"Build a following first" Easier said than done, why would people follow you if you don't have anything interesting to share? You have to start somewhere
not easy at all...definitely something that requires taking a longer term view/approach
How to Lose Money
211–220 of 300 posts
Re: How to Lose Money
#212> 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…
this is a great point. writing doesn't have to be about getting rich at all...I think the point in the article was write about what you care about - then it will be a good outcome whether it makes money or not
Re: How to Lose Money
#213Re: How to Lose Money
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Commodities are infinite more volatile than stocks - mostly due to the sheer [large] volume of market participants. For example, today the nasdaq 100 future moved 22 points in the first 60 seconds of the day session. That's $480 gain/loss, per contract - in the first 60 seconds. Within 180 seconds, it moved a further 50 points. To recap...within the first 3 minutes, the futures market moved 72 points, or $1,440 per c…
Uh, NQ is stock future not a commodity future? Commodity futures are soybean, oil, corn, gold, etc.
NQ is based on the collective value of the nasdaq 100, which themselves are classified as a commodity by the NFA. I'm not sure if you are being pedantic or not... 75 years ago, the commodities you listed were the only type available on the futures market - but since then, it's no longer the case.
Re: How to Lose Money
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If I truly believe I have a better guess about whether a stock is going to go up than the general market conensus (which is what I'm assuming is powering options pricing), then I do stand a chance of making money right? Yes [1]. But a one-way single-leg options bet is far less likely to make you money, in that case, than just going long or short the stock. [1] I am going to parse “truly believe” as have an informat…
Makes sense. My limited understanding is that with options I don't just have to guess that the stock will go up but also by how much and when. Agreed that many amateurs (like me) don't realize this well enough.
> My limited understanding is that with options I don't just have to guess that the stock will go up but also by how much and when
Also interest rates, the stock borrow rate, dividends, the shape of the volatility curve, et cetera.
Re: How to Lose Money
#216Options are effectively Zero Sum - meaning that whoever is on the other side of the contract is predicting the opposite of whatever you're thinking. Successful long-term options traders don't trade options 'directionally' (like buying 50K of GME calls), they manage a whole portfolio of options, and then take directional portfolio risk. This is sort of like diversifying, then running risk analysis, then figuring out w…
Sorry but this comment is full of misinformation. > whoever is on the other side of the contract is predicting the opposite of whatever you're thinking. If you are a retail options trader, the person on the other side is a professional market maker who doesn't have a "prediction" the way you'd think about it. He made his money at the moment you did the trade, because you traded at a disadvantage relative to the fair…
Glad someone rebutted. I'd like to add the person on the other side of a retail long options trade can be a market marker or people like me that sell to retail for the same reason. :)
Re: How to Lose Money
#217Building 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.
Seems like OP is focused on building a steady traffic source to sell his product. Combination of a good product + marketing focus.
I have a popular Spark blog where I sell Spark books: https://leanpub.com/u/MrPowers. Customers like the product and I have a steady traffic source. It's possible to build side hustles with SEO - don't need to hit the HN jackpot.
Re: How to Lose Money
#218This article is long and I missed the bottom half on my first read.
The top section is awful without the bottom section.
If you're going to do anything to make money you should make sure you charge by the hour.
If instead you enjoy doing your side project and it may be monetizable you'll be golden.
Because no project is guaranteed to make money, if you consider it fun then you should be able to just enjoy it.
Then when it starts requiring the things you may not love to scale you can decide if the money is worth the marketing, patenting, managing, etc that comes with turning a project to a business
Re: How to Lose Money
#219Options are effectively Zero Sum - meaning that whoever is on the other side of the contract is predicting the opposite of whatever you're thinking. Successful long-term options traders don't trade options 'directionally' (like buying 50K of GME calls), they manage a whole portfolio of options, and then take directional portfolio risk. This is sort of like diversifying, then running risk analysis, then figuring out w…
Sorry but this comment is full of misinformation. > whoever is on the other side of the contract is predicting the opposite of whatever you're thinking. If you are a retail options trader, the person on the other side is a professional market maker who doesn't have a "prediction" the way you'd think about it. He made his money at the moment you did the trade, because you traded at a disadvantage relative to the fair…
What are vols and building curves? The factors that effect extrinsic values? Volitilty and time?
Re: How to Lose Money
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 think it is rather well known since Taleb's book came out that deep OTM options, including LEAPs tend to be mispriced as there's just not enough data to model better pricing.
what is Taleb's book?