Ask HN: Do you invest in the stock market?

No. In my opinion its just betting and that too in place which is controlled by few. Unless I have a lot of money I wont invest in stock markets.

I invest in 75% index funds, because of Random Walk Down Wall Street and all the related writing on the subject, and 25% individual stocks, largely for entertainment value. It's like WoW but much more time efficient.

Approximately 50% of my liquid net worth is Chipotle. I bought back in 2006/2007 and just held.

My other individual picks include Bank of America (yeah, ouch), Microsoft, and Nintendo. Chipotle more than pays for the shellacking I took on all the rest. It is ultimately irrelevant though as I still have 25 ~ 30 years before I'll start selling anything.

I've been sticking money into the market for the better part of 20 years now.

Initially it was how you got incredibly rich incredibly fast (my YHOO, for instance, went up 70% during the first three days that I held it). Then for a short period it transformed into a source of immense sorrow and despair. Then for several years it was just a convenient way to dispose of any excess salary that was left lying around at the end of the month.

Now it's back to being the way you turn the $XX,000 you put in today into the $YYY,000 you'll get back out in twenty years. Index funds (as discussed everywhere else in this thread) will pretty much do that for you without you ever having to think about it.

This is what I tell myself, but I continually hear stories (friends of friends, of course) of people hitting it big and wonder if I just don't get it.

Taleb is not a source of investing advice - unless you were interested in trading, in which case he has a few points.