151–160 of 182 posts
15 (or let’s say, 21yo) me would use $800k very differently than current 40yo me. 21yo me would make a beeline for the local Porsche dealership. 40yo me would not.
But really, you don't get to have $800k by buying Porsches.
> The messages that Lebed posted would predict marked increases in the stocks value [...] In response to Lebed’s messages, trading volume of these stocks would soar I'm so confused reading the comments here. How in the world is anyone defending this?
I'm equally confused, but in the other direction! He was acting without any special knowledge, so the only thing he was taking advantage of was the gullibility of the general public. That's usually legal, no?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found this Twitter account last posted to in 2014. https://twitter.com/lebedbiz I checked a good few of the stocks he listed. I figured he would have struck a lucky score at one point but he seemed to have an uncanny ability to always pick losing stocks. I was hoping for a happy ending like how many of the people I played Runescape with who hosted dicing games, speculated and flipped in-game assets became successfu…
Really? Merching in RS3 always seemed to be more of a pump and dump than anything that overlapped with real life quantitative investing
Other players would treat the GE like an NPC where they'd dump items in mass at 1gp just to get it all sold - knowing and taking advantage of this was (and prob still is) free money.
There were some very fun strategies where like, you would submit a question for the QnA proposing some use for $item around high alch price (e.g. 'the dark bow used to be such an iconic weapon but now it's useless and feels pathetic selling for 70k. with the new boss coming out, could we see a new use for these? :((') and when it got read out and if they liked the idea, speculators would buy these in bulk and especially if they weren't a very liquid item you would cash in, with minimal downside if you don't get read. Jmods caught on to this though, lol.
I think the natural scepticism it teaches makes for a good quant too. I remember seeing a Twitter thread like, 'If I have a coin and show you the two sides, then flip 19 heads in a row, what price should you accept to bet that it would be heads again?' with the options all being well >50%. The comments were all like, 'Well based on Laplace's rule of succession...', '...based on a beta distribution with a uniform prior...', etc., all theoretically correct stuff if we live in a mathematically perfect world.
The Runescape-brained would give you the real-life most likely answer: 'That coin is rigged, dude. I'm going to find better value elsewhere.'
Why is this page double line spaced? It's outrageous on mobile.
The page is from 2002, when "mobile" was pronounced "mob-eel" and the closest thing to a smartphone was an early version of the PalmPilot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How in the world is anyone defending this? Suppose you're an ordinary trader who likes high risk bets. You find a stock you like, you buy some. Now you go on message boards telling everyone you think the stock is going to the moon straight away. This is your sincere belief. Soon the stock goes up 300%. You thought it was going to go up 1000%, that's what you said before, but hey, it still went up 300%, that's still…
> Whether this is fraud or not basically hinges on whether you were being intentionally dishonest, right? No. Do you mean legally? or morally? Legally the offenses include things beyond what might strictly be "fraud" (see "fraud or deceit" as one example, but there are more [1]). IANAL, but failing to mention that your posts are with the hope of raising the price because you have a vested interest in that... seems li…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He should be tarred, feathered, and run out of town. I can't imagine what this could possibly mean. What should actually happen to him for posting messages on message boards?
> What should actually happen to him for posting messages on message boards? If the problem was "posting messages on message boards" we'd all be just as guilty, but obviously that's not the case. That's like saying that someone who stabbed a person to death got punished for "using cutlery". People who intentionally hurt others for profit should be treated as such, no matter if they're mugging their victims or scammin…
Mugging and scamming are definitely not the same. Being robbed is not the same as giving your money away voluntarily. But I also don't think muggers should be "tarred and feathered and run out of town" either. They should be tried for theft, because the money/goods weren't handed over voluntarily.
> He's no better than a Nigerian prince who uses email
I'm not saying he's better or worse than anyone. I'm asking what tarring and feathering should actually mean.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Whereas billionaire employees doing work on wall street What's a billionaire employee?
Slightly wrong or ambiguous parsing, but, any employee of a billionaire also works, at least as well as any other sloppy natural communication.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These situations always remind me of a quote from Clark Howard who was a radio host of personal finance shows. "It's almost impossible to get scammed if you're not a greedy person"
It's not though. Greed isn't involved for all the well meaning naifs who are just wiring cash to bail out their wayward grandson after he called them on facebook, or received mail indistinguishable from a bill and sent back a check.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What should actually happen to him for posting messages on message boards? If the problem was "posting messages on message boards" we'd all be just as guilty, but obviously that's not the case. That's like saying that someone who stabbed a person to death got punished for "using cutlery". People who intentionally hurt others for profit should be treated as such, no matter if they're mugging their victims or scammin…
> People who intentionally hurt others for profit should be treated as such, no matter if they're mugging their victims or scamming them. Mugging and scamming are definitely not the same. Being robbed is not the same as giving your money away voluntarily. But I also don't think muggers should be "tarred and feathered and run out of town" either. They should be tried for theft, because the money/goods weren't handed o…
"2 a : to deprive of something due, expected, or desired" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/robbed
You can argue semantics, but if I convince you that the beans I have for sale are magic and you voluntarily pay me for them only to find out that they aren't magic, it'd be fair to say you've been robbed.
> But I also don't think muggers should be "tarred and feathered and run out of town" either. They should be tried for theft
The specifics don't matter all that much. I'd also prefer that justice be handled in courtrooms, but what actually matters is that victims are made whole where possible and criminals who prey on others are punished. Society has always had ways to deal with parasites that hurt people by scamming them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People who intentionally hurt others for profit should be treated as such, no matter if they're mugging their victims or scamming them. Mugging and scamming are definitely not the same. Being robbed is not the same as giving your money away voluntarily. But I also don't think muggers should be "tarred and feathered and run out of town" either. They should be tried for theft, because the money/goods weren't handed o…
> Being robbed is not the same as giving your money away voluntarily. "2 a : to deprive of something due, expected, or desired" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/robbed You can argue semantics, but if I convince you that the beans I have for sale are magic and you voluntarily pay me for them only to find out that they aren't magic, it'd be fair to say you've been robbed. > But I also don't think muggers shou…
Yes - absolutely. Semantics is about meaning, and meaning is central to discussion.
> if I convince you that the beans I have for sale are magic and you voluntarily pay me for them only to find out that they aren't magic, it'd be fair to say you've been robbed
Colloquially yes, but not really robbed. Possibly a victim of false advertising. But to establish that you'd have to prove they aren't magic, first. The problem would be that if you think beans can be magic, or stock picks can be guaranteed, then things will go wrong. No one can protect you from yourself as well as you can.
> Society has always had ways to deal with parasites that hurt people by scamming them.
This is an odd and unnecessary thing to say, though. Just like the tarring and feathering.