As my third job, when I was perhaps around 17-18, I worked in a small publicly listed company. What I saw there in terms of inefficiency, PR, gaming the system and outright corruption turned me off stocks and the market entirely.
Ask HN: How did you learn about stocks and the market?
131–140 of 161 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn about stocks and the market?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
The services you mentioned only for US, or anyone can access it. For example EU citizens can also open account and set periodic investment?
There are some Quora questions about that: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-equivalent-company-to-Weal... The answer from some brief poking seems to be that there's nothing in the greater EU right now.
Awesome... who wants to collaborate to build one?
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn about stocks and the market?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you can beat the market by doing a few things: 1. Invest, don't trade. That means buying companies in large quantities when they're at a bargain, and holding for a long time (think years or even decades). This will keep your costs and commissions down. 2. Look where others won't. As Ben Graham and Seth Klarman have pointed out in their books, you want to look for companies that no one else is looking at for a var…
Any support evidence?
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn about stocks and the market?
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ive read Intelligent Investor twice - and there is a chapter midway through the annotated version which basically says that if you arent willing to put in the time finding value shares then stick with passive investing in low cost funds. I also read Buffetts share letter and he frequently touts how well passive investing would do, even with respect to Berkshire Hathaway Im purely passive now based mostly on boglehead…
Would you please mind giving some examples of low-cost ETFs?
I gave you examples! VTI, VOO, VXUS, BND, BNDX
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn about stocks and the market?
#135You will never, ever beat the market by making smart trades. Get real- you're a beginner reading investopedia. Active funds employ hundreds or thousands of people who work more than full-time to support an operation of systematically studying investment opportunities and exploiting inside information to beat the market, and even they don't beat the market. Put your money in a diversified portfolio of index funds and…
There's a lot of folklore about how active funds consistently under perform passive funds, but that's only in aggregate. If you aggregate a few active funds they will be a good proxy for the index, which after fees, will have less returns than buying the index. There is dependence in active fund returns, a good fund will consistently be a good fund, and a bad fund will consistently be a bad. You also have selection b…
If this was said of companies people could say "Don't buy an index. That's just an average of good companies and bad companies. Instead just buy good companies they will consistently outperform the index."
The problem is in the details. Identifying good companies is very very hard. Identifying good funds is much much harder. By the time there is a large amount of evidence that a fund is a good fund it is either A. closed to new funds
or
B. Drowning in so much cash that there is no hope of delivering it's historical returns.(its much easier to return 12% on 10 million than 10 billion)
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn about stocks and the market?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There are people and firms which consistently beat the S&P 500 after fees and trade commissions on a timeline of 20+ years without using insider trading. What would this be called, other than "smart" trading? Mind naming a few? I'm unfamiliar with any firms that consistently can beat the S&P 500, much less for 20+ consecutive years. This could, of course, be called "luck". Given the number of investors, some will in…
There is a difference between an institutional investor or advisors with fiduciary responsibility and a free agent. Professionals have consequences for fucking up beyond the money lost. So they always parrot whatever advice will not get them sued. Warren Buffet has been quoted elsewhere in this story recommending index funds. But, funny enough, his own behavior is 180 degrees from that. I always find these threads am…
There are very specific reasons a house is a better investment than an REIT.
1. Taxes - There are tax breaks to owning 2. Property Management - For an REIT you pay a property manager. If you own, no need to manage your property. Free +1.2% return on asset! 3. Loans are heavily subsidized by the government, REITs cannot get 30 year loans at 3-4% interest. 4. Occupancy - You live here. Occupancy rate 100% so take an +.6% to returns!
If the government stopped 1 and 3, technology completely automated 2, and leases were 4 years long. Then no one would recommend buying your own house as an investment.
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn about stocks and the market?
#137You will never, ever beat the market by making smart trades. Get real- you're a beginner reading investopedia. Active funds employ hundreds or thousands of people who work more than full-time to support an operation of systematically studying investment opportunities and exploiting inside information to beat the market, and even they don't beat the market. Put your money in a diversified portfolio of index funds and…
One thing to note is that even if you are one of the few who has a gift for investing, you need to be investing a lot of money to break even.
Assume
1. it takes an extra 500 hours a year to research and buy good investments.
2. you make $60 an hour
3. all your hard work delivers a respectable alpha of 3%(3% better returns than than the market)
You need to be investing approximately 1 million dollars to break even.
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn about stocks and the market?
#138You will never, ever beat the market by making smart trades. Get real- you're a beginner reading investopedia. Active funds employ hundreds or thousands of people who work more than full-time to support an operation of systematically studying investment opportunities and exploiting inside information to beat the market, and even they don't beat the market. Put your money in a diversified portfolio of index funds and…
Don't listen to this. You can beat the market --there are plenty of people that do.
The thing about investing is that it takes experience and you unfortunately only get that by investing.
One thing you don't want to do is trade. You want to act like an owner. That means find companies and get involved for the long term.
Also remember there is no free money out there. Investing takes a lot of work and often times doesn't pay off for years.
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn about stocks and the market?
#139You will never, ever beat the market by making smart trades. Get real- you're a beginner reading investopedia. Active funds employ hundreds or thousands of people who work more than full-time to support an operation of systematically studying investment opportunities and exploiting inside information to beat the market, and even they don't beat the market. Put your money in a diversified portfolio of index funds and…
One thing to note is that even if you are one of the few who has a gift for investing, you need to be investing a lot of money to break even. Assume 1. it takes an extra 500 hours a year to research and buy good investments. 2. you make $60 an hour 3. all your hard work delivers a respectable alpha of 3%(3% better returns than than the market) You need to be investing approximately 1 million dollars to break even.
I don't understand this at all. In what world is there an infinite amount of hours I can work? Most people work 40 hours a week and if they work more don't get paid extra (barring overtime but do you work somewhere where you can just work 100 hours a week and put in 60 hours of overtime because you felt like it?).
Between weekends and just general downtime in week (I spend time watching netflix and browsing the internet and I read books in my commute) I have at least 30 hours free a week. If you're into stocks as much as I'm into wasting time entertaining myself then why not.
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn about stocks and the market?
#140I didn't know what stocks were until my first job out of college as a junior civil engineer. It was 1999, everyone in the office was talking about stocks, all the time. There were magazines laying around like "Money", one I remember had a photo on the cover of a guy and the jet skis he bought with his smart stock investments. Lucky for me I didn't have any savings to 'invest', because it turned out all the stocks people talked about (Juniper Networks? comes to mind) weren't really worth anything, and led to permanent losses on a significant fraction of my colleagues savings.
So...I think it's important to consider fundamental value. A diversified low cost US fund makes sense. I've also learned about bonds, I think medium grade US corporate is a good trade off, when it comes to bond funds you want fixed maturity date 'bullets'. Municipal bonds are good as well. Yada yada, AAPL.