#0 - Be pessimistic about the stock market.
This is by far the most meaningful way most people lose money over the course of their lifetime.
How to Lose Money
101–110 of 300 posts
Re: How to Lose Money
#102> I’ve written four short books and they have literally grossed hundreds of dollars. I hear this argument pretty often. A book is not a binary thing: there is a book, and there isn't. It's not about the "book", it's about the contents of the book. So in other words the author has gathered some knowledge and he didn't make much money off of it. Therefore, the knowledge you will gather will not allow you to earn any mo…
Obviously there are people who make very good money off books. And one advantage of books, compared to say stock trading, is that the "only" risk is your time. (There may be some costs but probably not a lot unless you go into large-scale promotion.)
That said, it's pretty speculative to make any significant sum though the right book may be helpful to very helpful to support professional activities in various ways.
Re: How to Lose Money
#103> And as a side benefit it will help me make ends meet since I’ve lost so much money but still need to pay bills and such.
I feel your pain. Thursday was rough.
Re: How to Lose Money
#104Building an online course[1] has been one of the easiest ways to make money in my personal experience. Other things I've tried building: SaaS, Trades business, Freelancing business. I've made over $8k since I launched last month and it's been a great stepping stone into other ideas. The main problem I see going forward is getting consistent traffic. Building the course was the "easy" part and now I'm focusing hard on…
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you got to the frontpage of HN the first time you posted your site which presumably generated the bulk of that 8k, right? If you hit the jackpot (I.e. front page of HN) on your first try, yes it's going to feel like it's super easy to make money off building a course.
The frontpage of HN seems to be a sort of 'holy grail' for some HN readers, but you always have to remember that it's only a good thing if "HN readers" are your potential customers. If they're not then it's just a distracting spike in traffic that will do very little for your sales. And HN readers are a pretty diverse bunch (geographically, financially, and as far as interests go) so it's unlikely that many of us are likely to be buying unless your product has a weirdly broad appeal.
It's far better to get 50 page views from potential customers than 50,000 page views from people who aren't truly interested in buying what you're offering.
Re: How to Lose Money
#105I wonder how many noticed that the article continues with 5 points for " How to make money " after the image with broken savings. "4. Stop quitting" resonates the most with me, in hindsight. And I'm not sure if I would have persisted with my current work if I hadn't got lucky with encouraging sales at the start.
Yeah a lot of comments focused on courses, but they talk about how to make money with courses. “Build a following, then sale”
Re: How to Lose Money
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you got to the frontpage of HN the first time you posted your site which presumably generated the bulk of that 8k, right? If you hit the jackpot (I.e. front page of HN) on your first try, yes it's going to feel like it's super easy to make money off building a course.
The frontpage of HN seems to be a sort of 'holy grail' for some HN readers, but you always have to remember that it's only a good thing if "HN readers" are your potential customers. If they're not then it's just a distracting spike in traffic that will do very little for your sales. And HN readers are a pretty diverse bunch (geographically, financially, and as far as interests go) so it's unlikely that many of us are…
If you're selling a product related to vim I think HN is probably one of the best places on the internet to advertise your product, don't you?
In practice, I think that if you're posting to HN then HN readers are likely to be in your target audience. Because why would you be posting here if they aren't?
Re: How to Lose Money
#107Gary Vaynerchuk has some great come backs to people in his events saying "I'm going to start a business, buy property ETC"
The internet is awash with the slime in this article but people want fast money.
Fast money in leaves fast as well.
Re: How to Lose Money
#108School 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.
>Learning a 3-5 yr curriculum
You don't need that to find a decent job. Most developer/programmer jobs have very little to do with comp. sci (which is math) and a lot more with practical application of few select skills.
Re: How to Lose Money
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is easily avoided by not writing option contracts. If you're new to options and are ready to start exploring with real money, you should only be buying them and then selling them, not writing new ones. The exact same thing can be said for shorting stocks and, to a lesser extent, buying stocks on margin. I'm happy to say after getting margin-called in 2008, I haven't been since! Writing options and shorting makes…
You can write spreads and not have infinite downside risk. Iron condors are designed to collect premium and you’re covered (at a loss, but a fixed loss) if the stock goes one way or another too far. Of course at that point we are already more advanced than a YOLO casino roller. But yes, in general it’s wise to avoid bets with infinite downside and limited upside. You tend to win these bets frequently (and make small…
I would like to add that even with a spread you can bankrupt yourself if you are assigned to one side of the leg on expiration day after hours, stock moves against you, you aren't notified in time and therefore can't exercise the other leg.
It's rare but not that rare.
Re: How to Lose Money
#110>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…
Earlier last year around May, when the stock market seemed to pick up after the COVID crash, I purchased a number of deep OTM LEAPs (long expiry options; until early this year). They were incredibly cheap. I often had trouble finding a market maker for those. I only chucked about $2000 in, but these options have grossed $15,000 in realised returns and $25,000 in unrealised returns. Options allowed me to make a “bet”…
I've been looking into 12 / 18 / 24 month calls for Tesla, AMD, NVDA, AAPL and there is nothing cheap available anymore, even the really OTM stuff.
There was some stories about 12 / 24 month sub dollar OTM Tesla calls that printed between march and the split, but alas, no such things anymore. There are some deep ITM prices that sell for around the delta, but then might as well buy the shares.
What are you looking at these days?