think you can get there. These players get to play at least the early rounds. You are ever so slightly alternatively above and below the water...
- ordu 2y ago
  Reasonably, maybe, but it means that the person needs to rejects themself. At this level of immersion sport/music becomes the part of the person, their definition (implicit or explicit) contains words "music" or "sport". It is still possible to throw it away and start again, but it is really difficult psychologically, and probably in other aspects too: they don't know how to be someone who is not a musician or an athlete.
- TeaBrain 2y ago
  What I'm trying to explain is that for the top level juniors who become pros, it is not a hobby or "thing", it is their entire universe. Top junior players that expect to become pros are already touring the world when they are in their mid-teens. Their entire world is their parents, their coach, their peers at their tennis academy, and the players they see at tournaments. They are living and breathing it, and little else. The top junior players often do not participate in regular high schooling and the promising ones that go pro young, don't go to university at all. Almost none of the top pros even today have ever gone to university. The players that do make it to successful careers in the top 100, don't make it with the attitude of being half in with a backup plan. They make it with the idea that tennis is their entire life and purpose.

asdff 2y ago

Any of those players can go on to make excellent hourly offering lessons to adults and wealthy children. Its a poor slog now but that doesn't mean the experience has no value they could get from it.

photon_lines 2y ago

I'd say from my limited vantage point that it looks like it's only partially social pressure. The media glamourizing sports stars I'd say is the root-cause. This doesn't just apply to tennis - it applies to every sport. Look at what Jordan did to the NBA and how many kids wanted to be in his shoes growing up -- they don't realize what comes with the 'gift' though may not be glamorous or worth the price you pay. You mostly see the very rich life-style and fan-worship -- behind the scenes most people don't realize the hard work and pain and the pressure some of these athletes have to experience in order to get there. On another note - if anyone wants a great example of this here's a great read (called Federer as a Religious Experience and it's still my favorite piece of sport-writing after 15+ years): https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed...

JohnBooty 2y ago

I don’t understand why these people are continuing to try to play tennis professionally when the odds of them making something resembling a living wage seems so grim This is a great question and I'll try to answer it. Like, after a few years of trying it’s got to be obvious. It took Roger Federer a few years on the pro tour to break into the top 100. The difference between the top 100 players and the players ranked 400-500 is not that large and crucially, it's perhaps not the sort of difference you might think. It's not like, say, power lifting where one guy can lift 500lbs every time and another guy can only lift 300lbs and if he's not able to get near 500lbs then yeah, he can probably see this isn't for him. In tennis, the 100th ranked guy is doing the same stuff as the 1st ranked guy. Just not as consistently. Even a weekend player occasionally smokes an unreturnable winner right down the line. A few more reasons. 1. As you climb the rankings and earn more, you can afford better coaching etc. 2. A lot of the low ranked guys have some skills equal to the top 10 guys. But one part of their game may be lacking. They think: if I can just improve that one thing I can go on a run. This isn't delusional, it happens a lot, and even the Federers and Nadals of the world improved their games over time. (Nadal had a subpar serve for years; for example) 3. These guys are young. Athletes peak around ~25 years. A 19 year old ranked #500 is still growing. It'd be different if he was 38 years old and still ranked #500. 4. These guys aren't dumb. They know the odds.

quartesixte 2y ago

Here’s the thing. To become a top athlete/Classical Musician requires a literal lifetime of training. Unless you are an extreme outlier of latent prodigal talent, you must start as soon as humanly possible. And then throughout this training journey you will be subjected to multiple wash-out/filter tests. The mass of children get filtered out very quickly — genetic predisposition (aka Talent) is either there or it isn’t. Surviving this purge awards you with the words that will curse and haunt you forever: “You’re so talented!” By the time you hit pro, you have survived multiple of these events. It is now your identity, your ego. And now in the open waters of competition, it just boils down to “train harder” and “do better”. Maybe next year is the year you finally breakout. What’s to stop you and why stop now? You don’t understand what it means to give up. Giving up is how all the others got washed out years ago. You didn’t wash out. You got the scholarships, the state championships, the mentions in local media. You deserve to be there and Glory is just within reach… Besides. “You’re so talented!” By the time you finally hit The Wall and the results show that there is a much bigger fish out in this pond, it’s too late. What are you supposed to do now? You skipped all regular education to get here. You sacrificed your whole life! Your parents paid a fortune. Besides. It will be a massive waste of “talent.” And so it goes. Maybe you can swallow enough ego to become a high school tennis coach. Maybe you will be able to be the one who picks the next Federer or Williams. Then you will vicariously finally get your glory and honor and fame. Because you were talented. It’s what you deserved. And you will spend your whole life chasing it.

richrichie 2y ago

Precisely why professional sports (and entertainment) is not for the odds calculating average person. It is for a different breed of humans. In a literal sense, their genetic stock is different.