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Ask HN: HN for Finance?

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Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?

#31

Post by shred45 »

drexlspivey wrote: post #14
mtmail wrote: post #2

On "Ask HN: Hacker News, but for Finance?" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29557943 ) https://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/ , https://bogleheads.org/forum/index.php , https://www.elitetrader.com/et/ were suggested.

There’s also a r/bogleheads subreddit which cracks me up because there is literally nothing to talk about. Just the same three questions ad nauseum. For the uninitiated bogleheads are followers of the passive investment philosophy of John Bogle (founder of Vanguard) which in short is: 1. Set a standing order from your paycheck to your broker every month 2. Set an automatic buy of a total market ETF and a bond ETF on…

I'm not sure about the subreddit, but from my reading of the forum, there is still quite a lot of work / discussion to be done related to implementing said strategy in a tax efficient manner, directly purchasing bonds rather than using the ETFs, usage of TIPS, alternative asset classes like real estate, and portfolio allocation given age, etc.

I've learned that maintaining even the simplest "strategy" can be a lot of work.

Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?

#32

Post by crosen99 »

credit_guy wrote: post #15

Unlikely. Here's a Hacker News lookalike [1] for Machine Learning. You'll see that the latest post was 11 days ago, and the one before that 29 days ago and the one before 54. Most topics have one or zero comments. And ML is a much more popular topic than finance. The great thing about HN is that it does not restrict the topics. People can bring up anything they find interesting. As soon as you want to limit the discu…

> Here's a Hacker News lookalike [1] for Machine Learning. You'll see that the latest post was 11 days ago, and the one before that 29 days ago and the one before 54.

It looks like the main feed of DataTau (https://datatau.net/) may not be promoting posts from the "new" feed (https://datatau.net/new) aggressively enough. There are a few dozen new posts in just the last few days. I understand the dilemma with promoting posts before they have activity, but maybe the algorithm needs to be tweaked.

Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?

#33

Post by xekul »

For Canadian equities, especially mining stocks, ceo.ca seems to have a lot of knowledgeable participants.

Otherwise, maybe a Bloomberg terminal, though it's out of reach for most people. The high price to entry is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?

#35

Post by iLoveOncall »

credit_guy wrote: post #15

Unlikely. Here's a Hacker News lookalike [1] for Machine Learning. You'll see that the latest post was 11 days ago, and the one before that 29 days ago and the one before 54. Most topics have one or zero comments. And ML is a much more popular topic than finance. The great thing about HN is that it does not restrict the topics. People can bring up anything they find interesting. As soon as you want to limit the discu…

> And ML is a much more popular topic than finance

What sort of isolated bubble do you live in to spit out stuff like that? xD

ML is a niche topic in a niche field (AI) itself in a relatively niche field (CS), itself in a broader topic (Tech).

Finance is at least as big as tech. Saying it's less popular than ML simply makes no sense.

Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?

#37

Post by capableweb »

credit_guy wrote: post #15

Unlikely. Here's a Hacker News lookalike [1] for Machine Learning. You'll see that the latest post was 11 days ago, and the one before that 29 days ago and the one before 54. Most topics have one or zero comments. And ML is a much more popular topic than finance. The great thing about HN is that it does not restrict the topics. People can bring up anything they find interesting. As soon as you want to limit the discu…

> And ML is a much more popular topic than finance.

Holy SV-bubble moly, I don't think that's true, maybe not even in SV itself.

Two quick comparisons:

- https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Finance,... (Finance VS Machine Learning)

- https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Finance%... (Finance News VS Machine Learning News)

Even when comparing the region where "Machine Learning" is the most popular (South Korea), it ends up being 18% / 82% for "Finance". Or comparing the most popular city (Sunnyvale) it ends up being 14% / 86% for "Finance".

Not only is finance both a deeper and wider subject than machine learning, but also most people know that finance exists one way or another, while most people in the world probably haven't even heard about machine learning.

Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?

#39

Post by MonkeyClub »

yomly wrote: post #24
jowdones wrote: post #11

A "HN for Finance" has about the same appeal to it's regular crowd as "HN for Fruitarians". The "Fruitarians" already have their tight communities. Everyone who wanted to be in such a community is there already, not dumbly questioning on HN.

I'm sure there are people who straddle both

There was a time when HN wasn’t for “dumbly questioning”, a golden era some might say.

Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?

#40

Post by chadash »

college_physics wrote: post #29

The reason there is no HN for finance is that people, in general, don't hack finance. They are just consumers of a tightly setup up and controlled legal, political and technical infrastructure. Oh, sure there are "sophisticated" day traders, but those are just fodder for the Wall Street casino. The closest to really hacking finance was (the horror, the horror) the cryptofinance lot, but this has degenerated quickly i…

I believe that this is quite untrue. Finance is full of clever innovations that are mostly meant to make money for their creators. Because the monetary rewards are so high, it attracts some very talented people.

As just one example, you can securitize the revenues from golf courses. You can say, hey, i own six courses bringing in an average of $100m a year. I'm gonna take that $600m cash flow and sell it in an asset-backed security in order to raise money to finance the acquisition of more golf courses. Then I'm gonna tranche up those securities, because I found that I'll make more money selling 50% super safe and 50% risky than selling it as 100% middle-of-the-road risky. This example isn't really a hack anymore... it's almost the norm. But someone had to have the initial insight and then figure out if this was legal.

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