31–40 of 182 posts
Except analysts usually can't trade stocks. Short sellers can. In theory, libel law makes that safe, but when it's a 15-year-old playing the penny stocks, the company won't notice or have the legal firepower to chase down a /r/wallstreetbets user.
> Lebed professes that he did nothing wrong – he did nothing different from Wall Street analysts. He states that he learned how people react to the stock market and acted on that knowledge. So you trick people by lying to them, and it's ok because you take their money indirectly via the stock market. And because some analysts also do this (often suffering legal consequences), then it's definitely not wrong? Shameful.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire trading industry is a zero-sum game bro. For someone to win someone else has to lose. As is the advertising industry and surveillance capitalism industry that powers the “free web”. (Only at the edges is new value created. Most of it exists to have large institutionals take money from the small newbs, you’re the fish at the poker table.) And more broadly, capitalism exploits people. This is like blaming An…
> The entire trading industry is a zero-sum game bro. It's not, and even a cursory understanding of what zero-sum games are and how the stock market works would tell you that. How does the market grow if all trades are zero-sum? How do recessions happen if all trades are zero-sum? Some portion of trades are zero-sum, maybe even most of them. Stock markets don't function if every trade was zero-sum. Pump and dump sche…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire trading industry is a zero-sum game bro. For someone to win someone else has to lose. As is the advertising industry and surveillance capitalism industry that powers the “free web”. (Only at the edges is new value created. Most of it exists to have large institutionals take money from the small newbs, you’re the fish at the poker table.) And more broadly, capitalism exploits people. This is like blaming An…
> The entire trading industry is a zero-sum game bro. It's not, and even a cursory understanding of what zero-sum games are and how the stock market works would tell you that. How does the market grow if all trades are zero-sum? How do recessions happen if all trades are zero-sum? Some portion of trades are zero-sum, maybe even most of them. Stock markets don't function if every trade was zero-sum. Pump and dump sche…
Oh wait. This is by design so the elite can retain all money and power.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire trading industry is a zero-sum game bro. For someone to win someone else has to lose. As is the advertising industry and surveillance capitalism industry that powers the “free web”. (Only at the edges is new value created. Most of it exists to have large institutionals take money from the small newbs, you’re the fish at the poker table.) And more broadly, capitalism exploits people. This is like blaming An…
> The entire trading industry is a zero-sum game bro. It's not, and even a cursory understanding of what zero-sum games are and how the stock market works would tell you that. How does the market grow if all trades are zero-sum? How do recessions happen if all trades are zero-sum? Some portion of trades are zero-sum, maybe even most of them. Stock markets don't function if every trade was zero-sum. Pump and dump sche…
The same way a cancer does: by repurposing adjacent systems in service of propagating itself, often to the determent of the function of those systems.
In the case of a financial market this means people spending their time watching lines squiggle around on a screen instead of finding real problems to solve.
Referring to the increase of stock prices as an indicator that markets are positive sum is a little like referring to an increase in hit points as an indicator that D&D is positive sum
It's not useful to use a system's own abstractions to measure its effectiveness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire trading industry is a zero-sum game bro. For someone to win someone else has to lose. As is the advertising industry and surveillance capitalism industry that powers the “free web”. (Only at the edges is new value created. Most of it exists to have large institutionals take money from the small newbs, you’re the fish at the poker table.) And more broadly, capitalism exploits people. This is like blaming An…
> The entire trading industry is a zero-sum game bro. It's not, and even a cursory understanding of what zero-sum games are and how the stock market works would tell you that. How does the market grow if all trades are zero-sum? How do recessions happen if all trades are zero-sum? Some portion of trades are zero-sum, maybe even most of them. Stock markets don't function if every trade was zero-sum. Pump and dump sche…
The investing industry is positive sum - but you must hold for the long-run, or only make decisions if new information is discovered to be an investor. Vanguard and other passive firms are a part of the investing industry.
As the GP says, the trading industry is zero-sum.
> Lebed professes that he did nothing wrong – he did nothing different from Wall Street analysts. He states that he learned how people react to the stock market and acted on that knowledge. So you trick people by lying to them, and it's ok because you take their money indirectly via the stock market. And because some analysts also do this (often suffering legal consequences), then it's definitely not wrong? Shameful.…
> Lebed professes that he did nothing wrong – he did nothing different from Wall Street analysts. He states that he learned how people react to the stock market and acted on that knowledge. So you trick people by lying to them, and it's ok because you take their money indirectly via the stock market. And because some analysts also do this (often suffering legal consequences), then it's definitely not wrong? Shameful.…
The entire trading industry is a zero-sum game bro. For someone to win someone else has to lose. As is the advertising industry and surveillance capitalism industry that powers the “free web”. (Only at the edges is new value created. Most of it exists to have large institutionals take money from the small newbs, you’re the fish at the poker table.) And more broadly, capitalism exploits people. This is like blaming An…
It isn’t in utility terms, which are the only terms that matter for whether something is actually zero sum.
Under certain assumptions, it is in (e.g.) dollar (or other specific commodity) terms, but the whole reason markets work at all is that the no specific commodity (including any fiat currency at any point in time) has a consistent relationship to utility across market participants.
> Lebed professes that he did nothing wrong – he did nothing different from Wall Street analysts. He states that he learned how people react to the stock market and acted on that knowledge. So you trick people by lying to them, and it's ok because you take their money indirectly via the stock market. And because some analysts also do this (often suffering legal consequences), then it's definitely not wrong? Shameful.…
No one was arguing that it was indirect; the people who lost money took advice from an anonymous user on a forum on tiny companies they'd never heard of. The morality question is still interesting because it hinges on whether or not people knew they were playing a game with deception.