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What to know about the stock market (2007)

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Re: What to know about the stock market (2007)

#121

Post by bradfa »

bradfa wrote: post #117
3pt14159 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep telling me this, but I keep beating the market. It's been 20 years or so of applying very basic reasoning and getting ahead. 1. Commodities are bad long term bets because technology gets better. I remember people talking my ear off about peak oil and then the US turned into a net-exporter. Short term inelasticity, yes can sky rocket prices; but long term prices go down. 2. Physics based thinking. I knew e…

I've invested in GM and avoided investing in Tesla. Mostly just because I understand GM, their business and financials and stock price history makes sense to me. I do not understand the valuations on Tesla, and hadn't even long before COVID and the most recent run-up in value. Clearly I've missed out on massive earnings if I had invested in Tesla instead of GM (although GM's done decently lately). To me looking at th…

Possibly the reason I don't see Tesla as a services or software company is because I have very little faith that level 5 autonomous driving is going to be a thing in the near future. I could be very wrong, and if Tesla's existing hardware on the road can do it, then THAT would be a game changer and very easily justify the current stock price to me.

Re: What to know about the stock market (2007)

#122

Post by cudgy »

andriesm wrote: post #106
cj wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either way, sell early and buy the crash. Trying to time the market is akin to individual stock picking. When it works, it’s usually just luck.

No it can be skill. Was Warren Buffet and Charlie munger just lucky, year after year? Was Michael Burry of the Big Short just lucky to short the mortgage backed securities market, no he also side stepped the dot com crash and bought value stocks, recently he had very nice shorts on Kathy Woods ARKK... clearly he isn't just lucky, he has skill. I used to think I have skill yet my results were random for about a decade…

Buffet and Munger manage the companies they buy. You, 99.99% of stock purchasers, and I are dependent on the existing management with no control over decisions companies make. Big difference.

Re: What to know about the stock market (2007)

#123

Post by ivanche »

sdevonoes wrote: post #11

Am I the only one in HN who is not into the stock market? I live in Western Europe and I would say 75% of my acquaintances don't do stock market. People I have known in the past (old people) didn't do stock market either. They all seem to have lived a normal life (decent jobs, decent house, decent family). Nothing extravagant but they got enough money to be "happy" in life.

Ah don’t be afraid of it. You’re missing out an opportunity to live a worryless retirement and to even leave a solid chunk of assets to your kids/partner. Simply invest a few hundreds euros (probably 300-400 will be enough) every month into an ETF which tracks some of the very broad market indices like MSCI World, FTSE All World or even S&P500. You have very good chances of becoming a millionaire or almost-millionaire by the time you retire. Good luck!

Re: What to know about the stock market (2007)

#124

Post by pembrook »

mtberatwork wrote: post #110
pembrook wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans can have the luxury of not worrying about investing since many European countries offer livable pensions (for now…the demographic future for this isn’t looking so good). However, this isn’t as great as it sounds. While the European model for healthcare and education is better, their pension schemes are arguably a much worse deal than what Americans can have. In Europe, you’re basically paying the government…

> a hybrid private/public pension model like the US I'm not sure pensions exist in the US beyond a few public sector ones. The US model is entirely private at this point for all intents and purposes. Also keep in mind that only about 55% of the US population owns any stock (including retirement accounts) [0], so (IMO, not an economist) the US is most likely looking at a retirement crisis in the coming decades. [0] ht…

The US has a public pension scheme called "social security," which guarantees at least a minimum level of income in retirement to all citizens (although, not enough to live on IMO).

This is intended to be supplemented with private investments via 401k & IRAs, which are actually relatively new programs (created in the late-1970s, but nobody even talked much about them until the 90s).

So while most millennials understand they need to be saving privately in these vehicles (r/personalfinance has 15 million members), there's a huge forgotten generation in the middle who slipped through the cracks between the transition from industrial-era corporate pensions to personal saving.

These are the folks who will unfortunately bear the brunt of the retirement crisis, having to get by only on Social security.

Re: What to know about the stock market (2007)

#125

Post by nameisname »

I've seen a lot of pompous threads and misinformation masquerading as facts threads but this one takes the cake for both on HN for me. I've never seen so many people high on themselves for investing in Tesla and Apple. I feel sorry for the people who read these comments or have to talk to these people about the market. Insufferable.

Re: What to know about the stock market (2007)

#127

Post by llampx »

hnbad wrote: post #42
pjc50 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do any of them have private pensions? In the UK almost everyone will have been moved over to a "defined contribution" pension whose value is determined by the stock market, usually in the form of a "stakeholder pension". I don't "do" the stock market but I do have such a pension. And every few months sweep spare cash out of my current account into an index fund. Effectively I pay people to worry about this stuff on m…

Not the parent, but I live in Germany and while the new coalition government is expected to push for moving he public pension system to stock based pensions, the current system consists of a public pension system (that employees pay into via their employer to pay out current recipients who previously paid into it) and a private pension system everyone is strongly encouraged to pay into. As I understand it the private…

Watch the Ampel get into the stock market at its peak and put off an entire generation from the stock market, yet again.

Re: What to know about the stock market (2007)

#129

Post by pasabagi »

sokoloff wrote: post #119
pasabagi wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish it was just consumption! If houses always depreciated in value, then they would cost about as much as it costs to build them. Unfortunately, because a bunch of political factors, they endlessly balloon in price.

I think houses mostly do depreciate in value. The land underneath them does not and this can often mask the former. I live in a nice part of my city. My house is 100 years old, has terrible insulation, very old retrofit wiring, and needs constant maintenance to stave off decline. The house, with all the upgrades over the years, is likely worth about what it was when built. The land underneath it is a lot more valuabl…

Seems like semantics to me: you can't buy a house without essentially buying land. If you could, I absolutely would.

The fundamental problem here is not one of economics, but of politics. You can't live in a stable, dignified manner without paying to be part of a state-run monopoly (land ownership), so everybody who can does, so land titles (note the word) become absurdly expensive.

There is no real connection between land and living space - multiple story housing exists, and if housing was built to a reasonable density, there's more than enough land for everybody to live in whatever size house they could afford to build.

Re: What to know about the stock market (2007)

#130

Post by pasabagi »

djbebs wrote: post #118
pasabagi wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish it was just consumption! If houses always depreciated in value, then they would cost about as much as it costs to build them. Unfortunately, because a bunch of political factors, they endlessly balloon in price.

The houses do. The land they're on don't

Kitchens also don't appreciate in value. However, if you're trying to rent a flat in berlin, you'll probably find yourself paying brand-new+ prices for the previous tenant's kitchen.
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