This is good advice. I wrote a bunch of novels, got a degree - a Ph.D. in philosophy to make sure I'll never make any money and people who have money wouldn't want to give it to me -, and did some Internet advertising. Not very surprisingly, I'm fairly poor. However, I've still managed to save a little bit of money so maybe I should start trading now.
How to Lose Money
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Re: How to Lose Money
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US is composed of a heap of immigrants that migrated to the US and to a point intermingled culturally to come up with a new country / culture. The Anglo-Saxons were a people made out of immigrants from Germanic Europe that migrated to what is now England and mingled with indigenous British groups, tracing back to the 5th century. It's often used to refer to the language spoken in England and eastern Scotland unti…
Is it common to think the Normans were Vikings? The Normans are the reason why half of the English dictionary consists of French words.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans
They were a mixed people, partly descended from Vikings. Not only people descended from Vikings invaded England. You had non Viking French in there too.
Re: How to Lose Money
#339) Time is money. So by reading lot of irrelevant posts on HN and commenting and not doing your own job > wasting time > leads to loss of money.
Re: How to Lose Money
#34Re: How to Lose Money
#35School is such a guaranteed one now during Covid – you don't even get social serendipity. You're literally sitting there on Zoom burning through cash. What common folk don't realize is that college is just a luxury consumption good of the rich.
Yes and no. A Comp Sci./Eng. degree is pretty much guaranteed to get you a decently paying job. My ROI has been > 20x. Learning a 3-5 yr curriculum on your own is a surefire way to get you demotivated and/or depressed.
> A Comp Sci./Eng. degree is pretty much guaranteed to get you a decently paying job.
This has been the case in the recent past and is probably still true right now but the trend won't last forever.
Re: How to Lose Money
#36I know people who consistently make money with each of those categories. In any endeavour, most people can't make money and a few can. Maybe the author is just a general loser?
Re: How to Lose Money
#37This is good advice. I wrote a bunch of novels, got a degree - a Ph.D. in philosophy to make sure I'll never make any money and people who have money wouldn't want to give it to me -, and did some Internet advertising. Not very surprisingly, I'm fairly poor. However, I've still managed to save a little bit of money so maybe I should start trading now.
Right now seems like a great way to lose some money in trading. Use options to make sure it’s fast and that the losses stick.
Re: How to Lose Money
#38>The nice thing about options is that there isn’t just one way to lose money. No, you can lose money in many different ways – far more than I can write on this page. This is the most important lesson of options. It's never just a coin flip. You have an unimaginably huge number of factors riding against your success. It's not even remotely close to a 50/50 win/lose scenario. There are a million ways to lose, and just…
Options should be used as intended: as a hedge.
E.g. If I am net long in my portfolio and I fear some headwinds I can buy a put or two for the peace of mind. Now those puts should be always considered as worthless, and it is just the price to pay for the peace of mind.
Similarly you sell options. Trading options on the other hand is just pure gambling. Even if you get the direction right you likely won't get the timing right (or the volatility).
edit: typo
Re: How to Lose Money
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe an important point is that happy != informed.
It might also be true that neither the buyer not the seller, in any transaction, are happy about it as such . It could, or even probably should be, argued that one should remain dispassionate about the outcome of any specific transaction in particular. If you can't do that, then you probably are gambling, and that's probably a bad thing.
> It might also be true that neither the buyer not the seller, in any transaction, are happy about it as such.
"Happy" here is used in a very specific sense: If two parties engage in a transaction without coercion, it must be because they are both made better off by the transaction or they would both be less happy without the transaction.
This is where "gains from trade" come from.
The ability to make this statement disappears the moment either or both parties are required to participate in the transaction or are required to engage in different transaction.
The argument of the grandparent is that just like in any transaction, there are two parties to an option being traded at a given price. One party believes it's a good deal because they think the price they paid is low enough to accept the risk-reward balance and the other part believes the price they received is high enough for the certain payoff to cover the reward-risk balance they are giving up.
They might both be right because the reward you seek and the risk you can bear is a function of your current endowment in human and financial capital.
Re: How to Lose Money
#40>The nice thing about options is that there isn’t just one way to lose money. No, you can lose money in many different ways – far more than I can write on this page. This is the most important lesson of options. It's never just a coin flip. You have an unimaginably huge number of factors riding against your success. It's not even remotely close to a 50/50 win/lose scenario. There are a million ways to lose, and just…
It's a 50/50 bet if you pick sides at random. You may have a loss in expectation but it will be because of spreads, transaction costs, taxes, etc. (Only half-joking.)
Well, it can’t be 50-50 bet ever since there’s the time decay. 33 percent is the best bet to win!