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There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

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Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#231

Post by paulpauper »

kgwgk wrote: post #180
paulpauper wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it would only be in contago if there is borrow and storage cost. This applies to commodities. But stocks pay dividends, so this can cease backwardation if interest rates are low relative to dividends.

But where are the 3x funds that pay 3x the dividends?

futures and swaps do not pay dividends, so the dividends on 3x funds are imputed in the nav, adjusted incrementally everyday . I compared a 3x of the DIA (UDOW) to the 1x version and found that the 3x outperform in such a way that the only reason for the discrepancy is 3x dividends.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#232

Post by imtringued »

jasode wrote: post #77
XorNot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is exploding because people are looking to get rich via speculation, that's it. There's a wealth of uninformed investors and they're all hearing stories about crypto millionaires and how much it went up and FOMO narratives about it. People haven't been transacting in crypto basically at all - it's not even a blip in the popular discussion about it, except as a flimsy justification for why its value is not tuli…

>Crypto is exploding because people are looking to get rich via speculation, that's it. No, that isn't just it. Like other assets, there can be multiple narratives that explain cryptocurrencies rising prices. Yes, pure speculation is one of them. But another reason for some is deliberately shifting wealth from an asset ($USD, euro, bolivar, etc) they believe is deteriorating . E.g. a multi-billionaire like Ray Dalio…

>E.g. a multi-billionaire like Ray Dalio is already rich. He's the one saying "cash is trash" because he like many others see the M2 money supply growing very rapidly which erodes future purchasing power.

As I have said in previous comments, the Fed has been unable to erode future purchasing power, because the excess savings rate increases to compensate for the increase in the money supply.

> (The "cash is trash" also means not holding US Treasury government bonds because of inflation.)

But the entire problem is that the newly printed money ends up in exactly those places. Negative interest rates are impossible, because people can just get cash or rather, they get cash equivalents, namely treasury bonds. The Chinese government is using excess dollars from its trade surplus to purchase treasury bonds. The money put into treasury bonds can only be tapped into by issuing new debt, thus excess savings (uninvested savings) are being created. The government has to employ people on behalf of the Chinese investors otherwise the end result is unemployment because the household savings rate has to go down which means spending more than you earn.

>Yes, the Fed + US Govt can have all sorts of rationale to justify $2 trillion stimulus checks and printing billions to buy corporate bonds (Home Depot bonds), bail out banks, etc ... but economic actors can also counteract the money supply expansion by taking steps to retain future purchasing power. E.g. Shift wealth into real estate, tech stocks, gold, bitcoin, etc.

The problem with this strategy is that it is built on the existence of excess savings. If the inflation rate were to go up, which eats away at corporate savings, companies would be forced to find viable investments and thus generate jobs. The existence of these investments would allow the Fed to raise the interest rates again and excess savings would flood out of treasury bonds and other cash equivalents into regular bank accounts and corporate bonds again. That means stocks, real estate and cryptocurrencies would go down, precisely because inflation is going up i.e. because your future purchasing power is eroding.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#233

Post by ameister14 »

danenania wrote: post #203
ameister14 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never liked having true novices, especially in tournaments or when I was running multiple tables at once - it was easier to make notes of play style and predict when people knew how to play at a basic level. Sure, I'm more likely to beat the person that is going all in with a 2 5 off suit but bad beats are incredibly annoying. Over time, in a sit and go situation I'd beat that player, but online and in tournament p…

Sure, playing correctly against a maniac, novice, or otherwise unpredictable player can be more difficult and have higher variance, but it's also as lucrative as it gets if you know what you're doing. All the strong players I've known would be elated to play against people like that.

>Sure, playing correctly against a maniac, novice, or otherwise unpredictable player can be more difficult and have higher variance, it's also as lucrative as it gets if you know what you're doing. All the strong players I've known would be elated to play against people like that.

I don't know about you, but when I was grinding, I didn't really want to increase variance. I wanted a stable mental state with low focus on multiple tables to maximize the rate of return over that period. I found that alterations in that caused me to play more loosely, which ended up leading to avoidable mistakes, magnified because I'm playing multiple tables at once.

The same thing was true for a tournament. There's a far more limited return from players like this, in part because you meet them early. It's a fact of the online game that people just go all in a lot especially in the beginning, but it ends up being a gauntlet you just need to get through. I wouldn't call them my ideal opponents; it's not what I prefer, it just exists.

Maybe I'm not what you would consider a strong player but I did win consistently enough to feed myself with it for a couple of years, mostly online before it became illegal. It wasn't really my experience that high risk high reward play was the way to go. Most of the people I played with worked to limit variance's effect on their game, not increase it.

Again though, that's just me - not the strongest player ever, you clearly have a different opinion about it. All good.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#235

Post by ycombinete »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #78

Financial elites have been gambling for decades. They seem to be really upset that the plebs now can also do it. When brokers did it it was OK, when algorithms did it in milliseconds (when common people can only operate with delays of hours and days, and with deterrent fees) it was OK, but now that there are platforms that allow more or less anyone to speculate, we start publishing moralistic pieces in the media and…

I don’t quite believe that there was no moralistic sentiment directed against it when high frequency started, or even before that when whatever changed changed. The fact that people weren’t currently writing about the status quo, but then write about a change to it isn’t surprising.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#236

Post by newsclues »

toss1 wrote: post #122
newsclues wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t trying to lose weight and my diet remained essentially the same other than modification due to cost (mainly less meat). I had a fixed grocery budget, and over months, I lost weight due to a caloric deficit. Literally I bought less food with the same money and the result was just over a pound a month lost .

I'm sorry to hear that you are having such difficulties; I hope things improve for you soon. That is the data we need to confirm that you're seeing inflation. Curious where you are located that you are seeing these numbers?

It’s ok, I might be poor but I’m pretty happy despite the disability.

I live in a city an hour away from Toronto, Canada.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#237

Post by Aunche »

bondarchuk wrote: post #115
jayd16 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Financial elites have been gambling for decades. They seem to be really upset that the plebs now can also do it. I really don't understand this sentiment, as if a professional gambler would not gladly gamble with novices...but putting that aside... I think the emphasis is more about how there's no other game in town that can compete, not that gambling is new. Interest rates are so low that there isn't a simple/safe…

> I really don't understand this sentiment, as if a professional gambler would not gladly gamble with novices... The existence of a financial elite hinges on the existence of a non-elite that actually does the work. If workers are putting 25% of their paychecks in an index fund and retire a few years earlier, instead of paying off their too-expensive car loan or something, it will be bad for the current financial eli…

> If workers are putting 25% of their paychecks in an index fund and retire a few years earlier, instead of paying off their too-expensive car loan or something, it will be bad for the current financial elite.

Nobody is complaining about people placing their paychecks in index funds though. Index funds are a reasonably good proxy for the future health of the economy, so your gains from it will likely represent real growth. By contrast, gains made from cryptocurrency and speculative stock must be coming from someone's losses.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#238

Post by ksdale »

Aunche wrote: post #237
bondarchuk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't understand this sentiment, as if a professional gambler would not gladly gamble with novices... The existence of a financial elite hinges on the existence of a non-elite that actually does the work. If workers are putting 25% of their paychecks in an index fund and retire a few years earlier, instead of paying off their too-expensive car loan or something, it will be bad for the current financial eli…

> If workers are putting 25% of their paychecks in an index fund and retire a few years earlier, instead of paying off their too-expensive car loan or something, it will be bad for the current financial elite. Nobody is complaining about people placing their paychecks in index funds though. Index funds are a reasonably good proxy for the future health of the economy, so your gains from it will likely represent real g…

Index funds go up because more people want to buy them than sell them, cryptocurrencies go up because more people want to buy them than sell them.

Index funds happen to represent ownership of productive assets, but the assets don't really care who owns them, your investment in an index fund doesn't increase the number of productive assets in the world, likewise with cryptocurrency.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#239

Post by paulgb »

Aunche wrote: post #237
bondarchuk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't understand this sentiment, as if a professional gambler would not gladly gamble with novices... The existence of a financial elite hinges on the existence of a non-elite that actually does the work. If workers are putting 25% of their paychecks in an index fund and retire a few years earlier, instead of paying off their too-expensive car loan or something, it will be bad for the current financial eli…

> If workers are putting 25% of their paychecks in an index fund and retire a few years earlier, instead of paying off their too-expensive car loan or something, it will be bad for the current financial elite. Nobody is complaining about people placing their paychecks in index funds though. Index funds are a reasonably good proxy for the future health of the economy, so your gains from it will likely represent real g…

Amazingly, some people are complaining about index funds. It’s a pretty fringe position, but it comes up frequently enough that “should index funds be illegal?” is one of the recurring headings of Matt Levine’s newsletter.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/the-autopi...

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#240

Post by imtringued »

paulpauper wrote: post #24
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. Inflati…

The current president is attempting to bring things back to normal and the USA will stay strong because of that. The EU and Japan are not doing what they really should be doing.
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