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More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market
- downrightmike 2y ago[flagged]
- nozzlegear 2y agoWhat does this mean?
- hunch_throwawy 2y agoA guess, but I think they may be suggesting that when men don't see a future outside of striking it rich, they turn to gambling. downrightmike, please chime in if I'm reading it incorrectly.
- pkoird 2y agoFutures are a financial instrument that are much more volatile than Stocks (or even Options).
- milleramp 2y agoIt's a reference to the Sex Pistols song, God Save the Queen. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_the_Queen_(Sex_Pistols_song) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_the_Queen_(Sex_Pist...
- sonofhans 2y agoNo future for you.
- gsky 2y ago[flagged]
- joegibbs 2y agoReally? It works fine for me. What browser are you on?
- defrost 2y agoI recognised the comment .. it was made three days ago when this link was first submitted. https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=marban https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=marban This HN post has been "second life"'d and made fresh again with this one original comment refreshed in timestamp. Why? No idea - Le Mystère des HN.
- gsky 2y agoFirefox v133.0.3
- jshpool 2y agoLot of people are becoming more knowledgable and skillful. But purpose is the missing ingredient. Without purpose or a motivator in life people end up getting trapped in mindless rituals. It keeps the reward circuitry in the brain from decaying.
- jaco6 2y agoChild rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it.
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago>Child rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it. I doubt it, that's because to most people it does not feel purposeful, it's a chore. Most people who say it's purposeful are generally the most vocal ones, and I suspect the minority.
- marcosdumay 2y agoWhatever purpose you decide you have, do you think it will come without chores?
- chowchowchow 2y agoBeg the question that a purpose can’t involve chores or unpleasantries much?
- dismalaf 2y agoAs someone with a young child, it definitely feels purposeful. Also the opposite of a chore, it's lots of fun and what I look forward to after a day of work. And I'm someone who, for most of my adult life, thought I'd be childfree...
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
- impish9208 2y agoGift link: https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/stock-market-trading-apps-addiction-afecb07a?st=TyEcMR https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/stock-market-trading-apps...
- drcwpl 2y agoThank YOU
- CliveBloomers 2y agoThe regular 9-to-5 is seen as a last resort now—it’s almost like you’ve failed if you don’t have a side hustle. That’s the vibe. With AI and machine learning platforms making waves, especially for traders, the game has completely changed. The barrier to entry? Practically gone. These platforms have made it so easy to get started that anyone with a bit of curiosity can jump in. It’s not the exclusive playground of the Wall Street elite anymore. What used to be this tightly guarded world of algorithms and insider knowledge is now available to anyone willing to dive in. People are out here making bank, and they’re getting good at it. Trading isn’t just something “some people” do—it’s turning into a thriving industry where regular folks are learning the ropes and doing well for themselves. This whole shift has made the traditional career path feel outdated. Why settle for clocking in and out when you can leverage tools and tech to build something for yourself? The idea of just sticking to the 9-to-5 feels like giving up when the opportunities to create and grow are right there, waiting.
- pieterhg 2y agoBlocked for AI reply
- whateveracct 2y agoIt's funny because 9-5 is still a great way to actually enrich yourself. The best way to grow your wealth is to increase your income, and a salary+benefits is the juiciest way to do that. Sadly, I've seen many male friends of mine obsess with the stock market but not have anything going career-wise. They just hope they hit big and "make it." Better to just stack salary for years the boring way and save yourself the time it takes to micromanage investments.
- whateveracct 2y agoAlso, the second best way to enrich yourself in America is probably buying a home. But you need a down payment and the ability to afford it over the 30y mortgage. Gambling on stocks may give you a windfall that amounts to a down payment, but good luck convincing the bank you can pay that new mortgage for 30y off your stock market wizardry.
- 2y ago
- brudgers 2y agohttps://archive.ph/ObYDN https://archive.ph/ObYDN
- epolanski 2y agoI remember a controversial scamming figure in Italy that made millions by selling lucky numbers for lotteries or exploiting people's stupidity to part them with their life savings. Her motto was "idiots _have_ to be scammed". While this figure was morally and ethically deplorable, it always made me think how her motto essentially implied that there was an element of pure natural selection happening and she saw herself as the executor of the oldest survival of the fittest balancing act. At the same time, as someone who follows places like WSB seeing people getting in life-ruining leverage just for the adrenaline of it, or even worse, just for internet karma always made me think of that scammer's words: this is just natural selection doing it's thing as it has been for billions of years. And there's no third party scamming them. They know what they risk, and will do it anyway. The world is full of physical and non physical dangers, we are naturally programmed to push for self preservation and yet there are people that willingly and consciously decide to put it all on risk, how can it be anything but natural selection doing it's thing?
- nradov 2y agoDon't believe what you read on WSB. Most of those clowns are getting Internet karma points by making up stories, not by losing real money.
- stevenhuang 2y agoI can assure you that many of the posts there are real. If you have market data you can verify the transactions yourself.
- throwup238 2y ago> how can it be anything but natural selection doing it's thing? Does it affect their reproductive chances? If not, then natural selection has nothing to do with it.
- dleary 2y agoIt’s overly simplistic to say that if a person has reproduced, then they have ‘succeeded’ in the natural selection game. There is a whole (potential) downstream genealogical tree branching off from each individual Certainly, any person who reproduces has done “better” at the game than someone who has not reproduced at all. But that is still not quite enough. If a parent reproduces, but none of their children themselves reproduce, then the parent has not actually succeeded in the game. A gambling addict who can’t hold onto any money absolutely affects their downstream tree.
- bongodongobob 2y agoIf you have the math chops, you should really try to get into it just so you can realize you are not going to make a money making algorithm. I got knee deep into it out of boredom during Covid and was able to have the "aha" moment where you realize the best you can do is buy index funds or just long hold companies you believe in that are in your area of expertise.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoIsn't that how RenTech got started? From what I understand, that fund still does huge gains, and can't get too big.
- potato3732842 2y agoThere's a lot of firms like that.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bongodongobob 2y agoIf the gains are huge, it's either temporary luck or they're cheating. You cannot have long term high alpha without either. If you meet a person who can constantly flip a coin heads side up, ask them to keep going and they'll either fail or you'll find the coin is rigged.
- anon7725 2y ago“It’s impossible for me to beat the market consistently” does not imply “nobody can beat the market consistently” or “nobody can beat the market consistently for a long enough time to become filthy rich”.
- tayo42 2y agoGambling addiction is so unrelateable to me. Likely real drugs sure, obsessive gaming, done that too. I think I'm to anxious to enjoy gambling with like that or something.
- jdefr89 2y agoLikewise! I can understand drugs and such… But gambling? At least with drugs you have a guaranteed reward. You purchase heroin and you use it, you’re high. Task accomplished gambling it like “here’s money so I might possibly get high if I’m lucky.”
- matt3210 2y agoAt one point I knew I could beat the market with l33t software skills. I was wrong and only realized it after donating about 3k to Wall Street.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoLuckily you learned the lesson when you were young and only lost $3k instead of $3M when you were old.
- herval 2y agoThat’s peanuts! Congrats for realizing it early
- freehorse 2y agoI don't know OP but 3k can be a significant amount of money for some people esp when younger. I realise people often lose more, but that can also be because they have more money padding to lose.
- herval 2y agoThe stock market is an expensive addiction. If you read subreddits like r/wsb, you’ll frequently see people losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, mortgaging houses, gambling their future on another 0dt option bet. It’s a good thing he only lost 3k!
- btrettel 2y agoSome folks' elementary or middle schools had stock picking lessons with fake money: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21642395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21642395 From mine, all I remember was getting the impression that putting money in particular stocks without knowing what you're doing is a bad idea. Pretty valuable lesson, I guess, as I've never bought individual stocks since then...
- herval 2y ago
- inopinatus 2y agoTV adverts for day trading apps specifically target middle-aged men who think they know better than everyone else. Surprise! You do not
- smolder 2y agoThis title is stupid. Comparisons to crack cocaine should have stopped in the 90's or early 00's at the latest. They're never made by people who have the slightest idea about what idea crack was, and whoever wrote that is extremely out of touch. About crack: The public discourse was racist, the CIA had a lot to do with creating the problem, and in general it's no worse than the cocaine my fellow white people seem to think is so much cooler.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoYou have to see real compulsive gambling in action. The comparison is not so far off (but still over the top).
- smolder 2y agoI know what kind of havok a gambling addiction can cause, and it's no joke. It's powerful enough (for some people, at least) that a comparison to addictive drugs generally is apt, yet the traps are everywhere and usually legal. Exploiting the psychological weakness that underpins gambling addiction is something sought after and optimized for outside of overt gambling, like modern video game mechanics, social media, cryptocurrency, retail stock investment, and so on. In reflecting on why it's so addictive, I've come to believe there's a sort of feeling of adventure in random outcomes --that people like the entropy as well as the wins. That said, going back to what I said before, my issue with the title of the article is with invoking crack specifically as some especially scary super-addictive thing, which is an idea that was over-hyped at one time. They could have just said cocaine, or better yet, made a comparison to opiates, but they're playing to an old and incorrect bias.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoYou have to see real crack addiction in action. It’s not over-hyped at all. It’s just that not everyone gets addicted to it. People get hung up on physical addiction, but the mental obsession is the real destroyer. Most folks aren’t wired for that kind of obsession. They can get physically addicted to opiates, quit, and never go back. I’ve seen exactly that. I’ve also seen folks become so obsessed with pot, that it makes your worst Central Casting street junkie look tame, by comparison. True addicts don’t need physical addiction. It’s a mental disorder that doesn’t make sense to most people, but it’s definitely there.
- catchcatchcatch 2y ago[flagged]
- catchcatchcatch 2y ago[flagged]
- nerdponx 2y agoPoor emotional regulation skills and executive function, perhaps.
- soulofmischief 2y agoYes, that's ADHD, and I can tell you that playing the stock market for income will lay bare every single thing that is wrong with you. Becoming a good trader turns into just becoming a better person, adopting better coping mechanisms and developing extreme discipline. And that doesn't happen in just a year or two. I recommend people to start off paper trading for years before putting down any real money.
- dismalaf 2y agoThe most difficult part about the stock market is that stocks don't move for the reasons people think. People think fundamentals, news, financial performance, or chart patterns matter. But none of it does. Markets are driven purely by supply and demand. And in this case, supply and demand for the stock itself. Fundamentals are already priced in. Financial performance is already priced in. Expectations are priced in, and others probably have more information than you anyway. Other people also watch chart patterns and place their bets based on that. What you're betting on is whether the market is right, or wrong. Or whether other investors will think the market is right or wrong. Edit - the other part of it is that Wall Street firms hire tons of people who are incredibly smart, have math, economics and finance degrees or even PhDs, hire software engineers and spend hundreds of millions on infrastructure just to know the market better than you. You're not smarter than all those people put together.
- jfengel 2y agoIn the long term fundamentals will matter. But the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Ordinarily I would say that an investment in a broad index for the long term (a decade or more) is always wise, and there's no point in trying to time it more specifically than that. However right now it's been irrationally exuberant for a long time. it's going to have to correct itself... Either tomorrow or another ten years.
- dismalaf 2y agoDepends. If the fundamentals are already good, they're priced in, you probably have little upside, even long term. Maybe you'll just match the market. You have to think the fundamentals will improve over time more than the market expects to beat the market. Long term, I think economics has more to do with market performance. Stocks rise as the money supply expands and capital has no where else to go.
- jfengel 2y agoYou can't beat the market but you don't need to. The ordinary returns of GDP growth are pretty good. The free money has definitely been screwing with GDP as a base. I'm still unclear on why the Fed would lower interest rates when the market is fine, the GDP is fine, and inflation is still slightly above baseline 2%. I know everyone is yelling for the punch bowl to come back but now would be a good time to pay down some debts.
- Animats 2y agoWait until the WSJ discovers memecoins.
- m3kw9 2y agoLots of luck involved, even if someone think skill was involved. You will see many hedge fund have down years and go bankrupt, all of these hedge funds have “skill” like every one else
- impish9208 2y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42473081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42473081
- dang 2y agoOn HN a post only counts as a dupe if it got significant attention, which that one didn't (only 3 points and 2 comments - but we'll merge the comments hither) When an article hasn't had significant attention yet, we let reposts through (after 8 hours) - this is on purpose, to give good articles multiple chances at getting attention. Of course that leaves the submitters in a bit of a lottery situation, but it at least evens out in the long run if you keep submitting good articles!
- impish9208 2y agoUnderstood, thanks dang! I think sometimes I just get annoyed because I see something I posted earlier getting reposted. I’ll try not to let it get to me going forward lol.
- lifestyleguru 2y agoThe problem is, they are "trading" from smartphone apps. Remember this - no money will ever inflow into your bank account from scrolling and tapping.
- hindsightbias 2y agoWhat’s old is new again. If you worked in a tech office in the late 90’s, every other guy had Ameritrade or similar up in a window. It was the gaming/porn you could get away with at work. Dot com roasted them all.
- ajross 2y agoAs did 2008. A bull market is a hell of a drug, as it were. And yes, we're probably headed for another big correction in the near to medium term future.
- matwood 2y ago> If you worked in a tech office Office? ;) I was trading stocks in between my CS classes in the late 90s lol
- Bluestein 2y agoSame. Good times.-
- rchaud 2y agoWasn't it still $10/trade back then? That adds user friction, which discourages the gambling aspect much more than "free" trades provided by Robinhood (free as in they'll sell your order flow data to third parties).
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoRobinhood is an ironic name for the app that enables retail investors get cleaned out by the rich at scale.
- madaxe_again 2y agoI pay my brokerage about that, which is fine, as it works out as less than 0.1% of my average deal - and it’s usually at least five years between a buy and a sell. When people complain about brokerage fees, or are pleased that their brokerage charge no fees, it usually means they will be losing their shirt at some point. Volatility trading is for masochists on actual cocaine, and suckers.
- matsemann 2y agoThe other day at the store, in my smaaaall hometown, I overheard the cashier and an older man discuss crypto while I was waiting for my turn. They were discussing meme-coins they gambled on. Super weird to hear irl.
- davidw 2y agoSounds like shoeshine boy time.
- udev4096 2y agoThe supposed "survey" or whatever the hell this is was taken from a bunch of amateur people who started trading out of boredom which depicts an entirely non-real picture of the people who have been doing this for a living since quite some time. Like with everything else, using your brain cells can quickly make you realize it's a lot more than "gambling"
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> a bunch of amateur people who started trading out of boredom Former options market maker. The industry was dead for a decade until the pandemic. It’s now more profitable than ever. Lots of negative-alpha orders that can be predictably sorted from the flow. Market makers are seeing casino-like margins on some subsets of flow; that signals a problem.
- mrguyorama 2y agoIt's hilarious watching the r/Superstonks subreddit live in a pretend reality. Supposedly Citadel is their sworn enemy but they've spent the past 4 years purposely buying badly priced shares from them. How do you educate someone so confidently and consistently wrong in their world? Someone who INSISTS that "No, this letter from BBBY that says that we are going to see massive share dilution when 500k new shares are printed and sold to pay down debts before the company is shut down, is a lie because they actually are going to magically transform into a new competitor against Amazon because Ryan Cohen (a man who was only part of BBBY for like a month) is going to be the new CEO and make us all rich" When those shares dropped at an obviously stupid price with zero future value, they bought them by the hundreds and LITERALLY wrote "thank you for the tasty dip"
- bluepizza 2y ago> Like with everything else, using your brain cells can quickly make you realize it's a lot more than "gambling" Which sounds similar to how gambling addicts report their thoughts on their addiction - that they are smart enough to learn poker, or they know enough basketball to be able to predict outcomes. Like with everything else, some research and data interpretation shows that with the remarkable exception of two or three highly specialized companies that employ some of the best mathematicians alive, most active investors underperform.
- NelsonMinar 2y agoNote this article isn't about investing, it's about gambling. It doesn't mention Robinhood's role in promoting addictive gambling behaviors. How much has it changed since this 2020 article? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/technology/robinhood-risky-trading.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/technology/robinhood-risk...
- JKCalhoun 2y ago> After funding his account with $15,000 in credit card advances Wow. Stop right there.
- itake 2y agoYoung people can take risks that seem crazy to us older folks, because they have way more time to recover. If you leverage invest early in life, even if it completely wipes you out (once), you can leverage your way back into money.
- djsnoopy 2y agoWell, it’s harder then you’re letting on if your leverage costs 20%+.
- itake 2y agoApple is up 40% this year, VOO is up 27%. 20% cost and you’re still ahead
- DonsDiscountGas 2y agoYes if the market goes up a lot you win. That's generally how leverage works. The problem is when it goes down. Or, if you're borrowing at high interest, doesn't go up quite as much. (Which leads to many people selling, which drives the price down, which leads to selling, and so on).
- n144q 2y ago
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- jondwillis 2y agoAt this point I’m just watching a slightly younger cohort of men repeat all of my worst digital addiction mistakes like getting inserted into the online video game -> toxic online behavior pipeline (or worse, fascism), ideologies (Musk), crypto and options gambling (thanks Reddit a la 2013 for all of the crypto communities and WSB) too much computer (ouch, my neck, arms and back.) I’m not doing particularly well, especially mentally, despite having tons of opportunity and successes. Worried about the younger cohorts, but I guess that is a tale as old as time.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago> They expect the problem to worsen. The stock market has climbed 23% this year... The problem will resolve itself if (when?) the market crashes. I remember the run up to the dot-com bust. I was too much of a bumpkin at the time to even know how I would trade stocks — but I listened to an acquaintance go on and on about how much he was making on the market. At the time I guessed that he was much smarter than me — that it would take me years to become as investment-savvy as this guy was. In time, especially after the next bubble in 2008 when I had become more savvy, I came to see this guy as having been in the market at a time when even a monkey throwing darts could look like Warren Buffet. So too I think are many of today's investors. (I would include myself but perhaps not: I have been won over by Boglism, a balanced portfolio, infrequent trading, etc.)
- Pooge 2y agoI have to disagree with you. Comparing long-term, passive investors to short-term speculators seems unfair and simplistic to me.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y ago> At the time I guessed that he was much smarter than me — that it would take me years to become as investment-savvy as this guy was. You lucked out by mistakingly believing he was intelligent. The classic scenario is when your neighbor is obviously an idiot, making tremendous amounts of money in the market, and you have to explain to your spouse why you can't/won't emulate them. That's when even bright, (normally) level-headed people start piling in before the bubble bursts.
- another_poster 2y agoMost people have a gambler’s mindset about the stock market: > […G]ambling in financial markets often goes undetected […] because individuals confuse their actions [i.e., speculating] with investing. The typical person speculates on the market — buying low during their working years, and hopefully selling high during their retired years.
- gadflyinyoureye 2y agoThat’s because that’s all we can do. Buffet is an actual investor. His stock position allows him to remake a company if necessary. My stock position might buy some chickie bugs at Wendy’s. I have no direct control over any company I “own” and my voting position and the position of all retail investors is functionally nil.
- mistrial9 2y agonot a lawyer here but I suspect that exercising rights as a shareholder takes some legal education and some networking.. you are right that the DEFAULT stance is what is presented.. but somehow I dont think this the whole possible story in 2024
- dan-robertson 2y agoI don’t think this is the right analysis. One should generally expect a positive return over time from investing in equities: you are giving up money now and taking on risk, and you are compensated for it by the return on investment. The word ‘speculating’ is generally referring to a different kind of activity from the kind of investing a typical person gets through paying into a pension. I don’t want to make claims about what typical people are doing with brokerage accounts, and the structure of brokerages seems to have changed enough that it’s perhaps harder to describe long term trends or the lives of ‘typical’ customers.
- another_poster 2y agoFair point. There’s a real difference in attitude between speculation and saving. Most people buy stocks to save for retirement, not to speculate that they’ll have enough money for retirement. But most people aren’t investors, either. Typical people buy stock for their returns, not for their productive capacity. My point is that’s speculation. Most people have a speculator’s mindset. They would be happy to make a windfall on the market. For example, who wouldn’t be happy to own a plot in downtown Detroit before an economic boom raised land prices? Or stock in a startup before an established company announced they would acquire it? Although someone who puts money in the stock market for retirement may intend to save money, since a 401k seems like just any another asset, but it’s quite different from other assets: Bank accounts fund lending to companies for productive investments. Homes provide a residence. Bonds provide money to countries and companies for investment. But when individuals put money in the stock market, it’s because they hope the asset will appreciate.
- habosa 2y agoMany criticize the retail investor for treating the stock market like gambling, but I think it really does resemble gambling more than investing these days. How many times have we seen a companies value jump or fall by billions based on a tweet? How many meme stocks have we seen? How many pump and dump SPACs have there been? How many companies have never (and likely will never) made a dime in profit but see their market caps continue to climb? “Value investing” is dead for most, picking a company that you believe will generate solid long-term revenue is no longer interesting. You need to figure out what is going to 10x tomorrow. There are things that we could do to slow down the public equity markets and re-establish the relationship between stock price and business fundamentals, but that’s not what almost anyone wants.
- mancerayder 2y agoI agree. I think the reality is the "don't try to be smart, do these low-risk things because statistically you're too stupid to beat the market" has logic to it, and stats to back it up. But the unspoken part is, "let the rich do that stuff, and their wealth advisors and folks on the golf courses". So there's an elitist aspect to telling people to back off. We all know people who made a killing on individual stocks, either because they bought them or they worked at a company that issued them.
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- joshlemer 2y agoIt's not really elitist. Picking individual stocks is essentially saying "I have brand new insight that nobody else has, and I'm going to earn profit by incorporating that knowledge into prices and be rewarded forgetting it right". This is clearly a very specialized activity, you shouldn't expect to be able to bring brand new, accurate insight, and out predict everyone else in the world, without a deep understanding of economics, finance, and expertise in the specific industry and the company you're trading in. It's no more elitist to say "most people should just buy index funds" than it is to say "most people should just get root canals done by dentists rather than doing it themselves".
- mancerayder 2y agoPeople want a chance to get rich. They also want excitement. Doesn't that say more about our jobs that are a) dead-end for most b) financially limiting, with a salary that goes up slowly, if at all, unless you find a new job People want the chance to win, and some meaning, and some daily purpose. No one cares anymore about the stats of "stock pickers" "day traders" and other arguments for DCAing into index funds and not touching it until you're 65. A 60/40 portfolio. Don't time the market. Efficient market hypothesis. We live in a new world now, and people are willing to gamble. Sentiment is obvious for the average person to get a sense, and they trade on sentiment. Maybe give people new meaning somehow, or a chance to make unscheduled money other than the slow-as-molasses salary increases.
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- MathMonkeyMan 2y agoYou describe the psychological motivations for gambling.
- mancerayder 2y agoThe psychological motivation for taking risk. I don't necessarily call all risky stock activity gambling. At the risk of splitting hairs, it's a little different to buy Tesla stock because of, for the sake of argument, let's say a really bad reason (CEO smart, car go fast), i.e. uninformed, than it is to bet on a number on a roulette wheel. I think we paint it as gambling because gambling has an aura of naughty judgment about it, as in, "Oh, you're just gambling because you made an uninformed stock purchase." I'd prefer the term speculating or risky stock picking. Gambling, which is banned in many places and is against the law in religious texts, has a taboo because it's addictive. I daresay only a minority of stock trading bros are addicted in that way.
- seydor 2y agowhen you re generationally deprived of real estate heroin, you end up with stock market cocaine it s all partly gambling but different strokes for different generations
- jajko 2y agoGood insured real estate is always a good safe bet. The best conservative investment that current & few past gens could have done while being completely clueless about stocks, markets, politics etc. People need to live someplace to be just part of society and also to just survive, plus there is emotional and status aspect. Western construction is lagging behind population growth in popular places plus running / ran out of good space. Do the math.
- mancerayder 2y agoI am not so sure. An article is on the front page of the WSJ (online) about property taxes and insurance becoming more than the mortgage payments. In parts of the country there's a crash in the works (Sunbelt, Florida in particular). Where I live renting is substantially cheaper than buying, by thousands a month. You are absolutely better off buying a mutual fund with the difference and enjoying the flexibility of having cash. I am not so sure what is going on in the housing market, but there is so little inventory in the hotspots, and what appears to be a dump in the no-longer-hot-spots, that it's scarier than buying stocks right now.
- hiddencost 2y agoI've done the math for a bunch of properties family and friends have owned, and they were never beating index funds. Do the math and you'll find that putting your money in an index fund almost always beats real estate, with much less risk and much less work. It's easy for one property to underperform the market by a lot. It's hard for an index fund to do the same. I own a $1.5M rental home in a luxury destination and profoundly regret it. The amount of work I put into it was enormous. I'm not outperforming the market, and I can't sell it because the mortgage rate is 2%.
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- ok654321 2y ago[dead]
- navs 2y agoI lost my life savings chasing the dopamine hit and can relate to this. I'm in my mid 30s and suffering from career burnout. I know I can't afford a home when I can barely work full-time so I figured I'd trade. I was up, and up and up! Then I was down, then up, then down. One morning I woke up and I was so down, I sold out of fear. Now I'm left with so little I might as well be starting from scratch. This feels like gambling and here I thought I was smarter than those people that lost in casinos.
- bell-cot 2y agoMy experience, with a wide variety of generally older friends & associates & such - If they're talking about an occasional visit to the casino, people will be up front about the fact that they walked into the place with $X in their pocket, and walked out with $Y. Almost always, $X > $Y. If they're talking about stocks they've bought, people will be incredibly selective, and describe only some of their greatest successes. They could lose money in a rising market, and you'd have to carefully question them to even realize that fact.
- llamaimperative 2y agoWhich is ridiculous because while casinos are engineered to ensure $x > $y over time, economies are existentially dependent on the reverse being true over time and across a broad enough portfolio. Folks you can just buy the S&P 500 and wait. It really is that simple. Money will go down sometimes, up sometimes, down some more, but in the long run it will almost certainly go up. And if it doesn't, the world is crumbling anyway so who cares?
- barfingclouds 2y agoYep this is the craziest part. The answer has been known for a long time. S&P500. Literally that simple
- navs 2y ago100% I did that at first and got greedy and impatient. Serves me right.
- liendolucas 2y agoCoincidentially today I've just finished reading: "The Little Book on Common Sense Investing" by John Bogle. What's described in the article is exactly the opposite of what people should be doing if interested in serious investing. The book mostly focus on index funds and I highly recommend its reading to anyone who wants to understand and embark on investing seriously. The book is short, extremely easy to read, full of examples, wise advices and quotes from remarkable people of the investment sector.
- itake 2y agoI’ll add it to my reading list, but I think a lot has changed in the world since this book was written.
- directevolve 2y agoIt’s a cheap way to purchase a diverse subset of the global economy. That’s as timeless as it gets.
- justin66 2y agoOnline stock trading has gone from cheap to free, but that doesn't affect the worthiness of the book.
- n144q 2y agoWhat hasn't changed: * US economy has been growing steadily, and will do so for the foreseeable future * Index funds are still a great way to invest your money And more importantly, * Most people suck at picking stocks (including the average Joe, mutual fund managers, YouTube/TikTok influencers and "stock analysts"). It's better to just leave it to the market, aka SPY(VOO)/VTI etc., and have good sleep.
- itake 2y agoFair. Many people will continue to invest in ETFs for a long time, but when people start retiring and selling from their ETFs, then the party is going to end. ETFs, because of their algorithmic known trading, don’t always get the best price for their underlying assets. Notice how before an ETF is created (see bitcoin) or a company enters the snp500, the stock shoots up in price.
- rqtwteye 2y agoAfter losing my first chunk of cash during 2000 .COM crash I became be quite contrarian. Thought real estate is way too high, thought the stock market is nuts, bitcoin is a scam. Turns out the big crash never happened and everything ket going up. Three years ago for some reason I jumped into the stock market, bought a house, bought some bitcoin. Turns out so far the gains have been life changing. If I ever get laid off,I may be able to just call it quits and retire. I still think the whole thing doesn't make sense but it seems economic fundamentals don't work anymore. Everything is a bubble.
- advilgel4 2y agoExactly me -- except still a contrarian.. Everything just goes up and up and up.
- smt88 2y agoYou went long on some fairly general assets. That's not gambling. The problem with gamblers is (for example) making risky bets on margin and ending up losing massive amounts of money because a meme stock lost 5% of its value during a normal market fluctuation.
- BobbyJo 2y agoSame. Friends who just threw money at stuff are millionaires, and I'm... not. Hard to just put the money in and expect more back when it took so much hard work to get in the first place.
- DonsDiscountGas 2y agoIf you haven't already, now might be a good time to sell some of that bitcoin
- boopk 2y agookay I don't comment on here often, can check my post history, but absolutely would not sell your bitcoin any time soon considering we have a pro crypto president and have an approx 40% chance of a bitcoin strategic reserve within the first 100 days. terrible advice tbh.
- the_king 2y agoIt may turn out that in the “next epoch,” our stock market will be understood as our civilization's greatest work of art - our greatest cathedral to capitalism.
- Hilift 2y agoSome guy wrote a book recently and claimed that about 10% of workforce-eligible men are long term out of the workforce, due to some type of disability. Also 50% either aren't engaged at work or don't really do anything essential, meaning their job could disappear and it wouldn't be a huge impact. https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2021/q1/district_digest https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus... https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/economic-letter/2023/10/mens-falling-labor-force-participation-across-generations/ https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/eco...
- BobbyJo 2y agoI think this is and overlooked factor. Though living standards have not fallen, the perceived risk of it falling is probably at an all time high. We got rid of pretty much all cultural safety nets, and now people are desperate to replace the lost security.
- spoonfeeder006 2y agoThere's a paper I saw a while ago that uses LSTM for some kind of technical analysis trading, and the portfolio grew from 115k to 155k in a year, but also consistently Seems like there's clear patterns to the market. If only these apps would teach people these patterns and trading techniques in depth rather than just letting them trade
- dzogchen 2y agoThere's a paper I saw a while ago that uses patterns for some kind of roulette strategy, and the bankroll grew from 115k to 155k in a year, but also consistently. Seems like there's clear patterns to how roulette tables operate. If only casinos would teach people these patterns and strategies in depth rather than just letting them play.
- djsnoopy 2y agoThe sp500 did 20%+ over 12 months. Hardly worth trusting the llm
- nixosbestos 2y ago"I'm not gambling! I'm smart." [proceeds to repeat this mentality, as it all dwindles away]
- Dansvidania 2y agoDunning Kruger IMO makes it quite likely that any substantial investment be a bit more like gambling than it ideally should be, as the difference really only exists in the amount of knowledge one has in the industry one invests in. On the other hand, most financial advice also states that one should not keep more than X months worth of expenses in cash, otherwise one is still losing money on inflation and the likes. EDIT: Then again, if you are staring at the tickers all day, that might still be a problem.
- farceSpherule 2y agoPure schadenfreude for retards who use Robin Hood thinking they are making money…
- liontwist 2y agoThe real elephant in the room is sports betting. Sports has mainstream appeal and accessibility that stocks will never have (primarily white collar with good jobs). Every libertarian theory about legalizing gambling has been wrong. Marketing and ease of access increase use. It’s making sports worse and hurting young men.
- sakopov 2y agoThe hardest thing about investing is to not turn it into gambling.
- sashank_1509 2y agoAt some point the US will have to come to terms that the insane libertarianism that it shows to individuals is not a recipe for them living a good or meaningful life. Modern life makes it extremely easy for men to ruin their lives, with gambling, drugs, alcohol, screen addiction etc. We know what a good life looks like, we lack the will of forcing people who make destructive decisions into living the good life. Until that is done, things will keep getting worse.
- narrator 2y agoI make enough trading to live off of. Sure, I lost small amounts of money for about 15 years to get good enough at it to do well the last 4 years, but now I spend a lot of time looking at the market because it's basically my job. If I had a real job, I'd spend all my time peeking at the market, and probably make less money, lol. I'd say it's a great job for generalist news junkies. Also, now with AI you can have it grind through hundreds of pages of stuff. It's like having your own hedge fund research department. Getting over the psychological difficulties to becoming a good trader and unlearning bad conventional thinking takes a while though. It's why good traders are such non-conformists. They have trained themselves to not trust crowds and instead determine the truth themselves in controversial matters and then ride the crowd as it slowly realizes things.
- harimau777 2y agoI wonder if this could, in a manner of speaking, be a "rational" choice that indicates a breakdown in society. That is to say, perhaps some of what we are seeing is that younger people have concluded that the only way to live a decent life in America is to become rich and becoming rich mostly comes down to luck. If gambling is the only way to get a decent life then they may as well gamble. If they lose, then they were already going to have a bad life anyways.
- dingdondengar 2y agoI’m old enough to remember when you couldn’t just buy one share (you had to by a “lot” of 100), and when I actually received a paper stock certificate that I had to sign and mail to my broker. Rubes will try to beat the market and one in 1000 will succeed. Ignore them and follow the basics. I’ve been investing since the 80s and all my peers that did the boring thing are retiring comfortably.
- nc 2y agoThe boring thing being buy and hold?
- billy99k 2y agoEven worse is the 'air drop' craze of the crypto world. I also think the people that invested (and lost) their money in HAWK coin knew what they were doing. They wanted to pump and dump the coin and couldn't get out fast enough. It's just another way to gamble.
- nazgulnarsil 2y agoCapitalism-meritocracy= lottery. This feeling percolates deeply into society over time.
- janalsncm 2y agoThere’s something to be said about our economy that doesn’t seem to value hard work and long term planning anymore for the prospects of a middle class life. It’s not enough to study hard, work hard, climb the ranks of a company, etc. Those days are over. For most people, buying a house and raising a family (normal, healthy aspirations) are out of reach. We live in a ruthlessly “meritocratic” society. Not that we have a meritocracy but we very much value the idea of merit earning wealth. But the corollary to saying that people with merit will do well is that people who aren’t doing well must not have merit. In other words they are useless. For a person (especially young men) without the luck or credentials to be considered to have “merit” their only chance to make it is to bet it all on black. I would suggest that’s not a very healthy or sustainable way forward.
- veunes 2y agoGamification of trading is the trend that should be regulated! It blurs the line between investing and gambling.