Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

nymag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 409 posts

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#21

Post by AlexandrB »

paulpauper wrote: post #13
jp555 wrote: post #4

Zero mention of the recent unprecedented fiat currency printing we've seen, nor the fact that every time since the Tang Dynasty when we have done this, it has led to very troubling times 12-18 months later. Everyone is gambling even if they dont know Crypto exists.

then how come the US economy boomed after 2009 in spite of unprecedented stimulus and other programs. Not saying that the programs caused the expansion, but it did not seem to hurt it either. Everyone who said that the printing would cause inflation, a repeat crisis, recession, or other problems, were wrong.

Doesn't something feel wrong about the post 2008 "boom"? Theoretically the economy is doing great but you have constant social upheaval, a generation where many are still living with their parents, and the need for constant central bank stimulus in the form of cheap credit.

I sometimes wonder if we've managed to mask the real state of the economy by pumping the metrics to make it look like it's fine.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#22

Post by tim333 »

>Welcome to the non-fungible, memeified, cryptodenominated, degenerate future of finance.

I think a lot of that is the now of finance rather than the future. We'll look back on meme stonks like we do on the pets.coms and webvans.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#23

Post by wayoutthere »

The “woe is me, how do I know how to invest?” drivel in this article is solved by a sufficiently diversified portfolio. The article even admits that these shenanigans have no impact on the larger market — so invest there.

If you want to take on more risk, great — but with great risk comes lots of market manipulation. The wider public is now learning what every MBA is taught in investment theory classes: investing is a racket where the house always wins. Either you play long positions in a diversified portfolio or you enter the water with the sharks. If you’re not sitting on a billion dollars, you’re at an extreme disadvantage in the options market.

And the biggest risk in corporate America today is negative PR. The sharks you’re playing against have the connections to get insider trading info, the sophistication to hide it, and the influence to get away with it. Retail investors are at their mercy. I guarantee Elon Musk is making money moves off his tweets, he’s just sophisticated enough to hide it in a trust. And he’s not the only one; hedge funds have been known to actively seek out scandals to generate negative PR, then trade on that info.

The vibe on Reddit right now is “the system is broken and they’re cheating like crazy”. But that’s no revelation, this kind of crap has been completely normalized because the SEC can’t stop it (the people working there are largely the ones who couldn’t hack it on Wall Street). I fully expect that Wall Street will end up coming out on top in the end because the retail investors don’t quite understand the role of market makers and the level of coordination done with the investment side of things. Yeah, it’s flagrantly illegal, but if you get away with it (as they almost always do because the SEC can’t prove anything) you’re going to be rich.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#24

Post by paulpauper »

tcbawo wrote: post #8

Money is stored wealth, the ability to buy goods and services in the future. The problem seems to be that we live in a time of societal upheaval. The future of stored wealth becomes cloudier and more uncertain the further you go out in time. So, what is the best place to store wealth? Will my wealth be eroded by inflation? Will the companies I invest in become obsolete by technology or market-manipulating nation stat…

My answer to these questions and other unknowns about the fed, fiscal policy, America and its role in the world, the economy etc. is that the future will be a lot like the present, but more so. So extent the current trends into the future. Sure, things sometimes change, even dramatically such as the fall of the USSR or 911, but we are living in a steady-state world in which the underling trends do not change. Inflation will remain low in spite of printing, America remain on top economically and militaristically. Stock market keep going up. US dollar remain strong.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#25

Post by realce »

swiley wrote: post #18
paulpauper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then how come the US economy boomed after 2009 in spite of unprecedented stimulus and other programs. Not saying that the programs caused the expansion, but it did not seem to hurt it either. Everyone who said that the printing would cause inflation, a repeat crisis, recession, or other problems, were wrong.

It boomed according to certain metrics but fewer people could afford housing and transportation so I'm not sure I agree.

It's hard NOT to have the metrics of a "boom" when the Fed just buys up any bad asset on the market and puts it in a black bag.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#26

Post by diamondhandle »

Our job in life is to engage in value creation. When money is decoupled from value creation, your long-term bet is that it will lose its value, as value creation is what actually matters in the “real” world.

This is also why “crypto” (the asset class, not technology) is so corrosive, because it makes people who have done approximately nothing to create value in society, but who’ve enjoyed a massive boost in monetary value, think they’ve “won” or accomplished something real. This doesn’t work long term, and will eventually collapse on itself like all false religions.

If you’re planning to be alive in 20 years, you’re better off making sure you have a work ethic and skills that generate value, than obsessing over any sort of wealth-hoarding instrument at all, because it is the only true protection against change.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#28

Post by calvano915 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #21
paulpauper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then how come the US economy boomed after 2009 in spite of unprecedented stimulus and other programs. Not saying that the programs caused the expansion, but it did not seem to hurt it either. Everyone who said that the printing would cause inflation, a repeat crisis, recession, or other problems, were wrong.

Doesn't something feel wrong about the post 2008 "boom"? Theoretically the economy is doing great but you have constant social upheaval, a generation where many are still living with their parents, and the need for constant central bank stimulus in the form of cheap credit. I sometimes wonder if we've managed to mask the real state of the economy by pumping the metrics to make it look like it's fine.

> I sometimes wonder if we've managed to mask the real state of the economy by pumping the metrics to make it look like it's fine.

This concept extrapolates widely in our personal and professional lives. The internet and cell phones were probably the biggest real pieces of innovation in my lifetime (mid thirties). Everything else is just fluffed up rehashes of relics or in very early stages of something radically new. I just read an article proposing genomics as the next big thing to really change the course of medicine and humanity, and I'm inclined to agree but do not see what the timeline of the tipping point will be. Everywhere else I look I just see more stagnation, short term thinking/goals, and continuation of status quo...with touches of regression throughout.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#29

Post by makomk »

paulpauper wrote: post #13
jp555 wrote: post #4

Zero mention of the recent unprecedented fiat currency printing we've seen, nor the fact that every time since the Tang Dynasty when we have done this, it has led to very troubling times 12-18 months later. Everyone is gambling even if they dont know Crypto exists.

then how come the US economy boomed after 2009 in spite of unprecedented stimulus and other programs. Not saying that the programs caused the expansion, but it did not seem to hurt it either. Everyone who said that the printing would cause inflation, a repeat crisis, recession, or other problems, were wrong.

I'm not sure to what extent the 2008 crisis and the stimulus programs even did result in net printing of money. Remember, every time a bank issues a new loan they're printing money and every time they reduce lending they're destroying it, and increases in the flow of money are also act much like an increase in the money supply. So when the banks stopped lending and the money flows locked up back in 2008, this was effectively a massive destruction of money that offset some of the money printing.

The Covid pandemic is different. Western economies are heavily service-based and the pandemic effectively stopped many of those services being consumed. All of the restaurant meals and vacations and so on are gone, never happened, the opportunity to create them forfeited, even some factory production time was lost - and the money that would've paid for those things remained in the customers' pockets. Yet in most countries, the employees who would've worked to supply them also earned most of what they would've got for doing so. There's an imbalance there between stuff available to consume and money paid that's fundamentally very different from 2008, which was mostly a crisis in the financial and housing sectors.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#30

Post by jfengel »

newsclues wrote: post #20
jfengel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, no, I haven't. My groceries are the same. My electric bill is stable. The watch I'm replacing today is the same price today as ten years ago when I got its predecessor. I don't know if it's because I buy different things from you, or if I live in a different place from you, or what. But my andecdote is that no, I'm not paying more for stuff than a year ago.

Odd that some people don’t notice things like this... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkflation Do you actually track spending or just don’t notice?

A gallon of milk is still a gallon of milk. A pound of carrots is still a pound of carrots.

It sounds as if your basket of goods is different from mine. Most of the examples on that Wikipedia page are sugary foods, which I just don't buy a lot of.

Post reply on HN