Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity • Hacker News Board

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#51

Post by KittenInABox » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

cik wrote: post #17

borplk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Wealth is accumulated through habits" is a great story to tell people but it seems very often to be complete BS. Yes. It's capitalist propaganda. If you are a highly paid heart surgeon or CEO you can "accumulate wealth with habits". If you are anywhere between flipping burgers to many other types of jobs there's just not enough money "coming in" for these things to make a huge difference. You can be more sensible…

That's exceptionally untrue - though it can be true in context. In the city beside mine, renting a place downtown, and working in the grocery store it's very possible to save $500 per month. For reference, minimum wage is the equivalent of $1700 USD, and renting a one-bedroom, all in will cost roughly $454 USD. With cellphone (250GB of 5G speeds) costing the equivalent of $15 USD, and groceries and electricity costin…

Rubbish quality of life likely means further investment into mental healthcare so someone doesn't burn out of their shitty life.

And that's assuming nothing happens (literally nothing) that sets you back. Nothing breaks, no emergencies, no health scares, no economic shocks. The likelihood of this is very low.

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#52

Post by colecut » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

krageon wrote: post #47

colecut wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luck is very subjective. Having opportunities around is lucky, but most people aren't interested in taking the risks or making sacrifices necessary to seize those opportunities. And often times the ones willing to do this are then later called lucky.

Those risks are risks because they very often don't pan out. The folks that "make it" get to deliver clever speeches about how self-made they are and what a nice pair of bootstraps they used to get where they are today. What's left out of those stories is how many folks tried the same thing and failed. If all it took was the audacity to take a step others are not taking then it wouldn't be a risk in the first place,…

Luck is still subjective.

A good investor does not feel like he is gambling. He just knows industries well enough to make educated guesses that are likely to happen.

Someone else could put up the same amount of money because he overheard a tip in a bathroom. In my opinion, that person is gambling.

But really its all the same and it's all subjective.

The gambler was lucky, the investor was smart, who cares they both won.

The investor is more likely to win again though I wouldn't necessarily call him luckier.

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#53

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

jsjsbdkj wrote: post #3

From the article: Most millionaires opt for stealth wealth. Their friends don’t know, their coworkers don’t know, their extended family doesn’t know. In a few cases, not even their children know! Wealth is accumulated through habits; at least in a free society like ours. At the moment, something like 1 out of 25 households falls into the millionaire category, most of it self-made. From the comments: Your right in Jac…

> "Wealth is accumulated through habits" is a great story to tell people but it seems very often to be complete BS.

I see a lot of these.

One of my favorite examples is https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ebony-horton-paid-off-22....

"How one 31-year-old paid off $220,000 in student loans in 3 years" is the exciting title.

You have to get to paragraph #7 to learn "work at your parent's charity" is one of the techniques. Paragraph #8 tells you another trick is "be gifted a condo". #9 tells you the third one is "have grandma pay your rent".

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#54

Post by newsclues » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

lowercased wrote: post #42

andreilys wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

utilize my assets to earn additional income but that is illegal in my state What state would make investing illegal?

Possibly the poster was referring to a different set of assets.

ASSets!

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#55

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

woko wrote: post #33

FactolSarin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it takes money to make money. It's a lot easier to get a hundred million dollars when you start out with 1 million to put in the stock market.

One cannot transform 1 million into 100 millions without having 1 million in the first case (unless some debt leverage is used, but that is besides the point here). Right. However, I fail to see how that removes any value (or makes the task look easy) regarding Mc Donald's perspective. For that one guy who transformed 1 million into 100 millions, how many actually lost most of their initial million (in stock trading)…

[deleted]

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#56

Post by rory » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

The author is a money manager, so it shouldn't be surprising he mixed in a bunch of feel-good simplifications and tautologies about rich people.

But regardless of the source of his wealth, the subject still faced the temptation of greed and didn't succumb to it. Good on you, Jack.

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#57

Post by dionidium » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

jsjsbdkj wrote: post #3

From the article: Most millionaires opt for stealth wealth. Their friends don’t know, their coworkers don’t know, their extended family doesn’t know. In a few cases, not even their children know! Wealth is accumulated through habits; at least in a free society like ours. At the moment, something like 1 out of 25 households falls into the millionaire category, most of it self-made. From the comments: Your right in Jac…

About 20% of millionaires inherited their wealth. [0] (It may actually be far less than that, if you interpret "inherited their wealth" to mean "inherited over a million dollars." [1]) Almost 70% of those with ultra-high net worths are self-made. [2]

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0810/7-millionai....

[1] https://www.chrishogan360.com/investing/how-many-millionaire...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-riche...

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#58

Post by malandrew » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

throwawayfire wrote: post #30

malandrew wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a lot easier to get a hundred million dollars when you start out with 1 million to put in the stock market. This statement could only ever be uttered by someone that has not tried to do this. 100x increase in any endeavor is extremely exceptional. It's as hard to do as turning $10,000 into $1,000,000. The only thing having a larger starting amount helps with is that it opens up types of opportunities you did n…

> It's as hard to do as turning $10,000 into $1,000,000. It's hard, but provably not as hard . If you don't need the money, you can afford to take more and better risk with it. More risk is enough to get this article (not even necessarily better risk) - if 100 people take a pure 100:1 bet, then 1 can get an article like this. [As mentioned in the sibling comment, if you have enough time, then hard becomes easy]

You said it was provably not as hard and didn't try to prove the point you're making. I agree you can take more risk, but there's no guarantee that you're taking better risk and nothing about what you claimed proves that.

It's almost certainly more challenging to take better risks as the investment requires gets larger. All sorts of new challenges crop up that didn't exist with smaller investments. It's the reason why companies have a harder and harder time sustaining the same growth rate as they get larger.

Within the stock market alone, you get access to the same exact risks as the people with the $10k YOLO accounts. If you look at WSB, you'll see a lot more posts about people posting losses on their YOLO accounts than posting massive wins. There are a lot of sharks swimming in the capital markets with deep expertise.

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#59

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #48

jsjsbdkj wrote: post #3

From the article: Most millionaires opt for stealth wealth. Their friends don’t know, their coworkers don’t know, their extended family doesn’t know. In a few cases, not even their children know! Wealth is accumulated through habits; at least in a free society like ours. At the moment, something like 1 out of 25 households falls into the millionaire category, most of it self-made. From the comments: Your right in Jac…

> At the moment, something like 1 out of 25 households falls into the millionaire category, most of it self-made. 4% of households is off the mark. It's presently closer to 7%-10% depending on the source [1]. 8% of American adults (~19-20 million people) are millionaires [2]. It's not what it used to be, given the median sale price of a home is now around $350,000. Demographically the mean white household in the US i…

[deleted]

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#60

Post by tweetle_beetle » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

cik wrote: post #17

borplk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Wealth is accumulated through habits" is a great story to tell people but it seems very often to be complete BS. Yes. It's capitalist propaganda. If you are a highly paid heart surgeon or CEO you can "accumulate wealth with habits". If you are anywhere between flipping burgers to many other types of jobs there's just not enough money "coming in" for these things to make a huge difference. You can be more sensible…

That's exceptionally untrue - though it can be true in context. In the city beside mine, renting a place downtown, and working in the grocery store it's very possible to save $500 per month. For reference, minimum wage is the equivalent of $1700 USD, and renting a one-bedroom, all in will cost roughly $454 USD. With cellphone (250GB of 5G speeds) costing the equivalent of $15 USD, and groceries and electricity costin…

It's technically possible, but involves forsaking: personal mobility, the ability to start a family, private healthcare, taking leisure holidays, costs of seasonal cultural/religious events, the ability to buy a home and any safety net for disasters, emergencies or unforseen events. It also excludes inflation, which is likely to outpace any pay rises or promotions.

Even if self-imposed, I'm not sure choosing to live a life which excludes things listed on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should really count. This is why the idea of a "living wage" was created, to show the cost of entry to participate in society as it is - more than simply having a phone contract. https://www.livingwage.org.uk/sites/default/files/LWF%20Life...