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Are You Trading or Gambling?

investinglessons.substack.com

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Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#51

This is totally meta but... this style of writing or rhetoric is prone to "semantic not concept" problems. Gambling, Trading or Investing don't have strict enough meanings to withstand a "socrates is a man" analysis... The author here is trying to make a point about EV. IE, a player is gambling, but the house is investing because positive or negative EV. I disagree. IMO, negative or positive EV is not what separates…

> The author here is trying to make a point about EV.

This is only the first of their two points (summarised at the top and bottom). The second section "Poor Bet Sizing" covers what you are trying to say.

They make the second point that even if you have positive EV, the size of your bet is relevant - and the Kelly Criterion can help you decide how much to stake.

The larger your bankroll, the more volatility you can stomach [the smaller your bankroll, the more "good bets" are still a personal risk] - you are agreeing with their second point, that you should think like a professional gambler.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#52
post #13

Around 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to a member of Nasdaq top management talk about the stock market. It's all a _tiny_ bit blurry, being a long time ago, but I remember how he talked about three different perspectives for investing in stock: First, the "company perspective". An investor would buy stock in a company they believed in. Maybe they had good products, or good management, or something else…

I think you can still buy some stock with the intention of collecting the dividends or hoping for the stock's value to grow over time.

There are simple calculations like Price/Earnings ratio that are usually published with every stock, that can help to see if it is a "gambling stock".

You will of course hear all sorts of opinions about the stock market, including hardcore socialists who believe it is the root of all evil and so on. So take everything with a grain of salt.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes a lot of sense. I think the GME debacle is a good demonstration of that. Shorting stocks is a part of the game. Some people exploited it, others found a counter move. I don’t believe GME is worth what the market currently values it at. But I also don’t see that fundamental value ever matching the market value anytime soon because the market has fully embraced its non-rationality regarding this stock. We ar…

> But I also don’t see that fundamental value ever matching the market value(...). We aren’t trading shares in a specific company here. We are trading Melvin’a profits and/or losses. I think you're still doing L1/L2 thinking. The way I understand L3, there's no such thing as "fundamental value". There's only market value, that's determined by what people think the market value is. The extent to which it's correlated…

But it is obviously bullshit, as the real companies behind some stocks have a real value. Like for example they might own a building that is worth one billion dollars (simple example). If you take away all the stock market shenanigans, you still own part of that building via your stocks.

As for the usefulness question: providing liquidity is useful. If an investor considers investing in some project, it helps his decision making if they can be reasonably sure that they will be able to sell their shares later on.

And even if it wasn't useful, why would you care what other people do with their money?

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#54
post #3

It's an artificial distinction. If you are wealthy, you have access to opportunities with good odds, call it trading and tell everyone about it so they know you are a sophisticated and wise investor. If you are poor, you have few good options and generally wouldn't brag about your gambling. If you do, you are labelled irresponsible.

When you are poor, your discretionary investments are a small fraction of your future income. So you can afford to blow out your brokerage account a few times. In a way, college, marriage, and kids are leveraged bets on your future income so they are more risky than gambling past income.

When you are wealthy you have to be more disciplined and pace yourself. The only thing you thing that you can’t slow down the pace of is time.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I will never touch day trading is, that it is basically the same thing HF traders do. Only 1000 times slower. So I will loose against these guys every single time. And even HF traders loose money. The only single stock investments I have came from employment, either through RSUs or employer sponsored stock buying programs. RSUs are just coming to you, and why would I not take stock at 50% discount? The onl…

You are wrong. HF traders front run to profit off individual trades by beating them to better prices. Day traders try to get an edge and exploit it to profit intraday by simply selling higher than they bought.

And why would that be sustainably possible?

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#56
post #13

Around 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to a member of Nasdaq top management talk about the stock market. It's all a _tiny_ bit blurry, being a long time ago, but I remember how he talked about three different perspectives for investing in stock: First, the "company perspective". An investor would buy stock in a company they believed in. Maybe they had good products, or good management, or something else…

The reason I will never touch day trading is, that it is basically the same thing HF traders do. Only 1000 times slower. So I will loose against these guys every single time. And even HF traders loose money. The only single stock investments I have came from employment, either through RSUs or employer sponsored stock buying programs. RSUs are just coming to you, and why would I not take stock at 50% discount? The onl…

Day trading is difficult and requires a lot of practice, knowledge, and patience, but saying you’ll lose every time isn’t always true. There are many many profitable retail day traders. HFT don’t really compete too much because they look to scalp differently.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#57
post #13

Around 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to a member of Nasdaq top management talk about the stock market. It's all a _tiny_ bit blurry, being a long time ago, but I remember how he talked about three different perspectives for investing in stock: First, the "company perspective". An investor would buy stock in a company they believed in. Maybe they had good products, or good management, or something else…

The reason I will never touch day trading is, that it is basically the same thing HF traders do. Only 1000 times slower. So I will loose against these guys every single time. And even HF traders loose money. The only single stock investments I have came from employment, either through RSUs or employer sponsored stock buying programs. RSUs are just coming to you, and why would I not take stock at 50% discount? The onl…

I guess you mean High Frequency Trading, but I don't understand your reasoning. I'm an old school day trader as I execute my trades by hand.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#58
post #13

Around 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to a member of Nasdaq top management talk about the stock market. It's all a _tiny_ bit blurry, being a long time ago, but I remember how he talked about three different perspectives for investing in stock: First, the "company perspective". An investor would buy stock in a company they believed in. Maybe they had good products, or good management, or something else…

It's called: Value investing, technical investing, speculating.

'RobinHood' style 'investing' means that people have access to 'data' which makes them feel 'informed' but for the most part they are making totally random guesses, which implies a kind of distortion of self awareness.

In other words - they are RobinHood fish handed to the sharks who have more information, knowledge, and leverage via tech, other services and especially access to capital.

But - with the underling caveat that as stocks go up overall, even random trading can yield what is perceived to be a slight win over time as stocks overall go up in value.

This has the effect of actually making a lot of small winners and having retail investors believe they are actually making 'smart bets' when really they are just riding the market trend.

Compound this with the fact there is a lot of noise in every direction, and that random bets sometimes do turn out relatively well - and a 'single win' will be interpreted by winners as due to 'intelligence' when really it was just random (this happens to everyone, even institutional investors who always over-attribute their wins) - making people feel they are 'smart'. Of course, the 'bad bets' are attributed due to 'bad luck' and not 'bad investing'.

With slack in the economy and enough of the proles playing games on the market, it can really do things to stocks (Tesla, Nikola, Game Stop obviously).

In the end this means that it's hard to fathom if it's actually good or bad for companies, and that the analogy is a little bit like playing poker with better players but the pot just magically grows a bit without anyone noticing (i.e. market rising).

It also creates a little bit of Ponzi-ish mania reminiscent of 2000 where the saying used to be 'when your cab driver is giving you stock tips it's time to get out' with the major caveat that the Fed is creating so much liquidity that is getting dumped into stocks ... that it actually just might be rational to pick stocks randomly and even trade them, because the 'harm' of playing against sharks is less worse than not playing at all, and that being 'in' the market, even on roughshod terms, is better than holding cash.

It's a whole pile of weird dynamics playing out at the same time, and I hope it ends well.

Edit: I was corrected by a commenter below, I may have misappropriated 'Value Investing' which can be a form of technical investing, but subject to interpretation i.e. Warren Buffet doesn't make a pure technical analysis of 'under valuation', he's definitely looking at the management team, the viability of the company etc. but of course looking at that in the context of pricing itself. No investment strategy can avoid deferring the price of the stock as many 'great companies' are clearly overvalued at any given time.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I will never touch day trading is, that it is basically the same thing HF traders do. Only 1000 times slower. So I will loose against these guys every single time. And even HF traders loose money. The only single stock investments I have came from employment, either through RSUs or employer sponsored stock buying programs. RSUs are just coming to you, and why would I not take stock at 50% discount? The onl…

You are wrong. HF traders front run to profit off individual trades by beating them to better prices. Day traders try to get an edge and exploit it to profit intraday by simply selling higher than they bought.

Front running is illegal.

Its payment for order flow which is earning off the spread while also keep it tight and liquidity in the market.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#60
I feel like here needs to point out the fact that gambling (including making -EV bets) isn’t necessarily bad and can be a lot of fun.

You don’t always have to make smart decisions and maximize EV. YOLO!

Plus like Nick the Greek said, “The next best thing in life to gambling and winning is gambling and losing.”

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