I think its not HN but it's the openness and inclination to help that makes HN very unique.
Ask HN: HN for Finance?
61–70 of 77 posts
Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?
#62Not a professional but I think I follow markets pretty closely for a retail trader.
Twitter / FinTwit is the best
Level of discussion is not always great but I find its way better than anywhere else. Twitter Spaces usually have great discussions since people are less likely to troll vs tweets.
One thing I've found though is if the person is getting too cocky and going on victory laps, it's pretty much always a good time to counter trade them.
You'll be able to find some great Substack's, Podcasts, Youtube channels from Twitter as well if you're following the right people.
Some that I follow
- @fedguy12 - macro
- @JulianMI2 - macro
- @biancoresearch - macro
- @acrossthespread - Japan macro
- @anasalhajji - energy
- Pretty much any central bank, government official
- Fund managers. Many of them aren't too active and just crosspost links to videos. Cliff Asness is one that is active though
- Forward Guidance
- Odd Lots
HN is still way better than Reddit on the rare finance/economics post. Every finance thread you'll get a few people who have unique insights/opinions but I think the majority is still a lot of retail market participants who just regurgitate the Reddit stuff.
Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?
#63The 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-…
Securitization is a good example of a finance hack but I have to mention that it is half a century old innovation. Ofcourse, C/C++ is also about that age and people still talk about it on HN (mostly to proclaim its dead, but very frequently about some amazing and impactful projects based on it that still go strong)
But this brings to a second peculiarity of the financial world of today that makes it less fitting for an open discussion forum of (aspiring) fin-techies like HN. Its very proprietary, secretive and dominated by a few megaplayers (pick any subdomain: banking, asset management, trading platforms, credit ratings, credit scoring etc. there is some oligopoly milking it and they are not about to open it up to random DIY hackers)
One area that was quite intriguing for a while and maybe conducive to a more decentralized discourse (but predictably hasn't gone anywhere) is peer-to-peer lending.
p.s. my parent comment is downvoted even if it is about the only one in this thread that doesn't pitch some stonks forum or another. Alas, the milking machine is well oiled...
Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?
#64Litquidity
Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?
#65I wish there were such a website, but I haven't seen one. That's unfortunate, because I often feel the need to skip the comments sections on HN for economics-related posts.
There are many armchair economists here, mostly with a pure software dev outlook on the topic. People who've never taken a single class about finance confidently chime in with some of the worst takes I've ever heard.
They seem to think that because they're good at programming, they must therefore be masters of all studies, since STEM majors are often harder to get accepted into. This is a logical fallacy, and it's pretty tiring.
Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Just the same three questions ad nauseum A lot of Reddit seems like that.
It is unfortunate that the design encourages new posts on existing topics, compared to forums where bumping brings a state topic to fresh.
Maybe the answer is for each link or topic or submission to have multiple comment pages, and make it significantly more likely for people to find themselves back in old conversations. The way reddit locks discussion after a time frame makes this all but impossible though.
Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?
#67I wish there were such a website, but I haven't seen one. That's unfortunate, because I often feel the need to skip the comments sections on HN for economics-related posts. There are many armchair economists here, mostly with a pure software dev outlook on the topic. People who've never taken a single class about finance confidently chime in with some of the worst takes I've ever heard. They seem to think that becaus…
The CS-leaning finance professionals are often bad too.
The best use of CS knowledge is knowing how to avoid the quant trading herd.
Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Just the same three questions ad nauseum A lot of Reddit seems like that.
It is unfortunate that the design encourages new posts on existing topics, compared to forums where bumping brings a state topic to fresh. Maybe the answer is for each link or topic or submission to have multiple comment pages, and make it significantly more likely for people to find themselves back in old conversations. The way reddit locks discussion after a time frame makes this all but impossible though.
It's also karma-farming. Go find a popular post and re-post it for easy internet points.
Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?
#69As an update to this, what about more institutional websites like [1]
[1] https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/
Re: Ask HN: HN for Finance?
#70Unlikely. 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…
I think you might be missing the actual great thing about HN. It's not that it doesn't restrict topics, it's that it pseudo restricts audience by both targeting a specific subset of the tech movement (the business minded folks who have a bent towards founding companies while still being highly technical) while not being heavy handed about it and while also appearing to pursue moderation in their moderation. This means I tend to actually be able to see and engage with reasonable leftie points I haven't thought of, not get downvoted into oblivion if I bring a well thought out center right position to the conversation (indeed sometimes I actually collect upvotes if I do that, which is unheard of on other platforms like most subreddits). It also means the obviously incorrect far left nonsense is kept to a dull roar here even though this place leans pretty heavily (if mostly moderately) left. This place honestly feels like political debate looked 60-70 years ago before all civility left politics and positions were dumbed down to soundbites, albeit with a center leftist party in charge.